Taste the Blood of Dracula, 1970 – ★★★½

A new decade, and a new turn for Hammer in one of the more conflicting films i’ve seen from the studio. ‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’ is a bit of a contradiction in film making, an entry in Hammers Dracula series that simultaineously is trying to break with the previous few Hammer Dracula movies and is trying to modernize the style and feel of Hammer on a technical level. While ALSO feeling positively antiquated in the way it handles its themes and tones, the amount of gore or titilation it shows and its storytelling capabilities. Bearing in mind, the Amacus folk horror era is right on this films doorstep, and using Hammer as a base, that studio (and studios like it) would reinvent what Hammer started for new audiences and modern times. By contrast, Hammer is starting to feel behind the times.

The film this time around is presented as a bit of an anthology of sorts. featuring three well respected gentlemen of the community, who behind the scenes lust of the seedy and strange underbelly of society. from Brothels, to strange drinks and drugs. These gentlmen crave debauchery. But a chance encounter with a passerby will change their lives forever.

He is well acquainted with a travelling conman who, by chance, stumbled on Draculas demise at the end of the last film, and…Not one to miss an opportunity, snatched up his cape, clasp, ring and a large vial of his blood. and, with backing from the gents. This stranger is going to unleash untold chaos into their lives, by threatening the ressurection of Count Dracula himself.

However; the ressurection ceremony goes arwy when the gents get the fear and decide they dont want to go any further. When the stranger decides to complete the ritual himself, he scares the gents so much they beat him to death…Only for it THEN to be revealed that this stranger was a follower of Dracula, and that when Drac finds out they’ve killed one of his servents. He’s enraged to the point that he’ll stop at nothing to see the three put into the ground…Even if that means enlisting the help of their own children to do so…

And, despite the somewhat creaky nature of the studio at this time, I really do have a bit of a soft spot for this entry.

The script is a little slowburn, but whereas the other entries felt like they were stalling for time, this one feels like its ACTUALLY trying to slowly build tension and keep a consistent pace. Thats not to say there isnt SOME padding here and there. But what we predominantly have here is a film split across two storylines (Draculas vengence on the Gentlemen, and one of the Gentlemens daughters ‘Alice’ having domestic issues with her father over her wanting to court a young suitor) theres a certain emotional element to this film that hasnt really been seen since ‘Brides of Dracula’ and I feel its handled really rather well.

The act structuring is fairly solid, we have decent characters who feel more complex and engaging than previous efforts. We spend a LOT of time with bad people in this movie, they’re the people who take us on the majority of this journey, and its interesting to see Hammer take that approach after over a decade of monotonous characters who were essentially walking stereotypes for the genre.

In fact, my only gripe really with the film (barring some slight padding issues) is that I dont even really know if this needed necessarily to be a Dracula movie. It could have just as easily been about the Gents accidentally murdering someone and unleashing…just a generic curse on them and their families that would lead to their demise, and it probably would have worked even better than trying to cram a Dracula shaped peg into a not quite so Dracula shaped hole. That and the ending is a bit out of left field and abrupt…Im not entirely sure how Dracula dies in this movie. My best guess is thinking about neat and tidy churches gave him an anurism…

Direction and cine are sharp, feel refreshed, and see a return to a lush and rich feeling sense of set design. Again however; there are some tropes that have persisted from 50s Hammer that are STILL being forced into this film from a technical perspective and it just makes the production feel SO weary against its contemporaries. Just basic shot framings and Experimentation work that feels SO dated. Not to mention the aforementioned lack of interesting gore or fight choreography…It feels like a studio being left in the dust at times in a world thats soon to find itself with the likes of ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘The Exorcist’…

Performances are solid enough, again, I think a lot of the improvements I feel in this film come simply from giving the characters just a bit more complexity and a sense that they exist in a ‘lived in’ world. Anthony Higgins, Peter Sallis and Geoffrey Keen all play wonderfully as the three gents who wind up on Draculas hitlist. they open in a position of power and these three play a blinder in showing the breakdown of their constitution in the sheer face of fear.

