Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is going
Speaker 1: to be an episode that originally published ten twenty seven,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. The film is Dracula AD nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: starring the Great Christopher Lee as the Prince of Darkness
Speaker 1: who has risen from the Ashes a century later in
Speaker 1: groovy London, where he encounters hippies and also a descendant
Speaker 1: of doctor Van Helsing. So, without further ado, let's dive
Speaker 1: right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Limb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema we're going to be talking about the Oh. I
Speaker 3: usually say the year, but now I'm not so sure.
Speaker 3: Was it actually released in nineteen seventy two?
Speaker 1: Yes it was, And I want to stress Joe that
Speaker 1: it was released nineteen seventy two of the common era.
Speaker 3: Okay, not nineteen seventy two. Bce. Right, this is Dracula
Speaker 3: AD nineteen seventy two, the hammer horror movie starring Christopher
Speaker 3: Lee and Peter Cushing.
Speaker 1: That's right. So last week we not only did a
Speaker 1: Frankenstein movie. We did one of the best known and
Speaker 1: most beloved of all Frankenstein movies, nineteen thirty five is
Speaker 1: Bride of Frankenstein. And to follow that up, I just
Speaker 1: I have been feeling weeks in advance like we would
Speaker 1: need to do a Dracula movie after that. But which one, right,
Speaker 1: There's so many Dracula films to choose from. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about doing nineteen thirty one's Dracula or the Mexican
Speaker 1: Dracula film that came out the same year. Those I
Speaker 1: think are both fine choices. But I found I was
Speaker 1: craving not just a drac movie, but a weird spin
Speaker 1: on Dracula, which brings us back to the world of
Speaker 1: late franchise ingenuity, which is something I always enjoy. You
Speaker 1: know that point in a film franchise where people realize,
Speaker 1: all right, we've done the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 1: We need to go in a new direction. We need
Speaker 1: to spice it up.
Speaker 3: What can we do Dracula goes West or Dracula in
Speaker 3: Space that's actually that's a real movie, Dracula three thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, these are all valid choices. Dracula in the
Speaker 1: Old West has also been done. I just love it
Speaker 1: when a franchise gets maybe a little desperate and starts
Speaker 1: taking some risks. And that's where we are with the
Speaker 1: seventh film in Hammer Horror's Dracula series. Kicked it off
Speaker 1: with fifty eighth Stracula the nineteen sixties, The Brides of Dracula,
Speaker 1: then Dracula Prince of Darkness in sixty six, then Dracula
Speaker 1: Has Risen from the Grave in sixty eight, then Taste
Speaker 1: the Blood of Dracula in seventy oh, and then we
Speaker 1: have Scars of Dracula. I think that's the same year.
Speaker 1: And then we get to Dracula AD nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: which had the fat working title of Dracula Today.
Speaker 3: It sounds almost like the name of a publication, like
Speaker 3: it's a magazine for the modern Dracula connoisseur.
Speaker 1: Yeah, alright. I mentioned it to my wife and she's like,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a morning show, like Dracula hosts the
Speaker 1: morning show. It's Dracula Today, and he's got his hot
Speaker 1: mug of blood. So yeah, I think it's so at
Speaker 1: this point in the film franchise, Yeah, we're definitely in
Speaker 1: that experimental mode, and it would stay that way for
Speaker 1: the duration. The film to follow this up was seventy
Speaker 1: three's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, which I have not seen,
Speaker 1: but I've definitely flagged it because it's my understanding that
Speaker 1: it's sort of a Dracula spy movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have seen this one. I've mentioned this on
Speaker 3: the show before, but this was an especially hilarious movie
Speaker 3: viewing experience because I watched it with early YouTube auto
Speaker 3: generated subtitles with a group of friends, and the subtitles
Speaker 3: were all wrong. There was one point where somebody I
Speaker 3: don't remember what the actual line in the movie was,
Speaker 3: but the subtitle took it for the boat carrying general
Speaker 3: free balls.
Speaker 1: General freebops. Okay, I don't think he's established in this film,
Speaker 1: though some of the characters from this film will carry
Speaker 1: on into the next one.
Speaker 3: There's also a line that the subtitles interpreted as Peter
Speaker 3: Cushing or a Peter Cushing type guy answering a telephone
Speaker 3: and saying saw it on Twitter, and I was shocked,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: So we've definitely flagged that one for later. The final
Speaker 1: Dracula movie from Hammer Pictures was actually a co production
Speaker 1: with Shaw Brothers. It is nineteen seventy four is the
Speaker 1: Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and East Meets West
Speaker 1: Vampires film. This one's been on the list for a
Speaker 1: long time. I haven't seen it yet, but I mean,
Speaker 1: how can you resist such a mashup?
Speaker 3: How could it go wrong? I've got to see that one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, today's movie, Dracula AD nineteen seventy two takes
Speaker 1: the Dracula franchise into modern times.
Speaker 3: In a way.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a predecessor to nineteen seventy nine's Time
Speaker 1: after Time, which we previously talked about in the show.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I can see that. I mean, so in
Speaker 3: that episode we came up with a taxonomy of different
Speaker 3: kinds of time travel movies. This isn't exactly a time
Speaker 3: travel movie because nobody actually travels, there is no time machine,
Speaker 3: nobody leaves the time they're naturally in. But it is
Speaker 3: a generation spanning movie where where the vampire is slain
Speaker 3: in one era and resurrected in another. So you might
Speaker 3: expect there to be some I don't know, kind of
Speaker 3: a fish out of time elements, like we talked about
Speaker 3: in that episode, where the character from the past is
Speaker 3: forced to deal with how things have changed in the
Speaker 3: modern world. I must say none of that. There's nothing,
Speaker 3: nothing like that at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I've seen some reviewers who come more recent
Speaker 1: reviewers who've commented on that, like saying, why is there
Speaker 1: not like a fish out of water Fish out of
Speaker 1: time plot element to this? And I'm part of my
Speaker 1: thinking on that, I'm thinking, Okay, well, you don't want
Speaker 1: to make Dracula look foolish. This film takes Dracula's status seriously,
Speaker 1: and Dracula remains like a severe threat. He is just
Speaker 1: hunger and evil. But on the other hand, as we've
Speaker 1: seen in other films, it can be done. You can
Speaker 1: do the Fish out of Time at least a little
Speaker 1: bit and have the character that is engaging and it
Speaker 1: still be fearsome. The example that comes to mind, just
Speaker 1: off the top of my head would be The Terminator.
Speaker 1: It's not much of a Fish out of Time, but
Speaker 1: there is that one funny moment where he tries to
Speaker 1: go in and buy a plasma rifle from Dick Miller.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just what you see, pal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a funny moment, But it doesn't make
Speaker 1: the Terminator less terrifying in that film. So there's some
Speaker 1: sort of balance that would have been possible with Dracula
Speaker 1: going out at night and feeding on hippies. But Dracula
Speaker 1: just doesn't get out in this movie and do that
Speaker 1: sort of thing.
Speaker 3: That's exactly the issue. So the movie is trying to
Speaker 3: be it's trying to be conceptually fish out of time.
Speaker 3: It's trying to say, Okay, we have this monster from
Speaker 3: a different era. You know, he came to London and
Speaker 3: in this movie in the eighteen seventies, and suddenly he's
Speaker 3: here in the nineteen seventies and whoa, it's a crazy context.
Speaker 3: There are all these hippies and cars everywhere. This is
Speaker 3: not what we expect to see surrounding Dracula. But Dracula
Speaker 3: is never like, he never meets any of that stuff
Speaker 3: in his resurrected form. He just hangs out in a church.
Speaker 3: So I don't think he ever even sees any of
Speaker 3: the signs of the modern world.
Speaker 1: Right right, He's just ordering like takeout delivery essentially the
Speaker 1: whole time. He doesn't get out and see that world.
Speaker 1: You know, whether he'd be phased by the changes in
Speaker 1: the world, who can say. I mean, maybe maybe Dracula
Speaker 1: just sees blood at the end of the day and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter. He's like, that's doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter at all, Just bring me the blood. But maybe
Speaker 1: you could have had some neat moments.
Speaker 3: The Dracula in this movie does not seem very impressed
Speaker 3: or even very reactive to anything around him. He you know,
Speaker 3: there's the part where his lackey raises him from the
Speaker 3: dead and says, master, I've brought you back, and he
Speaker 3: just says it was my will. He walks past him. So,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I kind of think that that aloofness
Speaker 3: and high handedness might come through as well if he
Speaker 3: were forced to, you know, be around automobiles or something
Speaker 3: and be like, you wouldn't even notice them. He just
Speaker 3: walked past them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have been interesting to see how they
Speaker 1: would have handled it. Now, one thing I want to
Speaker 1: mention about this this particular movie is with its elements
Speaker 1: of like hippies and groovy London counterculture to the limited
Speaker 1: extent that is that it is explored. As I was
Speaker 1: digging on this one, I was like, oh, man, I
Speaker 1: wonder if this one is Electric Wizard certified, because the
Speaker 1: themes just seem to fit too perfectly for this to
Speaker 1: not be the case, and so I looked it up.
Speaker 1: I grabbed the book Come My Fanatics, A Journey into
Speaker 1: the World Electric Wizard by Dan Franklin, which came out
Speaker 1: earlier this year, and it basically is just filled with
Speaker 1: various movies references and movie mentions that line up with
Speaker 1: their work, and it is in fact cited as an influence.
Speaker 1: Dracula eighty nineteen seventy two is cited as an influence
Speaker 1: on the excellent two thousand and seven album which Cult today.
Speaker 3: I know the Wizard, and I can see this movie
Speaker 3: being right up their alley. They love some witch Finders
Speaker 3: and some hammer horror and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean satanic rites of Drugula obvious. Obviously there's
Speaker 1: a connection there. The title of track on the album
Speaker 1: which cult today reminds one of Dracula today. And then
Speaker 1: they also have that Torquamada seventy one track which also
Speaker 1: has sort of like similarities to the title here. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see this one as having been a strong influence.
Speaker 1: Now that it's been pointed out to me.
Speaker 3: Now here's a question. This is a convention. I can
Speaker 3: think of several examples of movies like this where it's Dracula,
Speaker 3: and then just the number of years Dracula nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: Dracula two thousand, and Dracula three thousand, which is the
Speaker 3: one in space with Casper van Deen.
Speaker 1: Is that one in the year three thousand.
Speaker 3: I guess it's supposed to be. That one's really really
Speaker 3: not good like z Grade, though it does make one
Speaker 3: choice that I really like, which is it sets it
Speaker 3: in the future, so they're on like a space ship.
