I satanici riti di Dracula

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.

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?

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.

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.

1973's "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" may have been commissioned by Warner Brothers to fulfill a 2 picture Hammer contract, but with the colossal failure of "Dracula A.D. 1972" and the same production team at the helm (Alan Gibson directing from a Don Houghton script), production would proceed with little confidence as "Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London." Warners disowned the final product, issued in the US five years after completion with the title "Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride," Christopher Lee's 7th and final appearance in the title role, teamed for the third time with Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, who had destroyed his nemesis in modern day King's Road to conclude "AD," only to learn that the Count was swiftly revived by a new acolyte for a new mission, bringing in the nation's most powerful men in a plot to infect the world with a rapid mutation of bubonic plague. One general, one politician, one landowning Baron, and one Nobel Prize winning bacteriologist are installed under the pretense of using the weapon only as a deterrent, the vampire cult stationed at remote Pelham House, where blood rituals take place and biker guards attired in afghan prowl the grounds with sniper rifles. What a jumbled mishmash, keeping Lee offscreen until the final third, when his initial faceoff with Van Helsing evokes fond memories of past glories, and includes the bilingual Lee's personal tribute to Bela Lugosi by adopting a vaguely Hungarian accent. He remains a shadowy figure seated behind his desk as the reclusive entrepreneur D.D. Denham, the light reflected away to avert suspicion, Van Helsing armed with a silver bullet but not before making inquiries of the mysterious Denham, a helpless captive to witness Dracula's suicidal triumph. The ridiculous ease with which all vampires are dispatched also afflicts the central character himself, denied access to final revenge by the branches of a hawthorn bush (the object of Christ's crown of thorns), sent tumbling into an unworthy demise to quietly expire one last time, as opposed to the finale of "Horror of Dracula," a thunderous music score fully engaging the viewer in its thrilling battle of arch nemeses. The satanic rites themselves are superfluous and take up the entire opening half hour, after which Cushing effortlessly carries the picture on his own while protagonists fall like dominos; he'd be back for a 5th outing in Hong Kong, "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires," while Lee concludes his run with more screen time than in any previous Hammer entry except "Scars of Dracula," at least bowing out in a literal blaze of glory.