HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 48
2nd of 4 Hammer films

The last two Dracula movies that Hammer produced, Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula tend to be dismissed as the rather pathetic attempts of a studio struggling to remain relevant as the 1970's gathered pace. Both of them were set in present day, which means they abandoned the gothic flavour which remains so beloved of fans of Hammer horror and one of its defining features.

And both of them have an air of mutton dressed up as lamb - a bunch of brilliantined old British dudes (I'm talking about the company, not that cast - you might think that applies to Lee and Cushing too but fie on you if you do) trying to be hip to the trends of the day. I have to say, this sense of embarrassment on Hammer's behalf detracts quite a lot from Dracula A.D. 1972 for me. Its cast of characters of groovy twenty-something swinging Londoners feels like what a fifty-year-old investment banker thinks it would be.

Here they take another swing, but this time they adopt the tropes and tone of something between a hard-boiled detective story and a John Le Carre espionage tale, which is even more incongruous, in theory. But I gotta say, I really had a good time with this one.

Yes, its attempts to convince as a tough police thriller are a bit hopeless. But where A.D. 1972 left me cringing, this one made me want to give it a big hug. Its mis-steps are rather adorable. This also gives better roles to Cushing and Lee, I feel - especially the latter. In fact, Drac's entire diabolical plan in this one marks an improvement over many Hammer Dracula films in a couple of ways. Firstly, he has one - when in some of the previous films he just seemed to be caught in some endless groundhog day where he'd get resurrected, start biting people, hiss a lot and then finally get thwarted and killed in increasingly silly ways (not to say his death scene here isn't silly - I mean, SPOILERS if you await his fate with bated breath but... getting tangled in a hawthorn bush? It's comically absurd, but I'd argue not quite as bad as when he got stuck between two streams of running water).

Secondly, it's really quite a frightening plan - this is Dracula going all Saddam Hussein and developing a biological agent so virulent it will wipe out all human life on the planet. And what's really great about this plan is that it is so cataclysmic, it causes Van Helsing to stop and question why. And his conclusion is that Dracula does indeed yearn for final, irrevocable death - because of course, with no humans left, he would have no blood to survive on. That's right, this is a Hammer Dracula with a genuine, compelling motivation beyond just revelling in death and evil-doing. I realise this is exactly what might turn folks off who want their Hammer horrors to stick to the formula, but I think it's a pretty decent bit of writing.

So this is clearly a more serious-minded effort than its predecessor. Sometimes that sets up some unintentionally comedic moments. It really is bizarre how quickly these hardnosed detectives accept the existence of vampires - to the point of immediately staking an ex-colleague through the heart when she flashes her fangs at them. And the plot requires Dracula to impersonate an Eastern European businessman, and Lee's performance in this scene opposite Cushing is so funny, I suspect they were secretly having a bit of a laugh. But I think this was a very dedicated attempt to innovate the formula.

It does lack the sumptuous production design and deep gothic colour of Hammer's classic Dracula's, and sure, I love those films for that and they are often better than this one. But I think this is genuinely interesting, well written, well acted by two of my all time favourites, and really quite well paced - I found it hugely entertaining.

Pointless trivia all about me: when we got to the scene with the silver bullet, I suddenly realised I had watched this movie as a pretty young kid on late night TV, because that is a scene I had always wondered if I had really seen (because I was sure it involved Cushing, who I recognised at the time from Star Wars). So that's one little mystery solved, although I'm considering this like a first-time watch, because that was so so long ago, and I was so young, I'm not sure I remembered or understood much else of what was going on. But even then, I think I bemoaned Van Helsing's stupid decision to tell Dracula the gun had a silver bullet in it before he shot him.