The Satanic Rites of Dracula

Oh! Look at the month! It's October, so it looks like, over the next 30 days, I'll be dumping a bunch of the horror films I've saved up over the year. You have been warned.

Oh! And Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (aka Dracula and his Vampire Bride)(Alan Gibson, 1973)  The last of Christopher Lee's appearances as Dracula in the Hammer series is in this scraping-the-bottom-of-the-coffin sequel to Dracula A.D. 1972. The same writer. The same director. And Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are in it, as well as Michael Coles as Inspector Murray and the character of Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica returns, although not played by Stephanie Beachum this time, but by Joanna Lumley. If you'll recall, in the previous entry, Dracula died after being pushed into a pit conveniently filled with stakes, with the added help of Dr. Lorrimer Van Helsing (Cushing) using a shovel to push the stakes deeper into him, and him turning to ash on the spot.

 

This movie's aim is so low they don't even explain how Dracula gets resurrected from that outcome—he just shows up at the 31 minute mark of the movie as if nothing had ever happened. At this point, you'd think the man would learn to avoid anything sharper than a rubber ball!

The exploitation level is very high—so much so that Lee's Dracula is barely in it—and there's less of a Dracula plot and more of a spy-thriller aspect to it, as least initially, as an agent from MI6 escapes captivity while downstairs four prominent Englishmen are taking part in a ritual (presumably to revive Dracula but that runs counter to the timeline laid out in the movie) involving a naked blonde* and the blood of a chicken. It's a long ritual, judging by the simultaneous-event-cross-cutting, that the agent has time to escape, whisked to HQ and burbles a 30 minute tape record of his experience, then dies and the micro-film in his wristwatch camera gets developed by the time it's over.

 

By the time the movie is over, you'll realize that the 'satanic rites" opening and closing the films are irrelevant and Dracula has no vampire bride, making you wonder just what either of the titles had to do with the movie. Did I mention that, although the movie was released in Britain in 1973, it didn't get released in the U.S. until 1978? Not that it was particularly missed.

Anyway, MI6, being so efficient and all, determines they'll need outside help so they contact Inspector Murray "of the Yard" who helps identify the four big-shot Englishmen (one of them's a Nobel Prize winner in biology, but you'd never know it as he's played Freddie Jones in full "gibbering" mode!) and makes the leap to blood sacrifices in order for him to say "Blood? I know somebody who knows a thing or two about blood!"

Cue Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing! He agrees it's all pretty suspicious and as the biology genius is an old acquaintance of his, he goes off to visit him, while MI6 agent Torrence (William Franklyn), Murray and Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica go out to where the dead agent was held captive to blunder about asking questions of whatever suspicious conspirator they can find. They find those, but they also find a coven of vampirettes in the basement/wine-cellar. Crikey, that sounds out-of-place!

Okay, everybody stumbles about, but the upshot is that Dracula has posed as a real estate developer (!) living in the penthouse of the high-rise built on the very spot where he died in the previous film. Living like Howard Hughes and amassing a fortune in downtown London, he has financed the creation of a  form of bubonic plague with enhanced virulency that he plans to unleash upon—dare I say it?—the world. It sounds exactly like a Bond-villain plot,** but Dracula isn't holding the world to ransom—he just wants to do it (BECAUSE he's Dracula!).

Oh, there's stakings, an electrocution, the stronghold being set on fire and Jessica unconscious on a sacrificial altar...again!...before the big fight between Dracula and Van Helsing, which ends with Dracula being caught in hawthorn bushes. Hawthorn bushes. Okay, Wikipedia says that works, folklorically—just like turning on the sprinkler system dispatches the vampirettes in the basement—but, damn!, dramatically, it's a bit underwhelming. Now, I could understand Dracula not having a weed-whacker yet as they'd only been invented in 1971, but...if the guy's so rich he can fund a bubonic plague program, why can't he afford a gardener? It would have kept him from getting stuck—and then staked—by Van Helsing in the end.

Thankfully, nobody built a high-rise on that patch of Earth, as there wasn't a sequel...not with Lee's Dracula, anyway. He wouldn't be back. Cause of death is officially hawthorn branches and multiple stake-wounds. But, I think that's a cover-up. Judging by The Satanic Rites of Dracula, he died of anemia.

