Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Alan Gibson

Writer:

Don Houghton (writer)

Release Date:

17 November 1972 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

The Count is back, with an eye for London's hotpants . . . and a taste for everything

Plot:

Johnny Alucard raises Count Dracula(Christopher Lee) from the dead in 1972 London. The Count goes after the descendents of Van Helsing.

Plot Keywords:

Vampire | Good Versus Evil | Cross | Beautiful Woman | Hammer Horror

Cast

Christopher Lee	...	Count Dracula
Peter Cushing	...	Professor Van Helsing
Stephanie Beacham	...	Jessica Van Helsing
Christopher Neame	...	Johnny Alucard
Michael Coles	...	Inspector
Marsha A. Hunt	...	Gaynor (as Marsha Hunt)
Caroline Munro	...	Laura Bellows
Janet Key	...	Anna
William Ellis	...	Joe Mitcham
Philip Miller	...	Bob
Michael Kitchen	...	Greg
David Andrews	...	Detective Sergeant
Lally Bowers	...	Matron Party Hostess
Constance Luttrell	...	Mrs. Donnelly
Michael Daly	...	Charles

Also Known As:

Dracula '72 (UK) (working title)
Dracula 1972 (International: English title) (informal title)
Dracula 1972 D.C. (International: English title) (poster title)
Dracula Chases the Mini Girls (UK) (working title)
Dracula Chelsea '72 (UK) (working title)
Dracula Today

Runtime:

USA:96 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

UK:15 (re-rating) (1995) | UK:18 (re-rating) (1988) | UK:X (original rating) | Singapore:PG | West Germany:16 (VHS) | West Germany:16 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Netherlands:12 (DVD rating) (2006) | Finland:(Banned) (1972) | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Aldenham Country Park, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Company:

Hammer Film Productions

Trivia:

Four actors in the film appeared in future James Bond films. Christopher Lee played Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Caroline Munro played Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Michael Kitchen played Bill Tanner in GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Christopher Neame played Fallon in Licence to Kill (1989).

Quotes:

Inspector: Van Helsing?
Detective Sergeant: Her grandfather is Professor Lorimer Van Helsing, London University. He helped us once.
Inspector: Oh, yes, that extortion mob. Money by blackmail. Something to do with witchcraft. Some cult or other.
Detective Sergeant: Yes, he's a specialist in that sort of thing.
Inspector: Witchcraft.
[plays with executive toy]
Inspector: Occult. Churchyards.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Dracula: A Cinematic Scrapbook (1991)

Soundtrack:

You better come through

Like, Taste the Blood of Dracula, kids!

For reasons known only to the author, Bram Stoker's Dracula never included the line "Sergeant, I'll bet you a pound to a pinch of s**t that there's a little piece of hash at that party, and if there is, I've got them.", but the early 70s saw that particular oversight put right. Dracula A.D. 1972 saw Hammer trying to pump new life into the old Count with a new creative team whose big idea was basically to rehash the plot of Taste the Blood of Dracula in the 1970s with Christopher Neame in the Ralph Bates role as Johnny Alucard, here conning a thrill-seeking group of with it kids (Michael Kitchen and Caroline Munro among them) into making a date with the Devil with a Black Mass at the deconsecrated church that not only holds Lawrence Van Helsing's body (Lawrence? Whatever happened to Abraham?) and Dracula's ashes. "Okay, okay. But if we do get to summon up the big daddy with the horns and the tail, he gets to bring his own liquor, his own bird and his own pot." As with the Godzilla films, the main attraction is kept off the screen for most of the running time – top-billed Christopher Lee's role is probably smaller in this than any other in the series, four brief scenes probably totalling no more than ten minutes. Worse still, looking more like Peter Sellers than Transylvanian aristocracy, he brings nothing except continuity to the part: he does what is asked of him with professionalism, but that's about it. Instead the bulk of the film is carried by Neame's Malcolm McDowell wannabe, second-billed Peter Cushing as Van Helsing's grandson Lorimar, Stephanie Beacham and Michael Coles' open-minded cop ("There is a Satan." "Of course. Otherwise we wouldn't need a police force, would we?"). Yet despite the clumsily handled prologue and finale it's fairly entertaining even if it is completely derivative, perhaps even more entertaining now than when it was released because its hip and happening trappings are far funnier than the intentional comic relief – not least Johnny Alucard urging "Dig the music, kids!" during the black mass – and it's a lot better than Dracula 2000. The DVD also includes the wonderfully over the top trailer - "Are you ready? He's ready. He's waiting to freak you out – right out of this world!" – but not the short making of documentary from when the picture was still called Dracula Today (other rejected titles included Dracula Chases the Mini Girls and Dracula Chelsea '72!).