Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dracula A.D. 1972

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the late-franchise Hammer horror film “Dracula A.D. 1972,” in which Chrisopher Lee’s vampiric prince of darkness rises from the ashes a century later in groovy London. Are hippies and the descendents of Doctor Van Helsing up to the challenge? Find out… (originally published 10/27/2023)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is going
to be an episode that originally published ten twenty seven,
twenty twenty three. The film is Dracula AD nineteen seventy two,
starring the Great Christopher Lee as the Prince of Darkness
who has risen from the Ashes a century later in

(00:25):
groovy London, where he encounters hippies and also a descendant
of doctor Van Helsing. So, without further ado, let's dive
right in.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Limb.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Cinema we're going to be talking about the Oh. I
usually say the year, but now I'm not so sure.
Was it actually released in nineteen seventy two?

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yes it was, And I want to stress Joe that
it was released nineteen seventy two of the common era.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Okay, not nineteen seventy two. Bce. Right, this is Dracula
AD nineteen seventy two, the hammer horror movie starring Christopher
Lee and Peter Cushing.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
That's right. So last week we not only did a
Frankenstein movie. We did one of the best known and
most beloved of all Frankenstein movies, nineteen thirty five is
Bride of Frankenstein. And to follow that up, I just
I have been feeling weeks in advance like we would
need to do a Dracula movie after that. But which one, right,
There's so many Dracula films to choose from. We've been

(01:44):
talking about doing nineteen thirty one's Dracula or the Mexican
Dracula film that came out the same year. Those I
think are both fine choices. But I found I was
craving not just a drac movie, but a weird spin
on Dracula, which brings us back to the world of
late franchise ingenuity, which is something I always enjoy. You

(02:05):
know that point in a film franchise where people realize,
all right, we've done the same thing over and over again.
We need to go in a new direction. We need
to spice it up.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
What can we do Dracula goes West or Dracula in
Space that's actually that's a real movie, Dracula three thousand.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, Yeah, these are all valid choices. Dracula in the
Old West has also been done. I just love it
when a franchise gets maybe a little desperate and starts
taking some risks. And that's where we are with the
seventh film in Hammer Horror's Dracula series. Kicked it off
with fifty eighth Stracula the nineteen sixties, The Brides of Dracula,
then Dracula Prince of Darkness in sixty six, then Dracula

(02:45):
Has Risen from the Grave in sixty eight, then Taste
the Blood of Dracula in seventy oh, and then we
have Scars of Dracula. I think that's the same year.
And then we get to Dracula AD nineteen seventy two,
which had the fat working title of Dracula Today.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
It sounds almost like the name of a publication, like
it's a magazine for the modern Dracula connoisseur.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, alright. I mentioned it to my wife and she's like,
it sounds like a morning show, like Dracula hosts the
morning show. It's Dracula Today, and he's got his hot
mug of blood. So yeah, I think it's so at
this point in the film franchise, Yeah, we're definitely in
that experimental mode, and it would stay that way for
the duration. The film to follow this up was seventy
three's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, which I have not seen,

(03:33):
but I've definitely flagged it because it's my understanding that
it's sort of a Dracula spy movie.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yes, I have seen this one. I've mentioned this on
the show before, but this was an especially hilarious movie
viewing experience because I watched it with early YouTube auto
generated subtitles with a group of friends, and the subtitles
were all wrong. There was one point where somebody I
don't remember what the actual line in the movie was,

(04:00):
but the subtitle took it for the boat carrying general
free balls.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
General freebops. Okay, I don't think he's established in this film,
though some of the characters from this film will carry
on into the next one.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
There's also a line that the subtitles interpreted as Peter
Cushing or a Peter Cushing type guy answering a telephone
and saying saw it on Twitter, and I was shocked,
all right.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
So we've definitely flagged that one for later. The final
Dracula movie from Hammer Pictures was actually a co production
with Shaw Brothers. It is nineteen seventy four is the
Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and East Meets West
Vampires film. This one's been on the list for a
long time. I haven't seen it yet, but I mean,

(04:49):
how can you resist such a mashup?

Speaker 3 (04:51):
How could it go wrong? I've got to see that one.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
So yeah, today's movie, Dracula AD nineteen seventy two takes
the Dracula franchise into modern times.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
In a way.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
It's kind of a predecessor to nineteen seventy nine's Time
after Time, which we previously talked about in the show.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Oh yeah, I can see that. I mean, so in
that episode we came up with a taxonomy of different
kinds of time travel movies. This isn't exactly a time
travel movie because nobody actually travels, there is no time machine,
nobody leaves the time they're naturally in. But it is
a generation spanning movie where where the vampire is slain

(05:29):
in one era and resurrected in another. So you might
expect there to be some I don't know, kind of
a fish out of time elements, like we talked about
in that episode, where the character from the past is
forced to deal with how things have changed in the
modern world. I must say none of that. There's nothing,
nothing like that at all.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, And I've seen some reviewers who come more recent
reviewers who've commented on that, like saying, why is there
not like a fish out of water Fish out of
time plot element to this? And I'm part of my
thinking on that, I'm thinking, Okay, well, you don't want
to make Dracula look foolish. This film takes Dracula's status seriously,
and Dracula remains like a severe threat. He is just

(06:12):
hunger and evil. But on the other hand, as we've
seen in other films, it can be done. You can
do the Fish out of Time at least a little
bit and have the character that is engaging and it
still be fearsome. The example that comes to mind, just
off the top of my head would be The Terminator.
It's not much of a Fish out of Time, but

(06:34):
there is that one funny moment where he tries to
go in and buy a plasma rifle from Dick Miller.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah, just what you see, pal.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, And that's a funny moment, But it doesn't make
the Terminator less terrifying in that film. So there's some
sort of balance that would have been possible with Dracula
going out at night and feeding on hippies. But Dracula
just doesn't get out in this movie and do that
sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
That's exactly the issue. So the movie is trying to
be it's trying to be conceptually fish out of time.
It's trying to say, Okay, we have this monster from
a different era. You know, he came to London and
in this movie in the eighteen seventies, and suddenly he's
here in the nineteen seventies and whoa, it's a crazy context.

(07:16):
There are all these hippies and cars everywhere. This is
not what we expect to see surrounding Dracula. But Dracula
is never like, he never meets any of that stuff
in his resurrected form. He just hangs out in a church.
So I don't think he ever even sees any of
the signs of the modern world.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Right right, He's just ordering like takeout delivery essentially the
whole time. He doesn't get out and see that world.
You know, whether he'd be phased by the changes in
the world, who can say. I mean, maybe maybe Dracula
just sees blood at the end of the day and
so it doesn't matter. He's like, that's doesn't it doesn't
matter at all, Just bring me the blood. But maybe
you could have had some neat moments.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
The Dracula in this movie does not seem very impressed
or even very reactive to anything around him. He you know,
there's the part where his lackey raises him from the
dead and says, master, I've brought you back, and he
just says it was my will. He walks past him. So,
I don't know. I kind of think that that aloofness

(08:18):
and high handedness might come through as well if he
were forced to, you know, be around automobiles or something
and be like, you wouldn't even notice them. He just
walked past them.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, it would have been interesting to see how they
would have handled it. Now, one thing I want to
mention about this this particular movie is with its elements
of like hippies and groovy London counterculture to the limited
extent that is that it is explored. As I was
digging on this one, I was like, oh, man, I
wonder if this one is Electric Wizard certified, because the

(08:51):
themes just seem to fit too perfectly for this to
not be the case, and so I looked it up.
I grabbed the book Come My Fanatics, A Journey into
the World Electric Wizard by Dan Franklin, which came out
earlier this year, and it basically is just filled with
various movies references and movie mentions that line up with
their work, and it is in fact cited as an influence.

(09:13):
Dracula eighty nineteen seventy two is cited as an influence
on the excellent two thousand and seven album which Cult today.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
I know the Wizard, and I can see this movie
being right up their alley. They love some witch Finders
and some hammer horror and all that good stuff.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I mean satanic rites of Drugula obvious. Obviously there's
a connection there. The title of track on the album
which cult today reminds one of Dracula today. And then
they also have that Torquamada seventy one track which also
has sort of like similarities to the title here. So yeah,
I can see this one as having been a strong influence.
Now that it's been pointed out to me.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
Now here's a question. This is a convention. I can
think of several examples of movies like this where it's Dracula,
and then just the number of years Dracula nineteen seventy two,
Dracula two thousand, and Dracula three thousand, which is the
one in space with Casper van Deen.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Is that one in the year three thousand.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
I guess it's supposed to be. That one's really really
not good like z Grade, though it does make one
choice that I really like, which is it sets it
in the future, so they're on like a space ship.
I think Casper Vanden's character is Captain von Helsing of
the USS whatever it is, maybe the Demeter, I don't know,
but the like they come across Dracula in a derylic spaceship.

