"Frankenstein Created Woman" (1967) d / Freddie Francis

Tonight's review, a 1967 cult classic as directed by one Freddie Francis, is the fourth in the Frankenstein series for the legendary Hammer Studios, half of a horror double bill with The Mummy's Shroud, and a metaphysically kooky one, at that. Besides the expected Peter Cushing in the lead, reprising his familiar role of Baron Frankenstein, this one also displays the Austrian Playboy Playmate Susan Denberg, dubbed here as the film's producers found her Austrian accent too thick for audiences, and Robert Morris, who'd also appeared in Quartermass and the Pit for the studio the same year. It's a showcase of Francis' ability to turn a disorientated script into an effective slice of gothic horror that may sound a bit like misogynist fantasies acted out for the big screen, but in actuality, stands as an empowering display of beautiful woman in the driver's seat, if by "driver's seat", we really mean "serial murders". Onward!


This imagery takes me back to a certain ultra-cheezy music video from the "Intensities in 10 Cities" album. You know the one...
After a young boy witnesses the public head chop of his criminal father at the guillotine, we see that he's grown into an adult named Hans (Robert Morris), excessively kindhearted for someone that's seen his dear da beheaded, at work as an assistant to Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) and Doctor Hertz (Thorley Walters), and in love with the barkeep's disfigured, crippled daughter, Christina (Susan Denberg), who gets the piss taken out of her quite regularly, by three wealthy deviants named Anton, Karl, and Johan (Peter Bythe, Barry Warren, Derek Fowlds, respectively) who later beat her father to death with canes when he interrupts their late night theft of his wine, and frame Hans for the murder, when he refuses to use his alibi (he was having gimpy in n' out wiff Christina, wudn't he?) and spoil her name. It just so happens, that Frankenstein, having been revived from a cryogenic death-state himself, has invented a soul-trapping apparatus, which he uses on the freshly executed Hans, and when Christina returns to the soul-crushing news and does a suicide flopper into the drink, drowning herself, well, you can see where this is going, can't you?


Harnessing the energy from Madonna's Blonde Ambition stage bra had proved disastrous for these men of science.
If you voted that Frankenstein used his medical knowledge to give a stay of execution to both parties involved, albeit a gruesome one, indeed, then give yourself a banana sticker. While the Baron uses surgery to repair all of Christina's physical flaws, he manages to trap Hans' disembodied soul inside the now beautiful young lady. That's not gonna work out the way you planned it, methinks, unless your plan was "get Hans' vengeful spirit to possess his former love and use her new fleshy wares to trap the three pompous perpetratin' bastards what put them in this metaphysical pickle in the first place". Naturally, Christina systematically snuffs the bastards at the ethereal insistence of her ghostly beau, and Frankenstein and Hertz only manage to piece it all together just as she's cancelling out the last of them for keeps. When the severed head informs her that her vengeful journey has come to an end, against the desperate pleas of Frankenstein, she takes the Nestea plunge into a waterfall, and re-drowns herself, to join her mate in the afterlife. For once, Frankenstein's comeuppance is merely psychological, and he walks away to collect his thoughts, and focus once again, on his work...


Susan Denberg wielding a meat cleaver? Halfway to full mast, with tingly potential.
Denberg would also appear in the "Mudd's Women" episode of Star Trek, which I have seen before, but can't recall whether the actress made an impression on me. I'm sure she did, and I just buried all memories of the poisonous sci-fi in the inner depths of my memory, including those of her. It is what it is, sci-fi dorks, I can't be someone I'm not... Rumors of her flipping her lid on L.S.D. and overdosing in the seventies, would seem to be unsubstantiated, probably. Cushing, as British Horror's elder statesman, would follow this up with Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), as well as assorted genre fare like Torture Garden (1967), Blood Beast Terror (1968), and Scream and Scream Again (1970). He certainly earned a packet of twenty unfiltered John Player fags, long his favorites, with his performance here. Either way, this is both must-see for film fans, and must own for genre completists, as it has earned an impressive three Wops on the rating scale. Grab a copy!


The Herman's Hermits pop music concert scheduled tonight in the East End, has, regrettably, been cancelled. Health reasons cited.
 

"Paranoiac" (1963) d/Freddie Francis

Tonight, we'll examine Freddie Francis' first effort in the director's chair for Hammer Studios, a tightly wrapped psychological thriller starring the always excellent Oliver Reed, as well as Janette Scott of Day of the Triffids (1963) fame. Closer in look and feel to the director's later film, The Elephant Man (1980), than the color-splashed genre romps the studio would come to be known for, Paranoiac wears a shroud of Hitchcock-esque deceit in weaving its potent parable of madness and money around Francis' richly framed black and white shots. They don't make 'em like this any more...


