Review of Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) by Thomas T — 24 Jan 2010

Regarded by many to be one of the best of the Sequels to "Dracula Prince of Darkness" it literally picks off right where the last film left off, with a British salesman getting lost in the Carpathian woods and, drawn by the baleful and eerie death screams of Dracula on that pointy cross from "Dracula has Risen From the Grave.

" Dracula turns to red dust and the guy picks up the dust and the Count cape, ring, and his bling:)-er clasps and takes them back with him to England (why doesn't really matter), where an occultist gets three slimy, hypocritical, businessmen to help him buy the Count's blood and personal affects.

The occultist called "Lord Courtly" convinces them that they'll get eternal pleasure if they accompany him in a black mass and you guessed it-TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (isn't that a great title?!) -the effect of putting the dab of his own blood into each of their goblets filled with Dracula's powder blood boiling over and becoming liquid blood is low tech cool btw.

This grosses them out and after Courtly drinks the blood and starts freakin' out man:) they beat him to death with their canes in a scared frenzy-oops:) They run and something really creepy and visually awesome happens: Dracula Possesses the body of Courtly- ghostly winds gather grave dust over his head and body becoming a shell which cracks and we behold his face has changed to that of DRACULA-Lee back again and for a moment sporting some really solid red contact lenses! He rises and vows revenge: "They killed my servant-they too shall all.

..die!" OK little thin motivation but OK (one wonders what would've happened if they all had drank-would there have been FOUR Dracula clones running around? And so Dracula does what he always does-seduces/hypnotizes the female at least one male loved ones of the people who wronged him and one by one starts bumping them off, wanting to glower over their corpses in blood (very bloody) satisfaction.

The characters are a little thin here and our hero (another Daltry look alike:) doesn't take any real action against the Count until almost two thirds of the way in, but there's a lot of dark cool set pieces here and Lee's Dracula is still good and has more dialogue then I expected (which isn't much:).

This one seems to be about addiction, and hypocracy-how your sin will find you out, but ultimately Dracula is vanquished by the power of God Himself it seems (I won't give too much away but lets just say a church is involved and you discover a new way to kill a vampire), even though it's kind of heavy handed.

This is also one of the first Hammer films to get an R-Rating-it's very-very bloody (lot's of stabbings and some guy gets a shovel in the face) and has three or four shots of gratuitous female nudity in the brothel scene towards the beginning-so that kind of puts a damper on the film in regards to my unapologetically prudish sensibility, but overall it's a well made picture with some surprisingly good effects and a must see for Dracula fans.

Finally we have "Dracula A.D. 1970"...