* I remember seeing this on one of the Elvira presentations of horror movies and there's so much gratuitous nudity that at one point she interjects "Uh...what's our "blurring" budget on this one?"

 

** Lee would do that NEXT year as the villain in The Man with the Golden Gun.

Dracula (1958)

Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula) (Terence Fisher, 1958) Jimmy Sangster's screenplay for the initial Hammer version of Dracula starts out much as Bram Stoker did—with an entry in the diary of Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen). Castle Dracula (in Klausenburg) is a good deal cleaner than previous domiciles (no cobwebs, no dust, but then the Count (Christopher Lee) does state his housekeeper is "away"), although it does an ever-present atmosphere of mist—one can even see Jonathan Harker's breath in his quarters.

 

But, Harker is not there to sell the place (as in the novel and so many versions). He announces that he is pleased to be accepted as the castle's "librarian" but he writes that he wants to "stop his reign of terror forever." You'd think, then, that he'd be a bit more wise to night-gowned beauties asking for help in the middle of the night, or that he might have come with holy water or a crucifix or a bible or some garlic of something. Or to choose his priorities on whom to stake a bit more wisely. 

Within days after Harker's arrival, Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) arrives at the Klausenburg Inn inquiring about Harker, and is stonewalled until he goes up to the castle. Upon entering the grounds, he sees a coach leaving in a big hurry, and investigating further, he finds two coffins in the basement, one holding a staked vampire woman turned old with age, and in the other, Jonathan Harker. Van Helsing makes quick work of him with a stake through his heart.

Returning to Karlstadt (Karlstadt?), Van Helsing informs the family of Harker's fiancee, Lucy (Carol Marsh), of the young man's death. Lucy has taken ill...with anemia...and her brother Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough) and his wife Mina (Melissa Stribling), who rebuff the doctor despite his reputation as "a very eminent man." They choose to delay telling her the terrible news until she recovers. There's not much chance of that, as it turns out.

Van Helsing may be "very eminent" (as Stoker described him as a philosopher a "metaphysician") but he seems to have a weird specialty. We seem him dictating his thoughts on vampirism, and it gives us a veritable "Vampire Rulebook" for this film's iteration of the myth. He tells us that vampires are allergic to light (and that sunlight is fatal), that vampires are "repelled" by the odor of garlic, that the "power of the crucifix symbolizing the power of good over evil, protects the human being but exposes the vampire or victim when in advanced stages."

"Victims consciously detest being dominated by a vampirism but are unable to relinquish the practice, similar to addiction to drugs. Ultimately, death results from loss of blood, but, unlike normal death, no peace manifests itself for they enter into the fearful state of the Undead." Changing into bats or wolves is dismissed later as "a common fallacy." It's in the Stoker, but sometimes a vampire's weakness is actually budgetary.

That also may be why so many of the characters from the Stoker novel are missing (as they are in the stage play), or switched out. Lucy Winestra and Mina Murray are transferred to a more nuclear Holmwood family, Quincey Morris is sent to a farm, and Dr. John Seward's presence is minimal and there's no Renfield or mention of an asylum. Then, again, there's no transcontinental travel, either. Everybody stays on the continent. Stoker's novel is boiled down to the minimal, but in a different way than the Hamilton Deane/John L. Baldeston play (which was copyrighted and held by Universal). And, of course, it being Hammer, there are bit-pieces for character actors, some of which are rather comic.

The treatment of the Count is a bit different. Christopher Lee has 16 lines, all of them in the first fifteen minutes. The rest of the time, he is silent and menacing, baring his fangs and growling—it IS difficult to deliver dialogue when you're slurshing through fangs. There is no pretense that he is a nobleman, or even having the manners of a member of the upper class. He is a monster, a hunter, with no motivations other than to feed. And his close-ups are animalistic, with reddened eyes, wolfish fangs and without the thought of even wiping his mouth to take away the blood of his victims. But, despite that, there is a carnality to him that enflames the ladies (it is Hammer, after all) and makes them toss garlic, doff crucifixes and open balcony doors in lustful invitation to him.

