Saturday, December 28, 2013

Dracula Has Left the Toilet Seat Up

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Directed by Freddie Francis
Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)

Dracula has risen from the grave and he is ready for a rumble.  I was excited to finally see this film since I'd already seen Taste the Blood of Dracula which starts off with Dracula's death scene from this film.  That seems to be the only thing these two films share other than Christopher Lee.  I'd like to believe that I can spot the difference between a Freddie Francis directed film and a Terence Fisher, but the differences are not so obvious in this case.  Maybe I need to see some more Freddie Francis films. 

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is a film about faith, and also vampires, but mostly faith...and also class.  There is no Van Helsing here, instead the vampire hunting is left to conservative religious authorities as represented by the Monsignor.  Our young heroes are the Monsignor's niece Maria and her student boyfriend Paul.  Paul is modern through and through.  He's working his way through school as a baker's assistant in return for room and board.  His boss Max is a genial and kind man who is like a father and friend to Paul.  Max is a solidly working class man who might own his own house and bakery but who is clearly at home with the folks who come to his tavern for a drink or ten.  Paul might be a student working his way up but he is also clearly comfortable with modern ideas of egalitarianism.  Paul is a perfect example of a young revolutionary.  Remembering that this story is set in Central Europe (in this case in the strikingly modern year of 1905) it is quite easy to think of Paul as a Marxist in everything but name.  (Sort of.)  It's a telling thing for a film made in the momentous year of 1968.

At any rate, Paul is left in the uncomfortable position of meeting his girlfriend's family after being drenched with beer by his student friends.  So he meets Maria's mother and then her uncle the Monsignor while reeking of alcohol.  And then when pressed he admits he's an atheist.  And you know what that means in a vampire film...his beliefs will be tested by the appearance of a bloodsucking fiend and whatever issues Count Dracula has atheism isn't one of them.    The Monsignor is not happy at all.   And what does this have to do with Dracula?

Well, Dracula has been menacing the neighboring town (where his Castle looms on the heights above.)  The film opens with a young woman's body being found dripping blood and hanging in the church bell.  For some reason we are then fast-forwarded to a year later and supposedly Dracula is no longer around but his spirit has lingered and nobody is attending the cursed church and the Priest has turned to drink because he's lost his faith.  The Monsignor shows up and drags the priest along with him to post a giant gold cross to block the door to Dracula's castle thus barring its use as a vampire nest.  (Or something to that effect.)  The priest meanwhile refuses to go all the way to the crack of Mt. Doom because he's a coward.  While the Monsignor is doing his ritual blocking of the door a thunderstorm occurs which causes the priest to run away.  While doing so he trips cracks open his head and his blood goes trickling down to the frozen river below where it resuscitates Dracula (who was turned into a vampiric popsicle down there in the previous Hammer installment (Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)).

This thunderstorm is of course a serious question of theodicy.  Is the storm evil?  That seems to be the indication of the weather suddenly becoming foul when the Monsignor attempts to bottle up the evil of the castle.  But why should the weather be controlled by the forces of darkness?  The storms should be essentially a neutral phenomenon.  Surely omnipotent deity would not cede control over something like the weather to the whim of evil?  Let us think of this instead as being a storm created by the forces of storytelling instead of a question of theology.  The storytellers needed a storm to create an element of fate that puts into motion the resurrection of the frozen Dracula.

So Dracula has risen from his grave, his frozen wet grave and now he wants to go home, but he finds that Thomas Wolfe was right and now he's pissed.  Dracula decides to take his vengeance out on the Monsignor and luckily for the Count the Monsignor has a very pretty niece.   And because he really is evil Dracula turns the priest into his minion to help him enact his revenge.  Who would suspect that a priest is actually serving the cause of evil?  Ahem, who would have suspected that in 1968?  These days we'd suspect that the mute boy in the church was mute because of something the priest did.  At any rate, turning the (nominal) servant of all that is good into a servant of evil is a bit of a coup for Dracula. 

