The Monsignor of the region visits Dracula’s castle to perform an exorcism so that the frightened villagers will stop avoiding the church. He sees they are upset about a dead maiden hanging from the bell tower. I would be too since she was killed and bitten while Dracula (Christopher Lee) was frozen, but let’s not let plot coherence enter into this. His exorcism calls down a storm that frees the vampire from the ice he fell into at the end of the last film, and blood from the head wound of a cowardly priest awakens him. Dracula is quite upset over the exorcism and sets out to get revenge upon the Monsignor.
The forth of Hammer’s Dracula films, and the third to contain Dracula (and Christopher Lee), Dracula Has Risen From the Grave once again gives us a vampire out of revenge. That makes him not a grim monster, but a petty schoolboy. Shouldn’t Dracula being doing something more…evil? At least, unlike the last installment, Lee gets to speak, although infrequently. For a change, however, Dracula does come off as frightening and cruel.
This is much more of a character picture than the other Dracula movies. For the first time in a Hammer Dracula picture, we have engaging young leads in Maria (Veronica Carlson) and Paul (Barry Andrews). Her fate actually matters and the two not only are developed, but actually behave, at times, like humans.
The change over from Terrance Fisher to Freddie Francis is an improvement. Francis, previously a cinematographer, had a much better eye then Fisher, better control, and more skill in using the visual medium to tell the story and the subtext. The world looks larger. This is the least claustrophobic Hammer Dracula film. The images carry much more weight. Innocence and evil are displayed by framing and color, and the rooftops takes one back to the best of the Universal pictures.
While the previous films were solidly, and problematically, on the side of a repressive social order, here things are less clear. The Monsignor’s close-mindedness both brings back Dracula and nearly destroys the truly good people. But the film muddles its religious message. It insists on having one, but can’t figure out what it wants to say. Apparently we are all lost without religion (Dracula suddenly can’t be destroyed without prayer), but religion just sucks, making you stubborn, weak, and stupid. It’s as if two different writers were fighting over the script.
The most common complaint I’ve heard against Dracula Has Risen From the Grave is that it is slow and boring. It does have a substantial lull, but it uses that time to establish character, which is a nice change. It makes this a richer film, as does the superior camerawork, and is my favorite of the Hammer Dracula films.
The other Hammer Dracula films are: The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960)—which lacked Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (1971), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).