Vampires (9 page)

Christopher Lee walks through the film as if he is totally numb. His distaste shows and he seems barely preoccupied although he does get the chance to scale his castle wall like a lizard. Roy Ward Baker admitted that he had to fight to have the set built for this and was proud of the achievement, but not the eventual film. Roy Ward Baker would go on to direct Ingrid Pitt in Hammer’s film version of
Carmilla.
The Vampire Lovers (1971)
and
their final Dracula movie,
The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974).

Dennis Waterman and Jenny Hanley are competent in their roles and are only two of Hammer’s leads of the seventies to continue in successful careers. Miss Hanley – daughter of actors, Jimmy Hanley and Dinah Sheridan - would go on to head the children’s magazine program
Magpie
(1974 – 1980).
One point that always frustrates is the fact that the beautiful Jenny Hanley is barely mentioned when one speaks of Hammer Glamour. Usually she is relegated to a small square photograph with three or four lines, and yet in this movie, she has more to do and more screen time than most of Hammer’s scream queens. Dennis Waterman is a household name in the UK for his roles in television such as
The Sweeney (1975-1978), Minder (1979-1989)
and
New Tricks (2003-present).
He would go on to star as a victim in the British cult movie,
Fright (1971)
alongside his long-standing
Minder
co-star George Cole. His daughter to second wife actress Patricia Maynard, Hannah Waterman, is also an actress.

Scars of Dracula
and
Horror of Frankenstein
mark an ignominious end for Hammer’s regular franchises. It has the look of being the most hastily compiled of all the films in the series that goes on to recycle incidents from many of their better efforts. It also suggests that the company did not take much notice of the successes that were happening at the world wide box office. Television had begun screening Hammer’s original stories that showed more creativity and imagination than was displayed here, although I have talked to some fans who refer to this film as
‘their guilty pleasure’.
For myself I found that the delirious inclusion of comedy relief policemen and
Benny Hill
regular Bob Todd as the Burgomeister, had me mentally recasting the whole film. Perhaps we could have included Jenny Lee Wright as a buxom servant girl and Henry McGee as a stuttering, but pompous, by-the-book Van Helsing?  Only Christopher Lee and Patrick Troughton would continue successful careers in major motion pictures.

Patrick Troughton had just finished his run as the second
Doctor Who (1966-1969)
frustratingly for fans of the series
;
many of his episodes were wiped by the BBC. He would go on to star in big screen movies,
The Omen (1976)
and the Ray Harryhausen spectacular
, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)
as the mysterious Warlock Melanthius alongside Damien Thomas of
Twins of Evil
. Reportedly, he kept a photograph of Dracula and Klove hanging on the wall in his lavatory. Troughton suffered two heart attacks brought on by overwork and stress; a third attack killed him instantly on the morning of 28
th
March 1987 at the age of 67. Two of his eight children, David and Michael are actors as are his grandsons, Sam Troughton and Harry Melling. Warwickshire cricketer Jim Troughton is another grandson.

New Zealand born Anoushka (Anouska) Hempel is memorable in her largest role as Tania, Dracula’s captured bride. She arrived in London in 1962 with just Ten pounds in her pocket and had appeared in a small role in
Kiss of the Vampire (1963).
She also had a credit in the James Bond movie,
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).
In 1973 she starred in the movie
Zodiac
based on the comic strip,
Tales of Tiffany Jones
and Russ Meyer’s soft porn film,
Black Snake.
In 1998 she bought up all UK rights to these films effectively blocking the chances of ever having them screened. Married three times, she was widowed when her first husband, journalist and property developer, Constantine Hempel, died in a tragic car accident. Husband number 2 was producer Bill Kenwright and this ended in divorce after two years in 1980. Her third and present husband is Sir Mark Weinberg and she becoming Lady Weinberg. She has two children, a son and a daughter, and is now a renowned hotelier, owning a series of Hotels and restaurants. In 2002, she was ranked by
Archeological Digest
as one of the top 100 Interior Designers and architects in the world.

Scars of Dracula
met with mixed to positive reviews in 1970, but Hammer was quickly losing its hold on the imagination. A look at other horror movies released that same year by other British studios;
Incense for the Damned
and
The
Blood on Satan’s Claw
, also hints that they weren’t keeping score to the change in public tastes.
The Vampire Happening
had turned Dracula (Ferdy Mayne) into a bumbling straight man confused by the new sexual revolution that was happening in the movies.
The House That Dripped Blood
had Jon Pertwee as a horror star being turned into a vampire by his buxom co-star Ingrid Pitt. In fact, vampires had been openly parodied for the last three years after the release of Roman Polanski’s
Dance of the Vampires (1967)
that had borrowed its plot from Hammer’s greatest vampire movies,
The Brides of Dracula
and
Kiss of the Vampire
.
Roy Ward Baker’s movie made with all sincerity by Hammer is unintentionally funnier than them all.

Dracula AD1972 (1972)
Christopher Lee as
Count Dracula.
Peter Cushing as
Lorimar Van Helsing/Lawrence Van Helsing.
Stephanie Beacham as
Jessica Van Helsing.
Christopher Neame as
Johnny Alucard.
Michael Coles as
Inspector Murray.
Caroline Munro as
Laura Bellows
. Marsha Hunt as
Gaynor Keating.
Janet Key as
Anna Bryant.
Philip Miller as
Bob.
Introducing Stoneground as
Themselves
. Screenplay; Don Houghton. Director; Alan Gibson.

