Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) directed by Peter Sasdy, screenplay by Anthony Hinds
Taste the Blood of Dracula is a mixed bag of a film. It edges toward exploitation, but of course it’s not Vampyres by a long shot. It hints at incomprehensibility, but for a script that wasn’t originally going to include Dracula at all, it actually works out alright. (Christopher Lee was reluctant to play Dracula again and the story was supposed to revolve around young Lord Courtley’s revenge, but the American distributors wanted Dracula in there somewhere because they judged, rightly, that they could sell anything better with a Dracula name attached than without.)
The opening of the film features a fat salesman named Weller (Roy Kinnear) in a carriage who manages to piss his fellow travelers off so badly that they toss him right out into the (presumably Eastern European) forest. He hears screaming and discovers Dracula (Christopher Lee) impaled with a stake and dying. (This is apparently taken from the end of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.)
Dracula’s eyes are creepily blood red (allergies again) and after a bit of writhing he finally turns to dust and his blood (do vampires bleed?) turns into a powder. Dracula then disappears from the film for a while.
Meanwhile back in England (at last, we’re out of Ingolstadt) we get a little scene in a churchyard straight out of Trollope or George Eliot with the young lovers of the community paired off and making arrangements for their assignations. Jeremy Secker (Martin Jarvis) is in love with Lucy Paxton (Isla Blair) and Lucy's brother Paul (Antony Corlan) is in love with Alice Hargood (Linda Hayden). But Alice’s father forbids her from seeing young Paul despite the fact that he himself is friends with the boy’s father as we soon learn.
In fact the fathers of the kids here form a little trio that gets together the last Sunday of every month to do “Charity work in the East End.” I don’t know who Charity is, but she must work pretty hard. It’s a shame these guys don’t have a name for their little trio. (The Ambulators, The Victorian Dads Thrill-Seeking Hooker & Blackjack Club, The T-Birds, Cougars, Hawks, Jerkoffs, whatever…) or for that matter t-shirts and nicknames.
Apparently, they are bored, or at least Hargood (Geoffrey Keen) is bored, Secker (John Carson) and Paxton (Peter Sallis) seem to be enjoying themselves. (Hookers and cigars and cocaine, what else could a Victorian gentleman need?) Hargood, though, needs something to keep him interested since abusing his wife and daughter and heading to the bordello once a month don’t seem to do the trick anymore.
The bordello in the East End is the exploitation element that provides the titillation factor and a bit of nudity as we tour the place with Felix (Russell Hunter) the ridiculously made-up mostly bald pimp. (When I say ridiculous, please understand that this is something of an understated. Hugo Weaving in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert looked more classy.) We get a really atrocious bit of exotic dancing by an uninteresting lady (Malaika Martin) with a snake (I can see why Hargood is bored) though, again, Paxton and Secker seem to be quite enjoying themselves with their own ladies.
But even this bit of Sunday night fun is interrupted by the appearance of young Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates) (whose character was originally intended to be the main evil of the film in place of Dracula). Courtley is a proto-Aleister Crowley/post-Byronic character who has gone whole-hog into devilry and evil. He is the real deal compared to the T-Birds and their attempts to stave off boredom. Despite not having a penny, Courtley walks into the brothel like he owns the place, walks in on every room in the place and in each one the prostitutes swoon over him because he’s just that damned charismatic. He’s like a Victorian devil-worshipping Fonzie. Courtley is so cool that he walks right in on the old guys and their snake dancer takes Hargood’s whore away from him with a snap of the fingers and walks out to the great embarrassment (as if he wasn’t a walking embarrassment already) of Felix the Pimp.
Hargood is now bored and angry but also kind of curious and breaks up the whole party and (perhaps mesmerized by the clammy excitement of Courtley’s evil) goes looking for the young man to see if he can provide the gang with better entertainment.
Courtley is excited by the prospect of people with money and suggests they follow him to a shop where he can get them something really exciting. It is, of course, the fat merchant Weller who has the relics of Dracula including the powdered blood of Dracula amidst his other knicknacks.
