Best line: YOU DRINK IT!! YOU DRINK THE FILTH!!!
Taste. TASTE! Classic Friday night fare and one of my early Hammers that I remember watching. This and Death Line in quick order, if I remember rightly. Not sure - I was ten, after all.
Have to say, this is probably my favourite of the "in period" Draculas plus its got gothic trappings up the kazoo, lovely autumnal leaves sweeping everywhere, a kind of "coy testing" of the waters for nudity where Hammer are concerned (theres a bit of T&A in this, but they went more full on with Vampire Lovers soon afterwards).
So, Dracs found impaled on a giant cross by Roy Kinnear mugging to camera in horror, following directly and dollying in from the end of Risen From The Grave. We cut to families leaving church in good ol' London and get an introduction to each over the credits rolling - very nicely done.
Later, the three patriarchs gather for their monthly "charity work" in the East End, really a front for whoring, drinking, debauching and generally worshipping at the altar of Dionysus.
The sight of a coked up Peter Sallis being ridden on all fours by a scantily clad whore occurs in this sequence - buyer beware!
A young dandy enters, steals one of the women, ruins the party and then sweeps out. Turns out he's a wrong un who is known in society for his SCANDAL. The old boys decide to join him for a black mass. Enter Roy with Draculas powdered blood, a great ruined church, young heaving bosomed daughters unhappy with home life and we've got ourselves a great recipe.
As Lord Courtley (the dandy) is getting busy with the black mass, imploring the gents to Drink. Drink!!, they chickenshit out, kick the crap out of him, leave him for dead and leg it.
Except, of course, he'd drank the blood..........so who comes back? The Big Man, of course.
Cue Drac lurking about being all predatory, young women under his spell, doom for all and a bloody good time for the viewer
METHOD OF DISPATCH
An odd one, this. Even by Draculas rather low standards. He's spent the whole film lurking in a ruined church, right? Enter young hero, who drapes a table cloth on the altar and puts a cross on it. Drac's riled up and flinging bits of furniture and pipe organ about when he spots the stained glass and susses "hang on? I'm in a fuckin' church?!?!?", falls off balcony and dies, crumbling to dust.
Yeah, not good. Not his worst, but pretty bloody silly all the same.
Never get tired of this one, oh no. Especially the bit when the three gentleman (Three Imposters? They are faking their reasons for being and about after all, and a Machen pun is always worth attempting) are walking up to the churchyard in expectation of a black mass and clutching their pearls.
Filmed in Highgate, I believe.
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