Speaker 3: I think Casper Vanden's character is Captain von Helsing of
Speaker 3: the USS whatever it is, maybe the Demeter, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but the like they come across Dracula in a derylic spaceship.
Speaker 3: But then when they wake him up, is he like
Speaker 3: a spacey Dracula. Is he wearing kind of a spooky
Speaker 3: space suit. No, he's just dressed in like a Halloween
Speaker 3: store Dracula costume, with like the cape and the high
Speaker 3: collar and the ruffles.
Speaker 1: You know. I doubt they pulled it off and made
Speaker 1: it work, But on paper, I respect the choice. I
Speaker 1: do like it when Dracula is like powerful in spite
Speaker 1: of the tropiness of the way he is dressed. And
Speaker 1: I think that an example that can be found in
Speaker 1: this movie because Christopher Lee, again, his Dracula maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: have as much to do, doesn't get to do as
Speaker 1: much killing and exploring as we would like, but it
Speaker 1: is still a strong screen presence. It is still like
Speaker 1: a terrifying vision of Dracula. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think Christopher Lee is almost always pretty strong. I
Speaker 3: think he's good in the moments he has, though I
Speaker 3: do think the movie under uses him. We kind of
Speaker 3: don't get enough Christopher Lee, and we don't get enough
Speaker 3: of several of the movie's big selling points.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. Oh but come back to what
Speaker 1: you were saying. Yeah, Dracula seventy two, but it was
Speaker 1: also released as Dracula's seventy three in France and Spain
Speaker 1: as it came out in seventy three, so they had
Speaker 1: upgrade the title. Nobody wants last year's Dracula. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, but it's worth looking up the French poster
Speaker 1: for Dracula seventy three because it's absolutely stunning. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to explain it. It's got
Speaker 1: this weird kind of I don't know, almost kind of
Speaker 1: like our deco looking font and then Dracula's head is
Speaker 1: like this psychedelic floating visage in the sky gazing hungrily
Speaker 1: at bikini women.
Speaker 3: It really doesn't look like Christopher Lee. It's more like
Speaker 3: a floating monster mask that is bleeding colors into the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: Yes, so look that up. It's good. Now. I want
Speaker 1: to stress that this movie is not everyone's favorite. Roger
Speaker 1: Ebert only gave it one star, single star. Michael Weldon
Speaker 1: of Psychotronic Film Guide called this one's time jump quote
Speaker 1: a big mistake. And and I even touch base with
Speaker 1: Hammer fan and former producer of the show Seth Nichols Johnson,
Speaker 1: who again big fan of a lot of Hammer films.
Speaker 1: He says this is not one of his favorites. He
Speaker 1: likes it, but is not one of his favorites.
Speaker 3: Fair enough. I think it'll make for a good discussion
Speaker 3: on the show. But I say it's not one of
Speaker 3: the best Hammer horror Draculas. I think Horror of Dracula
Speaker 3: is much better.
Speaker 1: No, No, I think to enjoy this film, you've got
Speaker 1: to be on board for again late franchise innovation, for
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, risky if not completely realized,
Speaker 1: dream of where Dracula could take you, and I guess
Speaker 1: also the further away we are from it in time,
Speaker 1: the more it has been allowed to age, because I
Speaker 1: know a lot of these commentators were talking about when
Speaker 1: it first came out. Weldon criticized it as being already
Speaker 1: dated when it hit the screen. But we've had decades
Speaker 1: for this film to mature, and now we can appreciate
Speaker 1: it for what it is.
Speaker 3: I suspect people might have found the hippie caricatures more
Speaker 3: grating in the seventies. I find them delightfully amusing now, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that could be part of it, all right,
Speaker 1: elevator pitch for this one. I would say these hippies
Speaker 1: are such a drain on society. Of course, they resurrected Dracula.
Speaker 3: It's the dope, it's the Devil music, it's the Dracula rights.
Speaker 1: That's right. My other one that came up with his parents.
Speaker 1: Be aware of these warning signs that your twenty five
Speaker 1: year old teenager may be involved with drugs, sex, black masses,
Speaker 1: rock music, and Dracula resurrection.
Speaker 3: We do have several parenting scenes where Peter Cushing is
Speaker 3: trying to exert a positive influence on his granddaughter Jessica.
Speaker 3: You know he's trying to figure out, like, hey, are
Speaker 3: her friends on the level? But it just doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: No, All right, let's listen to some trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Yesterday Dracula was the most fearsome being the screen has
Speaker 4: ever seen. Today, tonight you you could be Dracula's next.
Speaker 5: Victim, something new yet as old as time.
Speaker 1: Come on, Johnny, a date with the Devil.
Speaker 4: Are you ready? He's ready, He's waiting to freak you
Speaker 4: out right out of this world. Nice September eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 4: one hundred years ago to the day.
Speaker 5: You who witnessed must swear before the name of the
Speaker 5: devil to keep its secret.
Speaker 1: Who knows about vampires?
Speaker 3: For God's sake, my.
Speaker 1: Grandfather died fating about most terrible vers dangelous and of
Speaker 1: all time.
Speaker 4: The year is nineteen seventy two, a leap year in horror,
Speaker 4: a vintage year vampires. Good time for the masters of
Speaker 4: horror to meet a game.
Speaker 1: In the twentieth century.
Speaker 5: Come to me, come pracular.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, if at this point you would like
Speaker 1: to go watch Dracula eight nineteen seventy two for yourself,
Speaker 1: well you're in luck, because this one was released through
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, so it's widely available. It's even currently available
Speaker 1: in the States, at least on Max. Looks like they
Speaker 1: have a number of Hammer Horror flicks in there, so yeah,
Speaker 1: go crazy. You can also get it on basically any
Speaker 1: physical or digital format you desire.
Speaker 3: All right, let's do those connections.
Speaker 1: All right. The director is Alan Gibson, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight through nineteen eighty seven. Canadian director who worked
Speaker 1: a lot in the UK with TV work going back
Speaker 1: to the mid sixties, but it's his horror work that
Speaker 1: most remember him for today. His credits include nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: Goodbye Jim and I, which I believe is some sort
Speaker 1: of a you know, scary twin movie, This film, of course,
Speaker 1: and its follow up, nineteen seventy three's The Satanic Rights
Speaker 1: of Dracula. He also continued to work in TV and
Speaker 1: directed episodes of the anthology series thriller Tales of the
Speaker 1: Unexpected and Hammer House of Horror. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the Hammer House of Horror episodes he directed was The
Speaker 1: Silent Scream, starring Peter Cushing but also a young Brian
Speaker 1: Cox who was actually I think we did the math.
Speaker 1: He would have been like thirty four at the time.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's hard to understand that I'm looking at Brian
Speaker 3: Cox younger than I am now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he came out with I mean, Brian Cox's
Speaker 1: the augumented career of you know, playing at least you know,
Speaker 1: heavies and formidable personalities. Formidable personalities, yeah, not so much,
Speaker 1: you know, leading man type stuff. So yeah, he's one
Speaker 1: of those actors who, perhaps even early on, always looked
Speaker 1: like he was in his late forties at least. But
Speaker 1: great actor. I haven't seen the episode, but I might
Speaker 1: have to seek it out.
Speaker 3: And you said it's also got Peter Cushing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Peter Cushing. You know, it's just he was
Speaker 1: on speed dial for Hammer. They needed him for something.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, is it a movie? Fine? There TV show, great,
Speaker 1: I need a flight to China. Great, Let's make it work.
Speaker 3: It's nice to have steady work. Yes, all right.
Speaker 1: The screenwriter for this one is Don Houghten, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety one, British television screenwriter and
Speaker 1: producer whose writing credits include thirteen episodes of Doctor Who
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy, The Satanic Rites of Dracula the Seven
Speaker 1: Golden Vampires movie, and also another Shaw Brothers Hammer co
Speaker 1: production from seventy four, an action picture titled Chatter. I
Speaker 1: believe Peter Cushing is in that one as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, is it about a man who has the power
Speaker 3: to shatter?
Speaker 1: It looks like it's kind of like crime or act
Speaker 1: crime action, maybe spy. I'm not sure, you know. It's
Speaker 1: one of those non horror Hammer films that perhaps gets
Speaker 1: re explored less in the modern era. I see, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: who's playing the title character of Count Dracula. Well, of
Speaker 1: course it's Christopher Lee, who lived nineteen twenty two through
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. We've talked about Lee before on the show,
Speaker 1: as he's popped up in numerous films we've discussed already
Speaker 1: and is just going to keep popping up because he's
Speaker 1: an icon of horror. But here he is in one
Speaker 1: of his most iconic roles, the one that influenced his
Speaker 1: casting and presentation in late career hits like this, like
Speaker 1: the Star Wars prequels, like Peter Jackson's Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings films. He was, I think, rather famously tired of
Speaker 1: playing Dracula at this point in his career, or at
Speaker 1: least tired of playing Dracula the hammer away. I'm to
Speaker 1: understand the nineteen seventy Just Franco picture Count Dracula was
Speaker 1: more in line with what he wanted to do with
Speaker 1: the character at that point in his career. But still again,
Speaker 1: it's a great screen presence, and one can only imagine
Speaker 1: that he enjoyed working once more with his friend and
Speaker 1: a longtime co star of twenty two films, Peter Cushing.
Speaker 3: What is his Do you know what his take in
Speaker 3: The Franco Count Dracula is? How's it different?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in its entirety yet, it's been
Speaker 1: It was actually a film I was considering for this
Speaker 1: month on Weird House because it's supposed to be, first
Speaker 1: of all, not as sleazy as other Just Franco films,
Speaker 1: like it's a little more mainstream, has a great cast,
Speaker 1: you have like Kloskinsky playing Renfield in it. But it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be more of like a sympathetic tragic Dracula.
Speaker 1: And I'm to understand it's the first Dracula film in
Speaker 1: which we initially meet an elderly Dracula who has then
Speaker 1: made young again through the consumption of blood.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so this has many things in common with
Speaker 3: what would later happen in Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Coppola,
Speaker 3: which we were just talking about in our Core episodes
Speaker 3: earlier this week. Yeah, yeah, that has the at least
Speaker 3: partially sympathetic Dracula. Adds in a love story for Dracula,
Speaker 3: which I want to emphasize is not in the book.
Speaker 3: Dracula is not in love. He does not romance in
Speaker 3: the book. He is just a demon and he's just bad.
Speaker 3: And that also has a Dracula who when Jonathan Harker
Speaker 3: first meets him in Transylvania, he looks very old and decrepit,
Speaker 3: but by the time he reaches London he is young
Speaker 3: and rejuvenated and old many.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the Dracula that we get in Dracula eighty
Speaker 1: seventy two is certainly the demonic Dracula. In fact, they
Speaker 1: call him the demon vampire in the prologue to the picture.