There is also an overt physicality to this Dracula, as well, no doubt owing to the lack of dialogue. During the first confrontation between Harker and Dracula, Lee leaps over a large dining room table to attack Harker, at one point, running up stairs three at a time to make an escape, and, during the climactic confrontation, Van Helsing—or Cushing's stunt-double—goes full-on Douglas Fairbanks to rip down the drapes to let in the sun-light in order to reduce Dracula to ash. Talk about leaving a carbon foot-print!

Lee is quite amazing in the movie and makes a stark contrast to the cool, collected Cushing, but, the most remarkable performance belongs to Carol Marsh as the poor, unfortunate Lucy, who exhibits a wily lust before she is dispatched and then, abject terror when she is stopped from attacking her brother-in-law by a relentless Van Helsing (Marsh was also noticeable as "Rose" in Brighton Rock). She's quite amazing, especially considering the performances of Lee and Cushing, which could overshadow anyone, and which are considered—even without the benefits of vampirism—immortal.

Man Bait (1952)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Man Bait (aka The Last Page)(Terence Fisher, 1952) Even British noirs are a bit more refined than those in the States, as lurid as they try to make them in their marketing strategies. Take Man Bait, which—as one might suspect—is not the first or last time that title has been used in the history of cinema. It holds the distinction of being the first film of the Hammer Studio to be directed by the director who would become most associated with it, and who would direct the best films of the studios' output, Terence Fisher.

Now, we've all got to start somewhere, and Fisher does a fairly decent job of keeping the movie cruising along and maintaining a slightly tawdry air. The script is by the fellow who wrote the stage play "Dial 'M' for Murder" and one can see little similarities in style: wronged people, compromised positions, the doting yet stalwart "third wheel", conflicting truths and the telling little detail that gives all away despite having no significance whatsoever. It's just the genders are reversed, and for that reason, the stakes seem a lot less crucial.

Pity poor store manager John Harman (George Brent) of Pearson's Rare Books on Oxford Street. He works relentlessly, with little time off, and he has an invalid wife with a heart condition. The man is a saint. Why, the worst thing the man does in a day is to reprimand blond, dishy clerk Ruby Bruce (Diana Dors) for clocking in late. She says it won't happen again, but it will, and there will be consequences. 

Those consequences involve her lack of judgment and an incident that occurs later in the shop when she spots a sharp, Jeff Hart (Peter Reynolds) trying to shop-lift a rare and expensive book. Now, Hart is a grifter and a cad at selling a line. He makes Ruby promise not to report the incident...and promises to meet him at a club later, after work. The girl has issues. But, she still is available for working after-hours with the manager.

Harman and Ruby work late, with her in her off-the-shoulder party frock. He reminds her not to be late in the morning, and the two seem to have put the day's earlier animosity behind them. How the kiss happens, neither one of them can remember, but it results in a rip in her blouse. Harman becomes apologetic, and promises to give her the funds for a new one, and Ruby goes off on her date.

Hart awaits her at the club, ready to be on the make, and sets the mood by letting her know that she's late, and the story comes out. And he puts it in Ruby's head that she can get much more out of her boss than just the cost of a blouse, if she plays her cards right. And he'll tell her just how to play it.

Harman is planning a trip with his wife, their first vacation in years, and assistant Stella Tracy (Marguerite Chapman) is only too happy for him. She has turned down better paying jobs in the past, but feels obligated to Harman as, even though he is completely unaware of it, she admires him and secretly loves him. She doesn't know what happened between him and Ruby, but she notices that the girl is spending more and more time in the office.

That's because she's blackmailing Harman, and, with Hart's coaching, she is demanding more and more from Harman, even going so far as to threaten to write a letter to his wife, telling her about the incident. He can do nothing but comply, but he is outraged by it, and he can't fire the girl or everything will come out. He's trapped.

Well, it wouldn't get any good unless things got extremely out-of-hand, and they do, it short order, with Harman ultimately becoming a fugitive from justice, and a rather ingenious way to be shown for book-sellers to hide a body. One does not find this very enjoyable, though, as the supposed innocent party is not all that innocent, even if he is not ultimately guilty of what transpires.