(10:34):
But then when they wake him up, is he like
a spacey Dracula. Is he wearing kind of a spooky
space suit. No, he's just dressed in like a Halloween
store Dracula costume, with like the cape and the high
collar and the ruffles.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
You know. I doubt they pulled it off and made
it work, But on paper, I respect the choice. I
do like it when Dracula is like powerful in spite
of the tropiness of the way he is dressed. And
I think that an example that can be found in
this movie because Christopher Lee, again, his Dracula maybe doesn't
have as much to do, doesn't get to do as

(11:07):
much killing and exploring as we would like, but it
is still a strong screen presence. It is still like
a terrifying vision of Dracula. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
I think Christopher Lee is almost always pretty strong. I
think he's good in the moments he has, though I
do think the movie under uses him. We kind of
don't get enough Christopher Lee, and we don't get enough
of several of the movie's big selling points.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's true. That's true. Oh but come back to what
you were saying. Yeah, Dracula seventy two, but it was
also released as Dracula's seventy three in France and Spain
as it came out in seventy three, so they had
upgrade the title. Nobody wants last year's Dracula. I mean,
come on, but it's worth looking up the French poster
for Dracula seventy three because it's absolutely stunning. It's like,

(11:54):
I don't even know how to explain it. It's got
this weird kind of I don't know, almost kind of
like our deco looking font and then Dracula's head is
like this psychedelic floating visage in the sky gazing hungrily
at bikini women.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
It really doesn't look like Christopher Lee. It's more like
a floating monster mask that is bleeding colors into the stratosphere.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yes, so look that up. It's good. Now. I want
to stress that this movie is not everyone's favorite. Roger
Ebert only gave it one star, single star. Michael Weldon
of Psychotronic Film Guide called this one's time jump quote
a big mistake. And and I even touch base with

(12:39):
Hammer fan and former producer of the show Seth Nichols Johnson,
who again big fan of a lot of Hammer films.
He says this is not one of his favorites. He
likes it, but is not one of his favorites.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Fair enough. I think it'll make for a good discussion
on the show. But I say it's not one of
the best Hammer horror Draculas. I think Horror of Dracula
is much better.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
No, No, I think to enjoy this film, you've got
to be on board for again late franchise innovation, for
some sort of you know, risky if not completely realized,
dream of where Dracula could take you, and I guess
also the further away we are from it in time,

(13:19):
the more it has been allowed to age, because I
know a lot of these commentators were talking about when
it first came out. Weldon criticized it as being already
dated when it hit the screen. But we've had decades
for this film to mature, and now we can appreciate
it for what it is.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
I suspect people might have found the hippie caricatures more
grating in the seventies. I find them delightfully amusing now, yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, I think that could be part of it, all right,
elevator pitch for this one. I would say these hippies
are such a drain on society. Of course, they resurrected Dracula.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's the dope, it's the Devil music, it's the Dracula rights.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
That's right. My other one that came up with his parents.
Be aware of these warning signs that your twenty five
year old teenager may be involved with drugs, sex, black masses,
rock music, and Dracula resurrection.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
We do have several parenting scenes where Peter Cushing is
trying to exert a positive influence on his granddaughter Jessica.
You know he's trying to figure out, like, hey, are
her friends on the level? But it just doesn't go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
No, All right, let's listen to some trailer audio.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Yesterday Dracula was the most fearsome being the screen has
ever seen. Today, tonight you you could be Dracula's next.

Speaker 5 (14:51):
Victim, something new yet as old as time.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Come on, Johnny, a date with the Devil.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Are you ready? He's ready, He's waiting to freak you
out right out of this world. Nice September eighteen seventy two,
one hundred years ago to the day.

Speaker 5 (15:33):
You who witnessed must swear before the name of the
devil to keep its secret.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Who knows about vampires?

Speaker 3 (15:42):
For God's sake, my.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Grandfather died fating about most terrible vers dangelous and of
all time.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
The year is nineteen seventy two, a leap year in horror,
a vintage year vampires. Good time for the masters of

(16:14):
horror to meet a game.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
In the twentieth century.

Speaker 5 (16:24):
Come to me, come pracular.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
All right. Well, if at this point you would like
to go watch Dracula eight nineteen seventy two for yourself,
well you're in luck, because this one was released through
Warner Brothers, so it's widely available. It's even currently available
in the States, at least on Max. Looks like they
have a number of Hammer Horror flicks in there, so yeah,
go crazy. You can also get it on basically any
physical or digital format you desire.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
All right, let's do those connections.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
All right. The director is Alan Gibson, who lived nineteen
thirty eight through nineteen eighty seven. Canadian director who worked
a lot in the UK with TV work going back
to the mid sixties, but it's his horror work that
most remember him for today. His credits include nineteen seventies
Goodbye Jim and I, which I believe is some sort
of a you know, scary twin movie, This film, of course,

(17:24):
and its follow up, nineteen seventy three's The Satanic Rights
of Dracula. He also continued to work in TV and
directed episodes of the anthology series thriller Tales of the
Unexpected and Hammer House of Horror. In fact, one of
the Hammer House of Horror episodes he directed was The
Silent Scream, starring Peter Cushing but also a young Brian

(17:44):
Cox who was actually I think we did the math.
He would have been like thirty four at the time.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Wow, it's hard to understand that I'm looking at Brian
Cox younger than I am now.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah. Yeah, he came out with I mean, Brian Cox's
the augumented career of you know, playing at least you know,
heavies and formidable personalities. Formidable personalities, yeah, not so much,
you know, leading man type stuff. So yeah, he's one
of those actors who, perhaps even early on, always looked
like he was in his late forties at least. But

(18:17):
great actor. I haven't seen the episode, but I might
have to seek it out.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
And you said it's also got Peter Cushing.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, yeah, Peter Cushing. You know, it's just he was
on speed dial for Hammer. They needed him for something.
He's like, yeah, is it a movie? Fine? There TV show, great,
I need a flight to China. Great, Let's make it work.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
It's nice to have steady work. Yes, all right.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
The screenwriter for this one is Don Houghten, who lived
nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety one, British television screenwriter and
producer whose writing credits include thirteen episodes of Doctor Who
from nineteen seventy, The Satanic Rites of Dracula the Seven
Golden Vampires movie, and also another Shaw Brothers Hammer co
production from seventy four, an action picture titled Chatter. I

(18:59):
believe Peter Cushing is in that one as well.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Okay, is it about a man who has the power
to shatter?

Speaker 1 (19:06):
It looks like it's kind of like crime or act
crime action, maybe spy. I'm not sure, you know. It's
one of those non horror Hammer films that perhaps gets
re explored less in the modern era. I see, all right, Well,
who's playing the title character of Count Dracula. Well, of
course it's Christopher Lee, who lived nineteen twenty two through
twenty fifteen. We've talked about Lee before on the show,

(19:28):
as he's popped up in numerous films we've discussed already
and is just going to keep popping up because he's
an icon of horror. But here he is in one
of his most iconic roles, the one that influenced his
casting and presentation in late career hits like this, like
the Star Wars prequels, like Peter Jackson's Lord of the
Rings films. He was, I think, rather famously tired of

(19:49):
playing Dracula at this point in his career, or at
least tired of playing Dracula the hammer away. I'm to
understand the nineteen seventy Just Franco picture Count Dracula was
more in line with what he wanted to do with
the character at that point in his career. But still again,
it's a great screen presence, and one can only imagine
that he enjoyed working once more with his friend and

(20:09):
a longtime co star of twenty two films, Peter Cushing.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
What is his Do you know what his take in
The Franco Count Dracula is? How's it different?

Speaker 1 (20:18):
I haven't seen it in its entirety yet, it's been
It was actually a film I was considering for this
month on Weird House because it's supposed to be, first
of all, not as sleazy as other Just Franco films,
like it's a little more mainstream, has a great cast,
you have like Kloskinsky playing Renfield in it. But it's
supposed to be more of like a sympathetic tragic Dracula.

