Dracula A.D. 1972
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.66 You Save: $14.32 (72%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.46 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Dracula A.D. 1972
Movie Review: Not As Bad as You Might Expect
Summary: 4 Stars
Some have compared this with Taste the Blood of Dracula with a more modern setting. Very correct. Watch the film. What I like about it is the Dracula puts the bite on a major male character making him an acolyte, who in turns puts the bite on another male character (whom the vampire, Johnny doesn't much care for.) Victorian mores aside, the homoerotic scheme of this film is interesting. That could possibly explain the pan for this film as opposed to TTBOD.
This is pure camp however. Enjoy in the Hammer canon. Bring on Twins of Evil and "Vampire Circus" a film that was truly vilified...and one of the best!
Chris did put the bite on JH in Horror but that was defintely not in the book. But hey, I enjoyed Jackson's LOFR's trilogy.
Movie Review: Dig The Music, Kids!
Summary: 4 Stars
Dracula is back...this time to DVD, so perhaps its time to put on those hotpants and dig the music with Johnny Alucard. This much maligned Hammer Horror gets the thumbs up for sheer entertainment value. There is so much to cherish; the Cavern Coffee Club, the groovy black mass in St. Bartolph's, Caroline Munro's outfit, Stephanie Beacham's wig (and cleavage), the Six Thousand Demons of Hell(!), Stoneground and above all else Lee and Cushing taking it all so very seriously. Fangtastic stuff. Yes, thank you Warner for inviting us to the Horroritual!Movie Review: "You're talking about black mass and that sort of jazz, right?"
Summary: 3 Stars
The 1970s weren't an especially great time for Hammer Studios...the marketplace for horror features had become especially crowded, they would lose their American financing (and thus their most excellent production values), and the gothic horror genre, the very genre they popularized beginning in the mid to late 1950s, had become somewhat passé (this was about the time The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, among others, made the scene)...in an attempt to `hipsterize' themselves they brought one of their staple characters, Dracula, into the present with this release titled Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) and the sequel The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974). A bold move, but one that failed miserably, especially with hardcore fans and critics alike (after `Satanic Rites' star Lee publicly stated he wouldn't be doing anymore Dracula features), as the hispterization included ditching the gothic horror for a more contemporary feel, along with throwing in a dash of comedy, effectively diluting any horror that might have found its way into the feature accidentally. Written by Don Houghton (Shatter, The Satanic Rites of Dracula) and directed by Alan Gibson (The Satanic Rites of Dracula), the film, the seventh in the Hammer Dracula series, stars Christopher Lee (The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula) and Peter Cushing (The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Mummy). Also appearing is Stephanie Beacham (And Now the Screaming Starts!), Christopher Neame (Lust for a Vampire), Michael Coles (The Satanic Rites of Dracula), and one of my favorite Bond women Caroline Munro (Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, The Spy Who Loved Me).
As the movie begins the year is 1872 and we see Dracula (Lee) and Lawrence Van Helsing (Cushing) in a death struggle atop a runaway horse carriage, which ends up smashing into a tree. Both men bite it, no pun intended (Dracula on a broken spoke from a wheel and Van Helsing from various injuries), and Dracula's remains turn to dust, later to be collected by a mysterious figure with ginormous mutton chop sideburns. Fast forward one hundred years into the future to swinging London...seems a group of hippies have crashed a party (the uptight squares are glowering from the sidelines), and are having themselves a real nutter of a time (both Beacham and Munro sure knew how to shake their junk)...hey, when you invite the band Stoneground to play your gig, anything can happen...anyway, the fuzz is called and the group, including Jessica Van Helsing (Beacham) sporting a hairstyle I can only describe as that of a mullet, split that tired scene. One of their members, named Johnny Alucard (Neame)...oh bruther...comes up with a far out idea of holding a black mass ceremony in a nearby church slated for demolition, eventually suckering the rest to go along. Well, turns out Johnny's something of a disciple of the Prince of Darkness, and initiates, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, a resurrection ritual to bring back his evil master. Once successful, Johnny begins offering up his friends, but Dracula has only one thing in mind, that of revenge on the house of Van Helsing, and what better place to start than with Jessica? Jessica's grandfather, Lorrimer Van Helsing (Cushing), a professor of the occult, soon realizes that which his family has fought against time and time again is back (once the mutilated bodies start piling up), and begins to sharpen the stakes and polish the crosses, but will it be enough to save himself and his granddaughter?
