Films: 1970s
(1973) The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Thursday, January 01, 2015
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Director: Alan Gibson
Released: 1973
Director Alan Gibson and writer Don Houghton (who indeed penned Doctor Who episodes prior to his Hammer work), devise a plan worthy of the satanic title, and just as long-winded, for Christopher Lee's returning vampire.
No effort is expended in explicating how Dracula has returned from the grave, but plenty of celluloid is unraveled in documenting the orgiastic goings-on at the Pellham House on the outskirts of London.
A full-fledged cult has grown up around the Count, and its adherents include the most elite and intelligent members of British society. Politicians and scientists watch virginal sacrifices, and interlopers are kept bound in the upstairs chambers.
Luckily, a special branch of secret intelligence agency MI6 is on the case. With the help of Van Helsing grandson Lorimar (Peter Cushing), the agents spy upon, infiltrate and confront Dracula's global scheme.
No longer satisfied with his eternal pursuit of hot warm blood, Houghton and Gibson have Dracula deciding to end it all. The lord of vampires plans to take the world with him, however, and has hypnotized/brainwashed Professor Julian Keeley (Freddie Jones) into developing a hyper-augmented strain of bubonic plague that will depopulate the Earth.
As Van Helsing and crew close in on the Count, Dracula's minions kidnap Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica (Joanna Lumley) as a pawn to stave off the assault. The final confrontation at Pellham House ends in flames, disease and a chase through some particularly prickly bushes that the Count, it seems, just can't stand.
Unfortunately, the least-common-denominator trappings of the material from which the story borrows undermine the potential best parts of "The Satanic Rites of Dracula."
The microfilm camera-watches, the helmeted motorcycle assassins, the silencer-equipped snipers, and villains' unprompted explanations of nefarious plots to captured protagonists border on camp, given the context.
Dracula has very little to do, short of appearing suddenly in one scene to drain an MI6 assistant of lifeblood, and then seethe in the shadows until Van Helsing arrives to hear his plan.
"The Satanic Rites" goes on for too long playing with the trappings of fantastical spy material and abandons what should have been its thematic core: that Dracula as an eternal being is ultimately bound to face the pointlessness of his own existence.
Suicide is an interesting mine for a vampire film to tap, but here Houghton relegates it to a mere means to an end. His pen is far too bent on drawing out the world-destruction plot and the chase scenes that lead up to its big reveal.
Otherwise, the film pays lip service to the Christian good-versus-evil themes with which the Hammer Dracula movies are infused after Terence Fisher left the credits scroll. Here, however, Dracula is somewhere between an Anti-Christ and an avatar - far too reliant on human machinations to qualify for the Lucifer-walking persona he became in previous entries.
The gratuitous use of satanic symbols and imagery, and the association of nubile sexual women as victims/objects-of-lust in their presence, is heightened in one of the film's more disturbing scenes - the ritual slaughter of an sacrifice involving roosters, knives, altars, and old men dipping their fingers into the victim's belly button for a bit of blood.
That sort of thing, although dispensing with deeper meaning, makes "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" fairly fun - if a bit belabored. Lumley, Cushing and the rest of the MI6 crew exchange well-delivered lines and the look of the picture avoids much of the generic forest-and-village imagery that began to plague Hammer's Dracula films in the late 1960s.
It's a waste of a good idea, however, and worth only half the 85 minutes one must endure to get the point.
The film's ending is its metaphor.
Dracula is snagged in the thorns of a tree that is poison to him, unable to progress, thrashing and rolling about while Van Helsing mucks about looking for a suitable stake. At a certain point in this talky, wheel-spinning entry, the audience knows just how the undead master feels.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
The Satanic Rites of Dracula, 1973
Dracula is snagged in the thorns of a tree that is poison to him, unable to progress, thrashing and rolling about while Van Helsing mucks about looking for a suitable stake. At a certain point in this talky, wheel-spinning entry, the audience knows just how the undead master feels.
