The Curse of Frankenstein/Taste the Blood of Dracula [1970] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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The Curse of Frankenstein/Taste the Blood of Dracula [1970] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Christopher Lee , Geoffrey Keen , Gwen Watford , Linda Hayden , and Peter Sallis
Director: Peter Sasdy , and Terence Fisher
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Revenge Of Frankenstein [1958]

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed [1969]

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave [1968]

ASIN: B0009UZG5A
Release Date: 2005-08-30

Average customer rating:

Hammer still got the knack

Sins of the fathers

Taste the Blood of Dracula

Lee is wasted

An Excellent Hammer Horror

Taste the Blood of Dracula [1970] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Christopher Lee , Geoffrey Keen , Gwen Watford , Linda Hayden , and Peter Sallis
Director: Peter Sasdy
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

All Family Favourites | Family Favourites | Children's DVD | Categories | DVD | Video
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Similar Items:

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave [1968]

Scars Of Dracula [1970]

Dracula - Prince Of Darkness [1965]

The Satanic Rites of Dracula [1973]

Horror of Dracula [1958] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

ASIN: B0001FVE9K
Release Date: 2004-04-27

Amazon.co.uk Review

Taste the Blood of Dracula is one of the best of Christopher Lee's Dracula series for Hammer. A group of businessmen who, out of sight of their families, like nothing more than to frequent brothels and generally behave in sensation-seeking ways, are persuaded by Dracula's servant (a splendidly manic Ralph Bates) that summoning up the orthodontically-challenged aristocrat would be the ultimate thrill. They warily agree, purchasing relics for the necessary ritual from a shifty dealer (Roy Kinnear--who else?), but panic halfway through the proceedings and decide to kick their initiator to death instead. Unfortunately, it's too late, and Dracula materialises as they make good their escape, swearing to avenge the murder of his servant.

While the subsequent descent into paranoia by the three villains-Dracula himself hardly counts in comparison with this odious bunch--isn't exactly the stuff of Rosemary's Baby, it still infuses the plot with an element of psychodrama that is unusual for a Hammer fang-fest. There are strong performances pretty much all round, but Peter "Clegg" Sallis quakes exceptionally nicely as one of the trio of miscreants. The sets, props and costumes are of an unusually high order, too. --Roger Thomas

Customer Reviews:

Hammer still got the knack.......2008-02-28

The 5th installment of Hammers Dracula films is excellent in my opinion. There was a review in a newsapaper stating that this was a recovery from the last film (risen from the grave). I think people said that because there was no one else besides Lee of any real substance. Ralph Bates fills that role excellently not as an adversary but as a catalyst in reviving Dracula with the help of Roy Kinnear and Peter Sallis as well as other dodgy blokes. The ending is a bit of a letdown as it isn't completly clear how Lee dies(which is why I can only give a 4)
The plot 3 dodgy repressed victorian dignitaries visit various brothels and like to think themselves adventurers in the darker part of human nature. On one of their quests they meet Ralph Bates who promises to get them higher than they have ever been. They must purchase some items of a dodgy salesman (roy kinnear). The items are a pendant,ring and a testube full of dried blood which all belong to a certain Count Dracula. When they are asked to drink the blood they all "bottle it" and poor Ralphie necks the lot and starts having some sort of satanic fit the gentlemen genorously put him out of his misery. However the count has been summonded and has revenge on his mind.

Sins of the fathers.......2007-12-15

Taste the Blood of Dracula follows on so directly from Dracula Has Risen From the Grave that, after one particularly bizarre piece of deus ex machina that borders on the inspired, it begins with Roy Kinnear literally stumbling into the last scene of the movie. On a less welcome note it also marks the point at which an increasingly reticent Christopher Lee was reduced to a cameo figure as the Count - it's not until the halfway point that he's resurrected in a less than convincing display of special effects. Until then much of the film is carried, and rather well, by Geoffrey Keen's Bible-bashing strict disciplinarian Victorian dad, the kind of man you can set your watch by as he sets off to do `charity work' in the East End with his respectable friends John Carson and Peter Sallis saving fallen women - about two each once a month in Roy Hudd's brothel discreetly located in the backrooms of a soup kitchen. It's there that he and his pals are surprised playing horsie by Ralph Bates' dissolute disinherited aristo who has sold his soul to the Devil and offers to broker the same deal for them if they'll buy Dracula's cape and blood for him, reasoning that "Having tried everything that your narrow imaginations can suggest, you're bored to death with it all, right?" Naturally it all ends badly with Bates getting a severe case of indigestion after drinking the blood of the title and getting kicked to death by his new friends, conveniently providing Dracula with a new body and a new mission - to destroy all three men through their children (a typical role-call of amply-bosomed totty, future BBC regulars and supporting actors who never made it to the major leagues in the forms of Linda Hayden, Isla Blair, Martin Jarvis and Anthony Higgins in the days when he was still calling himself Anthony Corlan) while Michael Ripper's ineffectual detective displays a pronounced lack of interest in the mounting body count.