Speaker 1: He is just pure supernatural hunger. He has more in
Speaker 1: common with the Terminator than some of the more sympathetic
Speaker 1: film versions of Dracula that we've seen. In this film's wake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a mean nasty, vengeful, uncomplicated, demonic vampire. Now.
Speaker 3: I mentioned this earlier, but just to get a little
Speaker 3: bit in deep into it. I feel like Christopher Lee
Speaker 3: is good in this movie, but one of my major
Speaker 3: complaints about the film is that it is reserved in
Speaker 3: the deployment of its key selling points, one of them
Speaker 3: being Christopher Lee. He he's a kind of he's an
Speaker 3: ineffectual vampire. He doesn't have a lot of lines, and
Speaker 3: he has limited screen time, and that screen time is
Speaker 3: confined to basically just two locations. It feels almost like
Speaker 3: they were trying to make sure they could shoot all
Speaker 3: of his scenes on the same day and you could
Speaker 3: see how his like the fact that he never leaves
Speaker 3: the church he's resurrected in in the modern era unless
Speaker 3: he I don't think there's ever a scene of him
Speaker 3: going anywhere else, is there. I can't think of one.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's just there. So you could say, well
Speaker 3: that that speaks to his power, right, So you know,
Speaker 3: he just stays there and he has his servants bringing
Speaker 3: him victims, so like he doesn't he's so powerful he
Speaker 3: doesn't even have to go out hunting. But I don't know,
Speaker 3: I feel like this movie would deliver more on its
Speaker 3: promise of Dracula nineteen seventy two AD if it had
Speaker 3: both more of Dracula on screen and going out and
Speaker 3: doing things in the world and had more of the
Speaker 3: world of nineteen seventy two AD, which it's also actually
Speaker 3: relatively tame on, save for like one silly party scene.
Speaker 3: I think what they should have done is have Dracula
Speaker 3: go to the coffee bar while it's like hoppin' and
Speaker 3: everybody's partying, and he goes and I don't know, I
Speaker 3: guess he wouldn't dance, but he would at least like
Speaker 3: get encounter hippie culture there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like kill Nick Jagger in the street or something. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think just one sequence of him feasting on hippie
Speaker 1: blood elsewhere in London would have gone a long way.
Speaker 1: And if you were determined to have him not leave
Speaker 1: the church yard, maybe just like one scene where he
Speaker 1: like looks out the window at night and like sees
Speaker 1: what's out there. You could even play it up like,
Speaker 1: oh man, if Dracula gets loose in nineteen seventy two London,
Speaker 1: it's all over, Like that's why he has to be
Speaker 1: stopped here before he has reached full feasting again. But
Speaker 1: they don't really explore any of those ideas.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's easy to forget because the book itself
Speaker 3: is very old now. But I think one of the themes
Speaker 3: in the novel Dracula is the idea of some part
Speaker 3: of the old world coming into the new world. It's
Speaker 3: that like, you know it, that this you know, figure
Speaker 3: from a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains out in
Speaker 3: the forest at the at the edge of Europe, as
Speaker 3: these people would have thought of it coming to the
Speaker 3: biggest metropolis that they knew of coming to modern London.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. So it's already built into
Speaker 1: the text quite a bit there, that he's traveling across
Speaker 1: time and space to something new and yeah, and to
Speaker 1: come back to time after time. One of the great
Speaker 1: serious threads in that is that when Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: arrives in the modern era, he's like, this place is great,
Speaker 1: Like I can really thrive here, like and you know,
Speaker 1: And of course that would come later that film, but
Speaker 1: a similar vibe I think would have gone a long
Speaker 1: way here. All right. So that's Dracula. But you can't
Speaker 1: have a Hammer Dracula without a Hammer van Helsing, and
Speaker 1: that's where Peter Cushing comes in playing This is technically
Speaker 1: going to be a dual role because he starts off
Speaker 1: playing Lawrence van Helsing, but then we'll go on to
Speaker 1: play his descendant, Lauramir van Helsing.
Speaker 3: I got some notes on these names. I'll come back
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: So Peter Cushing lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety four. Again,
Speaker 1: we've discussed Peter Cushing on the show before, and he's
Speaker 1: just going to continue to pop up because he was,
Speaker 1: like Christopher Lee, just an iconic player in horror and
Speaker 1: sci fi cinema of the day, and I think he
Speaker 1: was even more prolific. He's one of those actors that
Speaker 1: everyone seems to have had nice things to say about,
Speaker 1: both personally and professionally. Just a consonant pro no matter
Speaker 1: what the material had him doing or saying, he always
Speaker 1: he always brings an air of dignity to most pictures.
Speaker 1: This movie is from the later stage of his after
Speaker 1: the death of his wife in nineteen seventy one. In fact,
Speaker 1: film just eight months after her passing. This is an
Speaker 1: event that apparently took a huge toll on him. In fact,
Speaker 1: he was apparently originally intended to be to play the
Speaker 1: father of the character Jessica van Helsing in this movie,
Speaker 1: but he had visibly aged so much since his wife's
Speaker 1: passing that they rewrote the script a little bit to
Speaker 1: make him be her grandfather. Oh okay, So you know,
Speaker 1: I think we might be forgiven for viewing films from
Speaker 1: this era of his career and detecting that loss and
Speaker 1: that distance in his screen presence, especially in the various
Speaker 1: examples of films that cast him as a man who's
Speaker 1: experienced a great loss. But you know that being said again,
Speaker 1: consummate professional. He does a solid job in this and
Speaker 1: I'm to understand he actually does his own stunts in
Speaker 1: the opening, which is which concerns like a thunderous carriage
Speaker 1: based action sequence. So it's you know, it's not just like,
Speaker 1: oh he you know, he fell out of a chair
Speaker 1: like he's on like a moving carriage. It looks kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous, and apparently he does whatever stunts are required
Speaker 1: of him. There.
Speaker 3: Wow, I'm impressed. Well, I was going to say that,
Speaker 3: you know, I love Peter Cushing, but I'll admit sometimes
Speaker 3: he phones it in. Give him a break. He did
Speaker 3: a lot of movies and a lot of very similar movies.
Speaker 3: But strangely, I thought it seemed to me he was
Speaker 3: putting a lot of feeling into this one. This is
Speaker 3: not one of his best written roles, but he really
Speaker 3: exceeds what is required of him, and there was more
Speaker 3: emotion in this performance than I expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not just about the man
Speaker 1: who must defeat the monster, but there's like someone in
Speaker 1: his life he's trying to protect as well, and not
Speaker 1: only protect from supernatural threats but also just sort of
Speaker 1: ambiguous social threats as well that he's concerned about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his protective care for his grandchild comes through as
Speaker 3: genuine emotion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now playing that grandchild, Jessica van Helsing is
Speaker 1: Stephanie Beacham Moreneteen forty seven. This is our young, prematurely
Speaker 1: white haired descendant of the original Van Helsing. Stephanie Beacham
Speaker 1: is an English actor of stage, screen and television with
Speaker 1: a very long and still very active career. She'd mostly
Speaker 1: done TV in stage at this point in her career,
Speaker 1: but had popped up in some films, including Roddy McDowell's
Speaker 1: tam Lynn from nineteen seventy and The Nightcomers from seventy one.
Speaker 1: After Dracula AD nineteen seventy two, she acted in seventy
Speaker 1: Threes and Now The Screaming Starts, seventy six's House of
Speaker 1: Mortal Sin and Schizo, and nineteen eighty one's Horror Planet.
Speaker 1: Her TV credits include forty nine episodes of The Colby's,
Speaker 1: twenty three episodes of Dynasty, in which she plays Sable Colby.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how this works, but I'm guessing this
Speaker 1: is the same character. There's some sort of like I
Speaker 1: don't know if this was a spinoff of Dynasty or
Speaker 1: if like a character from The Colby's joined the cast
Speaker 1: of Dynasty. I'm not sure how soap operas really work.
Speaker 3: I don't know either, but.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was apparently a big role for her. It's
Speaker 1: like the top thing that's mentioned diner on her IMDb page,
Speaker 1: But she was another STI she's like on the Love Boat.
Speaker 1: She apparently played Margaret Thatcher on an episode of alf
Speaker 1: Life Poles. Yeah, so there's that. I could not find
Speaker 1: a screenshot of it. I was really looking for it,
Speaker 1: could not find it. But she's also been on things
Speaker 1: like Star Trek, The Next Generation SeaQuest and Coronation Street.
Speaker 3: I think she's quite good in this, though she has
Speaker 3: the same issue that almost all of the teenagers have,
Speaker 3: which is that none of them seem like teenagers. I
Speaker 3: think I don't know how old they're supposed to be.
Speaker 3: I would guess they're supposed to be like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: eighteen to twenty, but they all come off as about
Speaker 3: thirty or at least late twenties.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think she was like twenty five at the time.
Speaker 3: Not really a problem. I just think it's funny when
Speaker 3: movies have these groups of all extremely adult teenagers.
Speaker 1: All right. The next actor of note is Christopher Neim
Speaker 1: playing Johnny Alocard. This is the drugish occult enthusias in
Speaker 1: the group of friends that we meet the young Londoners.
Speaker 1: He cares about only one thing, and it is, of course,
Speaker 1: the resurrection of Dracula. He has a Dracula cultist.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that I think there are a lot of
Speaker 3: stories that where people become the servants of a satanic
Speaker 3: entity or demonic overlord so that they can pursue a
Speaker 3: party lifestyle and hedonistic pleasures. Like the powers they acquire
Speaker 3: by serving the demon lord give them the ability to
Speaker 3: party the way they want to. He's the other way around.
Speaker 3: Johnny Alucard parties in order to serve a demon lord like.
Speaker 3: He apparently only does the swing and hippie thing in
Speaker 3: order to attract a group of friends who can be
Speaker 3: brought as snacks to the vampire that he wants to resurrect.
Speaker 1: That's right, Johnny Alickhard just wants to do Dracula stuff.
Speaker 1: That's all he wants in life, and he's going to
Speaker 1: do whatever it takes to get there.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Johnny Alickhard is played by Christopher Nien born nineteen five
Speaker 1: forty seven. He has a great look. He brings some
Speaker 1: great hungry energy to this role as a Dracula cultist
Speaker 1: in Vampire Wanna Be. He kicked off his film career
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventy environmental disaster film No Blade of Grass,
Speaker 1: followed by seventy one's Lust for a Vampire. This is
Speaker 1: These are small roles, I'm to understand, but this role
Speaker 1: in Dracula eighty nineteen seventy two sent it to have
Speaker 1: been a big step up for him. He goes on
Speaker 1: from here to work steadily in all manner of pictures
Speaker 1: and TV shows, including thirty episodes of Days of Our
Speaker 1: Lives nineteen eighty seven, Steel Dawn, a really weird sounding
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight sci fi horror film titled Transformations. He
Speaker 1: did episodes of Dynasty episodes of Dallas. He pops up
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighty nine James Bond film Licensed to Kill,
Speaker 1: in which he plays the agent that is sent to
Speaker 1: collect the rogue agent James Bond.
