Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

Instant Favorite.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Despite the presence of Hammer's iconic Gothic duo of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, "Dracula AD 1972" is a pretty mundane entry into the Dracula canon. Briefly, a group of counter-culture types get tricked into an unholy attempt to resurrect the blood-sucking count by "Johnny Alucard" (Christopher Neame) with predictable results. One of participants at the dark ceremony is the granddaughter of Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing (Cushing), who is in turn the grandson of Lawrence Van Helsing, who had dispatched the vampire exactly 100 years earlier and a vengeful Dracula (Lee) is out for blood, figuratively and literally. Cushing and Lee are fine playing their standard tropes but the youths are an uninteresting bunch and I doubt if anyone will much care if they live or die or undie. The worst part of the film is the soundtrack. I can accept that, when the music is actually embedded in the story (such as in the bar), then the music needs to match the scene but most of the score is simply background and setting Dracula and van Helsing's climatic showdown to cheesy '70's cop-show music quickly kills any sense of drama or horror. There are a number of ridiculous scenes such as Van Helsing working out the mystical significance of 'Aulcard's name as though he was deciphering the Rosetta stone, gory scenes with blood that sometimes looks like catsup, other times like vermillion poster paint, and above all Christopher Neame's hammy summoning of the Prince of Evil (admittedly a good 'who's who' of evil). Presumably, the film was an attempt of Hammer to ingratiate itself into a new generation of viewers and the film opens with the groovy, free-loving, hippie-types crashing a party hosted by a bunch of snooty 'upper class' types who are mocked for their 'squareness' until the 'fuzz' show up (a scene that serves no real purpose other than establish the 'hipness' of the film). The scenes featuring Cushing and Lee are too brief and the rest of the movie is not really worth watching, so this one's a miss for all but core vampire fans.

In the Nineteenth Century, Professor Lawrence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) vanquishes, destroys Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) and dies. A rider keeps Dracula's dust in a vessel and his ring. In the present days (1972), in London, the mysterious rebel Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame) that worships Dracula lures his friends, including Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), and resurrects the vampire. Dracula plans to destroy Professor Abraham Van Helsing and his granddaughter Jessica to take revenge on their ancestor Van Helsing. "Dracula A.D. 1972" is the seventh and the weakest Hammer's film of the famous vampire. Anyway, it is an entertaining with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and the gorgeous Stephanie Beacham in the lead roles. Further, this film is dated and nostalgic in 2017 when compared with the other Hammer films. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Drácula no Mundo da Minissaia" ("Dracula in the World of the Miniskirt")

Growing bored with the current party scene, a youth drags a group of friends to an abandoned church in central London where they unwittingly resurrect Count Dracula through a supposed prank and forces the descendants of who destroyed him to do so again.For the most part this was an unnecessarily maligned and undervalued effort though it does have some minor problems. One of the film's best parts here is the fact that it manages to really capture a fantastic trend of mixing together the different styles employed at the time by offering the Gothic landscapes here alongside the more modern Mod trappings that were in fashion here. The Gothic markings here come from the rather grand church for their party as the supposedly abandoned effort comes complete with the broken-away and decayed landscapes, the absolutely chilling ceremonial hall where they manage to conduct their party in the middle of broken stained-glass paintings and crumbling pews makes for a truly enjoyable setting along the way here even if the best atmosphere is saved for the end with the battle in the church leads into the adjoining cemetery which is all sorts of Gothic fun, while the film's main issue of dealing with the direct lineage being in peril and the reawakening curse concepts come from the grandest stories of the genre's past being replayed to its fullest here. Even with all this good stuff here, the setting in concurrent-day London allows for the settings in the discotheques and dance stores that populated the scene which is all quite nicely brought in here to give this a solid mixture of the two worlds. Beyond this mixture, the fact of generating some solid action here is quite enjoyable with the opening carriage-top brawl between Dracula and Van Helsing in the past is so fast and frenetic the surprising location of the scene is fun enough while allowing for a marvelous opening. Likewise, the resurrection is truly unnerving and chilling with the entire thing pointed out to be a joke but it steadily grows into something more sinister as he continues on and the final appearance from the mist makes for yet another grand, stylistic entrance here for the Count as he makes his way through the church for his helpless victim. As well, the investigation into the deaths and the slow discovery of Dracula being alive come off really nicely here at generating enough interest to be enjoyable, while the multitude of fights here at the finale with the minions before the great showcase in the church with Dracula is highly enjoyable and ends this on a positive note. There's a few minor flaws here, mainly from the dated look and feel here by being mostly set at that specific point so there's a lot of goofiness here with the clothing, music and lingo used at the time that's just lame. Even still, there's little point here in Dracula being there with being relegated solely to the church for his brief appearances where his menace isn't as well-thought-out here and doesn't feel as strong as some of his other outings. Still, there's a lot to like here otherwise.Today's Rating/R: Violence, Language and drug use.

The Hammer Dracula series was mostly solid and entertaining, but the last three films were disappointing and three of Hammer's lesser efforts. Dracula A.D. 1972 has often been considered the worst of the Hammer Dracula films, for me it is one of the weakest along with Satanic Rites but by no means unwatchable.Starting with what's good, the best assets are Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Cushing brings real dignity and class here to a character that ranks with his best, his dialogue is often absolutely terrible but he remarkably delivers it with much conviction and seriousness(without being overly so). Lee has very little screen time and even little dialogue but is a towering presence and the embodiment of evil. The cast generally actually are decent, with the most memorable being Christopher Neame, he overacts at times and does seem to be trying too hard at times to channel Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange but he is incredibly charismatic, very sinister and is so much fun to watch. There are three good scenes, the genuinely exciting opening coach fight which features one of Dracula's most memorable demises of the series, Dracula's resurrection which is one of the series' most imaginative and the tense and entertaining ending which is one of the series' better and more plausible ones. The photography is incredibly stylish and the lighting has a lot of vibrancy and atmosphere.However, Dracula A.D. 1972's biggest problem is that it is very dated(especially in the production values, script and music), a term I try to avoid using but I do feel that it applies here. And this is not just by today's standards, it was dated back in 1972 as well. The sets are really lacking in atmosphere and are quite tacky and gaudy in colour, a cheaper version of Austin Powers. The very 1970s costumes and hair-styles are pretty much the same. The script is howlingly bad, Cushing has the worst of the dialogue(some of which are endless explanations) but the howlers come from Alucard, and while it provides some unintentional entertainment at first it gets very tiresome soon after. The film even tries to incorporate some Dracula mythos, but does absolutely nothing with it, a decent idea wasted. The soundtrack dates the film terribly, not only does it sound incredibly cheesy but it is always incongruous with what is going on, with tense scenes almost completely ruined by inappropriately 'groovy' music.The story has its moments, but does drag badly and was in serious need of more suspense, mystery, excitement and tension. It is especially bad in the party scene, which goes on forever and serves no point to the story at all, instead showing off an exhausting display 1970s fashions and behaviour at its worst, complete with the most unconvincingly played hippies for any film. The direction is often far too languid, the characters are not really all that interesting or engaging(with the most important characters being severely under-utilised, Dracula and Van Helsing's rivalry is so much more interesting than everything else in this film, why not show more of it?) and while most of the acting from the main players is decent, Caroline Munro is mesmerising to watch but is wasted by being killed off too soon, Stephanie Beacham is sexy but quite vapid and the acting for the hippies is mostly terrible.All in all, not unwatchable but one of the weakest of the Hammer Dracula series and lesser Hammer overall. 5/10 Bethany Cox