[HorrorScience] The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

After a long hiatus, I bring back the Dracula saga created by Hammer Productions, which began with Horror of Dracula (1958), had its first sequel (or spin-off of Van Helsing) in Dracula's Brides (1960) and a bunch of direct sequels like Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula returns from the grave (1968), The power of Dracula's blood (1970) and Dracula A.D 1972 (1972).

This time it's time to talk about the seventh film in the saga, known as The satanic rites of Dracula (The Satanic Rites of Dracula) which continues in a very direct way what was seen in Dracula A.D. 1972, since the events take place only two years after the outcome of that film.

The film begins by showing us how a sacrificial ritual is carried out in an isolated mansion in the city. One of the security guards makes a mistake and that allows a badly injured prisoner to escape from his captors and be rescued at the last moment by the police.

That man was a spy who had the mission of obtaining information about the strange events that took place in that mansion. The information he gives to his companions reveals that very influential figures (politicians, landowners, scientists...) are participating in these rituals.

Due to the particular nature of the topic being discussed, the police turn to Van Helsing, who relates this type of rituals to vampirism, under the skeptical gaze of the members of the police, who will soon prove to what extent he is right.

Van Helsing tells them that to summon Dracula they would need access to his remains, but that he killed the vampire a couple of years ago in a cathedral (at the end of Dracula A.D. 1972). In the place where that confrontation took place there is now an office building, where a powerful businessman named D. D. Denham lives locked up, whom no one has ever seen.

Will Denham be related to Dracula? Will the police solve the mystery of the satanic rites in the mansion?

The first time I saw this movie it bored me to death, although that may have been motivated by the fact that I set out to watch the entire saga in a short period of time and by the time I got to the last movies I was already pretty burned out. Also, why deny it, the previous film (Dracula A.D. 1972) I found it as irregular as it was ridiculous, which surely affected my perception of its sequel.

Today I saw it again, after a long time without seeing any of this saga, and it gave me a slightly more positive feeling (I may be softening). Instead of having music bands and young hippie parties, we find a story of satanic rituals, spies with gadgets worthy of James Bond (even the music will remind us of agent 007 in some scenes) and an absurd plot about a virus that possibly annihilates humanity.

Let's go in parts. The plot of the police spying on satanic rituals is fine, it is a way to introduce the main characters and not have the entire plot depend on Van Helsing. The introduction of the veteran character makes the film move in the right direction and promises us a new duel between Van Helsing and Dracula. However in practice, Van Helsing is used to try to explain that the scientist working for Dracula has created a virus capable of eradicating the human race from the planet. Faced with such a perspective, not even Professor Van Helsing can look for logic. Why would Dracula want to kill the entire human species, if he feeds on it?

Although Van Helsing deduces as one of the reasons that perhaps Dracula wants to die and intends to do so by devastating the entire planet, that plot will completely fall into disarray, since when we see Dracula, we see that not only does he not seem to want to die, but on top of that he is creating a group of accompanying vampires. Dracula's servants thought that the virus was for blackmail and extortion, but according to the Count's plans, his servants would be contaminated to create sources of contagion.

And since I'm talking about Dracula, I'm afraid that in this film the character is not very favored in general terms. In the previous film it was criticized that Dracula did not really interact with current society (at that time) and that therefore it made no sense to make a film in the 70s if the vampire played the same role as always. This time they show us a Dracula who in just 2 years has become a powerful businessman who lives in an office building. It's not that this isn't credible (in the film it is shown that he can hypnotize people, so he can get whatever he wants...), but the excuse of showing us Dracula as a businessman leads us to the unfortunate scene where Van Helsing and Dracula talk while sitting at a desk where an attempt is made to hide the vampire's face against the light, even though you can clearly see that it is him.

However, the scenes of Dracula attacking his victims, as well as the great scene where he forces one of his servants to use the lethal virus on himself are quite good, which leads us to regret that the final confrontation between Van Helsing and Dracula is the most ridiculous of the entire series (even surpassing the count's pathetic ending in Dracula, Prince of darkness).

Honestly, it feels like no one knew what to do with the Count anymore and they tried to waste their last ideas on this movie. You have to admit that in some ways this movie improves on what was seen in the previous one and that there are some great scenes that are covered up by the rest of the footage, like the part with the entire mansion burning and Dracula's follower dying from the virus. The concept of Dracula influencing important people in modern society to corrupt them seems very good to me, but its execution is regrettable.

The saga and its actors seem exhausted, the idea of ​​bringing Dracula to the current moment has not been the most successful (they exploit him in two films and in neither of them do they take advantage of him) and the ideas to end Dracula in the final part of the film are increasingly worse, so that this film is more in line with its predecessor than with the first Hammer Productions films with the vampire.

Curiosities:

• The initial title of this film was Dracula is Dead…and Well and Living in London, as a parody of the musical Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Christopher Lee publicly expressed his displeasure with that title, as it gave the film a parody aspect that it did not have, and it was eventually changed.
• Although the final title was The Satanic Rites of Dracula, in France it was changed to Dracula vit toujours à London (Dracula still lives in London), possibly influenced by the film's initial title. In the United States it also underwent changes, renaming it as Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (I don't know the reason, but perhaps it was to avoid problems that the word “Satanic” in the real title could give.
• Esta fue la última vez que Christopher Lee interpretó a Drácula en las películas de Hammer.
• En esta película se mencionan muchos métodos para poder atacar a los vampiros y curiosamente, se usan todos ellos durante el largometraje.