Vampires (6 page)

“A year has passed since Dracula, the perpetrator of these obscene evils was destroyed. And I. Ernst Muller, Monsignor of the Holy Catholic church, Province of Kleinenberg, decided it was time that I paid a visit to the little village in the valley to see that all was well.”

Here is the first puzzle; the original movie in the series began in 1885, with Jonathon’s journey to the Castle, and in
Prince of Darkness
, Father Sandor reminds his flock that it is
“Over, these past ten years!”
which would place that timeline to 1895. Considering that POD only recorded three nights of the Count‘s existence, I began to wonder if there was a continuing screenplay that became mislaid chronicling more of the Count’s dastardly deeds? There doesn’t seem to be a local council and yet big changes have happened concerning the topography of the vampire’s hunting ground. The castle still holds everyone in a deadly grip of fear and is now reached at the top of a boulder strewn mountain prefigured by a treacherous trek through a dark gloomy forest. Muller and the local priest – who is never referred to by name – perform a very indepth exorcism on the castle itself, sealing the door with a gigantic gold cross borrowed from the church. The sky darkens and lightning flashes in anger at this outrage, but the Monsignor is satisfied that he has finally blessed the castle and takes his leave.

Christopher Lee’s Count is awakened when the drunken priest falls onto the ice during the exorcism and injures his forehead. The ice cracks and blood finds its way to the lips of the sleeping vampire. Dracula has decidedly more screen time than in his two previous outings and his evil personality is broken down with some very banal dialogue. Ten lines this time and all geared to barking instructions like a manic parade Sergeant. With the simpering Priest in tow, they procure a new coffin from the local cemetery by emptying out the previous occupant first – a very tall girl, one imagines, identified on the coffin nameplate as:
Gisela Syms (1885 – 1905).
Blinded by a raw revenge on the Monsignor, he immediately follows his foes path to his hometown to extract it; his transport being a fine black carriage pulled by two coal black horses. The horses are whipped frantically by their driver and must be very strong animals indeed, considering that no one has been around to feed them for the past year.
His first conquest is the chirpy barmaid Zena who works at the tavern run by Michael Ripper’s jovial landlord Max. She doesn’t reside at the hotel like her work colleagues and likes to walk home in the pitch blackness of the night through the forest, making her very easy pickings indeed. With the Priest and the girl under his power, Dracula sets his sights on Maria, the virginal niece of the Monsignor. This makes Zena very depressed and she is bled dry before being consigned to the flames of the baker’s oven. The Count’s further pursuit of Maria is offset by all kinds of problems as he seems to be interrupted at every turn by people barging in just when he is about to sink his pearly whites into her soft neck. He is pursued across the rooftops by the dotty Monsignor and, after ripping a hastily rammed stake from his chest, has the coal hot ashes of the oven hurled at him by his conquests smug boyfriend and in the best tradition of the B-movie bad guy, takes a powder until next time. Finally, he does get to nibble on the lovely Maria and uses her as the tool to deconsecrate his Castle Keep.

Lee’s Count has never been more unwaveringly focused and evil than in this movie. However,
haunting the rooftops like a character from a penny dreadful, his chivalry is also touched upon when he picks up his bride in his arms and carries her to the castle stronghold as she has torn and bruised her feet on the hazardous rocks. He orders her to remove the large cross that has been jammed onto the front of his door and to fling it over the side of the mountain – I asked myself why he couldn’t order the priest to do this very early in the movie? As he is ready to take a final bite, the irritating boyfriend turns up again and, during a forced combat, the Count loses his footing and falls over the battlements of his castle landing squarely on the golden crucifix that pierces his heart. Staggering around like a fly on the head of a pin, there is little that he can do as his servant turns tails on him by reading a final prayer that melts him down to nothing.
The Count’s new servant comes in the form of the priest of Kleinenburg played with a haunting, gloomy intensity by Ewen Hooper. Never mentioned by a first name and only referred to as “
Father”
once, he finds that his faith isn‘t what it used to be and drowns his sorrows in the hip flask hidden beneath his robes. A year before the story began, he had found a girl bled dry and stuffed into the Church bell still bleeding fresh blood. How this atrocity happened is never explained as, in
Dracula, Prince of Darkness,
the Count only has two, maybe three nights on Earth before he is destroyed by Father Sandor. When the irritating and bellowing Monsignor arrives, he is forced to take the long trek to the Castle and perform the exorcism. Taking a rest on a nearby boulder he watches as the old man climbs further toward his destination.
The shadow of the castle touches the church, so how is this going to help?
The priest swigs back his whiskey and falls ripping open his forehead as blood leaks into the cracked ice. As he sits up however, we see that his wound wasn’t really all that bad as the scar has disappeared completely. But enough blood has been shed and, as the Monsignor smugly returns to the village, the Priest is cornered by the newly restored Count. Assuming to take on anything for a quiet life, the weak-willed Priest agrees to serve the vampire. He is ordered, off-screen, to acquire a room at the hotel run by Max with his live-in student help, atheist Paul and sluttish barmaid Zena. Dracula’s new coffin is secreted in the cellars of the hotel, though how this is managed is left to the imagination as the cellar seems to have only one entrance/exit that is guarded by endless bags of self-raising flour. For a while, however, things seem to go along at a swinging pace, but his Master is foiled at every turn as he tries to fang the local talent, the Monsignor’s niece. More depression ensues when big mouth Zena begins to rant at the Master and the priest is forced to feed her to the baker’s oven finding, through cuts made by the censor that she burns up rather quickly. He follows Paul and Maria across the rooftops and tips off the Count to their whereabouts, but his Master bungles it again when the cross-waving Monsignor bursts into the room and frightens the vampire away. As the old fool follows, the Priest decks him with a brick and Dracula is safe once more. When the Priest is recruited by Paul to fight the vampire, thankfully no one notices the effect that his presence has on the Monsignor, as this time he has the decency to expire from his head wound. But Paul drags the Priest to the Count‘s resting place and rams home the stake, blood shoots everywhere but the Master’s clothes stay crisp and dry. Finding that he can’t utter the necessary prayers the priest makes a break for it as Paul fends off the vampire with a shovelful of hot ashes. Still in two minds whom he should serve – Paul or Dracula – the Priest harnesses the horses with the newly captured Maria lovingly caressing the casket of her sleeping lover in the back of the carriage. A final window is open for the Priest to regain his faith when Dracula is hurled from his castle onto the giant cross. Using his best voice projection, he stands proudly with bible in hand and recites the prayer for exorcism before finally calling it a day by laying down and dying for his own sins.
Dundee born Ewen Hooper holds more television credits than theatrical movies. He was writer and Producer of 60s TV series
A Man Dies (1964)
and the subsequent film version in 1969. One of his latest roles being in the UK series
Doc Martin
in 2009. The un-named Priest in
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
remains his most high profile character on film to date.
Ernst Muller arrives to find that all is not well in the town of Kleinenburg. A year on after the gruesome find in the church bell, he is shocked to find that the natives still hold a fear of the perpetrator Count Dracula. Finding the Priest nursing a whiskey in the local inn, he berates him and then takes him under his wing to help rid the villagers of their fears once and for all. The trek to the castle is long and laborious, but he has The Good Lord on his side even though his own disciple is waning and he has to make the rest of the trip himself. He reads the exorcism powerfully as he tries to blot out the horrors of the evils in the castle over the centuries. He fastens the giant golden crucifix to the castle doors. When he has finished, he returns to the village. Informed that the Priest has already returned home, The Monsignor decides that he must do the same. All is now well in the World. On his arrival home he is waited on and looked after by his sister Anna, whom he has looked after in turn as a boon to his dying brother. Her daughter, Maria is a beautiful addition to the family he never had and, now in the bloom of womanhood has taken a chaperone in a young man who is an enterprising student and earns money by working at the local bakery. But problems ensue when Maria arrives with her young man and he discovers that the boy is an atheist under his own roof. But he has a moral streak and deigns to leave before being thrown out head first. Left out of the action – as most elders are in the lives of young lovers – he is shocked one evening to see the black cloaked entity that is Dracula bending over his niece. Seeing his cross, the demon takes heel as the Monsignor ventures out over the rooftops in pursuit, his mind surely wondering how the vampire lives. Rounding a chimney, he recognizes the Priest, now under the beast’s control.
How could this have happened? The castle was exorcised!
Before answers are forthcoming, the Priest wields a rock like David, catching the omnipotent emissary on the forehead. As he scrambles back home to his sister, he neglects to mention in his delirium that it was his own disciple who swung the brick. Realizing that his very home is in danger from an incredible evil, The Monsignor turns to Maria’s young lover, Paul, and tells him that Dracula lives and only he has the power to destroy him. The young man is not well-versed in the Christian church, however, and turns up with friend, The Priest. Ernst Muller expires from his injuries as he looks on the face of his murderer knowing that he can only aid Paul in spirit to destroy the evil that holds his home in the grip of deadly terror.
Rupert Davis entered films in 1948 having formed a passion for the theatre whilst being held captive by the Nazis in the celebrated concentration camp known as Stalag Luft III, made famous by the movie
The Great Escape
in 1968. He appeared most notably as George Smiley in
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965)
and carved out a memorable slice of TV history by starring as pipe-smoking sleuth
Maigret (1960-1963).
His genre films include
The Brides of Fu Manchu (1968)
and his most famous genre character of the Reverend Lowe who is savagely tortured and murdered by Vincent Price as
The Witchfinder General (1968).
Liverpudlian born, he died in London in 1976 aged 60.