Star George Brent was a serious actor—he had done eight films with Bette Davis and you have to be on your "A" game with her. But, here, he gets a "D" or "D-". Maybe he didn't like the material, maybe he was playing beneath his gifts, but those gifts are on short display, as he plays his put-upon exec like he'd just read his lines and didn't think about what they meant. It's a flat emotionless performance that has all the sincerity of reading a phone-book. And when he does have to emote, he goes "0" to "60" in half-a-tick, and then forgets that he just yelled. He makes Man Bait no fun at all.

The rest of the cast isn't much better—Reynolds is too fey to be slick and Chapman goes for the Joan Crawford section of the theater. Surprisingly, the best thing about Man Bait is the bait itself. Diana Dors is still very early in her career at this point, but, at least there's subtlety in what she does, and any conflicting emotions about her character's actions just keeps you guessing. She's terrific in this and you miss her when she goes away 3/4 of the way through the film. Dors was always touted as being "Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe." But, that hardly seems fair. The camera certainly loved Monroe more, but Dors was consistently a better actress.

Five Million Years to Earth

Five Million Years to Earth (aka Quatermass and the Pit) (Roy Ward Baker, 1968) London is all a-natter about the recent discovery hitting the news—the discovery of the skeletons of "underground ape-men" during construction of the Hobb's End section of the London Underground. Paleontologist Dr. Romey (James Donald) and his assistant Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley) have been called in to study and document the find and Romey speculates that the remains have been there for five million years.

It causes enough of a stir that the British Army is monitoring. They've been busy, informing Dr. Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir) of the British Experimental Rocket Group that they'll be joining his enterprise with the intention of employing military uses for the doctor's research, something that raises Quatermass' blood pressure considerably. But, when the excavators (particularly one played by Bee Duffel) uncover a metal object in the dig, Quatermass' new military overseer Col. Breen (Good Lord, it's Julian Glover!) invites the good doctor along to have a gander.

The military thinks its unexploded ordinance, but it's like no bomb they've ever seen: for one, the metal isn't magnetic, and it resists any attempts to cut through it with an acetylene torch—the damned thing doesn't even warm up. And the soldiers who've touched it for any length of time develop frost-bite symptoms. The substance is harder than diamonds, so it didn't come from the Nazis ("you ask von Braun" says Quatermass).

Original construction on the tube was in 1927, and about that time, Hobb's End was abuzz with rumors of spooks and spirits with sightings of a frightening type— "the figure was small like a hideous dwarf." There are scratch-marks on the walls of the abandoned tenement, and a local bobby gets the sweating yips inside the ruins. Appropriately, the place used to be spelled "Hob's End"—"Hob" being another name for the devil. It seems whenever someone digs in the area, "something" gets disturbed...and not in a good way.

That accelerates when attempts to get inside a sealed chamber of the metal "bomb" are attempted using a Borazon drill. It is unsuccessful, but the screeching caused in the process has an unnerving effect on the operator, Quatermass, Breen and Romey. Still, it does have a subsequent effect. The chamber begins to open, and inside is a honey-combed chamber with large insectoid creatures, long dead, that begin to disintegrate with their first contact with the air. Romey and Quatermass extract what they can and take the samples back to examine.

The upshot of all this is that those creatures came from Mars five million years ago in a colonization effort and finding only primitive hominids, used their technology to advance the race on the path to what would, at some point, become homo sapiens. How this is all determined is rather muddled in the explanation, as is a crucial sub-plot involving Romey's development of a gizmo that can tap into the ancient human psyche—wrestling with our alligator brains, as it were. A plan is made to use the device to record the readings when a subject is near the "bomb," and it creates a recording of hordes of hopping creatures in a marching pattern that, despite the primitive special effects, looks pretty darn good from reading brain-waves.

It seems the Martian locusts still have the power to influence us, and when the scientists' continued attempts to figure out what it is they're trying to figure out, disaster strikes in the form of a power cable hitting the bomb and sending out blasts of psychic energy that turn people crazy and start ripping up the infrastructure. Lord, we're turning into Martians! This must have seemed entirely uncivil, not to mention not posh in the England of the 1960's. And it's only through grim determination, self-sacrifice, and a conveniently placed crane, that everyone survives enough to take on the clean-up involved.