The idea of the sins of the fathers being revenged by their children is a good one, offering both a neat twist and a reason for Lee's extremely limited screen time that keeps him very much to the sidelines until the disappointing finale, but it's certainly one of the more entertaining sequels and, a couple of lapses such as the resurrection scene aside, boasts superior and atmospheric direction from Peter Sasdy with some surprisingly graceful camerawork. It's also the last of the Hammer Draculas that looks like they spent some money on it - when they churned out Scars of Dracula the same year, it looked like they'd spent all their money on this one and had only pocket change and whatever was left over in the studio wardrobe for that!

Warner's DVD offers a good widescreen transfer with the original trailer as the only extra.

Taste the Blood of Dracula.......2007-10-08

With the substantial success of the previous 2 sequels, Hammer began filming Taste the Blood of Dracula in 1969. Released early in 1970, this film, perhaps partially drawing on Hammer's earlier success with Christopher Lee in the film 'The Devil Rides Out', (1968) would deepen the connection between Dracula & Satanism still further. But how would Hammer ressurect the Count yet again? This was acheived in a flashback to the end of 'Dracula Has Risen From The Grave', in which we see that Dracula's destruction whilst impaled on the cross had been witnessed from the opposite angle by a traveller played by Roy Kinnear, who had been thrown from his carriage. This traveler called Weller, scooped up some of Dracula's blood, which has disintegrated to a red (as opposed to the grey of the first 2 movies) powder, along with Dracula's cloak & clasp & ring etc... before eventually returning to his native London. This was finally a way of getting Dracula at large in Victorian London, which had been completely omitted by Hammer in their original movie.
The London setting gives Hammer an oppurtunity to go to town on their set design once again. The film is as visually sumptuous as any costume drama, & is absolutely awash with Victorian richness & english gothic beauty. It's in this setting that we meet 3 rich Victorian 'gentlemen' who meet secretly to seek out forbidden thrills to enhance their staid, borgoueis lives. On the pretence of doing charity work, they visit brothels, whilst compounding their hypocrasy further by limiting the natural desires of their young adult children who live under the rule of patriachal tyranny.
Aspiring to go further in their thrill seeking, led by William Hargood, they meet with a young decadent upstart called Lord Courtly, who is played with great relish by the suberb & underated Ralph Bates. Courtly persuades these rich fathers to part with some of their brass in order to buy the remnants of Dracula from Weller, so that the power seeking Lord Courtly can ressurect Dracula by performing a Satanistic ritual, in which he mixes his own blood with the powdered remains of Dracula, & encourages his charges to drink red frothing mixture. But the rich thrill seekers have clearly bitten off more than they can chew, & they can't bring themselves to go through with it. So Courtly drinks the foul brew, & after he promptly falls ill, the cowardly bunch help Courtly to his death by beating him with their sticks. But after they've left Courtly for dead after imbibing Dracula's blood, he is transformed & ressurected into Dracula, & Lee, in virtually his only line of the movie, gravely intones: 'They have destroyed my servant...they will be destroyed!' - Upon which the Count begins to wreak a revenge upon 3 men, via their children.
Hargood & his companions begin to fall apart in their fear, & Dracula soon moves in on Hargood's beautiful daughter Alice, played by the gorgeous Linda Hayden, to be his first victim. Once again there's a magnified sense of anticipation when Alice is under Dracula's hypnotic influence, that goes beyond the previous sexual hints & almost borders on the semi-orgasmic. Linda Hayden acheives possibly the best portrayal since the first movie of a woman under completely under Dracula's spell. At the Count's instruction, Alice kills her despotic father with great relish by forcefully clobbering him with a spade, bringing Geoffrey Keen's splendid perforamance as Hargood to an abrupt end. I love the look that she gives Dracula as she turns to seek his approval with a satisfied smile on her face!
Alice then lures her friend Lucy Paxton to Dracula's lair, where she initially proves to be somewhat resistant to his mesmerism, but she succumbs after Alice forces her to face the Count, & her reaction to the vampire bite is again remeniscent of sexual ecstacy, whilst Alice wishfully looks on. Meanwhile, the two rich fathers who remain alive, Paxton & Secker, find the vampirized Lucy at the deconsecrated church, & when Secker tries to stake Lucy, the deranged Paxton shoots him, & after a time decides he must do the job himself. But he is shocked when her eyes snap open, & suddenly Dracula & Alice emerge from the shadows, & Paxton finds himself cornered by the 3 vampires, & at Dracula's bidding, he is staked by his own daughter, helped by Alice. Lee's Dracula has a literally commanding presence in these scenes as he orchestrates his revenge, which is extracted by the 2 female vampires with smiles of great relish as they kill Paxton!
Next, Lucy seeks out & vampirizes Secker's son Jeremy, (played by a young Martin Jarvis), who in turn kills his father to complete Dracula's revenge on the 3 toffs. Not satisfied with this however, Dracula turns on Lucy after she grovels after him, showing that he can use the vampire bite either to bring about ecstacy, or to kill....
Alice is spared this fate by the onset of the dawn, & whilst Dracula is at rest in his tomb, she lays on top to be close to her master whilst he sleeps. In the meantime, her suitor, Paul, following instructions laid out in a letter which Secker managed to write before he died, is seeking to destroy Dracula & rescue his beloved Alice. On the way to Dracula's lair he finds the now dead Lucy's body, left to drown in the river, before engaging Dracula in a final confrontation, at the old church.
It's at this point that the film lets itself down slightly with a relatively poorly conceived ending, IMO. It's not made explicit in the film, but it appears that Paul resanctifies the church in some way. He places a cross at the door, & relights new candles at the altar, where he also places crosses. In the struggle with Dracula he is betrayed by Alice, who wrestles the golden cross which he is using against Dracula, away from him. Alice is desperate to please her master, but after Dracula rejects her, she throws the cross in his path, trapping him between that one & the other large cross which Paul lodged in the door. Inexplicably, the Count escapes up into the balcony where he hurls various objects at Paul & Alice before he's seemingly overcome by the religious ormamention of the stained glass windows which depict images of Christ & the crucifix etc... Then he simply weakens plummets from the high window, falling to his destruction on the church altar, where his body dissolves to powder once again.
Compared to the previous films, i find this a bit of a feeble & somewhat vague demise for the Count, but in all other respects 'Taste the Blood of Dracula' remains one of my favourite sequels. It's a very dark toned film, quite violent & gory for it's time, & it's steeped in a gothic atmosphere that showcases some excellent performances from likes of John Carson, Peter Sallis, Isla Blair, & particularly from the aforementioned Geoffrey Keen, Linda Hayden, & of course Lee. Special mention again to Ralph Bates who steals the show in the first half of the film as Lord Courtley. With such a superb cast, it never occurs to me whilst i'm watching it, to even notice or feel the lack of Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. Were it not for the poorer ending, this film would get 9/10, on a par with 'Dracula: Prince of Darkness', but the ending, whilst not terrible loses the film half a point for me, So: 8.5/10.

