And so, we arrive at the penultimate Hammer ‘Dracula’ film. And…essentially the end of the story for Christopher Lee and Peter Cushings interpretations of the Vamp and the slayer…and while Cushing would go on to play Van Hellsing one more time in ‘The Seven Golden Vampires’ That film takes place in the early 19th century and is *technically* a prequel to ‘Horror of Dracula’. Whereas this film is a sequel to ‘Dracula A.D. 1972’ and takes place a year after the events of that film. So…you’d think they’d want to see the franchise out with a bit of a bang…they dont.

So the big change with this film over the other entries is that, in the UK at this point in time UK cop dramas were really starting to take off, you had things like ‘New Scotland Yard’ and ‘The Sweeny’ taking off alongside things like ‘Van Der Valk’ and Hammer films saw this popularity and thought ‘What if Dracula, but COP show?!’ and thats…not an inherently bad idea…But unfortunately, to me at least. they seem to have made the slowest, lamest cop show film in history.

So the film opens with an undercover cop escaping a black ritual cult who are attempting to ressurect demons and devils they can connect with. He’s badly injured but gets back to the station and with his final breaths is able to relay what he saw at these Black Masses. featuring tales of rooster murder and blood on naked virgins.

The police are exploring every avenue to try and get evidence these cultists are breaking the law. And eventually they relent and fall back on there previous ‘black magic’ contact, Van Hellsing. Who happily pops up and begins doing some research of his own. after a while he starts to put together that there may be something alltogether vampiric going on, and it doesnt take long for it to be revealed that the cultists have ressurected Dracula and he’s using them as servents to help…probably his most coherent (if not VERY idiotic plan) in the entire franchise…which I wont spoil here.

Oh! also Van Hellsings daughter is back (played…somewhat surprisingly here by national sweetheart Joanna Lumley) and…she basically gets nothing to do. Which is a real shame as I was hoping we’d maybe see some development from A.D. 1972, with her maybe taking on an espionage/detective role alongside her grandfather in finding out whats going on…But no…they treat her a bit like a lemming, sending her ahead in dangerous terrain to see if anything kicks off…then pulling her out of the action so the police and Van Hellsing can get in there and save the day…

Now, dont get me wrong…Like I say, I think pivoting and reframing a Vampire horror film as a Cop show style thriller, where the vampire reveal IS a genuine shock could have been a great idea…But this film is called ‘The Satanic rites of Dracula’. Meaning, it would have been a bigger surprise if Dracula HADNT been in this film.

As such, what we end up with is a script that feels like the big plot twist is spoiled before the opening titles even finish. At which point we’re basically waiting for Dracula to turn up…which he doesnt do for nearly 40 minutes. Imagine if they just up front told you who the killer was in a murder mystery…and then expected you to sit there for the full 90 minutes while they went through the motions while pretending they HADNT made it abundently clear who the murderer was up front…Thats this movie.

It almost feels a bit like its fallen back on the old tropes from the 60s movies, but with a modern location. It opens kind of strong before settling into an exposition heavy ALL tell NO show situation for the majority of the 2nd act and opening of the 3rd…and then they just kind of…MAKE UP a feeble and frankly rubbish ending as an excuse to stop the film. Rather than giving these two iconic roles a decent send off.

The pacing is slow burn at first, but all but fizzles out until the last 10 minutes when THE most nonsense finale happens and then it full on crashes out to credits.

The characters arnt particularly interesting, I had no investment in any of them, the dialogue was incredibly dense and (for the most part) poorly written. the pacings all over the place…this feels like a very rushed script without much care given to wht its actually trying to say or do.

Same goes for the direction and cine. After a rush of fresh air in ‘A.D. 72’ we have a massively scaled back production. 3-4 locations basic camera movements, no experimentation, low effort sequence building, everythings incredibly flat profile. Its a dead eyed production, it’s doing what it needs to do, nothing more, nothing less just going through the motions to get a cheap looking film made.

Performances? well Christopher Lee was doing alright untill he started doing a phoney foreign accent to try and trick Van Hellsing…then he lost me, Cushing is largely wasted here, and despite the pair of them giving a DAMN good try and making this work, its just too low/no effort for even THESE two to try and save it. The supporting cast, honestly? might as well have not been there for how much of an impression they left. I couldnt tell you a single charictaristic of ANY of the extended cast outside of Dracula, Van Hellsing and his daughter…they’re all just avatars. spewing exposition and running around trying to look scared…thats all there is.

And the soundtrack? has already dated terribly. This is 1973, the year of ‘The Wicker Man’ and ‘The Exorcist’ and I now FULLY understand why Chrisopher Lee waived his apparence fee for ‘Wicker Man’ because if i’d been stuck on THIS film? I’d wanna sod off to the farthest flug parts. of the shetland isles and film a weird folk horror about pagenism.

In some ways…as far as endings go, this is worse than it ending badly. If it had ended badly, I could have at least commented on how distinctly badly it ended…this? this is nothing. Just a total nothing of a movie that adds nothing, does nothing other than waste the audiences time and draw a line under two of the greatest portrayals of these characters in cinematic history…and thats kind of crazy to me. Not recommended…at ALL.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-satanic-rites-of-dracula/