After watching the film last night its fairly obvious to me why there's such a general dislike for this feature, especially when comparing it to previous Dracula Hammer films...the filmmakers have literally sucked all the gothic nature from the material and replaced it with and eye towards the contemporary, which wasn't necessarily a good thing when you're talking about the contemporary 1970s...free love, hot pants, multicolored beads, unrestrained drug use, Caucasians with afros, and so on...oh, there's a bit of the gothic here and there (the scenes in the dilapidated church), but the infusion of glib comedic material within the script only served to really diminish the horror audiences had come to expect from a Hammer feature. Here's an example of what I'm talking about as Johnny lures an unsuspecting female back to his pad for the purpose of giving her to Dracula (which seemed odd as Dracula was sequestered at the church)...as he pulls up to his flat he say to the woman, "Come in for a bite."...bruther...in the filmmaker's defense I can understand what they were trying to do in an effort to keep up with the times, but it just didn't play that well. One might say "Well, hey, at least the film's got Lee and Cushing together, so it can't be all bad"...and I'd agree, but one should know Lee is given very little screen time as his character is relegated to almost a supporting role. Cushing comes off a bit better, but he looks a little tired, most likely due to the filmmakers having him run all over Hell and back through the streets of London accompanied by some really goofy music, pursuing his familial nemesis (do yourself a favor and get an automobile). Caroline Munro and Stephanie Beacham provide some good jiggle action (no nekkidness, though), the latter possessing a mesmerizing rack at the time...oh, I also thought they did well enough in their roles, but, as I mentioned earlier, Ms. Beacham runs around through the entire film with a hideous mullet. Most gave decent turns in terms of performances with perhaps the exception of Christopher Neame who was way over the top for my tastes. Perhaps he was trying to compensate appearing with Lee and Cushing, but I felt the director should have reined him in a bit as he wasn't the star of the film. The funniest part of the film comes when Van Helsing is trying to figure how Alucard figures into the recent spate of gruesome murders, eventually deciphering Alucard is an anagram for Dracula...gee what a brain buster that was...he actually spells the two names out on paper and then draws lines from each of the corresponding letters. Did the filmmakers think audiences were really so dense they wouldn't have been able to figure it out without them literally spelling it out for us? All this really did was make me suspicious of Van Helsing's occult credentials along with his intelligence (and that of the writer's). Things do pick up within the last five minutes, when Van Helsing eventually confronts Dracula in a bloody finale. Completists and fans of Christopher Lee and/or Peter Cushing will want to get this feature, but as far as casual viewers interested in , you might want to go with some of the earlier features like Dracula (1958) or Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) to get a full on Hammer experience in terms of the character.
The picture, presented in widescreen (1.85:1) format, enhanced for widescreen televisions, comes across clean and sharp, and the Dolby Digital mono audio, available in English and French, comes through very clearly. As far as extras there's not much except for a theatrical trailer and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French.
Cookieman108
Movie Review: It'll be a "Giggle"
Summary: 3 Stars
This film isn't without its merits. It does feature two of the masters of the genre. Neither Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee gave the best performance they were capable of but it would be unfair to say they were uninvolved. Lee just wasn't given much to work with. This characterization of Dracula portrays the Count as nothing more than an autocrat with a bad temper. (Maybe all that party blood he drinks in this film leaves him hung-over. Who knows?). Cushing, for his part, seems to follow directions to be either obsessive or benign. When he discourses about the undead his mind stays on one track, period. For most of the rest of the film he's either gentle or wise. This is one of his least dynamic portrayals of a Van Helsing on film. The pair do have their moment though. The final confrontation between them isn't up to what they achieved with "Horror of Dracula" but it is memorable. If the entire film (or even most of it) had even approached the standard this scene sets it would have been close to being a classic.
Some members of the cast are reasonably strong as well. Stephanie Beacham has always been a class act (even though she's turned up in a lot of dreadful material). She gives her best effort to making the inane dialogue believable and manages to give her character some depth the writers didn't see fit to include. Michael Coles does a decent job as the police Inspector who believes Cushing even though it goes against his training. As with the parts given to Beacham, Lee (and just about everyone in the cast) the writers didn't give him a lot to work with. It's to his credit that he manages to make the character appear torn without falling into excess.