Speaker 3: Mm. Yeah, okay, this is the one where Bond go
Speaker 3: he like quits I six and he goes on a
Speaker 3: mission of vengeance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the one where oh what's his name? Explodes?
Speaker 3: Robert Davey feeds his friend Felix to a shark and
Speaker 3: leaves a note saying he disagreed with something that ate him.
Speaker 3: And so James Bond goes to kill Robert Dovey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Anthony's er explodes, right, I think that's how
Speaker 1: it goes goes maybe?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Anyway, Christopher nine was in a bunch of stuff. He
Speaker 1: pops up in Ghostbusters two playing a Nitro d He's
Speaker 1: in the Hulkgan films Suburban Commando from ninety one. He's
Speaker 1: in the nineteen ninety four Chuck Norris film hell Bound,
Speaker 1: He's in Species three from two thousand and four and
Speaker 1: then goes on to be in The Prestige from two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, just a bunch more all the way
Speaker 1: up through twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: He's perfect in this. He's got a creepy, malevolent, froggy smile.
Speaker 3: He just he looks like he's up to no good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dangerous youngster. They're very drugish.
Speaker 3: He also just give strong like cult leader. It's like
Speaker 3: you see him and it's like, get this guy a
Speaker 3: cult stat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. We also have the law present in
Speaker 1: this film, investigating manner matters that turn out to be
Speaker 1: Dracula related. We have Inspector Murray played by Michael cole
Speaker 1: So of nineteen thirty four through two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: This is our chief law officer investigating a stream of
Speaker 1: strange murders in London. He's presented as a more progressive
Speaker 1: and sympathetic policeman, but at the same time he's totally
Speaker 1: down to invoke draconian drug laws in order to weed
Speaker 1: out dangerous hippies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna say no offense to Michael Coles. He
Speaker 3: does fine, but this oddly shaggy and in some ways
Speaker 3: sympathetic detective character. Feels like it was meant for David Warner.
Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah, David Warner would have been good. I
Speaker 1: mean David what. You could cast David Warner in anything
Speaker 1: in this film and he would have nailed it. As
Speaker 1: for Michael Coles, he would reprise this role in seventy
Speaker 1: three's The Satanic Rights of Dracula. So I guess that
Speaker 1: the investigation continues. His other credits include nineteen sixty five's
Speaker 1: Doctor Who in the Daleks. All right, we basically as
Speaker 1: far as the cast goes, there are just a couple
Speaker 1: other people of note. These are other members of the
Speaker 1: youth group. Well it's not a youth group. That makes
Speaker 1: it sound like it's church affiliated. These are some more
Speaker 1: of the swing in Londoners the Young People, the first
Speaker 1: of which is the character Gaynor, played by Marcia A.
Speaker 1: Hunt born nineteen forty six. She's an American model, singer, actor,
Speaker 1: and a later author and editor. She only acted in
Speaker 1: eleven films, but they include such titles as nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two as The Cinder It's like a psychic, sort of
Speaker 1: Scanner esque flick, nineteen eighty three's Never Say Never Again,
Speaker 1: The Bond film Howling II, Your Sister is Aware Wolf,
Speaker 1: which is obviously part of the ups and downs of
Speaker 1: the Howling franchise. Her Her bibliography includes an autobiography, a memoir,
Speaker 1: and the nineteen ninety novel Joy. Her discography includes three
Speaker 1: albums from the nineteen seventies, and she was also famously
Speaker 1: in a relationship with Mick Jagger and the two had
Speaker 1: a daughter together.
Speaker 3: She's one of the more friendly presences in the group
Speaker 3: of London Hippies, though she tragically is eaten by Dracula,
Speaker 3: like several characters are.
Speaker 1: Another doomed character that fits the same description for the
Speaker 1: most part is Carolyn Monroe's Laura Bellows. We've talked about
Speaker 1: Monroe on the show before, because yeah, she was a
Speaker 1: pin up model and actress who stole many a seventies
Speaker 1: film nerds heart, with such genre appearances as The Spy
Speaker 1: Who Loved Me seventy seven, Maniac in nineteen eighty, Slaughter
Speaker 1: High in eighty six, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad earlier
Speaker 1: in seventy three, Captain Crono's Vampire Hunter, Another Hammer Picture
Speaker 1: from seventy four, at the Earth's Core in seventy six,
Speaker 1: and also star Crash in seventy eight. She also has
Speaker 1: a just slight cameo as a picture of Doctor Fib's
Speaker 1: wife in nineteen seventy one's The Abominable Doctor Fivees.
Speaker 3: She is the main character in Star Crash and she
Speaker 3: she's still a star.
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, yeah, yeah, she's right there, she's on
Speaker 1: the poster.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She is also eaten by Dracula in this movie,
Speaker 3: and her character is is just goga for demons. Ever
Speaker 3: since there's like the moment the Johnny Alucard brings up, hey,
Speaker 3: what if we did a black mass, She's like, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: do it, now, let's go.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, she's kind of presented as the Well,
Speaker 1: of course she was killed by Dracula because she was
Speaker 1: a bad hippie, so so yeah, what early victim here.
Speaker 3: But I don't understand, like why is she so into demons.
Speaker 3: There are several characters in this movie who have a
Speaker 3: history of like investigating the occult, so like it's an
Speaker 3: established interest of theirs. She seems like she's never thought
Speaker 3: of it until Johnny Alucard brings it up. But the
Speaker 3: moment he's like, let's summon the Prince of darkness, she
Speaker 3: can't think of anything else. It's like, this is all
Speaker 3: I want now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's you know, I guess
Speaker 1: we're already thinking about it deep more deeply than anyone
Speaker 1: involved in the film, I think. But you know, maybe
Speaker 1: she's supposed to be just sort of like the shallow
Speaker 1: enthusiast of the occult that doesn't realize that there are,
Speaker 1: you know, in the world of this film, real threats
Speaker 1: involved in trying to summon up the spirit of a
Speaker 1: slain Dracula creature from the past, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna skip over the rest of the
Speaker 1: youth in this film and just get right to the music.
Speaker 1: The music is by Michael Vickers born nineteen forty. He
Speaker 1: was a member of the nineteen sixties band Manfred Mann.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with, but the scorer and soundtrack for
Speaker 1: this film is widely available, and I have to say
Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun. Most of the score tracks
Speaker 1: are very jazzy, lots of blaring like horn or saxophone
Speaker 1: or whatever is Dracula and Van Helston chase each other around.
Speaker 1: But he also gives us a wonderful black mass track
Speaker 1: titled Devil's Circle Music that is you see it being
Speaker 1: played on screen. It is the soundtrack to the Black
Speaker 1: Mass that is conducted in the picture, and it itself
Speaker 1: is a beautiful, creepy cacophony of Satanic sounds. So part
Speaker 1: of me, which is the whole score for this movie,
Speaker 1: sounded like that. But on the other hand, I really
Speaker 1: like the cheesy content of this film, so I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we have the blaring jazz present as well. All Right,
Speaker 1: with all that behind us, Joe, take us to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two.
Speaker 3: All right, we'd be well, no, we don't start in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, that's right. We start in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right. I'll take you to eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: How about that? How about we start there? Okay, we
Speaker 3: begin with dead leaves blowing in the autumn wind. And
Speaker 3: I noticed I noticed in this opening sequence in some shots, Rober,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw this too. In some
Speaker 3: shots the trees are just packed with dense green foliage,
Speaker 3: and in other shots they have orange and yellow leaves
Speaker 3: and fewer of them, and then in a third kind
Speaker 3: of shot they're completely bare. I wonder why that is.
Speaker 3: Could it be the different shots in this, like I
Speaker 3: don't know, minute long carriage chase were shot at different
Speaker 3: months of the year. That seems unlikely, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just different kind of trees or something. I
Speaker 3: was on guard for this because I saw, like at
Speaker 3: the the very first shot, orange leaves are blowing on
Speaker 3: the ground, but the trees in the background are fully green,
Speaker 3: and it reminded me of John Carpenter's Halloween, which you
Speaker 3: may have never noticed this before, but it's like that.
Speaker 3: I think it was actually shot in the summer, even
Speaker 3: though it's supposed to take place in October in Illinois,
Speaker 3: so I think they had to like bring in bags
Speaker 3: of dead leaves to dress, you know.
Speaker 1: The sets reminds me of the neighborhood that while we
Speaker 1: both live in. Occasionally they're film productions, and there was
Speaker 1: that one I think this was like in the summer
Speaker 1: where they were filming something for Halloween and they decorated
Speaker 1: the whole streak for Halloween, like movie level Halloween decorations,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty fun. Like sometimes film productions can
Speaker 1: you know, they can get in your way and then
Speaker 1: you can be a little grumpy about them disrupting your
Speaker 1: morning commute or whatever. But that film shoot, God bless it.
Speaker 3: Oh good lord, Yes, yeah, Halloween in July. Thank you,
Speaker 3: I'll take it.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get the leaves blowing. We see red calligraphy
Speaker 3: letters on the screen. This as a Hammer production. And
Speaker 3: it's that calligraphy font that makes the word bathory look
Speaker 3: like bat Lord. A horse drawn carriage is racing along
Speaker 3: on a parkside pathway goes over a stone bridge under
Speaker 3: an archway of these dead tree limbs, and a narrator
Speaker 3: comes in. Narrator says the year is eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: and the nightmare legend of Count Dracula extends its terror
Speaker 3: far beyond the mountains of Carpathia to the Victorian metropolis
Speaker 3: of London. Here in Hyde Park, the final confrontation between
Speaker 3: Lawrence van Helsing and his arch enemy, the demon vampire Dracula. Now,
Speaker 3: I told you I was going to come back to
Speaker 3: the name of Van Helsing in this movie. You did
Speaker 3: hear that, right? It is Lawrence van Helsing for some reason,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what This movie and maybe at least
Speaker 3: one of the other Hammer horror Draculas calls this character Lawrence.
Speaker 3: Of course, in the novel, Van Helsing's first name is Abraham.
