Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2017 | 48/52 | Hammer Horror
A young boy named Johann rides his bike into his village and to the church, where he works as an altar boy. He hears the bell ring and grabs the rope to stop it, only to find it soaked with blood. Glancing upwards, he sees the blood pooling around the porthole through which the rope falls. He goes up the stairs and into the bell tower. His screams alert a priest, who runs into the church to find the frightened boy, unable to explain, covered in blood, running away. The priest follows the trail of blood up to the bell. A shoe drops out. Then, a woman’s body, her neck torn into at two points.
Rain turns to snow and snow to spring—a year has passed since Dracula drowned in Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Monsignor Ernst Muelle rides into the village on a carriage to check on them. In the church, the priest performs perfunctory Mass rites for an empty sanctuary. After mass, he hits the pub, leaving Johann to meet the Monsignor’s arrival. Johann is mute and unable to voice where the priest is, but points towards the pub. There, the villagers explain that they no longer attend mass because the shadow of Dracula’s castle touches it. The Monsignor tries to assure them that Dracula is dead, but they still sense evil there.
To assuage their fear, the Monsignor intends to climb to the castle to exorcise its residual evil, bringing the priest with him. The sun begins its decline, and the horrified priest is unable to continue. The Monsignor leaves him to continue the rest of the way. As clouds form and lightning strikes, the Monsignor performs the exorcism. The storm sends the priest running. He trips and falls down the mountain, hitting his head and falling atop where Dracula is frozen. The blood from his wound drips down the rocks and onto Dracula’s lips, awakening him once more.
When shall we be free of his evil?
The film explores the tension between the church and the world. Central to the story is the Monsignor, quite set in his ways and the ways of the Catholic church. Paul, a character we meet after Dracula’s awakening, is an atheist who takes pride in his honesty, even when it gets him into trouble. The Monsignor stands on his beliefs and challenges a town that is scared but doing okay with an exorcism. In the process, his stubborn will awakens Dracula.
But don’t worry, oh, ye faithful — if you’ve seen enough Dracula movies, you know that God has dominion over Draculas, and it is Paul’s lack of belief that the film challenges. Faith is not something you can build out of rites and rituals—there must be something central that belongs to the individual. And what better challenge than a dang old Dracula trying to fuck your girlfriend?
You should swear by the Almighty God, but you have denied yourself this.
The film practically teases us with Lee’s appearances, offering us glimpses in small measure. If I recall correctly (probably not, let’s be real), Lee was pretty over this series by this point, so this may be him giving the movie the bare minimum. The man has never turned down a role, it seems.
Barbara Ewing is the proper star of this movie, giving us the most nuanced performance as the barmaid, Zena. Everyone is walking around in their stuffy 19th-century postures, and she plays it so effortlessly that she feels like an honest-to-god person.
The movie feels the absence of Peter Cushing, but it doesn’t drag the film down too terribly. It’s also the first without Terence Fisher directing. Freddie Francis does fine, bolstered, no doubt, by Hammer’s in-house production team.
As Hammer continued making films, they became less shy with the sexual innuendos and undertones. Dracula has always been horny, but they’ve never been this explicit about it.