Christopher Lee once again turns up as Dracula, he talks in this one too! I think his performance here is really solid, but the final act fight really wasnt very good, to the point that it made me cringe a couple of times to think that this series first film ended with an extensively choreographed fight sequence between Lee and Cushing using lavishly designed set pieces and spaces…And now here’s Lee…standing on a balcony hurling rocks at someone till he falls over…ugh…

The supporting cast are great too, with Roy Kinnear as the Con man, Linda hayden as Alice and Ralph Bates as Lord Courtley all bringing a real presence and ‘feel’ to this film that has been sorely absent from the last couple of entries. They’re delightful.

And the soundtrack? standard hammer, uninspiring, edited in well…yadda yadda. it does the job, but I always hope for more…

‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’ may have one of the worst film titles Hammers ever done (and they named a film ‘The Snorkel’ once…) But despite its titling. its a surprisingly robust movie that I could actually see myself revisiting at some point, while its maybe a little *too* slowburn for some. This is the first film since ‘Brides of Dracula’ that’s actually held my attention throughout and left me feeling like I could see myself rewatching it again in future…So I guess from me? I’d say recommended and probably worth checking out, especially if your exploring ‘classic’ horror or vampire movies in general.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/taste-the-blood-of-dracula/

by tytdreviews

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, 1968 – ★★★

‘Dracula has Risen from the Grave’ is a moutful of a film title if ever there was one, and ‘awkward’ is pretty much embedded into this films DNA…Now, I didnt watch this in the most optimised of conditions (it took me twice as long as the runtime because my internet was being an arse) but I think, even in the best of conditions, i’d have probably been less than ‘on board’ with this one.

So the plot picks up one year after the events of ‘Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ But we open with a brief flashback showing a young church ward finding a victim of Dracula in the church’s belltower…Which, in and of itself is a bit of a continuity problem, because; if memory serves Dracula spends about 99% of that movie in the castle grounds or the surrounding woodlands, he went nowhere near a village in that film; letalone attacked enough people to earn a concerned and infamous status for attacking villagers…bearing in mind that Prince of Darkness itself is set 10 years after ‘Horror of Dracula’ and in THAT movie, they emphisize that the village are aware of Dracula, but they have a ‘We dont bother him, he rarely bothers us’ relationship.

In either case, the attack renders the Church ward mute and puts a curse on the church resulting in noone showing up for mass (Oh I do love a good Mass!) When the Bishop for the area turns up and calls the priest out for the totally empty service. The priest makes it clear, noones going to attend a mass there until there is certainty that Draculas dead. So; the Bishop agrees to travel up to Draculas castle and perform a healing exorcism on the grounds to entrap any bad spirits to the grounds of the castle permanently.

However; with this being a Dracula movie, things dont quite go to plan, the Bishop gets seperated from the priest, he performs the service and heads back down the mountain trail, thinking the priest has gone ahead of him, the priest meanwhile bangs his head, and the open wound seeps into a nearby thawed out river and conveniently into the mouth of a semi frozen Dracula. who consumes the blood and is reborn, taking the priest on as a kind of ‘Renfield’ figure.

This then leads us into our main plot which follows Paul, a pastry chef in love with local sweetheart Maria. Pauls an Atheist. And what he DOESNT know is that Marias uncle…is the Bishop. So…that goes well, and to complicate matters further, on seeing Maria. Dracula decides he wants her for one of his ‘Brides’ of the undead…Leading a pastry chef and a Bishop to take on the prince of Darkness to try and free the Priest from the grasps of evil, and end the things once and for all…again.

Its a pretty short and sweet one for me on this one. Its WAY better than ‘Prince of Darkness’ in my opinion, but not *quite* as fun as ‘Brides of Dracula’.

The scripts fine enough, I like that they go back to the lore than victims of Dracula are essentially still themselves, but hunger for blood similarly to Drug addicts. I liked some of the action sequences and the tone of the piece which felt much more grounded after the last films all over the place attempt to ‘find itself’ I thought the act structurings were pretty solid.