Speaker 3: No offense to all of the wonderful Lawrence is out
Speaker 3: there for what I'm about to say, But this name
Speaker 3: change is not great. A Van Helsing, whose friends call
Speaker 3: him Larry, does not bring the same gravitas as Abraham.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So why the change? I don't know. Could it
Speaker 3: possibly have to do with intellectual property? That seems I
Speaker 3: don't know kind of.
Speaker 1: I mean, that would be the main reason to change
Speaker 1: up the name of a particular character. And of course
Speaker 1: historically we would have seen movements like that before concerning
Speaker 1: the Dracula property.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, but it's called Dracula, so it
Speaker 3: would have to be something specific to that one character,
Speaker 3: Like they could use the last name and the rest
Speaker 3: of the plot and Dracula, but not Abraham.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's confusing. So anyway, the movie opens with the ending
Speaker 3: of this other tail. We see Dracula and Van Helsing
Speaker 3: already in the middle of fighting to the death on
Speaker 3: the roof of this carriage as it races through Hyde Park.
Speaker 3: They're sort of wrestling. Dracula is choking Van Helsing, until
Speaker 3: suddenly the harness that's holding the horses to the carriage snaps,
Speaker 3: the horses run off. The carriage veers off the path
Speaker 3: and crashes into a tree. Van Helsing is thrown aside
Speaker 3: into the grass, and Dracula, when we see him stagger
Speaker 3: out from behind the carriage, is impaled on the spoke
Speaker 3: of a carriage wheel, an accidental stake through the heart.
Speaker 3: Dracula and Van Helsing fight a little bit more wild.
Speaker 3: Drac has a wheel stuck to him, so it's just
Speaker 3: kind of poking out of him, but eventually Dracula is defeated.
Speaker 3: Van Helsing kind of shoves the stake into the heart
Speaker 3: further and then he does the classic undead turbo rot.
Speaker 3: So Dracula collapses into a pile of bones and then
Speaker 3: that turns into ash and dust by the riverside. Van
Speaker 3: Helsing also collapses dead.
Speaker 1: So at this point the entire multifilm struggle between Professor
Speaker 1: van Helsing and Count Dracula ends in a vehicular accident,
Speaker 1: which I think would feel mighty underwhelming if this were
Speaker 1: like the end. But this isn't the end. This is
Speaker 1: the beginning, so I guess we'll allow it. A freak
Speaker 1: accident takes both the demon vampire and his chief adversary
Speaker 1: takes them both out of action.
Speaker 3: But wait a second, who's this creep back here watching
Speaker 3: everything go on? There is a young man observing the scene.
Speaker 3: He'd been following the carriage on horseback. He comes galloping
Speaker 3: in wearing a top hat, and he's a little guy
Speaker 3: with a scuzzy mutton chop sideburn set and a toad
Speaker 3: like grin. And he produces a glass vial and scoops
Speaker 3: up some of Dracula's ashes after he turboots Van Helsing's
Speaker 3: just laying there dying. He ignores Van Helsing. He also
Speaker 3: pockets Dracula's special ring. It looks like it's made of silver,
Speaker 3: but I don't think that would make sense for Dracula.
Speaker 3: So it's some kind of pale precious metal ring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe pewter or something. Maybe he can wear pewter.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure Dracula's lead ring.
Speaker 1: That would fit right, he doesn't have to worry about lead.
Speaker 3: So we cut to a funeral scene after that, and
Speaker 3: it's all of Van Helsing's friends and family gathered in
Speaker 3: a churchyard where the good Doctor's body is being committed
Speaker 3: to the earth. And it seems most of the mourners
Speaker 3: are variations on the Monopoly Man, shiny top hats, coats
Speaker 3: with tails, all that. It's mostly dudes at the.
Speaker 1: Funeral, and we're not introduced to any of them. We
Speaker 1: don't know who from the novel Dracula actually showed up
Speaker 1: at the man's funeral. Like, I feel like it would
Speaker 1: be a little bit insulting if Jonathan Harker didn't show
Speaker 1: up at Van Helsing's funeral, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, did they really know each other all that? Well,
Speaker 3: they just kind of got together for a work project
Speaker 3: one time.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, the way they work friends, right, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so oh another funny thing is the line
Speaker 3: we hear the priests say at Van Helsing's funeral. He's
Speaker 3: quoting the Bible, so we like come in and he's saying, man,
Speaker 3: that is born of woman hath but a short time
Speaker 3: to live and is full of misery. And I know
Speaker 3: that's the Bible, but man, is that really what people
Speaker 3: want to hear at a loved one's funeral. It's like,
Speaker 3: not only do we die soon, it's mostly bad until
Speaker 3: we get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't want that right at
Speaker 1: my funeral.
Speaker 3: Oh but a quick side note related to recent Core episodes.
Speaker 3: You know the next line after that in the Book
Speaker 3: of Job. This is from Job chapter fourteen, after the
Speaker 3: you know it's a short time to live, full of misery,
Speaker 3: the next line is he cometh forth like a flower
Speaker 3: and is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow,
Speaker 3: and continueth not anyway, So that funeral is going on. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the creepy guy who collected Dracula's ring and ashes, he
Speaker 3: shows up at the funeral. He digs a hole in
Speaker 3: the ground just outside the churchyard, pours Dracula's ashes into
Speaker 3: the hole, and then drives a steak, the same steak
Speaker 3: that killed Dracula, into the soil above the hole. And
Speaker 3: then a marvelous transition, we get jet wipe jet We like,
Speaker 3: look up to the sky and there's a jet plane
Speaker 3: wipe and the and the funky music comes on to
Speaker 3: don't Dawn. We go wow, and the jet comes down
Speaker 3: and we see the title Dracula nineteen seventy two A
Speaker 3: d very good, very good use of a jet plane.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's like bam. Now it's modern times. Look at
Speaker 1: the jet plane. The music has shifted from old time
Speaker 1: he got the horror movie to this is thoroughly modern
Speaker 1: jet funky number. And yeah, my only note here is
Speaker 1: that we're denied footage of Dracula flying first class. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's not actually supposed to be in that airplane. But
Speaker 1: you know, again, it's like you want. The movie seems
Speaker 1: to promise this idea of Dracula is in our world now,
Speaker 1: and it never quite gives us that.
Speaker 3: I think they should have done a pong wipe, so
Speaker 3: it's wiped to a screen of people playing the Atari,
Speaker 3: but it's not pong, it's an airplane. And then what
Speaker 3: are they going to use to show We got to
Speaker 3: get like a nineteen seventy two montage, right, show us
Speaker 3: some footage of what it means for things to be modern?
Speaker 3: What does that mean in this film's conception, primarily traffic,
Speaker 3: So we're just seeing like complex highway exchanges teaming with
Speaker 3: cars set to saxophone and whaling guitar solos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess that's all they really want to
Speaker 1: convey about the modern world, That it's busy, and you
Speaker 1: know that the world's fast, it's in a hurry. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Dracula is patient. Racula is long lived and is crossing
Speaker 1: oceans of time to reach the year nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: Two, and then from here we cut straight to a
Speaker 3: party scene. Now, this is the scene where I think
Speaker 3: they were the movie was trying to pack in all
Speaker 3: of its modern debauchery into like one five to seven
Speaker 3: minute sequence.
Speaker 1: That's right with But their hippies are not like all.
Speaker 1: Is it not like we're dealing with a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of grind housey like evil hippies or anything. These
Speaker 1: are all like, for the most part, likable, fun goofy kids. Again,
Speaker 1: I think most of them are at least in their
Speaker 1: mid twenties, but still goofy kids having a good time
Speaker 1: enjoying the musical stylings of Stone Ground Stone Ground.
Speaker 3: That's the name of the band they are playing. Let's see,
Speaker 3: how do so? The scene is like hippies versus more
Speaker 3: monopoly men, but monopoly men from nineteen seventy two instead
Speaker 3: of eighteen seventy two. This party is taking place at
Speaker 3: an elegantly decorated apartment or flat belonging to rich people,
Speaker 3: full of breakable antiques. There is a buffet table set
Speaker 3: up with champagne and ice buckets and a bunch of food.
Speaker 3: But I paused it almost all the food appears to
Speaker 3: be fruit. I guess they thought we wouldn't look too close,
Speaker 3: or maybe they just really like fruit. Also, several hippies
Speaker 3: are making out underneath the buffet table. The band stone
Speaker 3: Ground is playing. In the living room, there are go
Speaker 3: go dancers on top of the piano and on the
Speaker 3: sofa table. Hippies are dancing, presumably doing drugs, though I
Speaker 3: don't think we see any drugs being done and getting
Speaker 3: up to sexual behavior, and all of the rich posh
Speaker 3: people are scandalized.
Speaker 1: I can't stress enough that stone Ground as a band
Speaker 1: looks like what might happen if you took the Muppet
Speaker 1: Show band and portrayed them as human beings. Yes, they're
Speaker 1: like a human Muppet Show band.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, or like Fraggles, like the Fragle band.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Michael Weldon wrote in his review quote, a party
Speaker 1: sequence with the American band stone Ground is a real
Speaker 1: low point. Oh come on, I would disagree, But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, we I think he was writing this
Speaker 1: a little closer to the original release time. I would
Speaker 1: say that it's a goofy good time that also advances
Speaker 1: the plot somewhat introduces this to a key character, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to in just a second. I think you
Speaker 1: can say, well, perhaps there are some seventies bands that
Speaker 1: would have been better suited to this film than stone Ground.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I love the music, but they do
Speaker 1: appear to have been a real band and all, like,
Speaker 1: they don't just exist in this film. Sal Valentino was
Speaker 1: the singer noted for his earlier work in the sixties
Speaker 1: group The bo Brummels. They did the song just a
Speaker 1: Little and I think they had another hit, and various
Speaker 1: members of Stone Ground went on to other things.
Speaker 3: One of the songs they play at this party is
Speaker 3: just very generic lyrical content. It's like, oh yeah, come
Speaker 3: on or something. But the other song is called Alligator Man,
Speaker 3: and all of the lyrics are about how like I'm
Speaker 3: just a by you man, you know you can find
Speaker 3: me and the by you because that's all I do.
Speaker 3: I swim in the water. I'm an alligator man. I
Speaker 3: think he says I come from an alligator clan, and
Speaker 3: I was just looking at the scene, like, these are
Speaker 3: not alligator men, if anything, these are lamprey men.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's it's kind of a credence vibe
Speaker 1: right where it's like perhaps not authentic swamp music.
Speaker 3: Oh I don't know. I go credence, they're out. They're
Speaker 3: alligator men to me, John Fogerty, Yeah, come on, he's
Speaker 3: an alligator man.
Speaker 1: The credence was great, But did they come from an
Speaker 1: actual swamp.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe I've never looked into it.
