Dracula, the Satanic Rites

Evil rules, you know. It really does.

You need to feel the thrill of disgust. The beauty of obscenity.

Well, perhaps this was the final adieu to Hammer’s Dracula series with Lee, set in Modern London of 1973, but its plot is loaded with oddball twists. Freddie Jones gets a part here that supplies him with a weirdo fooling around with a new strain of bubonic plague (Dracula’s urging obviously “inspires” this pressured testing and research), while Cushing plays another descendent of Van Helsing, Lorrimar, confronting him (they were “old college buddies”) about his dealings with a Satanic cult (tied to Dracula). There’s a special task force spying on a building that is used as the cult’s headquarters. This headquarters is Dracula’s hideout, protected by his cult, and those they discover are against them suffer the consequences.

So this bubonic plague, according to Jones, would literally rot flesh from the bones and the contagion would spread like wild fire by mere touch. He tells this to Lorrimar in a state of hysteria and horror, as if he were conflicted with torment tinged with regret and this addictive attraction to the evil that seduced him. He’s soon hanging from the neck in his lab at his science university, with Lorrimar nearly hit by a bullet, awakening to find the Petri-dishes with the plague gone. That is an element not usually associated with Dracula films. Typically the threat to mankind is Dracula (he’s usually enough, isn’t he?), but you can add a plague certain to wipe out the human race, with the bonus of a cult of Satan worshippers trying to assist him (some of the cult are powerful figures of society with a lot of influence and standing) so there’s multiple reasons for Van Helsing and the cops to be concerned about.

The difference to me in the Frankenstein and Dracula films (Hammer’s two longest running series of monster films) is that Cushing (as Frankenstein) is seen throughout his films while Lee (as Dracula) pops up here and there, peppered in spots to illustrate he’s out there, but his presence isn’t substantial. The Satanic Rites of Dracula (like Dracula, AD 1972) has this modern setting yet Dracula, once again, factors very little in the new environs; this always felt like a lost opportunity to me. I mean, in the first hour, he might be on screen one minute tops. That seems like a waste of a menacing character, but by this stage Lee was going through the motions and just cared very little about Dracula any longer. I guess you could say that he was picking up a check. Damn if he doesn’t enter a doorway, though, and overpower the screen just with his presence…some have that, you know. They just enter the frame and have that gift so few do, and so many of us wish we had.

You get a little bit extra to throw at Dracula (it isn’t a coincidence that Van Helsing mentions a hawthorn tree (representing the crown of thorns embedded in the skull of Christ at the Crucifixion) this go-around), with the 23^rd listed as a specific date: “Sabbath of the Undead”. This date allows the devil’s disciples “hold a balance of power”, so Dracula (and his cult) must be dealt with or else.

Well, at least the plot’s a little different. It isn’t just Dracula attacking village girls and combating Van Helsing. A plague, the devil’s significant day, Dracula behind his own corporation, and a cult that serves the Count; the plot is busy. Add cops assisting Van Helsing in his efforts to stop Dracula and his followers, and the vampire entrapping himself in a hawthorn bush, allowing his adversary to take advantage of a nearby wooden fence (with plenty of spikes available to him), and it’s obvious Rites has a loaded screenplay with plenty of developments and ideas. And, as you might expect, Dracula dissolves into ash with Van Helsing holding his signet ring as a trophy of victory. Sure the film ends neat and tidy (there just had to be hawthorn bush all over the place for Van Helsing to capitalize with), with Dracula announcing that he will use Van Helsing’s granddaughter as his bride/consort (her sole inclusion in the film seems to be so she can find herself in danger time and again, in need of rescue by Michael Coles’ Scotland Yard Inspector Murray) and that his cult of old men will be his “horsemen of the apocalypse” (much to their surprise and horror), resulting in the headquarters lit up thanks to a scuffle between Murray and a motorcycle-riding bruiser (who loses when he is electrocuted upon encountering machinery) in the control room. The plague is forced upon a member of the cult when Dracula is ill with him for arguing and it burns away with the headquarters.

 

 

Even included in the film are vampire brides fed on by Dracula and left in the cellar of the cult’s headquarters, attempting to accost both Van Helsing’s granddaughter and Murray (probably my favorite scenes in the film). Dracula even pulls a “Bond villain” type decision by not allowing his cult to kill Van Helsing immediately, feeling he deserves to see his granddaughter turned into a vampire bride which is simply a way to allow him an eventual escape/retreat. Cushing rises to the occasion and is really the bigger star in this film. He certainly outwits Dracula and has far more screen time. Lee, even when less inspired, can summon just enough of the old magic to make Dracula a monster deserved of a gulp in the throat. He has genuine screen presence, no doubt.