Streaming Availability: HBO Max
We open in the year 1872 A.D. with Dracula (Christopher Lee) in his final battle with his arch-nemesis, Dr. Lawrence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). (This creates a plot hole because the original movie in the series, Horror of Dracula, was set in 1885, but never mind.) They’re racing on top of an out-of-control carriage somewhere in Hyde Park, London. The battle ends in a glorious double knock-out, Van Helsing destroying the creature Dracula seemingly forever, yet giving his life in the process.
Or it ends in a fumbling
awkward wrestling match, where Dracula has gotten his shoulder somehow wedged inside
a wooden wheel. Dignified conclusion or not, London is freed from the vampire menace for
an entire century.
A century later and it is the Year of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, 1972, and hippie kids are getting their kicks freaking out the squares at a party they've crashed. Having fully popped all available monocles, our hot young Boomer crew
is ready to find a new high. A Satanic high. Their leader, Johnny (Christopher
Neame) invites them to a séance in the very abbey which holds Dracula’s final remains. With a goblet of blood and ashes spilled on top of a young woman’s tits, Johnny brings Christopher Lee’s Dracula is back in style. The Count is now accompanied by a thumping Blaxploitation
soundtrack. Conveniently, Lawrence Van Helsing’s grandson, Lorrimer looks
exactly Peter Cushing. Even more conveniently, his granddaughter, Jessica (Stephanie
Beacham) is one of the hippies and right in the path of Dracula’s wrath.
Oh, did I mention Johnny’s last name? Johnny Alucard. It
takes Van Helsing 2 about half the movie to figure that anagram out.
I picked Dracula A.D. 1972 and skipped over most of the
Hammer Horror Dracula series for a number of reasons. First off, it is on HBO
Max so that makes it easily accessible right now, at least until David Zaslav destroys everything good about that service. Secondly, this is the first reunion
of Lee’s Dracula and Cushing’s Van Helsings since the 1958 original. And
thirdly, the idea of Dracula in Seventies Chelsea preying on go-go dancers and beatniks
is just much more fun. Who needs another 19th century cobwebs and castles romp?
Even Hammer Films had to realize that after seven Dracula movies, you have to
shake things up a bit. And why not shake their hips to the sounds of American
rock band, Stoneground?
What's even more fun is that Dracula A.D. 1972 came out the same real as Blacula. I'll cover that movie in a few days, but keep that in mind. We have rival -Aculas coming to the modern party scene. Who wore it better?
As much as I would love to report that Christopher Lee
throws on sunglasses and grooves with the hippies, that just doesn’t happen. In
fact, you’d assume this was a comedy from the first ten minutes, with such
gags as Alucard smashing fine China and a bored hippie chick getting railed
under a table. But ultimately, Hammer plays the idea of Dracula in then-modern
London entirely straight. This could have so easily been pure camp like Leprechaun 5: In
The Hood, but instead it is a 99% serious vampire movie with hippies
instead of dandies. Dracula A.D. 1972 is remarkably incapable of winking at its audience.
Dracula largely delegates everything out to Johnny Alucard, thus
we get much more of Evil Neame than Evil Lee. Luckily, Neame is a solid villain
in his own right. He’s young, he’s got messy hair, he’s consciously a sexy
dirtbag, there’s an energy here. (His look reminds me a lot of rock star Lestat
in Queen of the Damned.) In truth, Buxom counter-culture birds are as much threatened by
dangerous young men as they are threatened by stately gentlemen in capes.
Dracula never leaves his abbey, but what Dracula we get is
more verbose than the 1958 appearance. In the final battle against Van Helsing,
we get this choice quote: “You would play your brains against mine? Against me
who has commanded nations?” This is what was missing from Horror of Dracula! Also, it turns out that, no, Van Helsing the Younger’s plan was
just to stab the Count with a silver dagger.
Upon release, Dracula A.D. 1972 was lampooned as lame and pandering. Imagine releasing a Dracula movie in 2022 and
trying to get-in with the Zoomers by using words like "poggers" or having your vampire do a TikTok dance trend. All that sad humiliation has faded over the decades now, luckily. Early Seventies London feels as much a time of fantasy as 19th century Transylvania. I can’t tell what was cool and what was for posers
anymore, to me it is all wonderfully retro.
Regardless of authenticity, A.D. 1972 does have flaws. Jessica Van Helsing, despite her heritage, winds up just another Hammer Horror
damsel in distress. They put her in a trance and a sheer white dress with tons
of cleavage. This includes a hilarious frame where Jessica’s entire tit is on
screen out of focus, sharing the screen with her grandfather’s face. The other
problem is that both vampires fail in frankly bumbling fashion. Dracula 1v1s Van
Helsing at night, in his lair, with no excuses, and still loses out-right.
Poor Johnny Alucard gets the worst of it. Despite the actor’s
charisma, and the character’s sinister planning, Alucard foolishly demands to
be made into a vampire. So he gets the same weaknesses as his master. He
never vampire-proofed his flat, meaning he’s just a curtain-pull away from the blazing
sunlight. Alucard even defeats himself in a bit of physical comedy, falling
ass-backwards into his own shower and turning on the water. Unluckily for him,
in this franchise, water kills vampires. Since Alucard hasn’t read his
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night walkthrough, he never picked up the Holy
Symbol, and that’s that.
There would be one more Christopher Lee Dracula movie, the 1973 sequel, The Satanic Rites of Dracula. I’m going to skip that one too. Instead, we’re jumping ahead to the final and probably weirdest Hammer Dracula movie of them all.
That’s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, where Van Helsing goes to China. Kung-fu vs vampires!
No comments:
Post a Comment