Synopsis

London’s Hyde Park: 1872. An out of control coach is pulled by two terrified horses as its occupant’s battle on top. They are Count Dracula and his eternal nemesis, Lawrence Van Helsing. The coach crashes into a nearby tree and shatters as the two are thrown clear. When Van Helsing focuses, he realizes that Dracula has been impaled on the spoke of the wheel. He breaks the wheel leaving the spoke embedded in Dracula’s heart. Both men die on the spot and Dracula is reduced to dust. A lone rider makes his way to the carnage and scoops up Dracula’s powdery dust in a vial. At the funeral of Lawrence Van Helsing, he places the powder beneath the earth in unconsecrated ground. The camera moves up as the credits roll and an airplane tears across the sky. One hundred years later and a group of friends led by the mysterious Johnny Alucard decide to have fun by calling on the Devil through a black mass. Johnny is the descendant of Dracula. One of the friends is Jessica Van Helsing. In the course of the ritual, Johnny calls on Jessica to join him as the sacrifice, but a friend, Laura, decides that she wants to be the sacrifice. When the blood starts flowing, the teenagers exit the old church but Laura is bitten by the newly restored Count. The next day, Johnny Alucard tells his flock that Laura has taken a trip out to see her parents, but schoolchildren find her body discarded on a building site, drained of blood. When Jessica is questioned, her grandfather, Lorrimar Van Helsing, realizes the dangers involved. More girls disappear and Johnny Alucard is given power by Dracula. He kidnaps Jessica and is destroyed by Van Helsing who tracks him down to his student digs and drowns him in the shower. Asking the police for one hour before sunset, Van Helsing sets a trap for Dracula in the shape of a pit primed with stakes. Jessica lies on the sacrificial altar as Dracula rises. Van Helsing stabs the Count with a silver dagger, but the hypnotized Jessica removes the blade. Van Helsing runs out into the churchyard and Dracula falls into the freshly dug pit to be impaled on the stakes and to wither down to dust. Jessica revives from her hypnosis and is comforted by her grandfather
.

Review

Urged by the failure of
Scars of Dracula,
Hammer ingested fresh blood into the franchise yet again. It begins ominously with an adventure situated in the Victorian era, 1872, as Professor Lawrence Van Helsing battles frantically atop a runaway coach with his nemesis Dracula.

“The year 1872,”
intones the voice over,
“And the nightmare legend of Count Dracula extends its terror far beyond the mountains of Carpathia, to the Victorian metropolis of London. Here, in Hyde park, the final confrontation between Lawrence Van Helsing and his arch enemy, the demon vampire, Dracula!”

This frantic set-piece is obviously geared towards the fans who had enjoyed Terence Fisher‘s original stories. Cushing’s Van Helsing wears a fetching gray wig and sideburns that gives a nod to Bram Stoker’s original character as opposed to the efficient Cambridge MD of earlier treatments. One wonders that if we ever got the chance to hear him speak, would he use the Dutch intonation that he shirked from in 1958? These questions are left unanswered as the coach slams into a nearby tree. The occupants are thrown clear and the professor wakens to realise that his foe has been impaled on the spoke of the broken wheel. Using enormous effort, Van Helsing snaps the wheel away to leave the debris piercing the monster’s heart. Dracula dissolves pre-credits as Van Helsing dies at the scene. Racing along the same country road is an unidentified young man in the service of Dracula. Giving a contemptuous glance to Cushing’s fallen hero, he scoops up the blood of the vampire in a glass phial, depositing it in the foundations of a newly built church next to the funeral that is being performed for the fallen vampire kller, Lawrence Van Helsing:

Gravestone legend:

Lawrence Van Helsing

Born July 12
th
1814

Died September 18
th
1872

“Requiescat In Pace Ultima”

As the camera pans to the sky, we see a jet airplane appear and a rousing hip score begins on the soundtrack. We are propelled forward 100 years in a matter of seconds to London 1972, specifically Chelsea; or, more specific, a Chelsea that seems to have been forged from the hype of the swinging sixties. The characters in
AD1972
are as unbelievable as the concept of a vampire living in a nearby deconsecrated church. Hammer was trying very hard to bring Dracula to modern times in answer to the
Count Yorga
and
Blacula
movies of the early seventies; but, while it is great to see the well shot fanging sequences, it is implausible to think that he can even venture out of the church without alerting everyone to his presence.

Peter Cushing has his third stab at Van Helsing. This time he plays not one, but two versions of the professor and neither are related to the adventurer of
Dracula
and
The Brides of Dracula
. He is brought in on the case when his granddaughter, Jessica, is questioned concerning the murder of her friend Laura Bellows (Caroline Munro), after the previous evening’s satanic ritual inaugurated by the mysterious Johnny Alucard. Laura has been found drained of blood on a building site nearby St. Bartolphs deconsecrated
church and Van Helsing immediately suspects vampires are at work. A simple anagram is solved;

A  L  U  C  A  R  D

D  R  A  C  U  L  A

and the professor realizes that his grandfather’s old enemy, Dracula, is the real culprit. The patter between Van Helsing and Jessica is very interesting when one scrutinizes the rest of the film. She has already referred to him as an anthropologist and when Van Helsing asks that she bring her friends to meet him she replies: