The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) Reviews

• Last rites for a once great franchise

  KenLiversausage2005-02-14

  The legendary Mr. Lee's last outing for dear old Hammer Studios in his red contact lenses and silk-lined cape. And what a sorry end to what was once one of the real jewels of British cinema, the Hammer horror franchise. While there are one or two glimmers of the style and talent that put Hammer at the top of the tree in the 50s and 60s, this awkward hybrid of espionage thriller and supernatural horror never really gets off the ground. Lee has so little screen time he could probably sue the filmmakers under the Trade's Descriptions Act - "The Satanic Rites of a Bunch of Other People You Don't Give a Stuff About, not the Famous Vampire Count You Were Hoping For" might be a more accurate title. What irks me about this film is not just that it represents a cheap, slipshod ending to the Hammer Dracula cycle, but that it's not even true to the spirit of those wonderful originals. What few thrills there are derive mostly from some motorcycle stunts and a bit of fashionable nudity. Lee might as well have phoned in his part, and poor old Peter Cushing, still reeling from the death of his beloved wife Helen, walks through what little action he's given like a refugee from Plague of the Zombies. And as for the ending, well, there used to be a well-defined mythology in these movies, a vampiric rulebook that everybody abided by. Bram Stoker made most of it up in the first place, but once they'd put their spin on it, the Hammer boys generally stuck to it: garlic, stakes, holy water, silver bullets, running water, all that stuff we'd all rely on to dispatch the bloodsucking nobleman if he ever started licking his lips in our bedrooms. But suddenly, out of nowhere, there's this new lethal substance, something else that can do for a vampire - the King of the Vampires even. And what is it? A hawthorn tree. Yes, you heard right; Dracula, immortal, super-powerful, supreme monster that he is, curls up his pointy toe-nailed tootsies and shuffles off this mortal coil because he gets his cape caught in a bloody hawthorn tree. Ho hum. (Mind you, they can give you a nasty scratch can those hawthorn trees.) Clearly Hammer had seen the writing on the wall splattered there by Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist, but although it tried, it simply couldn't adapt. The truth is that the classical Hammer ethos doesn't really translate to the modern idiom. The films were very much of their time, and the times, as Mr. Dylan so helpfully reminds us, they are a changin'. So charge your glasses with the best of British blood, leave this one in the rental store and check out something from the golden era of Hammer. Contrary to one of the film's many misleading alternative titles, Dracula is not alive and well and living in London. He's dead. And Hammer buried him.

• Pretty good, considering some of the others in the series.

  FoxRyan2003-02-06

  Saw Satanic Rites last night for the second time, and paid more attention this time. The film, if you`re waiting to see a lot of Dracula will be a bit of a let down (but let`s face it, since Taste the Blood of Dracula, I don`t think Christopher Lee has had 30 minutes screen time with all of the Dracula films joined together.) The movie starts slowly, with, for once, no Dracula resurrection scene. He`s just back, and does not appear until well into the film. (He appears in a scene obviously stuck in because they realized he had not made an appearance at all so long into the film). When Peter Cushing appears, you start to feel like this is a proper Hammer film after all. Peter Cushing really does this one justice. Then from the time he visits D.D.Denham, it is a pretty good Dracula picture. The action between our hero and villain gets going, and builds up to a reasonable finale. This is better than Dracula AD 1972, but as I have said before, the whole series should have stayed in Victorian times. Joanna Lumley is radiant as Jessica, who's character returns from the previous film. It is a pretty scary premise. Dracula, finally sick of being resurrected for 2 or 3 days at a time, wants to end it all, but in doing this, he wants to take everyone with him. THE WHOLE WORLD! It is a good plot which just happens to have Dracula as the figure-head. For once Christopher Lee gets a reasonably decent script and delivers his lines beautifully. A couple of points. In some of the Dracula films, we are introduced to new but apparently tested ways of dealing with the fanged one. Dracula, Prince of Darkness introduced clear running water, as used at the end of DPOD, in Dracula AD 1972, and in Satanic Rites. Then in AD `72 we are introduced to the fact that the good Count can be knobbled with a silver bladed knife. Handy, since Van Helsing has one. Then in this movie, Van Helsing introduces the Hawthorn bush, from which Christ recieved his crown of thorns. Guess where Drac ends up near the end? Do these things really work? Or is it just that sunlight and the old stake are boring now, and the writers just make these things up? I feel a bit cheated when someone like Dracula can be beaten by lightning, drowned in a moat (NOT running water), or overcome in a church (whereas he had already killed a girl and placed her body in a full blown God worshipping church.) This film, when it gets going, is a pleasing finale to the Christopher Lee years as Dracula, and to boot, Peter Cushing delivers a really good performance too.