Maria lives quietly with her mother and uncle in the quaint little village. She is a bright and beautiful girl who seems to have no outward hobbies, but is the apple of her mother’s eye since her father’s death. Taken in as a little girl by her kind and upstanding Uncle Ernst, she has blissfully passed her time remaining a dutiful daughter to her mother. Now, however, she has become serious in her affections regarding a young student, Paul, who works to earn money in the bakery situated in the cellars of the hotel. Very much in love, she fears the meeting between her eminent uncle and her beau as Paul is an atheist who always tells the truth. Her fears are well-founded when the two men meet and Paul leaves the house to avoid unpleasantness with her God-fearing Uncle. But she loves Paul and regularly takes the precipitous stroll along the rooftops to enter his bedroom at the inn. Finding the local barmaid with him doesn’t dampen her feelings for this brilliant young man whose strong moral centre would never let him do anything like that! Maria is shocked but shakes off her underlying suspicions enough to sleep with the boy. She is overjoyed when her uncle also approves her choice. When the man in the long black cloak attacks, she is unsure how she should react, but finds herself obeying his every command and clinging to his coffin in rapt ecstasy whilst he sleeps within. Unaware of her uncle’s death, she follows Dracula to the castle breaking the flesh on her feet as she makes the long trek through mossy woodland and sharp rocks. As she tires, her master takes her in his arms and carries her to the castle. His mood changes as Paul arrives and she has never witnessed such violence. She stands on the sidelines as the dark figure is destroyed when he slips from the battlements. Shaken from her seeming trance, she rushes into the arms of Paul. There is no doubt at the fade out that this pair will have the happy ending that they both deserve.
Born in my own province of Yorkshire in the UK, the beautiful Veronica Carlson made her screen debut in
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
. She went on to star in more genre films of the period,
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)
and Tyburn Pictures,
The Ghoul (1975).
She is an accomplished artist and still acts every now and then and appears regularly at Hammer/Horror Film conventions.
Straight-talking Paul is a student in love with Maria. He works at the local inn in the bakery below to make money to go towards his studies that are never really specified. He enters the film on the worst day of his life. He is about to meet his future bride’s mother. Dressed in all his finery, with a bouquet of flowers, he is forced into an old tradition of balancing beer on the end of a broom whilst drinking a further pint as he tries to hold it steady. Maria enters the inn and his ribbing chums let out laughter as he takes the full glass over his head. Smelling of ale he enters her home and is surprised to find her very staid uncle, the local Monsignor. Things turn sour when he confesses that he does not believe in the existence of God. He leaves and gets drunk on Schnapps at the inn. He is unable to protest when good friend and co-worker Zena offers to take him to bed; even to the extent of stealing a kiss. But when Paul is able to focus again, he sees Maria tucking him in. She stays the night. The next day, Zena is in a very grouchy mood and even disappears the same night to God knows where. He didn’t think that she was really like that, but Max, his employer ensures him that they are all the same. He is surprised when The Monsignor is mortally wounded and tells him that only he can stop Dracula through his love for the girl. He recruits the Priest to help and finds that he has made the wrong choice as the cleric lays him out with a candelabrum. Recovering very quickly, he forces the Priest to take him to Dracula and drives a stake through the monsters chest. The Priest is weak, however, and his lack of faith causes the most incredible reaction. The dark man tears the wood from his chest and beats a hasty retreat as Paul uses hot fire from the oven to beat him back. As the beast escapes with Maria, Paul journeys on horseback for a final confrontation. All force seems futile, but luck is in his favour as Dracula slips over the wall and lands on the upturned cross, crying blood as the Priest appears from nowhere it seems to say the necessary prayers. The Priest dies and Paul holds Maria with perhaps a stronger religious conviction than anyone else on the planet.