"We're out of brandy, Williams. I should think that you'll order eighty-four more cases immediately..."
We meet the affluent Ashby family as they attend a memorial service at church for their deceased parents, when Eleanor (Janette Scott) is struck with a sudden vision of her dead brother, Tony, who may or may not have committed suicide some eight years prior. Her brother, Simon (Ollie Reed),  is a devil-may-care posh sot, who's taken to driving his E-type Jaguar through the estate's lush flower beds and drunkenly dart-fencing  poofs at the pub, when he isn't downing brandy's and/or Eleanor's busty nurse, Francoise (Liliane Brousse), that is. It seems that Eleanor's grip on reality has been steadily slipping since her brother's untimely demise, so much so, that she even tries to copy him, jumping blindly from a cliff out of misery, only to be saved by...her dead brother, Tony (Alexander Davion)? Well this certainly fucks Simon's chances for an inheritance pay out in three weeks' time, doesn't it?


"The flights on these...I believe they're crooked."
Of course, as is usually the case when dealing with a taut British thriller like this, nothing is as it seems at first glance. Eleanor's condition improves with Tony's arrival, but Aunt Harriet (Sheila Burrell) and Simon aren't at all sold on the man's identity, calling in the family attorney Kossett (Maurice Denham) to test him with family trivia, which he passes with flying colors, thanks to a thorough prepping from Kossett's son, who's been skimming cash from the family funds for quite a while. It's a good thing that he's an impostor, too, as Eleanor seems to have fallen in love with him somewhere along the way, and incest is the kind of scandal that might ruin the family name. His extravagant, drunken lifestyle forever nipping at his heels in the form of debt collectors and magistrates, Simon cuts his returned brother's brake line, nearly removing his recovering sister in the process to narrow down the division of his inheritance, and drowns the nurse when she realizes too late who the real family mental case is. If you didn't know, seeing a mysterious depiction of Oliver Reed on the release poster as you walked into the theater might have tipped it off for you, I dunno, anyway,  it's  Simon. But the shocks don't stop there, no sirree.


"Is that "Summer Holiday" by Cliff Richard and the Shadows? I bloody love that track!"
Scott went on to appear in The Old Dark House (1963) and Crack in the World (1965) while Sheila Burrell who had a long stage career, was Sir Laurence Olivier's cousin, no less. One of my favorite Hammer movies, hands down, and easily just as enjoyable as Christopher Lee leering with fangs displayed, at Veronica Carlson's technicolor tits, or a post-surgery Peter Cushing straining to wipe away brow sweat with a hand doused in bright stage blood. Sure, it's a British Psycho-clone like several others of the era, but one that's been masterfully handled by Francis and his crew, with solid performances from the cast, Reed's being the notable standout, of course, and thus, the sum of those excellent parts is full of enough suspense, mystery, and atmosphere to merit four Wops on the scale. A true classic. See it now.


Would you look at the state of that... Impossible to hire good clean up staff these days, 'innit?

"Craze" (1974) d/Freddie Francis

Hearing  Jack Palance repeatedly say "Chuku", the name of the African idol he worships and murders for in tonight's review, in his inimitable breathy Anthracite coal country whisper through nicotine-stained teeth, is probably reason enough to give this, director Freddie Francis' second 1974 effort (the other being a comedy called Son of Dracula, with Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr), a viddy, for any fans of the late actor's work. For those that do seek out this groovy British tale of witchery and human sacrifice, there's a mixed bag of actresses/victims that ranges from Miss Nroway 1962, Julie Ege and Italian genre favorite, Suzy Kendall, to former British sex symbol and femme fatale, Diana Dors, as well as cameos from Trevor Howard and Hugh Griffith. There's also a wooden fork-holdin' bruh in the basement you're gonna wanna check out for yourselves...


"After you finish your zany interpretive nude dance for Chuku, we could go out...for pierogies..."
Neal Mottram (Jack Palance) runs a quaint little curio shop in London, with the help of his young protege', a former rent boy,  named Ronnie (Martin Potter). He's also the head of a groovy coven of witches who worship a wooden statue of an African god named Chuku in the shop's basement. When an ousted spellcaster shows up claiming ownership of the idol, Neal goes loud and aggro, shoving her onto the large sharpened fork the yellow-eyed statue holds. After dumping the corpse in a nearby river, he finds a hidden drawer full of gold coins in an old desk he's about to sell off, and naturally attributes the sudden good fortune to Chuku and his impromptu sacrifice to the wooden brother. He burns a bit of sacrificial crumpet (Julie Ege) that he picks up in a club,  in the furnace downstairs,  after she refuses to dance for Chuku, and sells a pair of Ming vases he previously couldn't give away, prompting more weird alone time in front of the statue. Empowered with the belief that the god is protecting him and making him wealthy, he concocts an elaborate alibi involving broken down vehicles, drugging an old flame named Dolly (Diana Dors), throwing on tennis sneakers, and tube hopping, all to provide his idol with another sacrifice, this time, his elderly aunt, who he stakes in the neck in her front lawn after scaring the shit out of her with a rubber Halloween mask.