That's about where the good news ends though. Christopher Neame's performance as the Count's evil minion is so far over the top it floods into extra glasses. It's too laughable to be serious and too pathetic to be funny. The parts assigned to Marsha Hunt and Caroline Munro are never treated as anything more than sexy (but "supposedly trendy") vampire fodder. The dialogue they do have is awful ("it'll be a giggle") and their delivery of it is worse. Munro's gyrations of "agonized ecstasy" are too silly to even be taken as "camp". It may not have been their fault though. Caroline Munro was a much better actress than her work here suggests (she was the only one who ever received a full contract from the studio). The others all worked again after their stints in this film (which suggests the Director, Alan Gibson, may have been the real culprit).
The soundtrack is a schizoid piece of nonsense that bounces between gothic and modern. At least, that's what it's supposed to do. The "gothic" track sounds like a recycled version of something that was already recycled. The attempt at "contemporary" music conjures images of Yanni ("Yawnee") performing a heavy metal arrangement (a picture that should make any rational person lose their lunch if ever there was one). The wonderfully Gothic atmosphere the studio managed to charge most of their pictures with is its main victim. The series loses its thread of continuity here as well. It's pushed aside by the film's opening scenes.
Still, it's hard to really dislike this film. Even during its worst moments (and there are plenty of those) it never fails to entertain. Every time it looks as if it's about to come to the point where it should just be dismissed something happens to pull it from the abyss. At those moments it serves as a reminder of why the studio had such success within the genre. It is in fact more watch-able than many films that are supposed to be much better.
Watch it with an open mind. The good parts are worth waiting for. The rest will be a "giggle".
Movie Review: More hip than horror
Summary: 3 Stars
England's Hammer Studios did 8 Dracula films from 1958-1973:
Horror of Dracula (1958)
Brides of Dracula (1960)
Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)
Dracula has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Scars of Dracula (1970)
Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
Christopher Lee plays the Count in all but the second one, "Brides of Dracula;" in fact, Dracula doesn't even appear in this film, which explains why some consider it non-canonical. Peter Cushing also stars in four entries as Van Helsing.
By the time of the seventh film the creative well was apparently running dry and Hammer decided to spice up the series by bringing the Count to present-day London (which was 1972, of course). A group of hip counter-culture youths perform a black mass in an abandoned church for kicks (although the ringleader takes it all serious) and rivive the blood-sucking prince of darkness. Havok ensues.
Peter Cushing appears as Van Helsing's descendant. Christopher Neame plays the nutjob who performs the black mass with utter relish. Also on hand are the stunning beauties Stephanie Beacham and Caroline Munro. Stephanie plays Van Helsing's daughter and Caroline has a small but significant role. There are a couple of other early-70s hippie babes as well.
The first half of the film borrows heavily from the previous "Taste the Blood of Dracula" in that the Count is resurrected in roughly the same manner, although "Taste" is much more effective in this regard.
Which isn't to say that "Dracula A.D. 1972" isn't a decent, albeit bizarre, entry in the series. The main problem with the film is that the story doesn't seem to know what to do once Dracula is resurrected. For instance, Cushing's final battle with the Count is fairly lame for various reasons (I don't want to give anything away), not to mention Lee only appears for about 10 minute in the entire film, which is usual for the series, of course.
Another problem is the score heard throughout. It screams "early 70s" but doesn't mesh with what is essentially a serious horror flick (yes, I said serious; this is not a goofy or campy flick despite the colorful hippie elements). But then some would cite that as part of its charm.
What works best is that the film is a great period piece. You'll get a groovy glimpse of England's counter-culture, including the hippie girls and a live performance by the band Stoneground (who didn't go anywhere beyond this movie likely because their sound & style was already passe by 1972). So, the first half is fun and compelling, whereas the second half just sort of goes through the motions and peters out.
BOTTOM LINE: "Dracula A.D. 1972" is hard to rate because, despite the mediocre-ness of the story's second half, the film is a fun experience with numerous highlights. Hence, as a Dracula story I give it a C (or 3/5 Stars), but for entertainment value I give it a solid B or B+ (4/5 Stars).
OVERALL RATING: C+