Speaker 1: If they don't have a swamp thing origin story, then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it's it's a bit of an act,
Speaker 1: but it's a fun act. I always like, I like
Speaker 1: love credence when I was younger.
Speaker 3: I still love Credence. Wait, okay, but in the middle
Speaker 3: of this whole scene we got to expl So the
Speaker 3: hippies are dancing, the band is playing, all the rich
Speaker 3: people are are horribly offended. And in the middle of
Speaker 3: the scene, hey, it's that same reptilian creep that scooped
Speaker 3: up Dracula's ashes one hundred years ago. If anybody's an
Speaker 3: alligator man, it's him. He you know, he's like got
Speaker 3: these creepy eyes. He's staring at everybody.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if he has like not aged
Speaker 3: since one hundred years ago, or if this is supposed
Speaker 3: to be a descendant of that other guy. Either way,
Speaker 3: it's the exact same, dude, It looks exactly the same,
Speaker 3: except he is now I don't know. He's dressed sort
Speaker 3: of for the era. He's wearing a frilly pirate shirt,
Speaker 3: a burgundy velvet suit, and a black, wide brimmed fedora.
Speaker 3: So cool.
Speaker 1: I think he's supposed to be a descendant because Dracula
Speaker 1: later says something to him about his bloodline.
Speaker 3: Ah, that would make sense.
Speaker 1: So like, there's been a long line of Dracula enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: some of whom never got to meet Dracula, which would
Speaker 1: be kind of a bummer, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just, you know, bridging the gap between generations.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, and also we learned that his name is Johnny
Speaker 3: Aloucard smooth.
Speaker 1: Ah, we're not going to spoil We're not going to
Speaker 1: spoil it yet. We're not going to tell you what
Speaker 1: alo card means.
Speaker 3: Oh what, We're not going to tell you what it
Speaker 3: is spelled backwards. This is their kingdom. Yeah, Johnny nilbog
Speaker 3: here at the party. He's gazing out from under the
Speaker 3: brim of his fedora while everybody else has a good time.
Speaker 3: He doesn't look like he's having a good time. He's
Speaker 3: just sitting there watching with no expression. Of course, all
Speaker 3: of the fancy rich people are mortified. They're baffled about
Speaker 3: how all of these disgusting partygoers ended up in their flat.
Speaker 3: This old lady who's kind of a little bit Angela
Speaker 3: landsberry ish, she's like, what you know to her son,
Speaker 3: She's like, why did you invite all of these monsters?
Speaker 3: And he says I didn't. They're not my friends. All
Speaker 3: I did was to invite the stone Aground. But that
Speaker 3: just left me more confused. I'm like, why did he
Speaker 3: invite the stone Ground? He invited this band?
Speaker 1: Well, because stone Ground is just a household name. Stone
Speaker 1: Ground appeals to audiences of all ages, the old, the young,
Speaker 1: the hip, the square. Everyone loves stone Ground. That's one
Speaker 1: of the film's early key messages.
Speaker 3: I understand now, yes, oh, but there's one thing in
Speaker 3: this party scene that I think does not make sense
Speaker 3: and did not work at all. It's the bit about
Speaker 3: timing how many minutes until the police arrive. So the
Speaker 3: guy who invited the Stone Ground goes and calls the
Speaker 3: police to get all the hippies out of his apartment,
Speaker 3: and then the hippie the friends all start being like, oh,
Speaker 3: the fuzz will be here in four minutes. No, it'll
Speaker 3: be six minutes, it'll be three and a half minutes,
Speaker 3: eight minutes. And they're arguing with each other, and they
Speaker 3: explained that they have a running practice where I guess
Speaker 3: they party somewhere where they're unwanted until the minute before
Speaker 3: the police arrive, and then they leave. And it's not
Speaker 3: really funny and it doesn't really make sense. It sort
Speaker 3: of lacks very similitude, but the bit just keeps going on.
Speaker 1: It's a rather different relationship between hippies and law enforcement
Speaker 1: in this film versus certainly reality, but also I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, where you know,
Speaker 1: it's firmly established that the man hates hippies, that law
Speaker 1: enforcement just despises them, whereas in this film it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: they're fun loving. It's a fun loving competition, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, you got me today, hippies, we'll get
Speaker 1: you tomorrow. That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: And then the spirit of that sort of teasingness, like
Speaker 3: when the police arrive to bust up the party, Oh,
Speaker 3: they discover the hippies making out underneath the buffet table,
Speaker 3: and one of the hippies just says to the cop,
Speaker 3: peace man, and the cop smiles. But also there's a
Speaker 3: thing where when Johnny Alucard is about to leave the apartment,
Speaker 3: he takes the time to stop and torture the old
Speaker 3: lady about breaking her priceless antiques. Like he picks up
Speaker 3: this ceramic figurine and is tossing it hand to hand,
Speaker 3: and then just when she thinks, you know, he's setting
Speaker 3: it safely down on the table, he tips it over
Speaker 3: and it breaks on the floor.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's a chaotic youth. He doesn't care about anything.
Speaker 3: But so they split from the party. They go to
Speaker 3: their favorite coffee shop except is it daytime?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: I'm a little confused about the timeline. But they go
Speaker 3: to their favorite coffee shop, and the coffee shop is
Speaker 3: called Cavern, and this place is great. I wish I
Speaker 3: could go there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of have to assume that what we
Speaker 1: see of the interiors as a set. But it's a
Speaker 1: great looking set. We got the like splashes of tile
Speaker 1: and all sorts of cool purple lighting, Like it just
Speaker 1: looks too cool to be a real space. But I
Speaker 1: could be wrong on that. And then they order up
Speaker 1: what at first I thought was like bowls of soup
Speaker 1: and Coca Cola's, But I think this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be coffee and or tea plus Coca colas.
Speaker 3: I think there are Coca Colas in glass bottles. But yes,
Speaker 3: the super bowls are coffee cups. I think. Okay, they're
Speaker 3: just very wide and shallow for some reason. Oh and
Speaker 3: I made a note that cavern is right next to
Speaker 3: a store called Chelsea Mail M A L E. I
Speaker 3: don't know. Maybe that's clothing.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the coffee hass the hippies sit in a secluded
Speaker 3: booth and Johnny Alucard talks about how everything's just boring.
Speaker 3: I'm sick of it all. It's all stale. We've got
Speaker 3: to find a new way to get our kicks. And
Speaker 3: he says, I want something new yet as old as time,
Speaker 3: and he's got an idea. They all want to hear
Speaker 3: what his idea is. He leans forward and he says
Speaker 3: a date with the Devil, a bacchanal with Beelzebub. So
Speaker 3: they think he's joking around at first. Oh, you're just
Speaker 3: Josh and Johnny Alucard a ha haha. Oija board Spirit
Speaker 3: mediums that stuff's a bunch of funny nonsense. But Johnny
Speaker 3: Alucar is not joking. He's serious. He says, don't knock
Speaker 3: it unless you've tried it, And then Jessica, the most
Speaker 3: intelligent and level headed of the group, comments, well, they
Speaker 3: do say it's dangerous. But at the other side of
Speaker 3: the table, Carolyn Monroe as Laura is here like, yes, yes, devil,
Speaker 3: take me to the devil now. So everybody eventually agrees,
Speaker 3: last of all and reluctantly Jessica, but they're all in.
Speaker 3: They're gonna go to an abandoned London church later tonight
Speaker 3: at midnight to summon Satan.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess that's just how you have fun.
Speaker 1: This may come later, but I did like the way
Speaker 1: they set up how various members of the friends group
Speaker 1: are going along with this, where I think Jessica's boyfriend
Speaker 1: is like this is you know, It's like, yeah, Johnny's
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about it, but you know what's gonna happen. We're
Speaker 1: gonna show up, somebody's gonna get out of guitar. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have some food and some drinks. It's like it's
Speaker 1: just gonna be more or less like any other hang
Speaker 1: we do. It's just Johnny's gonna read some weird stuff beforehand.
Speaker 3: Yes, he said there will. It'll just be beer, food,
Speaker 3: guitar and loving in the end. But before we get
Speaker 3: to the summoning of Satan, we see a few little
Speaker 3: there's some interludes. First of all, we see Johnny Alucard
Speaker 3: head home to his sweet flat, which his flat seems
Speaker 3: very cool. It's like well decorated. I don't know, it
Speaker 3: doesn't have that bachelor quality to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. It feels like
Speaker 1: this is more space and it's in better shape than
Speaker 1: Johnny should have access to. He should have more of
Speaker 1: a like a little hovel with Dracula posters on the walls.
Speaker 1: Turns out the good guys are the ones with Dracula posters.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, So he goes to his house and
Speaker 3: he opens up a velvet box and inside it's the ring, Yes,
Speaker 3: drag Akila's ring, the one we saw the guy who
Speaker 3: looks exactly like Johnny take off of Dracula's corpse earlier
Speaker 3: on and the vile of ashes, so he's got him.
Speaker 3: We also follow Jessica home and this is where we
Speaker 3: learn that she is Jessica van Helsing and her grandfather,
Speaker 3: who she lives with, is Professor Lorimer van Helsing also
Speaker 3: played by Peter Cushing, again a descendant of Larry from
Speaker 3: the prologue, and grandfather Van Helsing is an expert on
Speaker 3: the occult. He has consulted with the police before to
Speaker 3: solve cases of ritual cult murder, and he comes into
Speaker 3: his office catches his granddaughter reading his book, which is
Speaker 3: called The Treatise on Black Mass. He says, Jessica, this
Speaker 3: is not a subject to mess around with. These are
Speaker 3: scientific works. But she mocks it. She says, you know,
Speaker 3: you can buy that kind of book in any shop
Speaker 3: in soho quote. It's all kinky, you know. She says,
Speaker 3: it's Hobgoblin's black magic. At so she thinks it's all nonsense,
Speaker 3: has no interest whatsoever in the occult, and in fact
Speaker 3: seems to think it's it's not even superficially interesting. She
Speaker 3: like thinks that she can't bring her friends over to
Speaker 3: this place or to meet him because it would be
Speaker 3: interminably boring. But wait a minute, Jessica, don't you know
Speaker 3: that your friends are obsessed with summoning the devil, Like
Speaker 3: they just express this extreme interest in the occult, and
Speaker 3: here she is like, I can't my friends could never
Speaker 3: find out that you're an expert on the occult. It
Speaker 3: would be so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jessica is a bit of a brat, and I
Speaker 1: think intentionally so, like he has to politely move her
Speaker 1: feet off of his desk when he comes in and
Speaker 1: finds her reading the Book of the Occult. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's that they do a great job
Speaker 1: letting us know that, yeah, he really cares about her,
Speaker 1: and she really cares about him. But there is this,
Speaker 1: you know, some awkward generational stuff where, you know, the
Speaker 1: stuff Grandpa's in too, is just lame. And yeah, she's
Speaker 1: kind of blind to the fact that there is this
Speaker 1: strong connection between what's about to happen in her friend
Speaker 1: group and the kind of stuff that grandpa actually knows
Speaker 1: quite a bit about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he patiently explains that, you know, our family has
Speaker 3: a legacy of research into the occult, and she's just like,
Speaker 3: it's not my bag. Baby.
