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Although primarily a stand-alone tale, Taste The Blood
Of Dracula follows on directly from Dracula Has Risen
From The Grave, with a salesman being thrown from a horse-drawn
coach (after an argument with an unrealistic simpleton) and
stumbling on to the night scene of Dracula impaled on a cross
and turning to dust - the conclusion of the previous film.
We now switch to three well-to-do society gents who every
last Sunday of the month visit the poorhouse to conduct their
'charity' work. But behind this building there is an secluded
whorehouse. When they meet an ostracised young lord who is
into the occult they realise they are bored with their lives
and take up his offer to get into something darker. He takes
them to a little storeroom run by the salesman and they buy
from him Dracula's cape, clasp, signet ring, and dried blood
from the master vampire himself. During a ceremony the three
men are afraid to drink the blood of Dracula. When the young
lord goes ahead he becomes wracked with pain. Panicked, the
trio beat him to death and flee, but unbeknown to them the
evil one has returned and is ready to take his revenge on
those responsible for killing his servant...
In
a similar format to the previous outing Dracula makes slaves
of two of the guilty men's daughters. There's no doubt that
chewing on the necks of two nubile young women would be ever
preferable to the wrinkled extremities of old men! Dracula
himself doesn't make his appearance until more than halfway
through the running time, but such is his presence that he
hardly needs to show his face at all; the threat is enough,
and overindulgence would only break the spell and weaken the
illusion. Most of the filming of Christopher Lee is in long-shots
or extreme close-ups with half his face in shadow.
The
period settings for these films are a wise decision; imagine
how dated a contemporary late sixties or seventies feel would
look... big hair, flares and flowery shirts! Again the young
suitor is the unlikely hero. The conclusion for me doesn't
even come close to the style of the previous film. It's all
too easy, I'm afraid, but enjoyable all the same.
There's
a few names you might recognise here: Ralph Bates, Roy Kinnear,
Martin Jarvis, Geoffrey Keen and Peter Sallis. Win a pint
down the pub with this one: What do Dracula and Wallace &
Grommet have in common?!
With only an over-the-top trailer to accompany the feature,
Taste The Blood Of Dracula will probably not attract
too many sales, which is a shame because it's really not that
bad.
Perhaps
you'd be better advised to buy the box set that the individual
releases in this series.
Ty
Power
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