 October 18th
Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968)
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave despite it's brilliantly exploitative title is probably the least remembered of all Christopher Lee's Dracula films.
It boasts a fine tightly woven script (mostly), allowing us a glimpse into the lives of merely a handful of characters and a beautifully mischievous performance by Lee as Dracula. Rupert Davies, cast here possibly because Peter Cushing and Andrew Kier were busy, plays the Monsignor, out to bring an end to the Dracula curse still haunting the local peasants even though the vampire had been long since destroyed. Meanwhile his niece played by the stunning Veronica Carlson, cavorts along with her new boyfriend Paul (Barry Andrews) and ends up iarousing Dracula's interest, Together with a misguided priest (Ewan Hooper) and Zena, a local serving wench at the tavern, make up the cast. A special mention to Barbara Ewing as Zena, her bar maid to me is the archetypal tavern wench - warm, bubbly and fun loving with a cleavage to die for. No wonder Dracula instantly goes for her, kudos to director Freddie Francis for giving her such a large role in the film.
Francis comes up with a lot of new ideas for this film. My favourite is setting a large portion of the film in upstairs rooms and having characters come and go via the roof tops of the Shambles style streets below. Its certainly different than being stalked by an unseen assailant along shadowy streets, castle bedrooms or dark woodland trails. Francis along with writer Anthony Hinds bravely decide to explore the thorny subject of faith. Paul, early on, tells the Monsignor he doesn't believe in God, so when it comes to him staking Dracula in what should be the films climactic scene the Count simply tears the stake out from his chest as Paul is a non-believer.
The film has some flaws, mostly early plot points. If Dracula is dead, trapped under ice from the previous film Dracula Prince of Darkness, then who killed the girl in the bell tower at the beginning of the film?. Once revived from the ice in a frankly daft scene involving the priest slipping and landing next to Dracula's frozen body in the icy river (How is it still there, does the ice never melt?) the priest recovers and sees the reflection of Dracula in the river, this goes against all vampire folklore as they don't cast a reflection. Finally what happened to the priests wound on his forehead? where's the blood and cut? Did Dracula lick it clean? All this happens in a five minuite spell and feels so wrong.
Unfortunately as with most of the Dracula films his death scene is also fairly rubbish, poorly thought out and relies on coincidence. Granted the Count being pushed from a balcony and landing on a cross which had just fallen, stood upright itself, is a bit dodgy, but its nowhere near as bad as being struck by lightning whilst holding a metal rod in Scars of Dracula.
Luckily these are minor grumbles in what is otherwise a hugely enjoyable film.
I keep waiting for this to get a UK Blu-ray release but it never comes. It's Warners so is crying out to join the HMV Premium Collection.
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