Saturday 13 August 2016

Taste of the Blood of Drakula

Previously we had one movie every few years, now we get two in one year! This first one has a great premise.

Roy Kinnear starts the movie by intruding into the end of the previous one, and takes the fallen items of Dracula. Back in England, there are a pair of young lovers, and their strict fathers. But, oh ho!, it turns out the fathers are complete bastards, and join another bastard to first get, then drink Dracula's blood. Which goes about as well as you might expect, the fathers chickening out on everything. Dracula then turns up and decides to turn the tables on the fathers, rather effectively.

Indeed, this feels like the most effective Dracula has been so far. He converts women, gets them to do his bidding, and gets his revenge. Where this film completely falls down is the ending, in which the main plot has run out, but they still need to kill off Dracula, so basically god intervenes and kills him off. There is no real excuse for it, he just dies.

There is quite the star studded cast here. Aside from Roy Kinnear, there's Martin Jarvis, and Ralph Bates, and Peter Sallis, and... some others I felt were familiar but I couldn't quite place. As for the production... I can't really say much stuck in my mind except for the nice large church they had. Christopher Lee as Dracula fit really well into that style of architecture, which, admittedly, is the one place he probably shouldn't be.

The other big note for this movie: Dracula is now in England. Let's see if that sticks and what other wackiness he'll get up to!

[END]

1 comment:

Al said...

So glad you seem to be enjoying (or not, not enjoying?) these!
Also in the cast is Geoffrey Keen from many Roger Moore 'Bond' films (as the Minister of Defense) and Isla Blair - Julian Glover's wife. Apart from Scars of Dracula which you'll probably be doing next and isn't really part of the continuity, the Count does indeed stay in England. And yes, much Wackiness does indeed ensue...