It isn't that it's bad. It's quite good in its ideas and the acting is professional, and even convincing, in even its dicier places. Having seen the original BBC teleplay, the film version was certainly compromised by the shorter story time and Hammer Studios' reluctance to put on the "what it all means to us" coda that sobers things up considerably, and the higher budget, for some reason, just distances the thing a couple steps from believability.

But, the ideas are there—that we're all just the product of some tinkering from another source, and that the dead can still have a powerful effect on the living—and are just creepy enough to raise the goosebumps and cause one to turn on the lamp (just in case). And the "common-folk" type of writing that seems to have leeched right out of movies in favor of bland archetypes.

It's one of those movies that would be a marvelous starting point for a remake, with some good ideas to germinate and just a bit more time to clean up the exposition. It always seems a better idea than to (as is the financial trend) to update past hits only to see them fall short. 

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968) It was the fourth of Hammer's "Dracula" films and the third to star the malevolently magisterial Christopher Lee* as the "Count-of-Few-Words," where, the events of the previous film, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, the Count has been dispatched by being thrown into the frozen moat that surrounds his high castle. Not quite as thorough as a stake through the heart or an hour in a tanning booth, but that seemed to be good enough to end the film with. One wonders why nobody worried about a potential Transylvanian spring-thaw just to make sure the Count was really and sincerely dead rather than merely or nearly dead. Perhaps they anticipated the sun's rays hitting the moat would do the trick.

Perhaps I'm thinking too logically about a movie featuring vampires.

Anyway, the nearby village still has an issue, in a preamble set a year before the film, a young church helper is stunned to find a recently bit damsel tumbling from a belfry bell. Presumably, it's a reminder that Dracula was about and has a lot to do with the idea of desecration—Dracula had chosen to do his dirty work in the very house of God. But, he got his; he's in a frozen moat, never to be heard from again.

Not bloody likely...

And it's religious hubris that sets off the chain of events that frees him, all in the name of trying to do the right thing. No good deed goes unpunished, etc. You can't have religion in a horror movie without some irony attached to it.

Monsignor Mueller (Rupert Davies—he played John Le Carre's George Smiley in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold) visits the town to find that nobody is going to church and it's in ruins. The young helper has become mute from his belfry shock and the parish priest (Ewan Hooper) is found in the local tavern, drinking something stronger than sacramental wine. He has lost his faith, given the previous year's struggle with the Count, and even though Dracula sleeps with the fishes, none of the towns-people have returned to the church, fearing Dracula's evil influence as the shadow of his mountain-top castle still touches the church.

Mueller intends to rectify things, so, with the priest in tow, he climbs to the Count's castle to exorcise it, jamming a crucifix in its door-way. The fallen priest, frightened by the influence of the place, literally falls, cracking his head on the rocks, and the blood from his wound makes its way into the moat, eventually reviving Dracula. Prematurely satisfied that he has solved the problem, Mueller gathers up the injured priest and they return to the town. The Monsignor returns to his home-city of Keinenberg, where he stays with his sister-in-law and her daughter, his niece (Veronica Carlson).

"SNARLINGLY miffed..."

Dracula is snarlingly miffed that he can't re-enter his castle and swears revenge (rather than immediately bite someone and tell them to remove the cross—vampires are so unpractical! But he'll get there, eventually). Placing the village-priest under his thrall, he extracts the name of the Monsignor and the two travel to Keinenberg, the Monsignor's home-town, where the venerable old priest has enough things to worry about. It seems his niece Maria has a young man, Paul (Barry Andrews), a student and baker's assistant, and the two are quite in love. But, when he is invited for Maria's birthday dinner, the subject of religion comes up and it seems that Paul is an atheist, which so offends the monsignor that he leaves the table early.