But, much like ‘Prince of Darkness’ this thing is SO SLOW at times. its 90 minutes that feels like 120. and while it is peppered throughout with some very interesting and fun moments, the gaps between them where people are largely just sat around or stood dumping village lore or Dracula facts is at times interminable. This isnt slowburn, its pedestrian burn.

The characters are all pretty basic architypes for this genre once again. Though, somewhat mercifully, at least Dracula gets a BIT more complexity than he did in the last entry…Not much by any stretch…But at least he HAS lines and delivers them with something of a menace. Everyone else though? Its weird. It feels almost like a movie made up entirely of background cast members, with noone really being given anything that well and truley makes them stand out.

The dialogue feels overly long winded to the point of it becoming labourious. Its very much in the realms of telling over showing, and while their is a little bit more titlation and gore here than in the last 2 entries, its all EXCEEDINGLY tame by late 60s standards.

The cine and direction ARE however a marked improvement over the last film, we see a return to the rich and lavish setwork of the first couple of entries, and while I dont feel the direction really truely captures the full majesty of those set designs (and…while they are quite a bit closer to the original films aesthetic, they are still a little cheaper looking than the original) It does at least attempt to get close to that with mixed results ultimately.

The cine at least tries in places to strike away from the first two films, rather than desperately trying to redo iconic moments over and over again, theres a certain degree of German expressionism to this film that I really quite liked, and the colour work is quite delightful here honestly. It feels like after the last film, they were keen to not repeat the mistakes they made on this front, and really wanted to try and capture that premium quality that early Hammer was known for, im not going to say its an out and out success. But its better than I expected.

Performance wise, Christopher Lee ACTUALLY has some dialogue in this film (not a lot, but he does!) and he delivers it pretty decently. I think the big problem Lee has here is that the effects budget seems to have been the thing to take the hit when producing this film, meaning his costume is a little cheap and shabby looking, they try to really ‘red up’ Draculas eyes with mixed to poor results, and the director seemingly just, doesnt quite understand how to try and impose menace onto a man of Lee’s stature. Meaning more often than not, while he should be coming across as an imposing and oppressive force. Instead he just looks like a slightly weedy guy in a halloween costume trying to LOOK menacing while having all the ACTUAL menace of a care bear.

The main cast all struggle with the fact that they feel less like main players and more like extras who’ve been given a small promotion. meaning a lot of the time I just didnt really care or feel invested in them because they didnt present themselves as worth investing in. With Ewan Hooper and Rupert Davies as the Priest and the Bishop being the only pairing who really stood out to me across the whole runtime…But otherwise? its a bit of a busted flush.

And as for the soundtrack? its the same kind of Hammer score we’ve heard time and time before, is it good? yeh kinda…is it distinct? it’s Hammer baby…does it make this film standout? ASBOLUTELY NOT.

I cant really flaw the technical elements of this film, its shot fine enough, but the script and casting really let down a film that needed a very specific kind of energy bringing to it. Is it a bad movie? No. I wouldnt go that far. But it feels incredibly padded in places and the plot is somehow slower than crawling speed.

While I would absolutely say this is a step in the right direction after ‘Prince of Darkness’ its really more of a ‘pivot’ movie than one that sees a return to the kind of Hammer I know and love. This thing is absolutely ‘Watchable’ but I dont know if i’d actively choose to watch it again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-has-risen-from-the-grave/

by tytdreviews

Dracula: Prince of Darkness, 1966 – ★★

…Well, that was a rather overblown waste of my time…

The teaser for this film promises ‘Dracula; rising from the grave after 10 years!’ but thats misleading, because what they mean by that is that this film takes place 10 years AFTER ‘Horror of Dracula’ and ignores ‘Brides of Dracula’ completely. ‘Horror of Dracula’ came out in 1958, so im assuming they used that slug because finding EXACT release date information wasnt that easy in the mid 1960s and they were only 2 years off being 10 years old…So…they winged it.