Lee is wasted.......2007-07-29

This 4th film in the Hammer Dracula series starts promisingly. Roy Kinnear witnesses Dracula dying in classic fashion (stake in heart) and keeps the Counts dried blood, Cape and Ring etc. Later in the film he sells these to three English gentleman who are looking for something more exciting than a brothel and are given this opportunity by Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates). He wants to bring Dracula back to life and the 3 gentlemen help him. Of course it all goes wrong, and from there the film goes downhill rapidly.

This really barely deserves three stars. What must Christopher Lee have thought when he read the script? He barely has a dozen words to say in the film, and his opening line is so bad "they have destroyed my servant. they will be destroyed". He must have been paid a lot of money! Sure his phsyical presence is still impressive but overall he never has a chance to put his mark on the film.

The other problem with some of these later Dracula films is the absence of an opponent worthy of mention. Peter Cushing as Van Helsing appears in a couple of the later films in 1972 & 1973 and manages to make these watchable, even though in general the series deterioted with each film. In this film I never believed that Dracula could be beaten...

If you want to buy the best Hammer Dracula films, get the first Dracula film (aka The Horror of Dracula) with Lee and Cushing, this is in a different league from all the sequels. The 2nd film Dracula Prince of Darkness is very watchable. I haven't see the 3rd recently. Of the later ones the last 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula' is worth considering.

An Excellent Hammer Horror.......2006-12-20

This is my favourite of Hammer's Dracula series.
The story concerns three Victorian thrill seekers who looking for greater and greater excitement are persuaded by fellow degenerate Lord Courtley(Ralph Bates, excellent as usual) to participate in a satanic ritual in an abandoned Church. This is where things start to go wrong as Courtley goes into a seizure and is battered to death by the unpleasant trio, his blood resurrecting Dracula. The children of these men are then used by the Count as an instrument of revenge.
The film is very stylish and in some ways the real monsters of the film are the three so called Gentlemen, who pursue their seedy secret life by night. Christopher Lee is given little to do, but is still a commanding presence, and there is strong support from Geoffrey Keen,Peter Sallis, John Carson,Linda Hayden and Gwen Watford

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