Dracula vit toujours à Londres

The accepted wisdom regarding the Hammer Dracula pictures is that they started great, tailed off to good, and, by the time the 70's rolled round, were stinkers. Well, sorry friends, but this time the accepted wisdom is wrong.

Personally, I have never been a great fan of Vampire films in general and Dracula in particular. The vast majority of the Hammer fang flicks bore me rigid (I like the Frankenstein's though - especially 'and the monster from Hell'). And I've always thought that Chris Lee was far better employed in other roles. But 'The Satanic rites of Dracula' represents the best of Hammer and Lee.

For me, one of it's major strengths is that Dracula remains implied rather than seen until the last third of the film. Instead, we view the sinister workings of his organization and it's minions. Lee appears after the first 30 minutes, in a short and ineffective scene in which he emerges from a puff of smoke to claim a kidnapped damsel, and then disappears again for another 30. This brief, unsatisfactory piece of business was presumably inserted to reassure punters who were worried that half an hour had elapsed without presenting the title character. Personally, I'd cut it to make an even better film.

The withholding of the chief vampire manages to build up a real sense of atmosphere and some genuine foreboding, which pays off well in the great little sequence where Cushing's Van Helsing finally confronts the Count, who has been operating under the funky moniker of D.D. Denham. A simple but very effectively staged episode with Pete n' Chris on top form.

The film as a whole is well shot and cut by ex-'Avengers' man Alan Gibson, who creates an effectively bleak and chilly atmosphere through good location work (a seemingly deserted London and Dracula's spooky country retreat) and some well designed interiors (hidden, seedy MI5 offices and Dracula's business headquarters). The tone and 'feel' of the picture is nicely established by the opening credits sequence. Again, simple but effective.

There are good performances by Cushing, Lee, William Franklyn, Freddie Jones and Michael Coles. Even Joanna Lumley. A modicum of 70's cheese, as evidenced by the vampire brides sequence and John Cacavas' cool 'chicka-wah' score, enriches, rather than taints, the whole experience. And some choice lines of fruity dialogue raise an occasional delighted grin. I've seen the film numerous times over the past 11 or 12 years and for me it never palls.

Along with 'Captain Kronos', definitely one of Hammers best.

Scared me at the age of eleven. The best thing I can say about this film. It should probably have been renamed 'A Stake Too Far' as by this time the Christopher Lee Dracula franchise had been bled dry.

Watch it by all means. But whilst you're watching ask yourself this: The fundamental plot line has Dracula and his cohorts wanting to wipe out the entire human race by releasing a deadly plague. If everyone's dead, on whose blood are they going to survive?

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.

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.

I guess Christopher Lee had had enough of Dracula, and this was his swan song. This has a clever twist, bringing the old guy back one more time. It involves the Count trying to bring a plague on humanity by using a group of significant businessmen to do his bidding. Of course, it's the same old crosses made by two sticks of wood, and so on. Cushing does his usual spooky character, this time a latter day Van Helsing. I have to say I enjoyed it.