Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

In the non-groovy past, a de-Jewified Larry Van Helsing (really? Larry? Not Abraham) and Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) both die—a scene that breaks with past films, but Hammer was never consistent. An unknown person wandering by grabs a vial of the Count’s blood, which pops up again in 1972. In that swinging time, some hippies, one being a descendent of Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham) end up raising Dracula from the dead. Luckily the young Van Helsing’s grandfather is crusty old Peter Cushing who has kept up on his vampire lore.

Gosh those swinging ‘60s were groovy. Dig it. There’s hip cat music, hot dancing babes, and free sex. It’s youth culture, at least as seen by condescending white men from an earlier generation. Like most films and TV shows that tried to do the “Cool man, daddy-o” thing, it comes off as embarrassing. And since it is supposed to be 1972, not 1965, even this unintentional parody is out of date.

This seventh Hammer Dracula film reunites Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and you’d think they’d have found something better to do with them. Instead they are tossed into an awkward semi-remake of Taste the Blood of Dracula, reset in a non-existent cool now. Instead of three Victorian gentlemen trying to get their freak on, we get a bunch of hippy kids trying to do the same. And again, we’ve got one guy who has a bit of occult knowledge and some blood from Dracula. And again, they decide to cast dark magic in a damaged church, and again, it works a bit slowly, bringing back Dracula. But at least the earlier film was shot well. This looks like a TV episode and I swear the music was used in The Mod Squad.

Since Lee had been poorly used so often, and Cushing tended to get bland roles, I can accept them being left out in the cold, but doing nothing with Caroline Munro is a sin. They only had her for a two picture deal, the other being the far superior Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1972) where she got to do a lot more than dance around and then die.

The entire film is a misfire. It is trying so desperately to be hip, to appeal to the new youth market, but it is stogy. An aging Cushing represents proper, old-school morality and waggles his finger at all this permissiveness. Sex and drugs and rock-n-roll leads to death and destruction, and our lead hippy girl is a virgin who doesn’t do drugs (because drugs are bad!). And in the twentieth century, a vampire in a cape looks pretty silly. Time had passed Hammer by and the studio didn’t know how to catch up. And they never would catch up. It also fails with the basic Hammer tools of sex and blood. There’s very little death, and most of that is off screen. There are two cute Hammer babes, but no heaving bodices. This is horror that’s safe to watch with grandma. That leaves us with the plot, which in this case is not a good idea. Dracula hangs out in the church the entire picture. Van Helsing talks a lot about evil and then runs around the city. Very little happens till the end, which would be disappointing except I had already lowered my expectations to the floor.

This isn’t the worst Hammer film, but it does put in a serious bid for being the dumbest.

The other Hammer Dracula films are: The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960)—which lacked Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (1971), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).