(20:40):
And I'm to understand it's the first Dracula film in
which we initially meet an elderly Dracula who has then
made young again through the consumption of blood.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Oh okay, so this has many things in common with
what would later happen in Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Coppola,
which we were just talking about in our Core episodes
earlier this week. Yeah, yeah, that has the at least
partially sympathetic Dracula. Adds in a love story for Dracula,
which I want to emphasize is not in the book.
Dracula is not in love. He does not romance in

(21:13):
the book. He is just a demon and he's just bad.
And that also has a Dracula who when Jonathan Harker
first meets him in Transylvania, he looks very old and decrepit,
but by the time he reaches London he is young
and rejuvenated and old many.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
So yeah, the Dracula that we get in Dracula eighty
seventy two is certainly the demonic Dracula. In fact, they
call him the demon vampire in the prologue to the picture.
He is just pure supernatural hunger. He has more in
common with the Terminator than some of the more sympathetic
film versions of Dracula that we've seen. In this film's wake.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
Yeah, just a mean nasty, vengeful, uncomplicated, demonic vampire. Now.
I mentioned this earlier, but just to get a little
bit in deep into it. I feel like Christopher Lee
is good in this movie, but one of my major
complaints about the film is that it is reserved in
the deployment of its key selling points, one of them
being Christopher Lee. He he's a kind of he's an

(22:14):
ineffectual vampire. He doesn't have a lot of lines, and
he has limited screen time, and that screen time is
confined to basically just two locations. It feels almost like
they were trying to make sure they could shoot all
of his scenes on the same day and you could
see how his like the fact that he never leaves
the church he's resurrected in in the modern era unless

(22:36):
he I don't think there's ever a scene of him
going anywhere else, is there. I can't think of one.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
I don't think.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
So.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah, so he's just there. So you could say, well
that that speaks to his power, right, So you know,
he just stays there and he has his servants bringing
him victims, so like he doesn't he's so powerful he
doesn't even have to go out hunting. But I don't know,
I feel like this movie would deliver more on its
promise of Dracula nineteen seventy two AD if it had
both more of Dracula on screen and going out and

(23:04):
doing things in the world and had more of the
world of nineteen seventy two AD, which it's also actually
relatively tame on, save for like one silly party scene.
I think what they should have done is have Dracula
go to the coffee bar while it's like hoppin' and
everybody's partying, and he goes and I don't know, I

(23:24):
guess he wouldn't dance, but he would at least like
get encounter hippie culture there.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, like kill Nick Jagger in the street or something. Right, Yeah,
I think just one sequence of him feasting on hippie
blood elsewhere in London would have gone a long way.
And if you were determined to have him not leave
the church yard, maybe just like one scene where he
like looks out the window at night and like sees
what's out there. You could even play it up like,

(23:50):
oh man, if Dracula gets loose in nineteen seventy two London,
it's all over, Like that's why he has to be
stopped here before he has reached full feasting again. But
they don't really explore any of those ideas.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
I mean, it's easy to forget because the book itself
is very old now. But I think one of the themes
in the novel Dracula is the idea of some part
of the old world coming into the new world. It's
that like, you know it, that this you know, figure
from a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains out in
the forest at the at the edge of Europe, as

(24:23):
these people would have thought of it coming to the
biggest metropolis that they knew of coming to modern London.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, that's a great point. So it's already built into
the text quite a bit there, that he's traveling across
time and space to something new and yeah, and to
come back to time after time. One of the great
serious threads in that is that when Jack the Ripper
arrives in the modern era, he's like, this place is great,

(24:52):
Like I can really thrive here, like and you know,
And of course that would come later that film, but
a similar vibe I think would have gone a long
way here. All right. So that's Dracula. But you can't
have a Hammer Dracula without a Hammer van Helsing, and
that's where Peter Cushing comes in playing This is technically
going to be a dual role because he starts off

(25:12):
playing Lawrence van Helsing, but then we'll go on to
play his descendant, Lauramir van Helsing.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
I got some notes on these names. I'll come back
to that.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
So Peter Cushing lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety four. Again,
we've discussed Peter Cushing on the show before, and he's
just going to continue to pop up because he was,
like Christopher Lee, just an iconic player in horror and
sci fi cinema of the day, and I think he
was even more prolific. He's one of those actors that
everyone seems to have had nice things to say about,

(25:45):
both personally and professionally. Just a consonant pro no matter
what the material had him doing or saying, he always
he always brings an air of dignity to most pictures.
This movie is from the later stage of his after
the death of his wife in nineteen seventy one. In fact,
film just eight months after her passing. This is an

(26:07):
event that apparently took a huge toll on him. In fact,
he was apparently originally intended to be to play the
father of the character Jessica van Helsing in this movie,
but he had visibly aged so much since his wife's
passing that they rewrote the script a little bit to
make him be her grandfather. Oh okay, So you know,

(26:28):
I think we might be forgiven for viewing films from
this era of his career and detecting that loss and
that distance in his screen presence, especially in the various
examples of films that cast him as a man who's
experienced a great loss. But you know that being said again,
consummate professional. He does a solid job in this and
I'm to understand he actually does his own stunts in

(26:50):
the opening, which is which concerns like a thunderous carriage
based action sequence. So it's you know, it's not just like,
oh he you know, he fell out of a chair
like he's on like a moving carriage. It looks kind
of dangerous, and apparently he does whatever stunts are required
of him. There.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Wow, I'm impressed. Well, I was going to say that,
you know, I love Peter Cushing, but I'll admit sometimes
he phones it in. Give him a break. He did
a lot of movies and a lot of very similar movies.
But strangely, I thought it seemed to me he was
putting a lot of feeling into this one. This is
not one of his best written roles, but he really

(27:26):
exceeds what is required of him, and there was more
emotion in this performance than I expected.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not just about the man
who must defeat the monster, but there's like someone in
his life he's trying to protect as well, and not
only protect from supernatural threats but also just sort of
ambiguous social threats as well that he's concerned about.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Yeah, his protective care for his grandchild comes through as
genuine emotion.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah. Yeah. Now playing that grandchild, Jessica van Helsing is
Stephanie Beacham Moreneteen forty seven. This is our young, prematurely
white haired descendant of the original Van Helsing. Stephanie Beacham
is an English actor of stage, screen and television with
a very long and still very active career. She'd mostly

(28:14):
done TV in stage at this point in her career,
but had popped up in some films, including Roddy McDowell's
tam Lynn from nineteen seventy and The Nightcomers from seventy one.
After Dracula AD nineteen seventy two, she acted in seventy
Threes and Now The Screaming Starts, seventy six's House of
Mortal Sin and Schizo, and nineteen eighty one's Horror Planet.

(28:35):
Her TV credits include forty nine episodes of The Colby's,
twenty three episodes of Dynasty, in which she plays Sable Colby.
I'm not sure how this works, but I'm guessing this
is the same character. There's some sort of like I
don't know if this was a spinoff of Dynasty or
if like a character from The Colby's joined the cast
of Dynasty. I'm not sure how soap operas really work.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
I don't know either, but.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Anyway, it was apparently a big role for her. It's
like the top thing that's mentioned diner on her IMDb page,
But she was another STI she's like on the Love Boat.
She apparently played Margaret Thatcher on an episode of alf
Life Poles. Yeah, so there's that. I could not find
a screenshot of it. I was really looking for it,
could not find it. But she's also been on things
like Star Trek, The Next Generation SeaQuest and Coronation Street.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
I think she's quite good in this, though she has
the same issue that almost all of the teenagers have,
which is that none of them seem like teenagers. I
think I don't know how old they're supposed to be.
I would guess they're supposed to be like, I don't know,
eighteen to twenty, but they all come off as about
thirty or at least late twenties.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah. I think she was like twenty five at the time.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Not really a problem. I just think it's funny when
movies have these groups of all extremely adult teenagers.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
All right. The next actor of note is Christopher Neim
playing Johnny Alocard. This is the drugish occult enthusias in
the group of friends that we meet the young Londoners.
He cares about only one thing, and it is, of course,
the resurrection of Dracula. He has a Dracula cultist.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
It's interesting that I think there are a lot of
stories that where people become the servants of a satanic
entity or demonic overlord so that they can pursue a
party lifestyle and hedonistic pleasures. Like the powers they acquire
by serving the demon lord give them the ability to
party the way they want to. He's the other way around.

