Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Movie: Dracula Has Risen from the Grave [1968]

This is the cover on my DVD box.




Another image. Looks like His Undeadness has candy corn fangs. :-p











That last almost looks comedic, makes you want to caption it: "I said I like STEAK!"

Watched the film a few days ago; I have a Hammer collection (so does my husband, but that's of the carpentry kind). Count Dracula is buried beneath a sheet of ice which is inadvertently broken by the weak-minded and cowardly local parish priest when he takes a tumble over a rock. Blood trickles from the unconscious priest's head onto Drac's lips. Priest is immediately taken control of by Drac, does his bidding. A while back Count Dracula was forced from his castle and into a comatose-like state by a Monsignor, who has returned to the village to do him in once and for all. Now Drac is determined to get revenge: By going after Maria, the Monsignor's curvaceous and beautiful blonde niece. Paul is Maria's boyfriend. For some reason nearly all the action takes place at the pub/bakery/inn where Paul and the luscious Zena work. Maria hazards sloped tiled roofs and dangerous catwalks to enter Paul's bedroom. The many Bavarian (?) roof scenes are weird in the film.

It's the best Hammer vampire film besides "The Brides of Dracula" (my favorite). I wish Peter Cushing were in this movie as well; unfortunately he's not. I'm more of a Cushing fan than a Lee fan. Christopher Lee is seen quite a few times as Count Dracula (veeeery handsome). He also has more lines in this film as compared to the other Hammer flicks.

All turns out well for Maria in the end, of course. And Paul, the atheist (and to think the Monsignor was at first afraid Paul was a Protestant!), reclaims Christianity. We presume Paul and Maria married, lived to a ripe old age together and had a lovely brood of rug rats.


A nice collage:

3 comments:

Thwacko said...

It's funny: I saw this film 10+ years ago in college and liked it. I thought it was one of the better Hammer Dracula movies.
A couple months back I tried to watch it again and got bored to tears during the extroidinarily long backstory sequence prior to Dracula's resurection.

Avia Liora said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cindy M said...

Hi Joshua: Yeah, these old films draaaag compared to the non-stop action nature of today's favored films. But I still enjoy the slower-paced stuff, IF it's done well (and there's a handsome actor in it, lol).