Im going to keep it brief, the plot follows a bunch of obnoxious gits who I took an immediate disliking to who are travelling to castle Dracula, on the way they encounter a man of the cloth who warns them about Draculas history and advises them not to travel to the castle. but they ignore him and head up there anyway. and what follows is around 45 minutes of these gits SLOWLY making their way up to the castle, arriving, titting about on the castle grounds for an AGE, before FINALLY meeting the custodian of the castle, who performs the slowest soup serving scene in cinema history, more titting about the castle, and we get our first kill AND first glimpse at Dracula AT the 45 minute mark, around halfway into this film.

From there, Dracula attacks the first victims wife, turning her into a vampire and the other couple who were travelling with them escape the castle, flee into the woods, find the man of the cloth again, relay whats happened to him and he teams up with the pair to try and take Dracula down once and for all SPOILERS – They succeed by making him fall into some running icy water…Waste of my time.

The scripts slow, plodding, and most critically DULL. its interesting moments are cherry picked, repackaged moments from ‘Horror’ and ‘Brides’ of Dracula, with everything else feeling like cold uninteresting filler or like it was especially crafted to annoy me. the pacing is glacial, the tone inconsistent and unappealing. the act structuring is all pretty much melted into each other meaning it feels like one long unbroken conversation rather than an ACTUAL plot.

Dracula himself is barely in ANY of this movie, collectively I think he gets maybe 5-8 minutes screentime, HIS best moments are visuals from ‘Horror of Dracula’ repackaged in a cheaper and less interesting way.

Almost all of the characters are unlikable, Dracula himself gets a HUGE downgrade in terms of character in this one, given NO dialogue and reduced to pretty much bursting into a scene, hissing, smashing some stuff up and running out…if I wanted to see that I’d go into my living room and throw something at my cat.

Most critically, a LOT of the lore from the last two films has been airlocked. the first 2 movies went to great length to imply that vampirism was a bit like drug addiction in the sense that becoming a vampire doesnt fundamentally change who you are, your still you, your just driven by urges and compulsions to do things you dont want to do because getting a bite of that sweet sweet blood feels SO so good…Here? Nah! thats all gone! if you get bitten, your just evil now. They also decided to make Vampires totally indestructable from now on apart from a very specific list of things including (but not limited to) Sunlight, a crucifix, running water, holy water and a stake through the heart…thats it.

The direction is low effort, basic attempts to just get the shot, leaning heavily on styles and choices from earlier entries. I cannot get my head around just how CHEAP everything here looks, NON of it has that grand richness of the earlier Hammer offerings, everything looks like it was shot in a broom closet somewhere near pinewood. This feels like ‘store brand’ Dracula. and it doesnt even pretend to be otherwise.

Same goes for the cine, drab, lifeless shots, maybe a handful of interesting moments, but its all largely cribbed. I cant fault the technicality, its still more or less to standard. But I cant believe just how much of a downgrade this is compared to the last film (itself a step down from the film before it) its astonishing really that this film made it through multiple pitch meetings without SOMEONE speaking up to say that its dreary to the point of being a prescription strength insomnia cure.

Performances are poor too, Im not entirley sure if this is at the point where Christopher Lee didnt want to be associated with Dracula anymore or not…But here he gives as much as he can muster to give for a part that clearly is beneath him at this point. Thats probably the kindest thing I can say.

I refuse to give anymore time to this film in looking up the other cast members names, they were all dreary. boring energyless performances that sapped what little energy I had. Its ‘Exposition: The Movie’ just people standing around in rooms talking, and once every 20 minutes or so screaming. its dull.

Soundtrack not bad, but nothing new, fit film fine. edited in well. kind of dull.

I didnt like this one. They had a good 5-6 years to pull together the return of a british horror icon, and it could NOT feel any more ‘thrown together based on notes written on the back of a cigarette packet 10 minutes before cameras roll’ if it tried. I have seen SOV films have better production values and story than this. Dire. Dire is the only thoughts I have for it honestly, not a fan, dont wanna watch it again. dont watch it, really poor show.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-prince-of-darkness/

by tytdreviews

The Brides of Dracula, 1960 – ★★★

With the, rather definitive ending to Hammers ‘Horror of Dracula’ I was MORE than curious going into this sequel to find out how they restored Christopher Lee from raggedy pile of dust and jewellery to the great count once more…Then I realised Christopher Lee wasnt in the titles OR credits of this movie…and im pretty sure they didnt do that to hide him somewhere in the film…So…yeh! This is a ‘dracula’ movie called ‘The Brides of Dracula’ that DOESNT actually feature Count Dracula.