Maria doing what Hammer heroine's do:

laying around in diaphanous sleepwear and breathing hard

Maria still loves Paul—enough to sneak out of her bedroom window and walking over roof-tops to be with him—but with Dracula in town, any comely blond with a good collection of ornate peignoirs had best keep her windows locked, her meals heavy in garlic, and a rabies vaccination nearby. But, her nightly habits are bad enough—what with being out at night and roof-hopping—she's the perfect match for Dracula (they have so much in common!) And, as she's the monsignor's niece, he thinks she's the only game in town to pay back getting crossed at his castle.

The director for Dracula Has Risen From the Grave is Freddie Francis, who started out his career as a cinematographer, and a very good one, versatile with both black-and-white and color, and working with some very visual directors—John Huston, The Archers, David Lynch, Jack Clayton, Robert Mulligan, Martin Scorsese—and was the shooter of choice for some cinematographer/directors like Jack Cardiff. He won two Oscars for his work—for Sons and Lovers and Glory—but, one of my favorite films that he shot is Clayton's The Innocents. 

Francis had another cinematographer shoot this for him when he took over directing the film (for ailing Hammer veteran Terence Fisher), but he lent him the filters—tinged at the edges with red, amber and yellow—used for that film for every scene that featured Lee's Dracula. The results are jarring (especially when it goes from a shot without to one being used), but they create a creepy sense that the Count even has an effect corrupting the film it'd been shot on, giving it a jaundiced unhealthy look. For that, and Francis' direction, it makes an interesting part of the series.

And even though Lee hated the jokey way that Hammer sometimes treated and advertised the films, that poster is hilarious.

Lee does his "these aren't the droids you're looking for" move.

* Dracula does not appear in The Brides of Dracula, as the film centers around Peter Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959) I'll go see any Sherlock Holmes story (as long as it's not a spoof), not so much because the story's are compelling--they're fascinating for the glimpse of salaciousness in Victorian England, but the story-template is rarely altered--but because the portrayal of Holmes is an actor's showcase. Holmes by Doyle is something of a blank slate, so an actor can infuse him with whatever qualities they choose to emphasize: Basil Rathbone, the heroic; Jeremy Brett, the neurotic; and on down the line to the worst--Stewart Granger who was content to make Holmes merely British (we won't get into Hugh Laurie as "House"). 

So, it's interesting to see the Hammer Studios' "take" on Holmes. Hammer was the British equivalent of Roger Corman's AIP, but with a distinct advantage in that, although they trolled in the less-expensive features, they usually had better reputations than their American cousins. Like AIP, Hammer also purloined classics in the public domain for story material, but they had the advantage of employing Terence Fisher, with his flawless eye of direction, framing (and cleavage) and a repertory cast that included Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

Here Cushing plays Holmes and he's obviously devoured the Doyle stories for Holmes quirks, stabbing documents into his mantelshelf and writing notes on his cuffs. His Holmes is energetic and flinty, bordering on rude with a relish of the melodramatic—as any portrait of Holmes endeavoring to be true to Doyle should be. His skull-like face even recalls Sidney Paget's original drawings. Until Brett came along, Cushing, to this Baker Street Irregular, was the best of the Holmes portrayals. Christopher Lee plays the put-upon Henry Baskerville, and as the actor is quick to point out in a "Special Features" interview, it's one of only a handful of romantic leads that he's played in his long, long career. 

Bear in mind this was the first attempt at a Holmes movie—in color, no less—since Basil Rathbone hung up the deer-stalker in 1946. Fox Studios had done their own version of "Baskervilles" in 1939, a significant film in Holmes cinema history as it was the first version that kept the time-period to Victorian times—previous Holmes films and subsequent films in the Fox series chose to set the film in contemporary times.

What makes this "Baskervilles" different from the others? Holmes is absent for far less time, for one thing. There's a lurid, rather manic, flash-back acquainting us with the bloody origins of the Baskerville curse, and combines the curse with some ritualistic mumbo-jumbo. It steams up the romance (of sorts) in a way that indicates the couple is in a hurry, and the ultimate dispatching by quicksand is given to someone entirely different. It is, although far more lurid than Conan Doyle envisaged, faithful in spirit, if not in detail. And Cushing's flinty, mercurial Holmes is a delight.