• Not the usual Hammer Dracula but I like it anyway

  TheEdge-42007-05-29

  I yield to no one in my liking for the standard Hammer Gothic horror set in the Mittel Europe Carpathian mountains complete with villagers who refuse to go near to Castle Dracula unless armed with flaming torches to burn the place down. But every so often, Hammer tried something different, with varying degrees of success. "The Devil Rides Out" was set in 1930s England and is generally regarded by many (including me) as being one of Hammer's very best films. Others such as "Dracula A.D. 72" (often known unofficially as Dracula meets the hippies) and this one, "The Satanic Rites of Dracula", which drag Dracula into modern seventies London, were less critically regarded. Any film set in present day will always date quicker than a film set in the past. "Dracula A.D. 72" suffers in this respect more than "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" as the former features a supposedly wild gang of hippies who are in fact nothing of the kind (one of which includes a very young Michael Kitchen, years before "Foyle's War"). "The Satanic Rites" of Dracula", however, largely escapes this fate (apart from the motorcycle hit men with a dodgy preference for fur-lined waist coats and long sideburns). I still enjoy "Dracula A.D. 72" nonetheless even though I would class it as very much a guilty pleasure. The "Satanic Rites of Dracula" is literally another story however. One of the highpoints of "Dracula A.D. 72" however is the stylish direction of Canadian director Alan Gibson and Hammer brought him back to helm this final Hammer Dracula (unless you count (sorry) Dracula's cameo appearance in "The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires"). Thanks to Gibson, several scenes here work wonderfully (the scene in which Joanna Lumley is menaced in the cellar by the female vampires is particularly well done and the scene in which William Franklyn's character is shot in slow motion was obviously Gibson's idea of an homage to Sam Peckinpah which I promise you you will never see in another Hammer film). In fact, this film is different from nearly all the other Hammer films in a number of ways. It's probably one of the best photographed of all the Hammer films, thanks to cameraman Brian Probyn who had photographed some of Terence Malick's seminal masterpiece "Badlands". The film has a glossy look the belies the small amount of money that was probably spent on making it. In fact, the whole style of the film is different. One of the previous posters here has likened it to an episode of "The Avengers" (rather appropriate as Joanna Lumley, here playing Peter Cushing's granddaughter, Jessica Van Helsing, would go on to play Purdey in "The New Avengers" just a few years later). I'd agree with that and as a result the story plays more as a thriller rather than the standard Hammer Gothic horror. I always thought that bringing Dracula into the present day is a spectacularly bad idea, but if you are going to do it, then the way it is done here works fine. The idea of presenting Dracula as a present day Howard Hughes, hardly seen by anyone is a good idea (a real bloodsucking businessman, that has to be a first). And John Cacavas' music is effective, even though it is completely different to Hammer regular James Bernard's usual style (then again so was Mike Vickers' music in "Dracula A.D. 72"). Acting wise, Lee and Cushing are the usual class acts (Lee as usual has little to do other than quote a few lines from Stoker's original when given the chance). Michael Coles, William Franklyn, Freddie Jones and Joanna Lumley are good in support (even though Lumley's responsible character of Jessica Van Helsing seems to have changed radically from Stephanie Beacham's rebellious portrayal in "Dracula A.D. 72" - still perhaps nearly falling victim to a vampire does that to a girl). And Valerie Van Ost makes a great vampire (once she takes those glasses off, she's beautiful - who knew?) If you approach this film as a thriller rather than the traditional Hammer fare, I think you will enjoy it. Just as long as you don't expect any villagers with torches to turn up in the third act (although Pelham House does go up in flames anyway - unlike certain vampires, some traditions never die).

• Lots of ideas for Lee's final Dracula, but a bit of a mess overall

  DrLenera2004-08-08

  The last of the Christopher Lee Dracula series [the Count would make one more brief return for Hammer in the guise of John Forbes-Robertson in The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires] is not exactly a success, but it's a good deal more interesting than the shoddy Dracula AD 1972. There are quite a few new ideas in this one, although they are not organised well and it does become a bit of a mess. However, dull it isn't, unlike the previous one. We have satanists practising sacrificial rites, a mad scientist with a deadly virus, a Howard Hughes-type recluse who turns out to be....., biker assassins with guns, you name it. Much of it has an Avengers feel, and Dracula is unsurprisingly hardly in the film, with only one brief appearance until the final twenty minutes. There's more action than horror, but two vampire scenes in a cellar are well done. The effects of Dracula's death sequence are excellent, although the scene is silly, with this most accident prone of vampires simply walking into a rose bush. Not really a good film, but kind of fun. It does suggest interesting pathways which Hammer might have taken the series if the response to this had not been so poor.

• Better than you might think!

  The Welsh Raging Bull2001-11-30

  Hammer's penultimate Dracula film and the last one to feature a tired Christopher Lee in the title role. This is a significant improvement over Dracula A.D. 1972, but Peter Cushing is used significantly less in the fight scenes (which are not particularly good anyway). The story, which revolves around a revived Dracula (in disguise) getting government ministers and leading doctors to help him take over the world with the plague has its merits. Infact, the story is well-paced and it's content is refreshingly varied (bike chases, cellars with female vampires, a plague victim etc). Freddie Jones turns up with a superbly jittery performance as a scientist (he was also excellent in "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed"). Christopher Lee doesn't get enough screen time, but his scenes with Peter Cushing are, as you might expect, good (n.b. the scene in the tower block where Van Helsing goes to expose D.D. Denham as Dracula). Lee, also gets a chance to utter the immortal lines "..my revenge has spread over centuries and has just begun..." (which is apparently from the book). If you go into this film with an open-mind, you won't be too disappointed - there is certainly plenty going on, even if the plot is not very tightly structured.