Instead we focus on young European ‘Student Teacher to be’ Marieanne. Who’s making her way to a dance academy when a series of unfortunate events leads her stranded in a local village the night before she’s supposed to begin teaching at a prestigious academy. All seems lost when in walks her ticket out of the village in the form of Baroness Meinster. A crimson woman of ill repute within the village who demands a drink at the local inn, quickly associates with MarieAnne, before offering to put her up in her spacious castle mere miles away from the Academy, where she can spend the night and then leave early in the morning, still making it to her first session on time. An offer MarieAnne quickly accepts.

However; at the castle, things start to unravel, when she witnesses a young man, hovering around the ledge of one of the lower bedrooms in the castle, the Baroness informs her that its her son, who is hidden away due to madness, with most of the village believing him to be dead.

Curiosity gets the better of MarieAnne, and after sneaking down to the Barons bedroom, its revealed that he’s in fact trapped in his room, clearly ISNT showing any signs of madness, and needs a key from the Baronesses room to escape, something Marieanne agrees to support on.

But once released, the Baron and Baroness reveal that this was a most unwelcome revelation, and carnage begins to reign from the castle down to the dance academy and local village, leaving MarieAnne at a loss as to what to do next. Mercifully for her, she has ANOTHER chance encounter with one of the leading experts in all things Vampiric and supernatural. Dr. Van Hellsing. Who ends up accompanying Marie Anne to her dance school, at which he learns of a terrible curse within the castle grounds. and the murders that have started to reap in…

And. On paper? this sounds great. in practice however…not so much. It would have been no easy feat in surpassing the greatness of the original Hammer classic. Lee and Cushing together are a tour de force. and I personally found that, while this film had some REALLY fun, interesting and thrilling moments. It couldnt quite find its thread and found itself regularly trying to figure out what it ACTUALLY wanted to be…

The script for a starters is very uneven in my opinion. The opening act is a game of two halves, starting off drearily slow and predictable, right up until the point where we get back to the Baronesses castle, at which point things take a turn for the genuinely unsettling and sinister. It really manages to pull the audience in with its twists and turns and opressive and intimidating atmosphere. Aaaaaaaand then Marieanne flees the castle at the end of the first act, going into the second act. And the whole film kind of hard resets in tone.

Act 2 runs at an absolute crawl for the most part, as we basically are reintroduced to Van Hellsing, and then have to spend an UNGODLY amount of time retracing the steps of the movie that we’ve already JUST sat through in the first act…with a tiny bit of additional backstory about the village, and the baron to try and sweeten the deal (it didnt for me…) This then leads into a pretty decent setup for the 3rd act with the Baron discovering the Dance academy and beginning the process of assembling his titular ‘Brides’ and once again the tension starts ramping up with some genuinely out of left turn plot twists I didnt see coming for a moment!

But!, it’s all for naught, because the film undoes any of the big plot twists that set up the 3rd act in the final 15 minutes or so, and then does a VERY underwhelming final fight before dumping us out to end credits without much in the way of resolution or closure. it just kind of ends, and we’re expected to be okay with that…Which I wasnt.

Like I say, I thought this film had some genuinely interesting and surrealist moments scattered throughout, with quite a few moments clearly being the inspiration for the BBC’s ‘League of Gentlemen’ series. But it really struggles to muster much in the way of enthusiasm from me when they keep setting up interesting plot twists and shocking revelations, only to then not do much with them, or undo them entirely before the end credits.

Tone is all over the place, the film cant decide if it wants the terror and suspense of the original film, a hearty dose of comedy, more of a thriller vibe, or to be a mystery film. So it samples elements of all of the above with mixed to poor results in my opinion.