Next Dracula goes after Zena the barmaid, who has a bit of a thing for Paul but manages to keep it nobly unrequited.  Zena is bitten and turned into a minion of Dracula.  The lower class woman is expendable here (whereas the higher class Maria is a treasure to be guarded.) and likewise her virtue is suspect whereas even though Maria goes out of her way to sneak around town and see Paul she still maintains a front of purity, while Zena has no pretense at expressing her sexuality.  Once she's under Dracula's control she is eager to please him.  Unfortunately for Zena she gets the "You have failed me for the first time and thus you have failed me for the last time" treatment from Dracula.  Lucky for Dracula he still has the priest to clean up his mess.  

Maria is eventually bitten by Dracula, because that's what Dracula does.  He uses women and sometimes he intends for them to be special companions. If her daddy's rich, he might even take her out for a meal, but if the girl is poor then Dracula does as he feels. 

The Monsignor has to die.  You know that's coming because he's too much of an even match for Dracula.  He's the Van Helsing of the movie.  Also, the death of the Monsignor forces a crisis of faith onto Paul.  In this story Dracula can only be defeated by faith.  Paul is a committed atheist.  You know where this is going.  Paul fights the priest and manages to turn him back to the good guys side.  But the priest is pretty useless.  Even though he and Paul drive a stake into Dracula they don't complete the religious ritual required (only in this film) to finish the job.  Thus, Dracula waits until they're gone and pulls out the stake and goes about his business.  And his business is draining people of blood.  

The Count abducts Maria and heads to his castle. There's a chase scene, horse drawn carriage style.  Dracula takes Maria up to his castle and uses her to get rid of the giant gold cross/plot device blocking his door.  She chucks the cross down from the heights but it lands perfectly upright, just as you might expect from a giant gold plot device.

That's when the boys show up.   And this time they mean business.   Paul finds the strength to throw Dracula down into the valley where he lands right on the giant gold plot device/cross that had (by the divine hand of Providence) landed upright on that very spot.  But that just means they've got Dracula pinned on a stake.  He can't free himself the way he did when he pulled the stake out of his chest earlier.  This gives the priest a chance at redemption and he manages to recite the Lord's Prayer.  (Really, that's the ritual required?)  That's what turns Dracula into dust.  Paul (and the priest) save Maria and Paul as a last gesture crosses himself, presumably because after what he's seen he has been driven back into the arms of religion.  

So like I said, this film is overtly about faith in traditional religion.  The priest loses his congregation because in some way his faith was inadequate to the task of keeping Dracula away.   This compounds his own lack of faith and drives him to drink.  But he is redeemed.  As for the Monsignor, he has faith and traditional conservative religious values but he is a relic of a dying civilization who must give way to the younger generation (and some of their radical values.)  He is redeemed in some way by his recognition that Paul's feelings for his niece are genuine and that the young man has admirable qualities notwithstanding his atheism.  

One thing I've noticed is that whereas the Hammer Frankenstein films are only loosely connected and in many ways should be viewed as independent stories the Hammer Dracula Franchise (from Dracula Prince of Darkness on) were directly linked with the previous film and with the aforementioned film skipping all the way back to the first of the Hammer Draculas.  In some ways this creates some problems and conundrums but at least in this film it doesn't detract from the story. 

I think in many ways this is the last really solid Hammer Dracula and certainly the last one where Dracula is the real focus.  In that regard it is a film that has some nostalgia goggles attached if taken in context.  (Sort of like watching the last Buffy or Angel episode before a really major change occurs.)  If you go back to it you'll have a much different feeling about it than you do if you just see it in sequence or completely by itself.  One of the advantages of a loose sequel style is that neither the audience nor the storytellers are bound by characters and situations that come before or after the story.  This can be a liability when it comes to character investment, but it can be a strength in that it avoids adaptation decay.  The one character in this case who we have to worry about is Dracula, who by this time has been sort of killed too many times, each time in a way that should be a definitive end. 

Cast
Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Monsignor Ernest Mueller -- Rupert Davies
Anna Mueller -- Marion Mathie
Maria Mueller -- Veronica Carlson
Paul -- Barry Andrews
Zena -- Barbara Ewing
Max -- Michael Ripper
Priest -- Ewan Hooper
Mute Boy -- Norman Bacon
Student -- John D. Collins
Landlord -- George A. Cooper
Farmer -- Chris Cunningham

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Arthur Grant 

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