Dracula A.D. 1972
Reviewed By : AVL

Release Year : 1972

Directed By : Alan Gibson

Written By : Don Houghton

Starring : Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham

Related Links : IMDB

 

Lee and Cushing re-unite for this somewhat humorous - though probably unintentionally so - effort which sees the toothy count resurrected and terrifying the cool cats and hip chicks of London. Get ready for big hair, open shirts, flares, and all the assorted trappings of the era. Ya know how it goes, bring on the 70s music and the moronic, terminally stoned looking kids who decide to have a Black Mass in an abandoned church - as ya do, we all been there and done that - and bring back the not so dead Count.

If you haven't guessed it already, then let me tell you that this is great fun! It's aged really badly, and has a really curious feeling about it, like a Dracula flick meets Carry On At Your Convenience maybe. Lee and Cushing struggle to lend it seriousness, but they can't put a dent in the campy atmosphere - Dracula was not meant to see the light of the 1970s, resulting in a movie of terrible, unplanned genius.

You can tell that the Hammer Horror Dracula productions were reaching their end by here, that the immortal team of Cushing and Lee as Dracula and Van Helsing were nearing the end of their on screen battles. In fact, they would lock horns only once more, in the 1973 film Satanic Rites of Dracula, which many panned as a terrible movie, yet is a film which I truly liked a lot and felt made a fitting conclusion to the battles between 2 horror legends, and 2 of the richest characters in horrors verdant tapestry.

As for Dracula AD1972 though, I can't in all honesty say that it is a great film, or even that it is a good film, but I can recommend it without reservation as an enjoyable watch and an example of something rendered great by its very awkwardness and strange transplantation of the cultured Count into hedonistic hippy land.