(30:33):
Johnny Alucard parties in order to serve a demon lord like.
He apparently only does the swing and hippie thing in
order to attract a group of friends who can be
brought as snacks to the vampire that he wants to resurrect.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
That's right, Johnny Alickhard just wants to do Dracula stuff.
That's all he wants in life, and he's going to
do whatever it takes to get there.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
So.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Johnny Alickhard is played by Christopher Nien born nineteen five
forty seven. He has a great look. He brings some
great hungry energy to this role as a Dracula cultist
in Vampire Wanna Be. He kicked off his film career
in the nineteen seventy environmental disaster film No Blade of Grass,
followed by seventy one's Lust for a Vampire. This is
These are small roles, I'm to understand, but this role

(31:20):
in Dracula eighty nineteen seventy two sent it to have
been a big step up for him. He goes on
from here to work steadily in all manner of pictures
and TV shows, including thirty episodes of Days of Our
Lives nineteen eighty seven, Steel Dawn, a really weird sounding
nineteen eighty eight sci fi horror film titled Transformations. He
did episodes of Dynasty episodes of Dallas. He pops up

(31:41):
in the nineteen eighty nine James Bond film Licensed to Kill,
in which he plays the agent that is sent to
collect the rogue agent James Bond.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Mm. Yeah, okay, this is the one where Bond go
he like quits I six and he goes on a
mission of vengeance.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah, this is the one where oh what's his name? Explodes?

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Robert Davey feeds his friend Felix to a shark and
leaves a note saying he disagreed with something that ate him.
And so James Bond goes to kill Robert Dovey.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, and Anthony's er explodes, right, I think that's how
it goes goes maybe?

Speaker 5 (32:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Anyway, Christopher nine was in a bunch of stuff. He
pops up in Ghostbusters two playing a Nitro d He's
in the Hulkgan films Suburban Commando from ninety one. He's
in the nineteen ninety four Chuck Norris film hell Bound,
He's in Species three from two thousand and four and
then goes on to be in The Prestige from two
thousand and six, just a bunch more all the way

(32:45):
up through twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
He's perfect in this. He's got a creepy, malevolent, froggy smile.
He just he looks like he's up to no good.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, dangerous youngster. They're very drugish.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
He also just give strong like cult leader. It's like
you see him and it's like, get this guy a
cult stat.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, all right. We also have the law present in
this film, investigating manner matters that turn out to be
Dracula related. We have Inspector Murray played by Michael cole
So of nineteen thirty four through two thousand and five.
This is our chief law officer investigating a stream of
strange murders in London. He's presented as a more progressive

(33:28):
and sympathetic policeman, but at the same time he's totally
down to invoke draconian drug laws in order to weed
out dangerous hippies.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, I'm gonna say no offense to Michael Coles. He
does fine, but this oddly shaggy and in some ways
sympathetic detective character. Feels like it was meant for David Warner.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Oh well, yeah, David Warner would have been good. I
mean David what. You could cast David Warner in anything
in this film and he would have nailed it. As
for Michael Coles, he would reprise this role in seventy
three's The Satanic Rights of Dracula. So I guess that
the investigation continues. His other credits include nineteen sixty five's
Doctor Who in the Daleks. All right, we basically as

(34:08):
far as the cast goes, there are just a couple
other people of note. These are other members of the
youth group. Well it's not a youth group. That makes
it sound like it's church affiliated. These are some more
of the swing in Londoners the Young People, the first
of which is the character Gaynor, played by Marcia A.
Hunt born nineteen forty six. She's an American model, singer, actor,

(34:29):
and a later author and editor. She only acted in
eleven films, but they include such titles as nineteen eighty
two as The Cinder It's like a psychic, sort of
Scanner esque flick, nineteen eighty three's Never Say Never Again,
The Bond film Howling II, Your Sister is Aware Wolf,
which is obviously part of the ups and downs of

(34:49):
the Howling franchise. Her Her bibliography includes an autobiography, a memoir,
and the nineteen ninety novel Joy. Her discography includes three
albums from the nineteen seventies, and she was also famously
in a relationship with Mick Jagger and the two had
a daughter together.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
She's one of the more friendly presences in the group
of London Hippies, though she tragically is eaten by Dracula,
like several characters are.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Another doomed character that fits the same description for the
most part is Carolyn Monroe's Laura Bellows. We've talked about
Monroe on the show before, because yeah, she was a
pin up model and actress who stole many a seventies
film nerds heart, with such genre appearances as The Spy
Who Loved Me seventy seven, Maniac in nineteen eighty, Slaughter

(35:41):
High in eighty six, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad earlier
in seventy three, Captain Crono's Vampire Hunter, Another Hammer Picture
from seventy four, at the Earth's Core in seventy six,
and also star Crash in seventy eight. She also has
a just slight cameo as a picture of Doctor Fib's
wife in nineteen seventy one's The Abominable Doctor Fivees.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
She is the main character in Star Crash and she
she's still a star.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
So oh yeah, yeah, yeah, she's right there, she's on
the poster.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah. She is also eaten by Dracula in this movie,
and her character is is just goga for demons. Ever
since there's like the moment the Johnny Alucard brings up, hey,
what if we did a black mass, She's like, yes, yes,
do it, now, let's go.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
It's true. Yeah, she's kind of presented as the Well,
of course she was killed by Dracula because she was
a bad hippie, so so yeah, what early victim here.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
But I don't understand, like why is she so into demons.
There are several characters in this movie who have a
history of like investigating the occult, so like it's an
established interest of theirs. She seems like she's never thought
of it until Johnny Alucard brings it up. But the
moment he's like, let's summon the Prince of darkness, she
can't think of anything else. It's like, this is all

(36:59):
I want now.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's you know, I guess
we're already thinking about it deep more deeply than anyone
involved in the film, I think. But you know, maybe
she's supposed to be just sort of like the shallow
enthusiast of the occult that doesn't realize that there are,
you know, in the world of this film, real threats
involved in trying to summon up the spirit of a
slain Dracula creature from the past, that sort of thing.

(37:27):
All right, we're gonna skip over the rest of the
youth in this film and just get right to the music.
The music is by Michael Vickers born nineteen forty. He
was a member of the nineteen sixties band Manfred Mann.
I'm not familiar with, but the scorer and soundtrack for
this film is widely available, and I have to say
it's a lot of fun. Most of the score tracks
are very jazzy, lots of blaring like horn or saxophone

(37:51):
or whatever is Dracula and Van Helston chase each other around.
But he also gives us a wonderful black mass track
titled Devil's Circle Music that is you see it being
played on screen. It is the soundtrack to the Black
Mass that is conducted in the picture, and it itself
is a beautiful, creepy cacophony of Satanic sounds. So part

(38:12):
of me, which is the whole score for this movie,
sounded like that. But on the other hand, I really
like the cheesy content of this film, so I'm glad
that we have the blaring jazz present as well. All Right,

(38:32):
with all that behind us, Joe, take us to nineteen
seventy two.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
All right, we'd be well, no, we don't start in
nineteen seventy two.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Oh oh, that's right. We start in eighteen seventy two.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Right, that's right. I'll take you to eighteen seventy two.
How about that? How about we start there? Okay, we
begin with dead leaves blowing in the autumn wind. And
I noticed I noticed in this opening sequence in some shots, Rober,
I don't know if you saw this too. In some
shots the trees are just packed with dense green foliage,
and in other shots they have orange and yellow leaves

(39:06):
and fewer of them, and then in a third kind
of shot they're completely bare. I wonder why that is.
Could it be the different shots in this, like I
don't know, minute long carriage chase were shot at different
months of the year. That seems unlikely, but I don't know.
Maybe it's just different kind of trees or something. I

(39:26):
was on guard for this because I saw, like at
the the very first shot, orange leaves are blowing on
the ground, but the trees in the background are fully green,
and it reminded me of John Carpenter's Halloween, which you
may have never noticed this before, but it's like that.
I think it was actually shot in the summer, even
though it's supposed to take place in October in Illinois,
so I think they had to like bring in bags

(39:48):
of dead leaves to dress, you know.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
The sets reminds me of the neighborhood that while we
both live in. Occasionally they're film productions, and there was
that one I think this was like in the summer
where they were filming something for Halloween and they decorated
the whole streak for Halloween, like movie level Halloween decorations,
and it was pretty fun. Like sometimes film productions can

(40:11):
you know, they can get in your way and then
you can be a little grumpy about them disrupting your
morning commute or whatever. But that film shoot, God bless it.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Oh good lord, Yes, yeah, Halloween in July. Thank you,
I'll take it.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
So.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, we get the leaves blowing. We see red calligraphy
letters on the screen. This as a Hammer production. And
it's that calligraphy font that makes the word bathory look
like bat Lord. A horse drawn carriage is racing along
on a parkside pathway goes over a stone bridge under
an archway of these dead tree limbs, and a narrator

(40:48):
comes in. Narrator says the year is eighteen seventy two,
and the nightmare legend of Count Dracula extends its terror
far beyond the mountains of Carpathia to the Victorian metropolis
of London. Here in Hyde Park, the final confrontation between
Lawrence van Helsing and his arch enemy, the demon vampire Dracula. Now,

(41:12):
I told you I was going to come back to
the name of Van Helsing in this movie. You did
hear that, right? It is Lawrence van Helsing for some reason,
I'm not sure what This movie and maybe at least
one of the other Hammer horror Draculas calls this character Lawrence.
Of course, in the novel, Van Helsing's first name is Abraham.

