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Title: Taste The Blood Of Dracula (1970) Starring: Christopher Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Gwen Watford, Linda Hayden, and Peter Sallis Director: Peter Sasdy Rating: R (Restricted) Runtime: 95 minutes Avg. Score: 6 Submit Comment Hits: 97

Review of Taste the Blood of Dracula

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Comments for Taste The Blood Of Dracula

• Posted on 2008-03-05
  Sins of the fathers
  
  Taste the Blood of Dracula follows on so directly from Dracula Has Risen From the Grave that, after one particularly bizarre piece of deus ex machina that borders on the inspired, it begins with Roy Kinnear literally stumbling into the last scene of the movie. On a less welcome note it also marks the point at which an increasingly reticent Christopher Lee was reduced to a cameo figure as the Count - it's not until the halfway point that he's resurrected in a less than convincing display of special effects. Until then much of the film is carried, and rather well, by Geoffrey Keen's Bible-bashing strict disciplinarian Victorian dad, the kind of man you can set your watch by as he sets off to do `charity work' in the East End with his respectable friends John Carson and Peter Sallis saving fallen women - about two each once a month in Roy Hudd's brothel discreetly located in the backrooms of a soup kitchen. It's there that he and his pals are surprised playing horsie by Ralph Bates' dissolute disinherited aristo who has sold his soul to the Devil and offers to broker the same deal for them if they'll buy Dracula's cape and blood for him, reasoning that "Having tried everything that your narrow imaginations can suggest, you're bored to death with it all, right?" Naturally it all ends badly with Bates getting a severe case of indigestion after drinking the blood of the title and getting kicked to death by his new friends, conveniently providing Dracula with a new body and a new mission - to destroy all three men through their children (a typical role-call of amply-bosomed totty, future BBC regulars and supporting actors who never made it to the major leagues in the forms of Linda Hayden, Isla Blair, Martin Jarvis and Anthony Higgins in the days when he was still calling himself Anthony Corlan) while Michael Ripper's ineffectual detective displays a pronounced lack of interest in the mounting body count.
  
  The idea of the sins of the fathers being revenged by their children is a good one, offering both a neat twist and a reason for Lee's extremely limited screen time that keeps him very much to the sidelines until the disappointing finale, but it's certainly one of the more entertaining sequels and, a couple of lapses such as the resurrection scene aside, boasts superior and atmospheric direction from Peter Sasdy with some surprisingly graceful camerawork. It's also the last of the Hammer Draculas that looks like they spent some money on it - when they churned out Scars of Dracula the same year, it looked like they'd spent all their money on this one and had only pocket change and whatever was left over in the studio wardrobe for that!
  
  Warner's DVD offers a good widescreen transfer with the original trailer as the only extra.
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2007-12-28
  They taste his blood and the horror begins.
  
  Christopher Lee stars in this Hammer Horror film about Dracula, he has got to be the best actors to play this role and nobody has ever come close to being as good as him, he just looks very menacing and creepy as the count especially with those red eyes. The film takes place in old Victorian England where a trio of business associates spend the evening in a brothel when they get accosted by Lord Courtley. Rumor has it that Lord Courtley who was disowned by his wealthy family has sold his soul to the devil, this intrigues the group of gentlemen as they've become bored with their usual lifestyle and are looking for something different maybe a supernatural experience and hoping to be initiated in the ways of Satan, the men want Courtley to help them and so Courtley takes them to a place (an abandoned church) where he performs a sacrificial ceremony using the items previously owned by Dracula including a vial of his blood, when something goes wrong the men soon chicken out and then proceed to beat Courtely to death and run away for their lives but soon their despicable and decadent behavior will only get them killed as Dracula is resurrected and he is looking for revenge. He uses their family members against them including the daughter's of some of the men played by Linda Hayden and Ilsa Blair who are under his spell. Taste The Blood Of Dracula is a great old fashioned hammer horror film that I thought was a reasonably entertaining British horror film even though it wasn't the best from the Dracula series it was still quite good and it had a very nice gothic atmosphere that was prevailing through out the film, I highly recommend this.
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2007-07-29
  Lee is wasted
  
  This 4th film in the Hammer Dracula series starts promisingly. Roy Kinnear witnesses Dracula dying in classic fashion (stake in heart) and keeps the Counts dried blood, Cape and Ring etc. Later in the film he sells these to three English gentleman who are looking for something more exciting than a brothel and are given this opportunity by Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates). He wants to bring Dracula back to life and the 3 gentlemen help him. Of course it all goes wrong, and from there the film goes downhill rapidly.
  
  This really barely deserves three stars. What must Christopher Lee have thought when he read the script? He barely has a dozen words to say in the film, and his opening line is so bad "they have destroyed my servant. they will be destroyed". He must have been paid a lot of money! Sure his phsyical presence is still impressive but overall he never has a chance to put his mark on the film.
  
  The other problem with some of these later Dracula films is the absence of an opponent worthy of mention. Peter Cushing as Van Helsing appears in a couple of the later films in 1972 & 1973 and manages to make these watchable, even though in general the series deterioted with each film. In this film I never believed that Dracula could be beaten...
  
  If you want to buy the best Hammer Dracula films, get the first Dracula film (aka The Horror of Dracula) with Lee and Cushing, this is in a different league from all the sequels. The 2nd film Dracula Prince of Darkness is very watchable. I haven't see the 3rd recently. Of the later ones the last 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula' is worth considering.
  
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2007-05-12
  A Fine Vintage
  
  "Taste the Blood of Dracula" was Hammer's fourth Dracula film to feature Christopher Lee and was a noticeable improvement on their previous outing "Dracula has Risen from the Grave." The move from Bray Studios to Elstree Studios in 1966, whilst not initially having a major effect on the films, was by the turn of the decade leading to rather dour and unassuming spectacles that were not aided by a forced economisation at Hammer. With this in mind "Taste the Blood..." was one of Hammer's last great productions. The Victorian milieu in which the film is set is beautifully realised - the gothic crypts, lavish drawing rooms and the camp squalor of iniquitous brothels makes for an enjoyably authentic mise-en-scene. But then Hammer never really had much difficulty in creating a mid-Victorian gothic sensibility. This visual beauty is aided by some fine location work, which gives this production a sense of space that earlier Hammer films lacked. The film is also interesting at the level of moral polemics and contains one of Hammer's most thinly disguised attacks on the hypocrisy of Victorian attitudes. This attack then functions allegorically as a treatise on societies new found permissiveness in the early 1970's. Sadly Christopher Lee has little to do, other than glare from the sidelines and bare his teeth a few times. The films real delight is in the chemistry between the trio of Victorian hypocrites, played with gusto and glee by John Carlson, Peter Sallis and Geoffrey Keen. It is this triumvirate that makes the film memorable, not Dracula. Peter Sasdy directs efficiently and occasionally very stylishly in this his first of three films for Hammer which also included "Countess Dracula and "Hands of the Ripper". These were three of Hammer's better productions of the 1970's and showed a lot of promise that Sasdy failed to build upon.
  
  This DVD released by Warner Bros. is totally bereft of extras, save for a rather scratchy old trailer. However the picture looks good, with the colours particularly radiant in daylight scenes. If you're feeling thirsty then "Taste the Blood of Dracula", you know it makes sense.
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2007-02-26
  What happened?
  
  I'd rather watch AD1972 before I watched this one again. The storyline was cool, but certain things were just too cheesy. For one, look at Christopher Lee's hair in this one. It doesn't have that neat, slicked back look anymore. It bulges on the sides. Secondly, everytime he has one of the three men murdered that killed his servant, he counts it off. Like when the first one dies, he says, "the first." I began to suspect that he would say "the second" when next one died, and unfortunately, I was correct. And what's this at the end when he resorts to throwing things at the people who are trying to get rid oh him? This was the biggest disappointment of the movie. Dracula is superhuman, and you see that in Prince of Darkness when he breaks a sword in half with his bare hands. Yet, he is now reduced to chunking whatever he can pick up to defend himself. I may watch this one again, but that is only because I admire Christopher Lee.
  Score: 1