Speaker 1: It's like the difference between a friend saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: I have this Doobie Brother's album and then your grandpa saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got Doobie Brothers albums too, Like, it's not fair
Speaker 1: that grandpa is considered lame because he has this album
Speaker 1: and your friend has a pass because he just discovered it.
Speaker 3: But that is how it works, no accounting for the
Speaker 3: social influences on taste formation anyway. Oh but also he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: what if I was to get to meet your friends?
Speaker 3: You know, I wonder who these people you hang out
Speaker 3: with all the time, who are they? And she's like,
Speaker 3: uh uh, You're never going to meet them because this
Speaker 3: place is boring and dusty and old, and you're an
Speaker 3: expert on the occult, so you will not meet them.
Speaker 3: But she tries to reassure him by saying she has
Speaker 3: never dropped acid, she is not shooting up, and she
Speaker 3: says she is not sleeping with anyone just yet, so
Speaker 3: he has no reason to worry. She is into nothing wrong.
Speaker 3: And then she goes to meet her friends at the
Speaker 3: deconsecrated church to raise the devil. Yep, so this black Mass.
Speaker 3: What can we describe about the scene. Well, first of all,
Speaker 3: there's a thing about the tombstone. On the outside, she
Speaker 3: and her boyfriend Bob are talking before they go into
Speaker 3: the church, they're waiting to meet everybody, and they stumble
Speaker 3: across the tombstone of her ancestor, Lawrence van Helsing, who
Speaker 3: died one hundred years ago to this day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which they initially think, Oh, this is one of
Speaker 1: Johnny's jokes. This is not funny. They get a little
Speaker 1: disturbed over this.
Speaker 3: It's one of Johnny's jokes. He had a fake tombstone
Speaker 3: made and put in this churchyard.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, they're just they're trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out. The other thing I would say is
Speaker 1: that this abandoned church is just is a great set.
Speaker 1: It's a great Gothic setting for what is inevitably going
Speaker 1: to be the resurrection of Count Dracula.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Johnny Alucard is there. He's wearing an
Speaker 3: all black robe. He has everybody sit in a circle
Speaker 3: and listen to music. He says, no fooling around, this
Speaker 3: is for real. And the tape he plays sounds kind
Speaker 3: of like the drum solo in Inegatta Davida, which is
Speaker 3: a thumbs up from me.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. It has this kind of like noisy, grimy
Speaker 1: quality to it, which I quite like. And again you
Speaker 1: can hear this track is included on the soundtrack and score,
Speaker 1: along with those Stone Ground tracks. If you need to
Speaker 1: listen to those.
Speaker 3: That must provide an odd contrast. But he's really telling
Speaker 3: them to get into it. He says, dig the music, kids,
Speaker 3: let it flow into you. Give yourself up to the music.
Speaker 3: And this reminds me of Christian tracts that I have read,
Speaker 3: genuinely espousing the idea that rock music will will allow
Speaker 3: a demon to possess your soul.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: Johnny Alucard seems to agree with that point of view,
Speaker 3: and then he starts. He starts naming demons. You know.
Speaker 3: He says, I call upon address the Grand Marquis of Hell.
Speaker 3: He says, Marquis, a provoker of discords, and upon ron Way,
Speaker 3: demon of forbidden knowledge, and upon Behemoth, the arch devil
Speaker 3: of black delights. I call upon as Modius, the destroyer
Speaker 3: and Astroth, friend of all the great lords of Hades.
Speaker 3: I demand an audience with his satanic majesty. He just
Speaker 3: and he goes on and on, names like fifteen more demons,
Speaker 3: and ends with Count Dracula, which, even in the context
Speaker 3: of the movie, for some reason, it just kind of
Speaker 3: sounds funny. In this list of I don't know, biblical
Speaker 3: or at least like apocryphal or hermetic kind of entities.
Speaker 1: Maybe, But at the same time, I don't know. We've
Speaker 1: talked already on the show. I think in listener Mail
Speaker 1: episodes about Marvel's Dracula and how in the Marvel Comics
Speaker 1: universe Dracula will occasionally have interactions with the likes of
Speaker 1: doctor Doom, so you know, Draculas can can hang out
Speaker 1: with Doctor Doom on the Then I feel like it's
Speaker 1: equally okay that his name is mentioned in the same
Speaker 1: prayer as these various other dark and powerful demon lords.
Speaker 3: So he says all these demons, but then he calls
Speaker 3: the name of Jessica van helsing, she's right here in
Speaker 3: the room with us. She's here listening to the music.
Speaker 3: She's digging the music as instructed. And he says that
Speaker 3: the demons have chosen her, but she is afraid, so
Speaker 3: she says, no, she's not going to join him up
Speaker 3: at the altar for whatever comes next. But somebody's ready,
Speaker 3: somebody wants to be to go to the altar, and
Speaker 3: it's Laura played by Carolyn Monroe. She's extremely jealous. She's like, no, me, me, Me,
Speaker 3: me me, And so it looks like it's going to
Speaker 3: be Laura instead for whatever this ritual will be. He
Speaker 3: so she goes up, lies down on the altar and
Speaker 3: Johnny Alucard cuts his hand bleeds into a grail full
Speaker 3: of Dracula's ashes and then pours them out on her
Speaker 3: and it gets really thick and frothy, and this is disgusting.
Speaker 3: She's now covered in a she blood. Everybody gets freaked
Speaker 3: out and runs away except for Johnny and Laura. And
Speaker 3: of course the ritual works it, you know, it resurrects
Speaker 3: Dracula from the earth where his ashes were buried one
Speaker 3: hundred years before. And then Dracula is shown shot from below,
Speaker 3: so we're looking up at him like he is the
Speaker 3: statue of liberty but a vampire, and he's surrounded by
Speaker 3: smoke and quite regal in his well, as Johnny said
Speaker 3: in his Satanic Majesty, and.
Speaker 1: I thought this was pretty effective. Like at this point
Speaker 1: I'm really digging, like, oh, yeah, this is Dracula, this
Speaker 1: is the real deal. You summoned him, and like this
Speaker 1: is an incredibly dangerous situation for everybody involved.
Speaker 3: But this is the part I mentioned earlier where he
Speaker 3: is right off the bat, extremely high handed with Johnny.
Speaker 3: Johnny says, master, I did it. I summoned you, and
Speaker 3: Dracula just kind of scowls at him and says it
Speaker 3: was my will and then holds out the ring for
Speaker 3: him to kiss.
Speaker 1: Well, he's not going to suffer any even if this
Speaker 1: is like, you know, a bloodline of Toady's that are
Speaker 1: supposed to look after Dragula's interest and raise him from
Speaker 1: the grave, Like, he's not going to suffer a wizard
Speaker 1: trying to pull one over him here. He's going to
Speaker 1: establish right from the top that Dracula is the guy
Speaker 1: in charge, right.
Speaker 3: So he goes into the church, Laura's still hanging out there.
Speaker 3: He's like, I guess I'll drink her blood, and he does,
Speaker 3: and meanwhile Johnny is looking on biting his knuckle like
Speaker 3: I wish that was me. And at first I thought
Speaker 3: he was thinking, like, oh, I wish that was me
Speaker 3: drinking her blood, but then I realized no, I think
Speaker 3: he's like, I wish that was me getting my blood drank.
Speaker 1: Because that's what he ultimately wants. He wants the kiss
Speaker 1: of cursed immortality.
Speaker 3: So the next day Laura's body is found by kids
Speaker 3: playing in a construction area. There's sort of the kids
Speaker 3: from the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Waters commercial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just sort of wild, unparented seventies children running around
Speaker 1: finding dead bodies in the in the rubble. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just how it went. I was born in
Speaker 1: the seventies as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go climb on that rebar. The police show up.
Speaker 3: They open a murder investigation and it is led by
Speaker 3: Inspector Murray. This is the detective we talked about earlier.
Speaker 3: Inspector Murray in turn consults with Laura Mr van Helsing.
Speaker 3: I think they have a pre existing relationship because Van
Speaker 3: Helsing knows all about weird occult murders, and the detective
Speaker 3: then reveals that the murder is connected to his granddaughter Jessica,
Speaker 3: because Laura was part of her friend group.
Speaker 1: They do acknowledge at one point, or Inspector Murray does
Speaker 1: talking with somebody else. I think one of the other
Speaker 1: police investigators is like, well, you know, here in the UK,
Speaker 1: we don't really have cult murders like they do in America.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not as complicated as that and as heavy.
Speaker 1: We have some cult murders but it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: more British here.
Speaker 3: So there is a an investigation portion of the movie
Speaker 3: in the middle here that had one scene that had
Speaker 3: Rachel and me rolling. It was the alu card scene
Speaker 3: where man, they really they don't skip over anything. They
Speaker 3: let you see the whole thing come together.
Speaker 1: Spoil it for us, Joe, tell everybody what Alocard means.
Speaker 3: Well, so that you see like Peter Cushing there with
Speaker 3: a card and he has written Dracula out on this
Speaker 3: piece of paper and then he's drawing lines from the
Speaker 3: letters in Alucard to the letters in Dracula and they
Speaker 3: all cross over and he's like, it's it's Dracula spelt backwards.
Speaker 1: The the the Dracula cipher right or Alocard cipher as
Speaker 1: if he just solved like a really complex puzzle here
Speaker 1: when it's just so obvious in the page. But again,
Speaker 1: it just shows you how great Peter Cushing is. Such
Speaker 1: a stupid scene, but he sells it. He patiently brings
Speaker 1: dignity to the scene.
Speaker 3: He draws. He doesn't just like write out Alucard and
Speaker 3: then look at he like draws all the lines. He
Speaker 3: does every letter.
Speaker 1: You know, he's checking his work. And I guess we
Speaker 1: have to remember at this point in in Hammer canon anyway,
Speaker 1: nobody had had solved the Dracula cipher. Yet they didn't
Speaker 1: know what this meant, and so we had to watch
Speaker 1: him do it in real time.
Speaker 3: That's true. It's like one of those math conjectures you know,
Speaker 3: remains unproven.