(41:32):
No offense to all of the wonderful Lawrence is out
there for what I'm about to say, But this name
change is not great. A Van Helsing, whose friends call
him Larry, does not bring the same gravitas as Abraham.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah, So why the change? I don't know. Could it
possibly have to do with intellectual property? That seems I
don't know kind of.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
I mean, that would be the main reason to change
up the name of a particular character. And of course
historically we would have seen movements like that before concerning
the Dracula property.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, but I mean, but it's called Dracula, so it
would have to be something specific to that one character,
Like they could use the last name and the rest
of the plot and Dracula, but not Abraham.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
It's confusing. So anyway, the movie opens with the ending
of this other tail. We see Dracula and Van Helsing
already in the middle of fighting to the death on
the roof of this carriage as it races through Hyde Park.
They're sort of wrestling. Dracula is choking Van Helsing, until
suddenly the harness that's holding the horses to the carriage snaps,

(42:38):
the horses run off. The carriage veers off the path
and crashes into a tree. Van Helsing is thrown aside
into the grass, and Dracula, when we see him stagger
out from behind the carriage, is impaled on the spoke
of a carriage wheel, an accidental stake through the heart.
Dracula and Van Helsing fight a little bit more wild.

(43:00):
Drac has a wheel stuck to him, so it's just
kind of poking out of him, but eventually Dracula is defeated.
Van Helsing kind of shoves the stake into the heart
further and then he does the classic undead turbo rot.
So Dracula collapses into a pile of bones and then
that turns into ash and dust by the riverside. Van

(43:21):
Helsing also collapses dead.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
So at this point the entire multifilm struggle between Professor
van Helsing and Count Dracula ends in a vehicular accident,
which I think would feel mighty underwhelming if this were
like the end. But this isn't the end. This is
the beginning, so I guess we'll allow it. A freak
accident takes both the demon vampire and his chief adversary

(43:48):
takes them both out of action.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
But wait a second, who's this creep back here watching
everything go on? There is a young man observing the scene.
He'd been following the carriage on horseback. He comes galloping
in wearing a top hat, and he's a little guy
with a scuzzy mutton chop sideburn set and a toad
like grin. And he produces a glass vial and scoops

(44:11):
up some of Dracula's ashes after he turboots Van Helsing's
just laying there dying. He ignores Van Helsing. He also
pockets Dracula's special ring. It looks like it's made of silver,
but I don't think that would make sense for Dracula.
So it's some kind of pale precious metal ring.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, maybe pewter or something. Maybe he can wear pewter.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
I'm not sure Dracula's lead ring.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
That would fit right, he doesn't have to worry about lead.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
So we cut to a funeral scene after that, and
it's all of Van Helsing's friends and family gathered in
a churchyard where the good Doctor's body is being committed
to the earth. And it seems most of the mourners
are variations on the Monopoly Man, shiny top hats, coats
with tails, all that. It's mostly dudes at the.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Funeral, and we're not introduced to any of them. We
don't know who from the novel Dracula actually showed up
at the man's funeral. Like, I feel like it would
be a little bit insulting if Jonathan Harker didn't show
up at Van Helsing's funeral, right, I.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
Mean, did they really know each other all that? Well,
they just kind of got together for a work project
one time.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well yeah, the way they work friends, right, So.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yeah, okay, so oh another funny thing is the line
we hear the priests say at Van Helsing's funeral. He's
quoting the Bible, so we like come in and he's saying, man,
that is born of woman hath but a short time
to live and is full of misery. And I know
that's the Bible, but man, is that really what people
want to hear at a loved one's funeral. It's like,

(45:40):
not only do we die soon, it's mostly bad until
we get there.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't want that right at
my funeral.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Oh but a quick side note related to recent Core episodes.
You know the next line after that in the Book
of Job. This is from Job chapter fourteen, after the
you know it's a short time to live, full of misery,
the next line is he cometh forth like a flower
and is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow,
and continueth not anyway, So that funeral is going on. Meanwhile,

(46:12):
the creepy guy who collected Dracula's ring and ashes, he
shows up at the funeral. He digs a hole in
the ground just outside the churchyard, pours Dracula's ashes into
the hole, and then drives a steak, the same steak
that killed Dracula, into the soil above the hole. And
then a marvelous transition, we get jet wipe jet We like,

(46:34):
look up to the sky and there's a jet plane
wipe and the and the funky music comes on to
don't Dawn. We go wow, and the jet comes down
and we see the title Dracula nineteen seventy two A
d very good, very good use of a jet plane.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Absolutely, it's like bam. Now it's modern times. Look at
the jet plane. The music has shifted from old time
he got the horror movie to this is thoroughly modern
jet funky number. And yeah, my only note here is
that we're denied footage of Dracula flying first class. I mean,
he's not actually supposed to be in that airplane. But
you know, again, it's like you want. The movie seems

(47:11):
to promise this idea of Dracula is in our world now,
and it never quite gives us that.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
I think they should have done a pong wipe, so
it's wiped to a screen of people playing the Atari,
but it's not pong, it's an airplane. And then what
are they going to use to show We got to
get like a nineteen seventy two montage, right, show us
some footage of what it means for things to be modern?
What does that mean in this film's conception, primarily traffic,

(47:41):
So we're just seeing like complex highway exchanges teaming with
cars set to saxophone and whaling guitar solos.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's all they really want to
convey about the modern world, That it's busy, and you
know that the world's fast, it's in a hurry. But meanwhile,
Dracula is patient. Racula is long lived and is crossing
oceans of time to reach the year nineteen seventy.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Two, and then from here we cut straight to a
party scene. Now, this is the scene where I think
they were the movie was trying to pack in all
of its modern debauchery into like one five to seven
minute sequence.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
That's right with But their hippies are not like all.
Is it not like we're dealing with a bunch of
sort of grind housey like evil hippies or anything. These
are all like, for the most part, likable, fun goofy kids. Again,
I think most of them are at least in their
mid twenties, but still goofy kids having a good time
enjoying the musical stylings of Stone Ground Stone Ground.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
That's the name of the band they are playing. Let's see,
how do so? The scene is like hippies versus more
monopoly men, but monopoly men from nineteen seventy two instead
of eighteen seventy two. This party is taking place at
an elegantly decorated apartment or flat belonging to rich people,
full of breakable antiques. There is a buffet table set

(49:09):
up with champagne and ice buckets and a bunch of food.
But I paused it almost all the food appears to
be fruit. I guess they thought we wouldn't look too close,
or maybe they just really like fruit. Also, several hippies
are making out underneath the buffet table. The band stone
Ground is playing. In the living room, there are go
go dancers on top of the piano and on the

(49:31):
sofa table. Hippies are dancing, presumably doing drugs, though I
don't think we see any drugs being done and getting
up to sexual behavior, and all of the rich posh
people are scandalized.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I can't stress enough that stone Ground as a band
looks like what might happen if you took the Muppet
Show band and portrayed them as human beings. Yes, they're
like a human Muppet Show band.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Yeah yeah, or like Fraggles, like the Fragle band.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah. Michael Weldon wrote in his review quote, a party
sequence with the American band stone Ground is a real
low point. Oh come on, I would disagree, But then again,
I'm you know, we I think he was writing this
a little closer to the original release time. I would
say that it's a goofy good time that also advances

(50:21):
the plot somewhat introduces this to a key character, which
we'll get to in just a second. I think you
can say, well, perhaps there are some seventies bands that
would have been better suited to this film than stone Ground.
I wouldn't say I love the music, but they do
appear to have been a real band and all, like,
they don't just exist in this film. Sal Valentino was

(50:43):
the singer noted for his earlier work in the sixties
group The bo Brummels. They did the song just a
Little and I think they had another hit, and various
members of Stone Ground went on to other things.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
One of the songs they play at this party is
just very generic lyrical content. It's like, oh yeah, come
on or something. But the other song is called Alligator Man,
and all of the lyrics are about how like I'm
just a by you man, you know you can find
me and the by you because that's all I do.
I swim in the water. I'm an alligator man. I

(51:16):
think he says I come from an alligator clan, and
I was just looking at the scene, like, these are
not alligator men, if anything, these are lamprey men.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Yeah. I mean that's it's kind of a credence vibe
right where it's like perhaps not authentic swamp music.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Oh I don't know. I go credence, they're out. They're
alligator men to me, John Fogerty, Yeah, come on, he's
an alligator man.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
The credence was great, But did they come from an
actual swamp.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
I don't know. Maybe I've never looked into it.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
If they don't have a swamp thing origin story, then
I'm gonna say it's it's a bit of an act,
but it's a fun act. I always like, I like
love credence when I was younger.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
I still love Credence. Wait, okay, but in the middle
of this whole scene we got to expl So the
hippies are dancing, the band is playing, all the rich
people are are horribly offended. And in the middle of
the scene, hey, it's that same reptilian creep that scooped
up Dracula's ashes one hundred years ago. If anybody's an
alligator man, it's him. He you know, he's like got

(52:18):
these creepy eyes. He's staring at everybody.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
And I don't know if he has like not aged
since one hundred years ago, or if this is supposed
to be a descendant of that other guy. Either way,
it's the exact same, dude, It looks exactly the same,
except he is now I don't know. He's dressed sort
of for the era. He's wearing a frilly pirate shirt,
a burgundy velvet suit, and a black, wide brimmed fedora.

