Os Ritos Satânicos de Drácula

As a Dracula film, this is rather sad and misguided and very typical of the late Hammer fare. But as a piece of classic cheesy 70's British filmmaking, it's a treasure! Loads of tacky scenes and acting, rough looking down-and-out location work and a collection of cheddary extras and character actors.

Peter Cushing looks like he's about to kick the bucket (die) although he miraculously seems to grow younger and less grandpa looking by Star Wars (1977). Who'd have thought he make it to 1994!! There's a healthy dose of Cushing hair flicking in this. Although not to the standard of earlier Frankenstein hair flicks, the old locks are still thrashing around :)

Scared me at the age of eleven. The best thing I can say about this film. It should probably have been renamed 'A Stake Too Far' as by this time the Christopher Lee Dracula franchise had been bled dry.

Watch it by all means. But whilst you're watching ask yourself this: The fundamental plot line has Dracula and his cohorts wanting to wipe out the entire human race by releasing a deadly plague. If everyone's dead, on whose blood are they going to survive?

The last of the Christopher Lee Dracula series [the Count would make one more brief return for Hammer in the guise of John Forbes-Robertson in The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires] is not exactly a success, but it's a good deal more interesting than the shoddy Dracula AD 1972. There are quite a few new ideas in this one, although they are not organised well and it does become a bit of a mess. However, dull it isn't, unlike the previous one.

We have satanists practising sacrificial rites, a mad scientist with a deadly virus, a Howard Hughes-type recluse who turns out to be....., biker assassins with guns, you name it. Much of it has an Avengers feel, and Dracula is unsurprisingly hardly in the film, with only one brief appearance until the final twenty minutes. There's more action than horror, but two vampire scenes in a cellar are well done. The effects of Dracula's death sequence are excellent, although the scene is silly, with this most accident prone of vampires simply walking into a rose bush.

Not really a good film, but kind of fun. It does suggest interesting pathways which Hammer might have taken the series if the response to this had not been so poor.

Hammer's last throw with Christopher Lee who refused to do another Dracula after AD 1972. He regarded the last Hammer's as such a departure from Stoker as to be sacrilegious. This replaces horror with a thriller. Dracula in a thriller? French Connection was a thriller. How does the suave and deadly Count become transplanted into a more style which uses more realism? He cannot, he is incongruous. Consequently Dracula makes almost no appearance until the last 15 minutes. The rest of the film is a chase between his henchmen and Cushing with the police. The quality of the Dracula films had deteriorated in their glamour and stylishness and transferring to the modern day was an attempt to inject glamour again. The most interesting piece of this film is the satanic rite of the title. Its images and practises have been used by the Church of Satan and other occult groups. The actor, scientist and parapsychologist Stephen Armourae has referred to it in articles and the actress Mia Martin has appeared in some of his drawings and paintings. Oddly despite such a high profile release none of the actors including Pauline Peart and Mia Martin did anything since despite their glamour and looks.

This rather odd entry in the Count Dracula film cycle finds the count (Christopher Lee) positioned as the head of a corporate conglomerate that has a group of high-level mucky-mucks enmeshed in a plan to unleash a new strain of uber-virile plague on the world. Why Count Dracula wants to kill off the world's population and therefore eliminate his food supply is never made clear; indeed, when vampire specialist Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) poses that very question to him, the count looks like he'd never thought of that before. The screenplay tries half-heartedly to explain it via some psycho-babble about the count really subconsciously wanting to bring about his own destruction and put an end to his tortured soul, etc. Nice try, but it doesn't fly.

The film is pretty short on atmosphere or scares, but there's some fun to be had anyway. Cushing is so assured in his performance that he almost makes you feel like you're watching something of substance, while a young Joanna Lumley is buxom and fetching as Van Helsing's in-peril granddaughter.

Grade: B-