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| TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970) |
Who?
Director: Peter Sasdy
Producer: Aida Young
Screenplay: John Elder
Cast: Christopher Lee, Linda Hayden, Anthony Corlan, Geoffrey Keen, John Carson, Peter Sallis, Ralph Bates, Isla Blair, Gwen Watford, Roy Kinnear, Michael Ripper, Martin Jarvis, Russell Hunter
How?
Hammer's 1968 Dracula Has Risen From the Grave was a huge success for the company and James Carreras was determined that they should produce a new Dracula film every year. However, Christopher Lee was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the role, and Hammer reluctant to pay his increasingly higher fee. It was eventually decided to go ahead with a film without Dracula in it and Anthony Hinds ('John Elder') was asked to produce a script. Hinds envisaged a film based on a group of decadent gents, one of whom drinks the blood of Dracula in a Satanic ritual and thus becomes a vampire himself. Hammer's US partner Warner, however, were not happy and so Lee was reluctantly persuaded to return as the Count, and Hinds hastily fitted him in around the story - the devotee now becomes Dracula humself! Peter Sasdy, who had worked on Hammer's TV series Journey to the Unknown was hired to direct, and the film was shot at Elstree Studios. It was, however, to mark the beginning of the end for Anthony Hinds at Hammer. The film was accused by Kevin Francis of having plagiarised some of his scenes from a rejected script he'd submitted to Hammer, and money had to be paid out before Hammer could release it. Hinds had had enough and left the company a year later.
What?
Commencing where the previous film left off, an English antique dealer travelling through Europe encounters Dracula impaled on the cross and watches as he crumbles to dust. Scooping up some of his blood, and taking the ring and cape, he brings them to his shop in London. Meanwhile a group of respectable London gentlemen are anything but in private, bored and looking for 'extremes' in experience when they make their night outings together. On one of these they encounter a fellow seeker who persuades them to buy Dracula's remains and join him in a satanic ritual to raise the Count to life, which involves the drinking of his reconstituted blood. In the end they balk at this and only he drinks, falling, screaming in agony, to the ground. In terror the others kick him to death and flee. However, from his remains Dracula arises and vows revenge on the men. To do this he intends to feed on and corrupt the men's children and force them to kill their own fathers.
So?
Given the confusion over whether this was to be a Lee picture or not, and his last minute insertion into the screenplay, one might expect Taste to have suffered as a result. On the contrary Taste is one of the more interesting of Hammer's Dracula offerings. The main reason for this is that Anthony Hinds created what is in essence a morality play. The main focus of the story is not really Dracula but the exposing of Victorian hypocrisy and the consequences which flow from such hypocrisy. Hinds' screenplay revels in showing the face of gentlemanly respectability which the three main characters portray to the world, and the seedy flirtation with the forbidden and search for new experiences which they conduct in secret. This is made all the more stark by the puritan morality which they place upon their children. In Hinds' picture such hypocrisy must be punished, and that punishment comes in the form of Lee's Count. But it is not Dracula who punishes directly, it is through his attempted corruption of the three men's children that he fashions the tools for punishment.
Lee's Count, then, does not feature predominantly in the film, and it is all the better for that. When he does appear it is almost as a satanic figure, corrupting, goading, and urging his tools along on his mission of revenge. Lee, of course, had perfected his Dracula to the point where he could do it in his sleep. Here, however, he appears to be disinterested, almost on automatic pilot, which makes his infrequent appearances beneficial. But the rest of the cast make a splendid job of carrying the story - Geoffrey Keen makes a particularly unsavoury character, with possible connotations of incest against his daughter (Linda Hayden). Peter Sallis' is equally distasteful, being weak, cowardly and ineffectual. John Carson, however, stands out in what becomes almost a heroic role as he realises what the men have done. Of the children, Isla Blair makes a pleasingly immoral vamp, and a young Linda Hayden also stands out, along with future Vampire Circus star Anthony Corlan. The two outstanding performances, however, must be Ralph Bates' corrupted Lord Courtley (who sadly exits much too soon) and Russell Hunter as Felix the brothel keeper - in which may be spied a young Madeline Smith in her first Hammer role.
Where Taste particularly differs from previous Dracula outings is in the new attitude toward sex and violence being taken by the British censors. Although still cut before release, Taste was the first Hammer film released in the UK that was permitted to show nudity (the infamous brothel scene), and some of the scenes are less 'cartoonishly' violent that we might have been used to. The repulsive blood drinking ceremony would also, no doubt, have not made it through previously. In all, the film has a more 'adult' feel to it than previous pictures. Peter Sasdy keeps the story flowing briskly and there are some nice set pieces - e.g. the initial death of Dracula, the brothel scene, the satanic ceremony - and a generally creepy atmosphere, although the film is city-bound. James Bernard provides a really wonderful score, and the set design is excellent. Where the film does perhaps fall down is in its ending - almost as if Dracula suddenly realises he's been hiding in a church all this time and dies. But this is a minor point in an enjoyable film that is almost a hinge between the previous Draculas and what was to come in Scars, AD 1972 and Satanic Rites. A perhaps underrated member of the series, Taste is unusual and all the better for it.
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