(52:45):
So cool.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
I think he's supposed to be a descendant because Dracula
later says something to him about his bloodline.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Ah, that would make sense.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
So like, there's been a long line of Dracula enthusiasts,
some of whom never got to meet Dracula, which would
be kind of a bummer, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Yeah, they're just, you know, bridging the gap between generations.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Oh, and also we learned that his name is Johnny
Aloucard smooth.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Ah, we're not going to spoil We're not going to
spoil it yet. We're not going to tell you what
alo card means.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Oh what, We're not going to tell you what it
is spelled backwards. This is their kingdom. Yeah, Johnny nilbog
here at the party. He's gazing out from under the
brim of his fedora while everybody else has a good time.
He doesn't look like he's having a good time. He's
just sitting there watching with no expression. Of course, all
of the fancy rich people are mortified. They're baffled about

(53:40):
how all of these disgusting partygoers ended up in their flat.
This old lady who's kind of a little bit Angela
landsberry ish, she's like, what you know to her son,
She's like, why did you invite all of these monsters?
And he says I didn't. They're not my friends. All
I did was to invite the stone Aground. But that

(54:01):
just left me more confused. I'm like, why did he
invite the stone Ground? He invited this band?

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Well, because stone Ground is just a household name. Stone
Ground appeals to audiences of all ages, the old, the young,
the hip, the square. Everyone loves stone Ground. That's one
of the film's early key messages.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
I understand now, yes, oh, but there's one thing in
this party scene that I think does not make sense
and did not work at all. It's the bit about
timing how many minutes until the police arrive. So the
guy who invited the Stone Ground goes and calls the
police to get all the hippies out of his apartment,
and then the hippie the friends all start being like, oh,

(54:42):
the fuzz will be here in four minutes. No, it'll
be six minutes, it'll be three and a half minutes,
eight minutes. And they're arguing with each other, and they
explained that they have a running practice where I guess
they party somewhere where they're unwanted until the minute before
the police arrive, and then they leave. And it's not

(55:04):
really funny and it doesn't really make sense. It sort
of lacks very similitude, but the bit just keeps going on.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
It's a rather different relationship between hippies and law enforcement
in this film versus certainly reality, but also I'm reminded
of The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, where you know,
it's firmly established that the man hates hippies, that law
enforcement just despises them, whereas in this film it's like, ah,

(55:32):
they're fun loving. It's a fun loving competition, you know.
It's like, oh, you got me today, hippies, we'll get
you tomorrow. That sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
And then the spirit of that sort of teasingness, like
when the police arrive to bust up the party, Oh,
they discover the hippies making out underneath the buffet table,
and one of the hippies just says to the cop,
peace man, and the cop smiles. But also there's a
thing where when Johnny Alucard is about to leave the apartment,

(56:01):
he takes the time to stop and torture the old
lady about breaking her priceless antiques. Like he picks up
this ceramic figurine and is tossing it hand to hand,
and then just when she thinks, you know, he's setting
it safely down on the table, he tips it over
and it breaks on the floor.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Oh yeah, he's a chaotic youth. He doesn't care about anything.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
But so they split from the party. They go to
their favorite coffee shop except is it daytime?

Speaker 5 (56:28):
Now?

Speaker 3 (56:28):
I'm a little confused about the timeline. But they go
to their favorite coffee shop, and the coffee shop is
called Cavern, and this place is great. I wish I
could go there.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Yeah, I kind of have to assume that what we
see of the interiors as a set. But it's a
great looking set. We got the like splashes of tile
and all sorts of cool purple lighting, Like it just
looks too cool to be a real space. But I
could be wrong on that. And then they order up
what at first I thought was like bowls of soup
and Coca Cola's, But I think this is supposed to

(56:58):
be coffee and or tea plus Coca colas.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
I think there are Coca Colas in glass bottles. But yes,
the super bowls are coffee cups. I think. Okay, they're
just very wide and shallow for some reason. Oh and
I made a note that cavern is right next to
a store called Chelsea Mail M A L E. I
don't know. Maybe that's clothing.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
Anyway, the coffee hass the hippies sit in a secluded
booth and Johnny Alucard talks about how everything's just boring.
I'm sick of it all. It's all stale. We've got
to find a new way to get our kicks. And
he says, I want something new yet as old as time,
and he's got an idea. They all want to hear
what his idea is. He leans forward and he says

(57:44):
a date with the Devil, a bacchanal with Beelzebub. So
they think he's joking around at first. Oh, you're just
Josh and Johnny Alucard a ha haha. Oija board Spirit
mediums that stuff's a bunch of funny nonsense. But Johnny
Alucar is not joking. He's serious. He says, don't knock
it unless you've tried it, And then Jessica, the most

(58:07):
intelligent and level headed of the group, comments, well, they
do say it's dangerous. But at the other side of
the table, Carolyn Monroe as Laura is here like, yes, yes, devil,
take me to the devil now. So everybody eventually agrees,
last of all and reluctantly Jessica, but they're all in.
They're gonna go to an abandoned London church later tonight

(58:29):
at midnight to summon Satan.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
I guess that's just how you have fun.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
This may come later, but I did like the way
they set up how various members of the friends group
are going along with this, where I think Jessica's boyfriend
is like this is you know, It's like, yeah, Johnny's
enthusiastic about it, but you know what's gonna happen. We're
gonna show up, somebody's gonna get out of guitar. I'm
gonna have some food and some drinks. It's like it's

(58:55):
just gonna be more or less like any other hang
we do. It's just Johnny's gonna read some weird stuff beforehand.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
Yes, he said there will. It'll just be beer, food,
guitar and loving in the end. But before we get
to the summoning of Satan, we see a few little
there's some interludes. First of all, we see Johnny Alucard

(59:23):
head home to his sweet flat, which his flat seems
very cool. It's like well decorated. I don't know, it
doesn't have that bachelor quality to it.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. It feels like
this is more space and it's in better shape than
Johnny should have access to. He should have more of
a like a little hovel with Dracula posters on the walls.
Turns out the good guys are the ones with Dracula posters.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
That's right. Yeah, So he goes to his house and
he opens up a velvet box and inside it's the ring, Yes,
drag Akila's ring, the one we saw the guy who
looks exactly like Johnny take off of Dracula's corpse earlier
on and the vile of ashes, so he's got him.
We also follow Jessica home and this is where we
learn that she is Jessica van Helsing and her grandfather,

(01:00:16):
who she lives with, is Professor Lorimer van Helsing also
played by Peter Cushing, again a descendant of Larry from
the prologue, and grandfather Van Helsing is an expert on
the occult. He has consulted with the police before to
solve cases of ritual cult murder, and he comes into
his office catches his granddaughter reading his book, which is

(01:00:40):
called The Treatise on Black Mass. He says, Jessica, this
is not a subject to mess around with. These are
scientific works. But she mocks it. She says, you know,
you can buy that kind of book in any shop
in soho quote. It's all kinky, you know. She says,
it's Hobgoblin's black magic. At so she thinks it's all nonsense,

(01:01:03):
has no interest whatsoever in the occult, and in fact
seems to think it's it's not even superficially interesting. She
like thinks that she can't bring her friends over to
this place or to meet him because it would be
interminably boring. But wait a minute, Jessica, don't you know
that your friends are obsessed with summoning the devil, Like
they just express this extreme interest in the occult, and

