*******SPOILERS Included*******
Do you remember Jaws: The Revenge? That was the fourth in the series, in which the shark avenged itself on the Brody family in Jamaica, quietly intoning after each of its victims, "The fuhst", "The second", "The thuhd"... Taste the Blood of Dracula is at essence a pretty good movie but it suffers a number of missteps, and one of them is making Dracula as mechanical as Bruce the shark.
Picking up where Dracula Has Risen From the Grave ends, a merchant happens upon the (un)dying Dracula as he disintegrates. The merchant, Weller (Roy Kinnear) gathers the vestments and some of the blood, which has turned to powder. He knows who Dracula is, and his instincts tell him it's a mistake...but the mercenary in him can't turn away from a sure sale. Someone is going to want these.
Cut to an unknown time later. A trio of family men and respected elders spend one Sunday night a month in secret debauchery. These are monied men, to be sure, the finest that polite society can offer. One of them, Hargood (Geoffrey Keen) treats his wife and daughter especially cruelly in his guilt. Secker (John Carson) is a decent man, learned, traveled, experienced: in a word, jaded. He's the closest thing to a Van Helsing character in this movie, full of useful knowledge and will voluntarily do the right thing, but it;s not his vocation. Paxton (Peter Sallis) is the weakling, easily cowed into going along with anything the alpha dogs want. Problem is, they've grown bored withe the same old thrills.
Enter young Lord Courtley, snotty, arrogant, and much farther along their path than they reckon. Courtley lives for satiation and offense. His latest quest is to meet Satan himself - or, if not Satan, then the closest thing to him. To that end he needs the unholy treasure waiting to be purchased in Weller's shop: the blood of Dracula. To get it, he'll need the money of the three thrillseekers. Lucky for him they want his services in guiding them into darker pastures.
Pretty good stuff so far, right? The movie doesn't actually belong to them but to their children, innocent bright young things with bright untainted futures ahead of them. They laugh and smile and talk of their pending marriages and elopements. Paul Paxton and Alice Hargood are madly in love with each other. Neither can comprehend why the elder Hargood hates Paul with such depth. That Paul's offense is simply being the son of Hargood's partner in vice is lost to them. The film has a Christian theme that is a little muddy - the sins of the fathers and all that. Children and parents alike are going to pay. Like the previous Hammer Dracula, this one is targeted at the older adolescent audience but this time trusting them with stronger meet and an earned adult rating (stronger material, an early glimpse of nudity for Hammer, and more bright red blood). The darker nature of the film is leavened by the forthright sweetness of the kids, backed by a tender ballad from composer James Bernard (replacing his usual theme for Dracula) and by beautiful locales. Taste the Blood is the series peak for cinematography, with natural colors, almost no use of gels, and baroque art design. Every frame is full of details and textures to keep your eyes busy.
Courtley performs a ceremony at a lonely, abandoned cemetery (Highgate Cemetery provides the exteriors, a highly photogenic location). This involves flattering himself by donning the Count's cape, clasp, and ring. Assembling his three conspirators, he fills their goblets with Dracula's powdered blood revivified into a foul brew with a few drops of his own. If the drink looks muddy, the plot is even muddier on the mechanics of Dracula's resurrection. Courtley doesn't know precisely what is supposed to happen, and is taken by surprise when the potable gives him intense pain. Hargood, Paxton, and Secker had already balked at drinking, and when they see Courtley felled they proceed to kick and beat him to death in their horror and revulsion. They go home vowing the night never happened.
Into dead Courtley arrives Dracula, helped by a dubious fx shot. Courtley's corpse transforms into Christopher Lee who vows revenge on the three who have destroyed his servant. Let me stop there for a moment, because I've got a few questions. First, drinking Dracula's blood has always been a part of every adaptation, but it already had a function - it seals the bond. Hammer was never concerned with continuity, though, and here it seems to have a different use...and the script is unclear just what that is. If Courtley wasn't supposed to die by the ceremony alone, then was Dracula not meant to return in person? Else, what's the difference? He's got a body, what's he bitching about? A servant isn't much use if he's sharing his body with you. And what of the other three who were supposed to imbibe? Would this have resulted in four Christopher Lees running around London spouting wooden dialog and glaring a lot?
In any case, Chris Lee is reduced to glowering a lot. He's out for revenge, just like the last film only with even less flair. There's is none of the usual lust for life, the passion, the ferocity. When he drinks from a woman, the pleasure he takes from it is fleeting, almost perfunctory. He's the addict whose fix no longer satisfies. Like Hargood, Paxton, and Secker he's grown bored, his thrills are no longer strong enough. But, no, actually, that's reading into it a more interesting film than it really is - he's just badly utilized by an otherwise engaging script, and played by an actor who really is bored by what his script offers. That's the biggest flaw in this Hammer entry, it's a Dracula film in which Dracula is a mere engine to get us from A to Z. He's the least interesting thing in his own movie. He gets by on Lee's presence alone.
That's too bad because his revenge is an interesting idea to explore. His choice is to use the children against their parents. In short, he corrupts them before their parents can and aims them homeward again as killers. The earlier theme of vampirism as sexual liberation is out the window for a more puritan take, as patricide becomes a DeSadean pleasure for the girls.
Taste the Blood comes to a close with more muddled writing, in which the grand conflict sees Dracula ineffectually throwing bits of church from as much distance as he can get inside the church. Pretty disappointing from a led villain. He's been using this crypt as a hangout as it's long since been desecrated by the likes of Courtely holding black masses. We know he can't be on hallowed ground. This makes his demise one of the more interesting, and had the potential to be satisfying were it handled better - the church is re-consecrated with him inside it, trapping and killing him. That's the idea, anyway. but it's Paul doing the re-consecrating. Not a priest, not anyone at all qualified...ah, that's okay, Jesus would instruct that all it takes is faith, and anyone is worthy, but the movie never builds Paul as a man of any particular faith. In fact, all he does is light a couple of candles and that seems to redeem the whole building.
I've identified three problems, all of them found in the writing. A little tweaking would have helped. none of these flaws touch the core story, yet are enough to blunt the movie as a satisfying whole. It took me time to warm to Taste the Blood. Today I find the bulk of it to be worthy...more weighty and fully formed than Dracula: Prince of Darkness or Dracula Has Risen From the Grave. It's just too bad that Dracula himself is upstaged by...just about everybody.
 |
| "The first! The second! The third, Aaaah-HA-HA-HA-HAAA!" |
* ** ** ** ** ** *
On a personal note, I'm more of a Secker than a Van Helsing (See review for Hammer's 'Horror of Dracula').
I am in the process of moving and have not had internet access for a while now, except a few minutes each week. Also, a few of my titles are packed away. So, I won't be putting these up in chronological order...pretty sure Jess Franco's Dracula should have been up before this. Also, still no decent screencap capacity. Apologies for the lack of shots.
No comments:
Post a Comment