Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

After signing a new agreement with Warner Bros. in late 1968, British Hammer Films is all set to churn out the fourth chapter in its ongoing Dracula saga.

There was some trouble behind the scenes, however – producer James Carreras had to employ some ethically dubious pressure (along the lines of “Do you know how many people will lose their jobs if you don’t agree to do this film?”) to finally convince the reluctant Christopher Lee to don the Transylvanian vampire’s cape for the third time, and then the abrupt unavailability of director Terence Fisher forced Carreras to settle for the less gifted Freddie Francis. In some ways, the path to making this film seems to mirror that of one entry of Hammer’s Frankenstein cycle, namely 1964’s weak “The Evil of Frankenstein“, in that the end result in both cases was rather disappointing. To be fair, though, the worst is yet to come for fans of the undead count – compared to trash like “The Satanic Rites of Dracula” (1973), this film still maintains an undeniable dignity.

Its most glaring flaw, however, is the director’s inability to instill an essential dose of tension into the script, which on paper seemed to have some potential. Key scenes – especially the one depicting the monster’s reawakening – turn out flat and not in the least engaging, almost as if there was little interest in dealing with those aspects of the story. This feeble narrative vigor combined with a dreadfully muted atmosphere infused with a pop esthetic rich in warm tones and psychedelic touches (from the dripping, shifting, bloody shapes behind the opening credits to the mellow Keinenberg evenings) impart that drowsy feeling of post-prandial stupor.

All that notwithstanding, the public at the time approved, which was incentive enough to get “Taste the Blood of Dracula” onto the launching pad for a 1970 theatrical release.