(01:01:25):
here she is like, I can't my friends could never
find out that you're an expert on the occult. It
would be so embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yeah, Jessica is a bit of a brat, and I
think intentionally so, like he has to politely move her
feet off of his desk when he comes in and
finds her reading the Book of the Occult. But at
the same time, it's that they do a great job
letting us know that, yeah, he really cares about her,
and she really cares about him. But there is this,

(01:01:53):
you know, some awkward generational stuff where, you know, the
stuff Grandpa's in too, is just lame. And yeah, she's
kind of blind to the fact that there is this
strong connection between what's about to happen in her friend
group and the kind of stuff that grandpa actually knows
quite a bit about.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Yeah, he patiently explains that, you know, our family has
a legacy of research into the occult, and she's just like,
it's not my bag. Baby.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
It's like the difference between a friend saying like, hey,
I have this Doobie Brother's album and then your grandpa saying, hey,
I've got Doobie Brothers albums too, Like, it's not fair
that grandpa is considered lame because he has this album
and your friend has a pass because he just discovered it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
But that is how it works, no accounting for the
social influences on taste formation anyway. Oh but also he's like, hey,
what if I was to get to meet your friends?
You know, I wonder who these people you hang out
with all the time, who are they? And she's like,
uh uh, You're never going to meet them because this
place is boring and dusty and old, and you're an

(01:02:56):
expert on the occult, so you will not meet them.
But she tries to reassure him by saying she has
never dropped acid, she is not shooting up, and she
says she is not sleeping with anyone just yet, so
he has no reason to worry. She is into nothing wrong.
And then she goes to meet her friends at the
deconsecrated church to raise the devil. Yep, so this black Mass.

(01:03:18):
What can we describe about the scene. Well, first of all,
there's a thing about the tombstone. On the outside, she
and her boyfriend Bob are talking before they go into
the church, they're waiting to meet everybody, and they stumble
across the tombstone of her ancestor, Lawrence van Helsing, who
died one hundred years ago to this day.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah, which they initially think, Oh, this is one of
Johnny's jokes. This is not funny. They get a little
disturbed over this.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
It's one of Johnny's jokes. He had a fake tombstone
made and put in this churchyard.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
I don't know, you know, they're just they're trying to
figure it out. The other thing I would say is
that this abandoned church is just is a great set.
It's a great Gothic setting for what is inevitably going
to be the resurrection of Count Dracula.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
That's right. So Johnny Alucard is there. He's wearing an
all black robe. He has everybody sit in a circle
and listen to music. He says, no fooling around, this
is for real. And the tape he plays sounds kind
of like the drum solo in Inegatta Davida, which is
a thumbs up from me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Yeah yeah. It has this kind of like noisy, grimy
quality to it, which I quite like. And again you
can hear this track is included on the soundtrack and score,
along with those Stone Ground tracks. If you need to
listen to those.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
That must provide an odd contrast. But he's really telling
them to get into it. He says, dig the music, kids,
let it flow into you. Give yourself up to the music.
And this reminds me of Christian tracts that I have read,
genuinely espousing the idea that rock music will will allow
a demon to possess your soul.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Johnny Alucard seems to agree with that point of view,
and then he starts. He starts naming demons. You know.
He says, I call upon address the Grand Marquis of Hell.
He says, Marquis, a provoker of discords, and upon ron Way,
demon of forbidden knowledge, and upon Behemoth, the arch devil
of black delights. I call upon as Modius, the destroyer

(01:05:20):
and Astroth, friend of all the great lords of Hades.
I demand an audience with his satanic majesty. He just
and he goes on and on, names like fifteen more demons,
and ends with Count Dracula, which, even in the context
of the movie, for some reason, it just kind of
sounds funny. In this list of I don't know, biblical
or at least like apocryphal or hermetic kind of entities.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Maybe, But at the same time, I don't know. We've
talked already on the show. I think in listener Mail
episodes about Marvel's Dracula and how in the Marvel Comics
universe Dracula will occasionally have interactions with the likes of
doctor Doom, so you know, Draculas can can hang out
with Doctor Doom on the Then I feel like it's
equally okay that his name is mentioned in the same

(01:06:06):
prayer as these various other dark and powerful demon lords.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
So he says all these demons, but then he calls
the name of Jessica van helsing, she's right here in
the room with us. She's here listening to the music.
She's digging the music as instructed. And he says that
the demons have chosen her, but she is afraid, so
she says, no, she's not going to join him up
at the altar for whatever comes next. But somebody's ready,

(01:06:31):
somebody wants to be to go to the altar, and
it's Laura played by Carolyn Monroe. She's extremely jealous. She's like, no, me, me, Me,
me me, And so it looks like it's going to
be Laura instead for whatever this ritual will be. He
so she goes up, lies down on the altar and
Johnny Alucard cuts his hand bleeds into a grail full

(01:06:52):
of Dracula's ashes and then pours them out on her
and it gets really thick and frothy, and this is disgusting.
She's now covered in a she blood. Everybody gets freaked
out and runs away except for Johnny and Laura. And
of course the ritual works it, you know, it resurrects
Dracula from the earth where his ashes were buried one
hundred years before. And then Dracula is shown shot from below,

(01:07:15):
so we're looking up at him like he is the
statue of liberty but a vampire, and he's surrounded by
smoke and quite regal in his well, as Johnny said
in his Satanic Majesty, and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
I thought this was pretty effective. Like at this point
I'm really digging, like, oh, yeah, this is Dracula, this
is the real deal. You summoned him, and like this
is an incredibly dangerous situation for everybody involved.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
But this is the part I mentioned earlier where he
is right off the bat, extremely high handed with Johnny.
Johnny says, master, I did it. I summoned you, and
Dracula just kind of scowls at him and says it
was my will and then holds out the ring for
him to kiss.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Well, he's not going to suffer any even if this
is like, you know, a bloodline of Toady's that are
supposed to look after Dragula's interest and raise him from
the grave, Like, he's not going to suffer a wizard
trying to pull one over him here. He's going to
establish right from the top that Dracula is the guy
in charge, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
So he goes into the church, Laura's still hanging out there.
He's like, I guess I'll drink her blood, and he does,
and meanwhile Johnny is looking on biting his knuckle like
I wish that was me. And at first I thought
he was thinking, like, oh, I wish that was me
drinking her blood, but then I realized no, I think
he's like, I wish that was me getting my blood drank.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Because that's what he ultimately wants. He wants the kiss
of cursed immortality.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
So the next day Laura's body is found by kids
playing in a construction area. There's sort of the kids
from the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Waters commercial.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Yeah, just sort of wild, unparented seventies children running around
finding dead bodies in the in the rubble. I mean,
this is just how it went. I was born in
the seventies as well.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
Yeah, let's go climb on that rebar. The police show up.
They open a murder investigation and it is led by
Inspector Murray. This is the detective we talked about earlier.
Inspector Murray in turn consults with Laura Mr van Helsing.
I think they have a pre existing relationship because Van
Helsing knows all about weird occult murders, and the detective

(01:09:22):
then reveals that the murder is connected to his granddaughter Jessica,
because Laura was part of her friend group.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
They do acknowledge at one point, or Inspector Murray does
talking with somebody else. I think one of the other
police investigators is like, well, you know, here in the UK,
we don't really have cult murders like they do in America.
You know, they're not as complicated as that and as heavy.
We have some cult murders but it's you know, it's
more British here.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
So there is a an investigation portion of the movie
in the middle here that had one scene that had
Rachel and me rolling. It was the alu card scene
where man, they really they don't skip over anything. They
let you see the whole thing come together.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
Spoil it for us, Joe, tell everybody what Alocard means.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Well, so that you see like Peter Cushing there with
a card and he has written Dracula out on this
piece of paper and then he's drawing lines from the
letters in Alucard to the letters in Dracula and they
all cross over and he's like, it's it's Dracula spelt backwards.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
The the the Dracula cipher right or Alocard cipher as
if he just solved like a really complex puzzle here
when it's just so obvious in the page. But again,
it just shows you how great Peter Cushing is. Such
a stupid scene, but he sells it. He patiently brings

(01:10:55):
dignity to the scene.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
He draws. He doesn't just like write out Alucard and
then look at he like draws all the lines. He
does every letter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
You know, he's checking his work. And I guess we
have to remember at this point in in Hammer canon anyway,
nobody had had solved the Dracula cipher. Yet they didn't
know what this meant, and so we had to watch
him do it in real time.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
That's true. It's like one of those math conjectures you know,
remains unproven.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Mm. But this is this is also good parenting slash
grand parenting tip that we're seeing here. Find out who
your your your your, your child or your grandchild's friends are.
Write their names on a sheet of paper and just
check and see if any of their first or last
name happens to be Dracula spelled backwards.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
I just knew I shouldn't have let my child play
with eoj niff.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
Ok. Sorry, I don't have any paper out, Joe. I
can't fact check that one to make sure that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Well, then you must be one of the idiots infurial. Okay,
So what happens that? So maybe I'm to skip more
lightly over some of the plot points that follow, but
one sequence is Dracula he really wants to eat Jessica
van Helsing. Actually, I think he wants to turn her
into a vampire. Right to really just fully defile the

(01:12:15):
name of Van Helsing. He wants to not just kill
the end of the Van Helsing line, but make her
a servant of the devil.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
That's right, that's his evil plot for revenge here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
So the way they're going to make that happen is
Johnny Alucard. Does he invite Jessica Van Helsing to go
to the Jazz Spectacular with him?

