The Midnight Ramble

Scars of Dracula

Dracula AD 1972

The Satanic Rites of Dracula

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Wednesday, 28 October 2026

BITE-SIZED: The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Alan Gibson, 1973)

Dr Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and his niece Jessica (Joanna Lumley) join forces with London police to track members of a strange new cult led by a mysterious figure intent on taking over the world…

At this stage of the Dracula ‘saga’, I was watching these movies with the same mindset as Christopher Lee - by contractual obligation.

Made by the same team behind AD 1972 as a direct sequel, this movie is trying. I just found it to be a bore.

The series was trying anything to stay relevant - here it is going for a low-budget riff on James Bond, with Dracula behind the scenes as an evil mastermind, who is developing a plague to wipe out humanity.

While the stars are back again, the film around them is more like a low-energy action thriller.

As Lee’s final appearance, it is a disappointment - caught in trees, he is immobilised before being staked.

The first film in this watch-along where I actively had to force myself to keep watching.

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Scars of Dracula

Dracula AD 1972

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!

Dracula AD 1972 (Alan Gibson, 1972)

Resurrected by his servant Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame) in contemporary London, Dracula (Christopher Lee) seeks vengeance on the Van Helsing family, scholar Lorrimer (Peter Cushing) and his niece Jessica (Stephanie Beacham).

A reboot of the series, with returning stars Lee and (for the first time since 1960) Cushing, Dracula AD 1972 is a strange beast.

Despite the familiar faces in their familiar roles, these characters are meant to be completely different from the incarnations we have seen previously.

This review is going to be a lot shorter than the previous ones - frankly, this is the point in the series where my interest and enjoyment dipped.

It starts promisingly: After opening with a high-energy confrontation between Van Helsing (this time, Lawrence) and Dracula on top of a speeding carriage, the action segues to 1972, with a shot of a plane flying overhead and the crash of an electric guitar on the score.

It is a solid entree, but once we hit the present, the film has the feel of middle-aged men trying to write for the ‘yoof’.

Our introduction to Jessica and her friends is a party (with the camera ogling a young gyrating midriff). While the elderly guests look on aghast, the young people carouse (including a couple has sex under the dining table), before the police break it up.

This scene is rather over the top, setting the kids up as rebels - but they spend the rest of the film sedately sitting in their local coffee shop. It seems like the filmmakers’ inspirations ran out fairly quickly.

Christopher Neame is the one arresting part of the film, as Dracula’s young familiar.

Johnny Alucard foregrounds the queer subtext previous films had hinted at - he chews his fingers lustily while watching Dracula bite a victim.

Once he has been turned, his own first victim is a man.

Neame manages to evoke the youthful libertine far more effectively than Ralph BAtes did in Taste the Blood of Dracula, and gives the effete killer a purring malevolence that gives the film a sliver more tension than it deserves.

It is a pity his showdown with Van Helsing is so unintentionally farcical - undone by natural light and a running shower.

Cushing is in good form, and it is interesting to see him play an intellectual forced to become a man of action.

However, there is little to latch onto. The final fight is cursory - more should have been made of Van Helsing’s lack of experience. It is there in Cushing’s performance - he seems genuinely terrified of Lee - but there is nothing to the scene.

With a disastrous score, Dracula AD 1972 is a nothingburger of a movie. Somehow, worse than Scars.

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Scars of Dracula

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!

Tuesday, 27 October 2026

Scars of Dracula (Roy Ward Baker, 1970)

After his brother Paul (Christopher Matthews) goes missing, Simon Carlson (Dennis Waterman) and his fiance Sarah Framsen (Jenny Hanley) follow his trail to Castle Dracula, where the Count (Christopher Lee) proves to be a distant if willing host.

His hospitality does come with some unexpected - and potentially fatal - conditions…

For context, I watched this film before its predecessor.

Purely on director pedigree, I expected to enjoy this movie more than Taste the Blood of Dracula. Instead the inverse was true.

Directed by Roy Ward Baker, a fine craftsman who was coming off of the fantastic The Vampire Lovers, Scars of Dracula was intended as something of a reboot for the flagging franchise. Boasting several ideas and moments which had been previously utilised, it has the ingredients to be great.

Sadly the film suffered from a low budget and rushed schedule, factors which Baker blamed for the final result.

Before we put the stake through its heart, I want to bring up some highlights, such as the opening sequence.

The camera enters Dracula’s castle to rest on his cloak draped over a slab.

It turns out the camera is a POV from a bat that drops blood on his ashes, which triggers his resurrection.

A short time later - following the murder of a young girl - an angry mob of villagers burn the castle to the ground.

They head back home to their church, where they find their families massacred - it is a shocking reveal that sets Dracula up as more powerful and wrathful than previously depicted.

Blood drips on candles cross-fade to red birthday candles to introduce to the boring real leads of the movie.

This opening is so effective, it helped keep up my interest for the rest of the film - I doubt it would carry the same power on another viewing.

While the film’s budget is clear throughout, the biggest disappointment is the leading man.

Christopher Lee gets far more to do than any of the previous sequels - but there is something detached and off about his performance.

Part of the effect is the sense of repetition.

When party animal Paul () barges into the castle, his interactions with Dracula play like a reprise of his first meeting with Jonathan Harker.

It almost feels like Lee is baffled to be going through the same motions again.

The film often feels like a greatest hits of the Dracula series - we get another familiar named Klove (Patrick Troughton) ala Prince of Darkness, albeit with a very different personality. We also get Dracula killing and feeding on his brides (Dracula Has Risen From The Grave).

It also draws more inspiration from the novel (we get Dracula’s lizard-like crawl along the outside of his castle).

There is more overt violence - Dracula stabs his bride to death after she betrays him; the Count burns Klove on the back with a heated blade.

While that also sounds interesting, it is played with almost no sense of energy or imagination.

As Dracula’s youthful opponent, Waterman is earnest but dull. He gets little to do, and has almost nothing to do with Dracula’s demise - the Count is struck by lightning as he is about to impale Waterman with a metal rod.

As Waterman’s love interest, Jenny Hanley is beautiful as Sarah - but gets nothing to do.

The one bright spot amongst the cast is Patrick Troughton as Klove.

In contrast to his predecessor of the same name, this Klove has his motivations which end up in conflict with his master.

He falls for Sarah from a photograph, which puts him at odds with Dracula for most of the runtime, and gives it simmering tension that the film otherwise lacks.

There is a sadomasochistic streak to their dynamic, as Klove clearly still wants to be in his boss’s good graces (at one point, he proves himself to the vampire by kidnapping a young maiden for his sustenance).

Troughton is in great form, leaning into making Klove pathetically human, driven by his own selfish impulses - it is a portrait of human evil that feels far more sophisticated than the film around it.

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