The characters are kind of dull, the Baron doesnt really command much authority, and coming after Lee’s interpretation of the count, left me positively tepid. Van Hellsing gets very little growth here over his place in the first film. non of the other characters really leave a lasting impression either…When I can say confidently, that the most detailed and lasting character in this film is the mad housekeeper who has ABSOLUTELY no pacing to her characrers emotions, she just wrecking balls through like…8 completely different emotions in 10 seconds. and comes out with some amazing lines…thats not a good thing, thats a problem…Because your film has Peter Cushing fighting and army of the undead…and I’d rather watch an old housekeeper pound the floor cackle crying about the nasty baron…

I would suggest that the direction and cine at least hold up to the lower to middle ends of the first films style and distinctness. we have lavish location work, rich and sumptuous sets, riddled with intricate detail. decent sequence work and rich use of midnight blues and plush reds to help offset the browns and earthier tones. It looks pretty decent. BUT! it doesnt quite hit the dizzy highs of the more iconic moments of the original, and never quite finds its own visual identity. I wanted to come away from this film feeling like I could differentiate it from any of the other vampire films from this era. But it just isnt that inventive. its fine…good even! but just not distinct or great enough to really fully win me over…

That AND for some reason the amount of ‘Hammer Blood’ is heavily reduced in this film over the previous one. you get a couple of ‘Staking’ scenes that show that sweet sweet paint red blood…but not a whole lot else…in fact, the gore and more graphic violent scenes are all toned quite a bit back in this one compared to the original, possibly due to the controversy the previous entry caused between Universal and the BBFC…

Direction of the cast is serviceable, everyone seems to really put themselves into the roles and theres some decent set choreography and prop work here. The fight sequences though again, seem a bit paired back over the original and come across as less intense as a result…which is a shame.

As for the performances? Peter Cushing rarely if ever dissapoints, and here is no exception, probably 30% of this films saving graces fall solely at his feet, and while I think pound for pound I prefer his Victor Frankenstein, his Van Hellsing here is still equally fun to watch. Freda Jackson as the demented housekeeper Greta makes up about another 30-40% of why I love this film, she’s manic, high energy and genuinely demented at times. I had a real soft spot for her and enjoyed her performance immensely here. Unfortunately David Peel as the Baron/lead Vampire did very little for me. He just doesnt have the presence, energy or range I want in a Vampire. he’s unsuspecting, yes, i’ll give him that. But when he flicks into Vampire mode I just kind of sigh…he wasnt for me…

Martita hunt however as the Baroness is a STORM and im genuinely upset we didnt get to see even more of her performance. she has a very unsettling presence and her deliveries are a mixture of unnervingly calm and pointed, in just the right balance that made me effortlessly watch her. I really wish she’d had more screen time as shes splended from start to finish.

throw in a fairly generic Hammer horror score of oomps and womps from the orchestral section that just about do the job, but again, seldome bring anything new to the table and I just found myself kind of wishing that this had been more than just a half hearted rush job…

Its by no means a bad movie at all, visually its very impressive and there is absolutely fun to be had here, but its nothing we didnt really see before in the previous film, only now everything looks quite considerbly cheaper, is much more toned down on gore and violence and feels incredibly padded just to hit the base runtime.

I do think this may be one that I warm to on rewatches, but in this instance? it was a significant drop in quality. Probably still worth your time if you like Vampire movies, but I wouldnt call this a Hammer ‘Essential’

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

by tytdreviews

The ‘Pokemon’ Movies – RANKED!

I wanna be the very best, like noone ever was, to catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause.

I will travel across the land, searching far and wide, each pokemon to understand, the power that’s inside!

Pokemon! gotta catchem all (It’s you and me..)
Pokemon! I know its my Destiny!
Pokemon! Oh! you’re my best friend, in a world we must defend!
Pokemon! A heart so true! Our journey will pull us through!

You teach me, and I’ll teach you!

Pokemon! (Gotta Catch’em all)
Gotta Catch’em all

Pokemon!

  1. Pokémon: Jirachi – Wish Maker
  2. Pokémon 3: The Movie
  3. Pokémon Heroes
  4. Pokémon 4Ever
  5. Pokémon the Movie 2000
  6. Pokémon: The First Movie
  7. Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/list/the-pokemon-movies-ranked/

by tytdreviews