Speaker 1: Mm. But this is this is also good parenting slash
Speaker 1: grand parenting tip that we're seeing here. Find out who
Speaker 1: your your your your, your child or your grandchild's friends are.
Speaker 1: Write their names on a sheet of paper and just
Speaker 1: check and see if any of their first or last
Speaker 1: name happens to be Dracula spelled backwards.
Speaker 3: I just knew I shouldn't have let my child play
Speaker 3: with eoj niff.
Speaker 1: Ok. Sorry, I don't have any paper out, Joe. I
Speaker 1: can't fact check that one to make sure that's okay.
Speaker 3: Well, then you must be one of the idiots infurial. Okay,
Speaker 3: So what happens that? So maybe I'm to skip more
Speaker 3: lightly over some of the plot points that follow, but
Speaker 3: one sequence is Dracula he really wants to eat Jessica
Speaker 3: van Helsing. Actually, I think he wants to turn her
Speaker 3: into a vampire. Right to really just fully defile the
Speaker 3: name of Van Helsing. He wants to not just kill
Speaker 3: the end of the Van Helsing line, but make her
Speaker 3: a servant of the devil.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's his evil plot for revenge here.
Speaker 3: So the way they're going to make that happen is
Speaker 3: Johnny Alucard. Does he invite Jessica Van Helsing to go
Speaker 3: to the Jazz Spectacular with him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, He's like, hey, I got tickets to the Jazz Spectacular.
Speaker 1: Want to come? And she's like, uh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing something else. And then Gaynor's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm looking to go to a concert.
Speaker 3: What's he going to do? Well, he figures out I
Speaker 3: can at least feed Gayner to Dracula.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this doesn't go over well with Dracula because Dracula,
Speaker 1: rightfully so is like, this is not what I charged
Speaker 1: you with. We have a specific plan for vengeance here.
Speaker 1: I will drink her blood and kill her, but you
Speaker 1: need to bring me the descendant of Van Helsing. And
Speaker 1: then but Johnny Alickhart is like, well, you haven't given
Speaker 1: me any powers, and he basically does kind of like
Speaker 1: there's like a labor standoff. Yes, here in the film
Speaker 1: and Dracula caves. He's like, all right, I'll give you
Speaker 1: the powers.
Speaker 3: So he bites him, turns Johnny Olichard into a vampire,
Speaker 3: and then Johnny Ali Card. Actually before he gets on
Speaker 3: with the business of, you know, of getting Jessica van Helsing,
Speaker 3: he just goes out and gets a snack first, right,
Speaker 3: and he like finds a lady in a laundromat and
Speaker 3: eats her.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, just starts committing random vampire murders.
Speaker 3: But at some point Jessica's boyfriend, Bob, he comes to
Speaker 3: get her at her house. Now she's been warned about
Speaker 3: things at this point by by her her grandfather Van Helsing,
Speaker 3: but Bob comes and says I think He says, oh,
Speaker 3: you know your grandfather and the police are at the
Speaker 3: cavern there interviewing everybody, and you need to come there now.
Speaker 3: Was that the story?
Speaker 1: I think it was, I believe so.
Speaker 3: Yes, And in this scene he strangely has a ben
Speaker 3: Dana tied around his neck. Yeh did you see this
Speaker 3: one coming?
Speaker 1: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: So he does take her to the cavern the coffee shop,
Speaker 3: but it's not the uh, it's not the good guys.
Speaker 3: It's the bad guys.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's a game of cat and mouse here
Speaker 1: between the Van Helsings and House Dracula.
Speaker 3: So eventually Jessica is taken to the deconsecrated church I
Speaker 3: think it's Saint Bartholf's and Dracula hypnotizes her but doesn't
Speaker 3: vamp her yet. I think he's waiting for like the
Speaker 3: big midnight ritual or something. In the meantime, we get
Speaker 3: Van Helsing on the case. He's trying to he's trying
Speaker 3: to find out how to rescue his granddaughter, and he
Speaker 3: ends up going to Johnny Alucard's house where they have
Speaker 3: a battle. It is Van Helsing versus a vampire, not
Speaker 3: Dracula yet, but the vamp, the sort of young vamp.
Speaker 3: And I thought this was a good battle. I like
Speaker 3: this scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, to be fair, this is the
Speaker 1: first vampire that this Van Helsing has ever battled. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they do a good job, yeah, of making it
Speaker 1: a little a little unexpected. Like, for instance, earlier in
Speaker 1: the film, there's a little foreshadowing where they remind us
Speaker 1: that there's an often ignored bit of vampire lore that
Speaker 1: says that moving water or moving fresh water. I think
Speaker 1: they're running waters film, clear running water, will you know,
Speaker 1: destabilize them or slay them or something. So I wonder
Speaker 1: if that'll come into play here.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I think he says that at the police
Speaker 3: station or something. He's listing all of the things that
Speaker 3: will harm or won't harm a vampire. Some of it's
Speaker 3: just superstition, but yeah, clear running water and a cross
Speaker 3: in a bible that'll do it. So there's a great
Speaker 3: move he has here where Johnny Alikart like the sun
Speaker 3: is rising in the window and he's trapped. He's got
Speaker 3: to get back to his coffin so he can rest
Speaker 3: during the daylight. But then Peter Cushing throws a bible
Speaker 3: into his coffin. He's like, oh gotcha, now, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sleep on that. And this is like a full
Speaker 1: size one too. It's not one of those little pocket
Speaker 1: ones that you know, you could just maybe like sleep around,
Speaker 1: but no, no, there's no sleeping in that coffin without
Speaker 1: laying on that bible.
Speaker 3: It's ruined, right, that's athunk bible. So they battle, but
Speaker 3: eventually Johnny Alucard falls into the shower. The water starts running,
Speaker 3: and this destroys him. Like the water's running over him
Speaker 3: and he's screaming. He's like, sturn it off, turn it off,
Speaker 3: and Van Helsing's like, where is Jessica? But he won't say.
Speaker 3: He's just getting obliterated by water.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is it the best vampire death in cinematic history?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Is it at least inventive? Does it give us something
Speaker 1: a little bit new? Then? Yes? I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I kind of like this one. It seems actually like
Speaker 3: plausible from a folklore standpoint. That sounds like something that
Speaker 3: could really be believed to harm a vampire in some scenario.
Speaker 3: And uh, yeah, I don't know. It was different. I
Speaker 3: liked it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess there is a bathtub scene in The
Speaker 1: Lost Boys. There's something but that was like a bathtub
Speaker 1: full of holy water.
Speaker 3: I think, ah, okay, I've forgotten about that.
Speaker 1: If memory serves also, Lost Boys came later, Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: much later.
Speaker 3: But eventually Laura Mr. Van Helsing does go to the
Speaker 3: church to confront Dracula and there is a great trap
Speaker 3: setting scene. He digs a pit outside the church and
Speaker 3: he fills it full of wooden steaks. He takes his
Speaker 3: trusty silver dagger with him, which he has showed off
Speaker 3: several times before, and there is a showdown, a final
Speaker 3: battle in the church, and there were a couple of
Speaker 3: parts here that I thought were actually kind of scary.
Speaker 3: I don't usually expect to find anything all that frightening
Speaker 3: in a hammer horror movie, but like the part where
Speaker 3: Dracula is chasing Van Helsing up the spiral staircase into
Speaker 3: the tower, I thought was quite menacing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because really throughout the film they do a great
Speaker 1: job of establishing Dracula as such a threat, and suddenly
Speaker 1: in that stairwell, it's like everything is so close, austrophobic,
Speaker 1: and there's this feeling of just being in an enclosed
Speaker 1: space with something that is just beyond even a vicious animal,
Speaker 1: just pure bloodthirsty hunger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so so they have a showdown. There's kind
Speaker 3: of a fake out here. Van Helsing stabs Dracula with
Speaker 3: his silver dagger, but Dracula is aided by the hypnotized
Speaker 3: Jessica van Helsing. She comes up and pulls the dagger
Speaker 3: out of him, and her grandpa is like, no, Jessica.
Speaker 1: This one caught me up in the moment, you know,
Speaker 1: you know the movie's not going to end like that.
Speaker 1: This movie's only ending one way, but getting caught up
Speaker 1: in just the sort of the spirit of the film.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh man, this is bad news.
Speaker 3: But of course we saw him dig that trap earlier, right,
Speaker 3: so the trap comes back. In the end, he throws
Speaker 3: holy water. Van Helsing throws holy water on Dracula. That
Speaker 3: kind of burns him, yow, and he falls into the pit.
Speaker 3: And then to really drive it home, Van Helsing and
Speaker 3: like grabs a shovel and like shoves Dracula down onto
Speaker 3: the wooden stakes with the shovel, and this breaks the
Speaker 3: spell over Jessica. They're all right, and I guess some
Speaker 3: of her friends are still alive or boyfriend's dead. But
Speaker 3: I don't know if you with the hippie group, they're
Speaker 3: still kicking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if they're gonna hang out much anymore,
Speaker 1: but yeah, some survive. I will say, in this movie,
Speaker 1: you had two different scenes with the melting vampires, so
Speaker 1: you end up melting the same vampire twice in the
Speaker 1: same picture. They at least made sure to have the
Speaker 1: second vampire death look even better than the first. I
Speaker 1: have to say that this one looked really good and gnarly,
Speaker 1: and I liked it quite a bit agree.
Speaker 3: So that's all I got for Dracula A d. Nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two. I enjoyed this one. I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna say it's the best Dracula movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: But if you're looking for those early seventies vibes and
Speaker 3: you want some Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in there too,
Speaker 3: it's perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not gonna recommend Dracula AD nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: to everyone, but if the title Dracula AD nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two stirs something inside you, then yes, you must see
Speaker 1: this film, and I encourage you to do so.
Speaker 3: It's way better than Land of the Minotaur.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I would agree, but the score for Land
Speaker 1: of the Minataar was better though I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Land of the Minotaur didn't have Stone Ground.
Speaker 1: That's right, if they'd only had the musical stylings of
Speaker 1: Stone Ground. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: this one out. But as always, we remind you that
Speaker 1: we're primarily a science podcast, Real science, not the Van
Speaker 1: Helsing branch of science, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: If you want a full list of the movies we've
Speaker 1: discussed over the years on Weird House Cinema, head on
Speaker 1: over to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T
Speaker 1: E R bo x D dot com. Our username there
Speaker 1: is weird House and we have a list and you
Speaker 1: can see all the films we've talked about. You can
Speaker 1: go back through the archives there and see, well, what
Speaker 1: other Dracula movies have they watched? I guess kind of
Speaker 1: sort of two or three other Dracula films.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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