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
Yeah, He's like, hey, I got tickets to the Jazz Spectacular.
Want to come? And she's like, uh no, no, no,
thank you for doing something else. And then Gaynor's like, hey,
I'm looking to go to a concert.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
What's he going to do? Well, he figures out I
can at least feed Gayner to Dracula.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Yeah, but this doesn't go over well with Dracula because Dracula,
rightfully so is like, this is not what I charged
you with. We have a specific plan for vengeance here.
I will drink her blood and kill her, but you
need to bring me the descendant of Van Helsing. And
then but Johnny Alickhart is like, well, you haven't given

(01:13:13):
me any powers, and he basically does kind of like
there's like a labor standoff. Yes, here in the film
and Dracula caves. He's like, all right, I'll give you
the powers.

Speaker 3 (01:13:23):
So he bites him, turns Johnny Olichard into a vampire,
and then Johnny Ali Card. Actually before he gets on
with the business of, you know, of getting Jessica van Helsing,
he just goes out and gets a snack first, right,
and he like finds a lady in a laundromat and
eats her.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Yep, yep, just starts committing random vampire murders.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
But at some point Jessica's boyfriend, Bob, he comes to
get her at her house. Now she's been warned about
things at this point by by her her grandfather Van Helsing,
but Bob comes and says I think He says, oh,
you know your grandfather and the police are at the
cavern there interviewing everybody, and you need to come there now.

(01:14:03):
Was that the story?

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
I think it was, I believe so.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
Yes, And in this scene he strangely has a ben
Dana tied around his neck. Yeh did you see this
one coming?

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
So he does take her to the cavern the coffee shop,
but it's not the uh, it's not the good guys.
It's the bad guys.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
That's right. It's a game of cat and mouse here
between the Van Helsings and House Dracula.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
So eventually Jessica is taken to the deconsecrated church I
think it's Saint Bartholf's and Dracula hypnotizes her but doesn't
vamp her yet. I think he's waiting for like the
big midnight ritual or something. In the meantime, we get
Van Helsing on the case. He's trying to he's trying
to find out how to rescue his granddaughter, and he

(01:14:51):
ends up going to Johnny Alucard's house where they have
a battle. It is Van Helsing versus a vampire, not
Dracula yet, but the vamp, the sort of young vamp.
And I thought this was a good battle. I like
this scene.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, to be fair, this is the
first vampire that this Van Helsing has ever battled. Yeah.
And they do a good job, yeah, of making it
a little a little unexpected. Like, for instance, earlier in
the film, there's a little foreshadowing where they remind us
that there's an often ignored bit of vampire lore that
says that moving water or moving fresh water. I think

(01:15:27):
they're running waters film, clear running water, will you know,
destabilize them or slay them or something. So I wonder
if that'll come into play here.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
Yes, yes, I think he says that at the police
station or something. He's listing all of the things that
will harm or won't harm a vampire. Some of it's
just superstition, but yeah, clear running water and a cross
in a bible that'll do it. So there's a great
move he has here where Johnny Alikart like the sun
is rising in the window and he's trapped. He's got

(01:15:56):
to get back to his coffin so he can rest
during the daylight. But then Peter Cushing throws a bible
into his coffin. He's like, oh gotcha, now, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Yeah, sleep on that. And this is like a full
size one too. It's not one of those little pocket
ones that you know, you could just maybe like sleep around,
but no, no, there's no sleeping in that coffin without
laying on that bible.

Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
It's ruined, right, that's athunk bible. So they battle, but
eventually Johnny Alucard falls into the shower. The water starts running,
and this destroys him. Like the water's running over him
and he's screaming. He's like, sturn it off, turn it off,
and Van Helsing's like, where is Jessica? But he won't say.
He's just getting obliterated by water.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Yeah. Is it the best vampire death in cinematic history?

Speaker 2 (01:16:44):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Is it at least inventive? Does it give us something
a little bit new? Then? Yes? I think so. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
I kind of like this one. It seems actually like
plausible from a folklore standpoint. That sounds like something that
could really be believed to harm a vampire in some scenario.
And uh, yeah, I don't know. It was different. I
liked it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Yeah, I guess there is a bathtub scene in The
Lost Boys. There's something but that was like a bathtub
full of holy water.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
I think, ah, okay, I've forgotten about that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
If memory serves also, Lost Boys came later, Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
much later.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
But eventually Laura Mr. Van Helsing does go to the
church to confront Dracula and there is a great trap
setting scene. He digs a pit outside the church and
he fills it full of wooden steaks. He takes his
trusty silver dagger with him, which he has showed off
several times before, and there is a showdown, a final
battle in the church, and there were a couple of

(01:17:36):
parts here that I thought were actually kind of scary.
I don't usually expect to find anything all that frightening
in a hammer horror movie, but like the part where
Dracula is chasing Van Helsing up the spiral staircase into
the tower, I thought was quite menacing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Yeah, because really throughout the film they do a great
job of establishing Dracula as such a threat, and suddenly
in that stairwell, it's like everything is so close, austrophobic,
and there's this feeling of just being in an enclosed
space with something that is just beyond even a vicious animal,
just pure bloodthirsty hunger.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
Yeah, And so so they have a showdown. There's kind
of a fake out here. Van Helsing stabs Dracula with
his silver dagger, but Dracula is aided by the hypnotized
Jessica van Helsing. She comes up and pulls the dagger
out of him, and her grandpa is like, no, Jessica.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
This one caught me up in the moment, you know,
you know the movie's not going to end like that.
This movie's only ending one way, but getting caught up
in just the sort of the spirit of the film.
I was like, oh man, this is bad news.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
But of course we saw him dig that trap earlier, right,
so the trap comes back. In the end, he throws
holy water. Van Helsing throws holy water on Dracula. That
kind of burns him, yow, and he falls into the pit.
And then to really drive it home, Van Helsing and
like grabs a shovel and like shoves Dracula down onto

(01:19:05):
the wooden stakes with the shovel, and this breaks the
spell over Jessica. They're all right, and I guess some
of her friends are still alive or boyfriend's dead. But
I don't know if you with the hippie group, they're
still kicking around.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Yeah, I don't know if they're gonna hang out much anymore,
but yeah, some survive. I will say, in this movie,
you had two different scenes with the melting vampires, so
you end up melting the same vampire twice in the
same picture. They at least made sure to have the
second vampire death look even better than the first. I

(01:19:39):
have to say that this one looked really good and gnarly,
and I liked it quite a bit agree.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
So that's all I got for Dracula A d. Nineteen
seventy two. I enjoyed this one. I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna say it's the best Dracula movie I've ever seen.
But if you're looking for those early seventies vibes and
you want some Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in there too,
it's perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
Yeah. I'm not gonna recommend Dracula AD nineteen seventy two
to everyone, but if the title Dracula AD nineteen seventy
two stirs something inside you, then yes, you must see
this film, and I encourage you to do so.

Speaker 3 (01:20:14):
It's way better than Land of the Minotaur.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
Yes, yes, I would agree, but the score for Land
of the Minataar was better though I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:20:23):
Yeah, but Land of the Minotaur didn't have Stone Ground.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
That's right, if they'd only had the musical stylings of
Stone Ground. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close
this one out. But as always, we remind you that
we're primarily a science podcast, Real science, not the Van
Helsing branch of science, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema.

(01:20:48):
If you want a full list of the movies we've
discussed over the years on Weird House Cinema, head on
over to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T
E R bo x D dot com. Our username there
is weird House and we have a list and you
can see all the films we've talked about. You can
go back through the archives there and see, well, what
other Dracula movies have they watched? I guess kind of
sort of two or three other Dracula films.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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