Last Rites

This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. This is a sequel to Dracula. And it is one of scariest movie ever made. This not a 3.8. This is a great movie. I give it 9 out 10. If this movie does not scary you then no movie will. Dracula (1931) is better. But still this a great movie. Dracula (1992) is also better. Nosferatu (1922) is also better. But still this a very scary movie. A lot better then that crap Blood for Dracula. This one movie you do not want to miss. More people need to see this movie. It is a classic horror film. I need more lines and I am running out of things to say.

SERIOUS SPOILAGE

I can remember seeing trailers for this on television when it was released, and being interested in all things vampiric, I longed to be old enough to see it. Boy, I didn't know what I was missing, that's for sure!

This is a face-off between vampire and...non-vampire. In the vampire corner, we have Lucard. A. Lucard, to be exact (haw haw). Lucard is a mortician, which is a great business for a vampire to be in, especially when mortician's wax seems to help vampires come out during the daylight. Lucard and his vampire buddies (the sheriff, the paramedics, and a few miscellaneous others) like to rush to the scene of accidents, declare the victims dead when they're not, then whisk them off to the mortuary for some bloodsucking. Immediately after biting them, the vampires stake the victims, for fear of any newly-minted competition getting a leg up on them.

In the other corner is one Ted Fonda. Ted's mother-in-law is the latest in the town's not-really dead but definitely soon-to-be undead category. Mrs. Ted is frantic, especially after they decide they want to have the wake at home and Lucard doesn't want to give back the body. Every shady businessperson's nightmare, Ted Fonda isn't one to be pushed around by any mortician, and he brings the old lady's corpse back home so they can put it in their living room for a few days until the wake--unembalmed, no less!

The match is on when Lucard sends one of his minions to steal the body back, but he winds up impaled on a picket fence in Fonda's yard instead. Grandma rises from the coffin later that same night and wanders the rural countryside looking like Grandmama Addams with Halloween vampire fangs, while the next day the Fondas are sure Lucard stole the body after all.

Meanwhile, there are social problems in the vampire community. The doctor and the sheriff think Lucard is getting too many victims, so some bickering leads to a few bat-fights. Fonda calls the doc over to give his already-sleeping wife a sedative, and he can't resist turning her into a late-nite snack. Fonda is out on his own little stake-out, following Lucard around while they search for Granny vampire before she can cause too much trouble and blow their cover. They find her and hold her down so the sun can kill her, but not before she makes eye contact with Ted, who finally figures out something strange is going on (duh!). Lucard tries to literally hold Ted back, stopping his car with his bare hands and sheer vampire strength, but Ted escapes and goes home to find his lovely wife completely drained.

When Lucard returns to the mortuary he finds the sheriff snacking on a 'drowning victim' Lucard had been saving for himself, so they have a slugfest that finds the town minus one undead lawman, and the town's vampire population dwindles. With only Lucard and the doc left, they employ some vague sort of deduction to guess Ted's whereabouts, while Ted sets a booby trap for them by dousing his car (and his wife) with gasoline and rigging it with an extension cord. The vampires fall for it--they're undead and not too bright--and Ted manages to stake both of them while they wriggle in flames.

In the film's stunning denouement, Ted stumbles away thru a pasture, while a title card informs us that Ted was found guilty on four counts of murder, and that nobody believed his vampire conspiracy theory. Furthermore, the body of his wife was NEVER FOUND! EEEEEEE!

"Last Rites" was probably a real scream to make; it looks a lot like a home movie and seems to have been assembled by filmmakers who were just jazzed about making a vampire movie and didn't really care about having an actual script. Truth be told, some of the 'arty' shots really do work up some atmosphere, and the shamelessly hokey vampire lady is great. Then something comes along and goofs it up, like those long unnecessary shots that track the characters as they drive in their vehicles along endless rural roads, or Ted and his numerous phone calls, or when some stray filming equipment or a Pizza Hut or something enters the frame and reminds us that we're watching a cheesy flick. This movie's imaginary story doesn't even exist within the frames of the film itself. Just like the vampire lady, who wanders around dazed and realizing she's dead, the movie knows it's baloney.

My quest to see every Dracula movie ever made brings me to this low-budget regional vampire film in which bloodsuckers in a small town, all prominent local citizens, feed upon people who have been wrongfully declared dead by A. Lucard (Gerald Fielding), the local mortician. To prevent their unwilling blood donors from joining the ranks of the undead, the vamps stake them once they are all done slurping; unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances sees one victim escaping their clutches and rising from her coffin...

The idea that these vampires have successfully carried out their operation for a long period of time without being rumbled is highly unlikely, but I'm willing to accept this, the film at least attempting to pump some new blood into an old genre. What I cannot forgive, however, is director Domonic Paris's languorous storytelling, which makes Dracula's Last Rites really drag for much of the time, and the atrocious editing, many shots continuing for far longer than they need to.

There are a couple of moments that are lot of fun -- a vampire is impaled on a picket fence, another is pinned to a door, and a creepy old vampire lady (Mimi Weddell) wanders around in a Alzheimers-style state of confusion -- but most of the film is talkative and very tedious. Definitely one for vampire/Dracula completists only.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

I have seen the review for this movie in the Psychotronic Movie Guide 1983, by the way, mine is split into 4 pieces after 38 years of consulting. I would recommend avoiding all of Canon's releases as always putting out a inferior effort to save money for the next idiot concept. Look at AIP instead who became Orion and you get top shelf movie like fantasy Excalibur which still holds up in our post modern era, smerk. Canon's answer is to make a quick knock off to reach the constant cheesy level and no originality. These movies are often available on free streaming channels and sub channels of your local TV station which is how I watch them

This becomes true for everything they released since 1979, but you maybe able to find something that appeals to you going backwards to 60s and just depends on your preferences, as I developed an interest in Jean Rollin movies from France.

I really do like B movies and with digit media documentary commentaries are often more interesting to how they put it all together. Most of the directors where movie buffs like we are, and had to learn as they went along. Clint Eastwood is the most successful of this type of director, where as film school gave us Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg.

It's not often that you find a movie vigorously contending for the coveted, "Worst in it's own Genre" award, but if there is such an award, then that would have to go, hands down, to Dracula's Last Rites.

Low budget horror films are a staple of the genre, and films such as Dead Alive, Bad Taste, Evil Dead, and Halloween have proven that it can be done with style. Dracula's Last Rites, on the other hand, show that low budget horror films can also be done without style, taste, substance, and with actors more wooden than Pinocchio.

To summarize this film, vampires in a small Mid-Western town take up residence in the local mortuary where they stage "accidents" to cover up for their bloody thirsts. Some unintenionally funny moments arise when the mother of the hero is bitten and turned into a vampire - badly fitted vampire teeth and poor make-up gives her a startling resemblance to Roddy McDowall in a fright wig, and her acting "skills" only serve to egg on the fits of laughter.

As a camp film, Dracula's Last Rites cannot be rated any higher than 2.5 out of 5, while as a straight horror film, it drops off any measurable scale.