It costs a freaking fortune but Hargood bullies everyone into pitching in (or he'll disband the club altogether) and they meet up with Courtley at an abandoned church where he sets up a low-budget black mass and proceeds to brew up 4 goblets of Dracula blood smoothies. Courtley orders the old men to drink the blood (without actually using the phrase “Taste the Blood of Dracula” fortunately) and they refuse because A) it looks (and maybe smells?) disgusting and B) it turns out they were bored but not THAT bored. Hargood tells Courtley to drink it himself, so the young man obliges and takes a big gulp of Dracula which then causes him to collapse. (There is a particularly annoying heartbeat camera effect here.) And then, for no discernible reason the older men beat Courtley to death and then, horrified (and a little thrilled?) by what they’ve done they go their separate ways and (in order to avoid suspicion) disband their club or at least suspend their activities. (Which isn't suspicious at all.)
After the chorus of old men leave the church Dracula finally appears (a little late to give the old folks a little thrill) and declares “They have destroyed my servant. They will be destroyed.” (If he had shown up a minute earlier he could have destroyed them in less than a minute and put an end to this movie right then and there.)
So, the rest of the film turns into a revenge film as Dracula takes out his vengeance on the fathers by using their children.
Hargood begins to drink more than usual and act ever more abusively with Alice. The look on the father’s eyes when he goes after Alice to hit her is not just menacing but portends even more disgusting possibilities. (I mean, he did kill a man, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still bored enough to do something far worse.)
Alice runs away from her father and stumbles into the arms of Dracula, who turns her into a minion (though not full-fledged). Her father chases after her, and under the spell of Dracula she takes a shovel and stoves in her father’s head.
This brings the police into the game as they begin to suspect everyone of everything without much luck. Alice lures her friend Lucy into Dracula’s arms (and teeth). Secker figures out what’s going on and tries to fix the problem (he suddenly becomes a stand-up guy here) and with Paxton in tow goes to the church where they discover Lucy’s body. Secker tries to convince Paxton what must be done but Paxton shoots Secker and then, refusing to kill his own daughter is instead killed by Lucy and Alice in a bacchic frenzy.
The innocent children as the instrument of their guilty fathers’ demise is a great device, though once Secker is stabbed by his own son it becomes less clear what Dracula’s problem is with the children other than pure mayhem.
Paul, armed with information from the now-deceased Secker who managed to take the time to research vampires before being killed (“You must arm yourself with knowledge.”) embarks on an ad hoc hero quest to rescue Alice from Dracula. Alice ends up being too needy a minion for Dracula who doesn’t want to be pestered by her. (Why don’t you turn me into a vampire too? Did you think Lucy was prettier than me? Do I look fat in this yellow dress?)
But Dracula’s rejection of Alice is costly as she joins up with Paul at the end to trap Dracula in an ambush of crosses, liturgy and light (including an especially amazing glowing cross) that finally does the vampire in. (I don’t know why Dracula takes to hurling objects at people, but he does.) Paul and Alice (no longer bothered by the sins of the older generation) survive to do what young folks do. Too bad their friends are dead, but that happens.
So, Taste the Blood of Dracula, while not rising to the level of a classic, does have some interesting angles to it. I can see how the story was at once convoluted and enriched by the presence of Dracula. It’s hard to imagine Courtley as having the same dark mesmerizing capability of Christopher Lee’s Dracula and while there is much that is incomprehensible here and it’s not a must see, there are some decent elements of interest. So, if you’re as bored as the old guys here, watching this movie would be a better choice than going to a Victorian whorehouse or drinking Dracula’s frothing blood.
Extras
Theatrical Trailer
The trailer actually says: “Sense the clammy excitement of his evil.”
Sense the WHAT? Sense the CLAMMY WHAT?
How far off the deep end does a slogan writer have to go to write the words “Sense the clammy…” and go on from there to finish the sentence? And how coked up do producers have to be to say “That’s brilliant. It really captures the essence of the film.”
Clammy. Excitement. Evil. This is not a combination known to nature.
When I think of excitement I don’t think of the word clammy? I don’t even think of clams when I think of excitement. (Well, I suppose it does depend on the type of clam we’re talking about, but still…)
I don’t know whether it’s insulting or liberating that someone got away with this ridiculously bad line.
I don't know, because I'm still a little bit deranged from being hit in the head with the line "Sense the clammy excitement of his evil!" No. I will not sense his clammy excitement. I don't want to sense his clammy anything. I won't do it.
Perhaps instead of the imperative, they could at least make it an offer: Sample the clammy excitement of his evil! Sip the Blood of Dracula!
No comments:
Post a Comment