Films: 1960s
(1968) Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
Freddie Francis
Release: 1968
A car accident took the English auteur from the lens during "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave," and while his replacement, cinematographer Freddie Francis, delivers a serviceable story (and Hammer's most profitable film), much of the meaty historical subtext is eschewed for psychosexual role play and Christian angst.
Dracula is dead, frozen in ice in the crags and crevasses beneath his castle. When a visiting monsignor ascends, meaning to exorcise the evil still haunting the memories of surround villages, his shattered and alcoholic companion priest falls from the rocks. His blood seeps into Dracula's icy tomb, resuscitating the monster.
The vampire discovers the holy seal placed upon his castle and employs the faithless village priest in pursuit of the monsignor, seeking revenge by destroying the holy man's family.
Unfortunately, Francis' film is fraught with plot holes, continuity errors, and alternately ham-fisted or wooden performances. It is too long by half an hour, with nearly one quarter of its length devoted to the director's dogged but flaccid efforts to generate a sincere love story between its young couple.
"Dracula Has Risen From the Grave" is not without meaning, but there is a lot of dreck to slog through before one bumps up against the more solid matter.
Whereas Peter Cushing's Van Helsing roamed the Hammer Dracula film espousing a kind of occult globalism, admonishing his English brothers to never appease the advance of vampirism from Carlsbad in the mountains, "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave" traces the arc of lost faith and atheism in a Catholic world.
Around Mueller, characters move in and out of faith.
There is Ewan Hooper's minor priest, ostensibly the spiritual caretaker of the village near Castle Dracula (this is Carlsbad, but never named in this installment), who is so scarred from the reign of the vampire Count that he's become a kind of Christian automaton - giving Mass to an empty church and spending his afternoons silently in the tavern.
There is Barry Andrews' atheist Paul, a student who searches textbooks for truth in life while courting Mueller's niece Maria (Veronica Carlson).
Monsignor Ernest Mueller (Rupert Davies) is both more aware and offended at the prospect of a wayward priest in his countryside and a godless youth in his parlor than he is ever of Christopher Lee's invasive and wickedly vengeful Dracula.
He is completely dim to Dracula's machinations until Maria is bitten, and even then he remains at home, studying furiously and summoning Paul to his home to gather tools rather than leaving to hunt the beast himself.
Francis is working with ideas of action over practice, philosophical over physical, and engagement over explication. The monsignor is the figurative and literal voice on the doorstep, sealing evil into any convenient cell instead of seeking its root and snuffing its source. Paul is an easy scapegoat for a younger generation in Mueller's words, but he is the only resource the monsignor can draw upon when faced with the servants and superiority of a real Satan in Cannenberg.
But the God and Devil construct goes farther than words versus deeds. The monsignor in his soft surroundings has himself gone soft, and Dracula's supplicants outnumber and outsmart him. The evil that has followed him from what amounted to an ineffectual ritual on the doorstep of Hell has more tools than Mueller's Bible and cross can contest.
Likewise, though, Paul's atheist encounter with the Count strips him of the comfortable trappings of studenthood. With Dracula in the sewers beneath his home, Paul's languorous nights with Maria are swiftly turned sour and the playful sexuality he enjoys with barmaid Zena (Barbara Ewing) becomes altogether more explicit and dangerous.
Paul leaves the disciplined world of well-behaved post-adolescence, first through the schnapps he quaffs to wash away his religious confrontation with Maria's uncle (the monsignor), then through forced acceptance of a world beyond books and science when the nature of Maria's sudden anemia becomes apparent.
By the end of "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave," Paul tentatively crosses himself against what he has seen and done. The refuge of his books, and the escape of booze, proved insufficient. He is halfway to the monsignor's world, actively engaged, but no longer so sure the divine is confined to allegory.
Where the monsignor never travels far from his chair-bound religiosity, and Paul is only at the start of a path towards reconciling science and the supernatural, Hooper's priest makes a complete journey.
Ravaged by the bloody desecration of his church during the years of Dracula, he turns wholly to the bottle (no mere Paul-like experimentation with oblivion, but full-throttle anesthesia). God slips away and the man cannot at the beginning of the film draw near the evil of the castle with Mueller, he is rotted away and no divine hand guides his approach.
Complete abdication of anything holy comes with Dracula, and the priest is a pallid servant - supplying his blood thirsty master with both sustenance and executing the plan that will put Dracula in Mueller's home for final vengeance.
Only at film's end does his connection with the first power in his life resume, and on the steps of the castle he could not confront, the village priest finds his powerful Christian voice again - completing the prayer that will consign the cross-impaled Dracula back to the abyss.
Three characters, three arcs through and toward the definition of their relationship with God. Francis is at work on worthy issues in his film. Were it sewn together better, its gorgeous sets and clever camera filters would be equaled by a textured script. Instead, it's a flashy and erotic mess, with some interesting thematic highlights.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, 1968
Three characters, three arcs through and toward the definition of their relationship with God. Francis is at work on worthy issues in his film. Were it sewn together better, its gorgeous sets and clever camera filters would be equaled by a textured script. Instead, it's a flashy and erotic mess, with some interesting thematic highlights.
