Hammer Dracula: Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970, dir. Peter Sasdy, UK) by Kymm Zuckert
“They have destroyed my servant, they will be destroyed.”
The fifth of the Hammer Dracula films starts with a coach staidly trotting along with three men inside. Two are very weird and grumpy, and one is Roy Kinnear, father of Rory, and very recognizable as being Mr. Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory made the following year! Mr. Salt is cheerfully eating and chatting, and offers to sell the other two a snow globe that one of them wants so much. They attack him and throw him and his luggage out of the coach!
By the time Mr. Salt comes to, it is dark, and being out in the woods at night has not proved to be a safe thing to do for four films now, I doubt it’s gotten any better for one’s general health here in film number five. Wolves howl. Yeah, not great. Then there is a terrible moaning screaming, and Mr. Salt runs and falls and suddenly he’s in the end of the last film, watching Dracula die!
Dracula becomes tomato soup on a rock, while Mr. Salt has a big freak-out.
Opening credits, Chris still isn’t above the title. What does a title character have to do around here to get better billing? Mr. Salt gets such poor billing that I fear we won’t see him again.
Now it is…some time later, and many upper class toffs are coming out of church, saying inane things. Young men are mooning after girls with strict fathers.
Alice (Linda Hayden) and Paul (Anthony Higgins, later a Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark) are flirting in the most G-rated fashion ever, her terrible father (Geoffrey Keen) calls her a harlot, and then goes off to do charity work in the East End, and I GUARANTEE you that he is doing nothing of the sort, and it will definitely prove that he knows what a harlot truly is.
And then, terrible father, Paul’s father (Peter Sallis, later to be the voice of Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit cartoons), and a third gentleman go right to a whorehouse and I have never been more right about anything in the whole of my life.
A very snooty, imperious and poorly monikered man, Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates, great grandnephew of Louis Pasteur), strides in, ignoring the ineffectual objections of the brothel keeper (Russell Hunter), and takes away the girl of the terrible father. The brothel keeper tells them that Lord Courtely was disinherited because he was caught performing a black mass, so maybe this means that we will be moving in the direction of Dracula being anywhere in this film beyond the pre-credit sequence?
The three men take Lord Sinner out for a meal, and he tells them that they can do a lot better in the indulgence line than what they have been, so why not sell their souls to the Devil? Kind of a big leap from visiting a whorehouse, but Lord Debauchery isn’t a shilly-shallier. It’s souls to the Devil or you are wasting his time.
While the terrible father is off considering this completely reasonable offer, his angelically innocent daughter whom he punished for speaking to a boy for five seconds outside of church hears a whistle outside her window. It is Paul, who wants Alice to run off with him, but she doesn’t want to leave her mother alone with the worst husband ever. Paul is pissy about it. None of the men in this film are anything to write home about. When is Van Helsing ever coming back? Not for a film or two yet.
Lord C and the Boyz go to the shop of Mr. Salt! Welcome back, Mr. Salt, we have missed you! Turns out, the tomato soup from the beginning turned into Kool-Aid powder, and Mr. Salt the salesman gathered it up, along with the cloak, the signet ring, the clasp, and is willing to sell this concentration of evil for one thousand guineas. (According to the Internet, that is £143,830.41 in today’s money, which is $162,712.47) Lord Wicked Vice is gibbering with excitement, Mr. Salt is perturbed, but cannot not take the money.
The men apparently carry around $162,712.47 as a matter of course, because they march off with the Dracula items in question, and go to someplace spooky. A mausoleum? Dracula’s castle? Who knows? Lord Degenerate fondles the items, put on the cloak, hands everyone crystal goblets, taps the Kool-Aid into them, then tops it off with his own blood, creating a Lord Creepy/Dracula cocktail. A Bloody Vladdy? Whatever, it’s time for the title of the film to come into play!
The men don’t want to drink it, 1000 guineas or no 1000 guineas, presumably because they thought selling their souls to the Devil would be less unsanitary. Lord Revolting drinks, then writhes around, screaming in agony until the men beat him to death with walking sticks, so they made the first good decision of the entire film (the not drinking, not the beating). But you know, I kind of think it won’t be the end. If for no other reason that there is 51 more minutes left of the film.
The terrible father tells his innocent wife and also Alice that if anyone asks, he’s been home all evening. He then weeps like the useless, whining baby that he is. No sympathy with this jackass.
Back at the mausoleum, bad special effects are occurring, and the dead body of Lord Depravity becomes Christopher Lee! It is very funny the lengths they go to to bring him back to life in the middle of every film. He appears to be super mad at the men for killing Lord Perversion, so they are in trouble. This might leave the door open for Alice and Paul to marry and Alice’s mother to be free of The Awful Man, except for the fact that Alice is a beautiful young maiden, and Dracula is back alive, so we all know what that means.
So there is much mesmerizing and neck nibbling and revenge, as is to be expected. It’s a grand good time, as per usual, looking forward to #6!
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog