Review of The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) by Thomas W — 10 May 2004

[b]The Satanic Rites of Dracula[/b].

This was my second [b][i]Hammer horror[/i][/b] film and the first with both the Legendary [b][i]Christopher Lee & Peter Cushing[/i][/b]. The other was[b][i] Frankenstein and The Monster from hell [/i][/b]which stared Peter Cushing as Barron Von Frankeinstein. I really enjoyed that one, far from perfect, but a fun film. So going into The Satanic Rites of Dracula I really wasn't sure what to expect.

[b][i]The Story-[/i][/b]The Story was sub par at best. An interesting concept, but played out to sporadicly for my taste. Plus I really found the last half of the film to be lack luster. Especially the ending. Which I really did not like.

[b][i]The Cast-[/i][/b]Great cast that were very under used. Lee spends very little time on screen and his talent was wasted. Cushing was the standout in this film. The man just has amazing screen presense. Its too bad many folks will never know his work outside of his work in Star Wars. The rest of the cast seemed to be really have very little going on for them.

[b][i]The F/X's-[/i][/b]The F/X's were good. Considering the time period of the movie I can say they were actually pretty impressive.

[b][i]The Cinematography-[/i][/b]Some very good cinematography in this film. For a B grade movie it was impressive at times. Allthough one thing that I can say kinda annoyed me and didn't really have anything to do with the cinematography was the editing. There were some very stupid and obvious mistakes.

[b][i]Overall-[/i][/b]Not really that impressed. There were possibilities with the story, but they just didn't really go anywhere. There characters that should have had more screen time didn't. Just a film that could have been so much more and fell short of what it could have been.