"Nevahmind dese boolshit-ass sacrifices...put some honey barbecued pig ribs on dis fork heah!"
With the Bill convinced that the antiques dealer is the main suspect in the growing list of ritualistic murders, but unable to make the collar, due to Neal's attention to intricate detail, the detectives lean on Dolly and Ronnie for information, resorting to gay bashing the young associate, who descends into a mire of double scotches at the pub while being tailed. Meanwhile, Neal's set up another sacrifice to Chuku (take a dramatic pause...then whisper along...Chuku) in the form of a call girl named Sally (Suzy Kendall), who he pays twenty quid to choke the fuck out. With the cops closing in, Ronnie tries to take an axe to the idol, earning himself a bloody grill from a furious Neal, who promptly lifts him over his head and chucks him out the shop window in broad daylight (!). If you thought Palance was unhinged before, wait 'til you catch him in the film's finale, spinning around like an axe-wielding top, screaming at the top of his lungs at oncoming policemen, before finally offering Chuku (...Chuku...) one last sacrifice. Roll 'em...


Off to Bedfordshire wiv 'yer: "I choke you for Chuku...he's cuckoo for cheeky muff..."
Francis would follow this one up with things like 1975's Legend of the Werewolf and The Ghoul, while Kendall appeared in such genre fare of the day as Psycho-Circus (1966), The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), Torso (1973),  and Spasmo (1974), among others. Venicia Day was an actress whose roles ascended from "2nd African girl", to "2nd Black girl", to "African Girl", to "Dancer",  here. Former Bond girl Ege would also appear in Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and The Mutations,  the same year. Diana Dors had to be one of the most beautiful blondes of the 40's and early 50's in my estimation, but she'd come a long way from that era by the time of this movie. Still always great to see. Craze is packed with Palance, pretty girls, painful seventies gear, and bright red stage blood and makes for a pretty good time if you're into it. Three wops.


"I couldn't find your... ribs... a slab of Ukranian ham, seasoned in Lattimer Mines...will have to do..."

"Legend of the Werewolf" (1975) d/ Freddie Francis

Let's face it, in terms of classic British werewolf movies, there's Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf atop the lycanthropy ladder, and all else can be found a significant number of rungs down from there. Like tonight's review, from Freddie Francis under the Tyburn Studios banner; a recycled, much clunkier update of the aforementioned 1961 Hammer classic that, if nothing else, will leave you reaching for that movie afterwards to fill the void left  by Legend's pedestrian wake. Still, having genre icon Peter Cushing among your cast members is always a plus, and he's as good as ever here, for any hardcore Cushing completists that are on the fence about adding Legend to their future queues.


...and suddenly, Glen Danzig realized he was deathly allergic to cats.
Etoile has the extreme misfortune of having his entire family wiped out by a pack of wolves in the French wilderness. Luckily for the orphaned toddler, the wolves raise him into one of those adolescent kids in a wolfskin Speedo you always hear about the travelling circus taking in, as occurs here. Once he's bloomed into an adult (David Rintoul), he celebrates by biting the throat of the circus' one man band clear out, forever negating his chances of being promoted to acrobat or even popcorn vendor. He soon takes up residence at a pitiful rundown zoo full of dying animals, as run by a skeevy-looking zookeeper (Ron Moody), and keeps the local street urchins from throwing rocks at the pair of old wolves caged within. It seems a handful of working girls frequents the zoological garden each day, around lunchtime, and it isn't very long before the otherwise innocent Etoile becomes fond of one of them, a prostitute named Christine (Lynn Dalby) who hides her questionable profession from the young cage cleaner whose fits of rage have recently unlocked the  blood lust of his surrogate beast parents within him. Sounds like a good idea...


"Me bleedin' toofbrush? Wot you on about, guv'nah!"
When rich johns start turning up, toes up, on a reoccuring basis, the local police surgeon, Professor Paul (Cushing) takes it upon himself to investigate the violent deaths himself, even enlisting a photographer (Roy Castle, in his last big screen role) to capture images of the traumatized cadavers for posterity, a cockney Quincy, of sorts, really. The courts order the zoo's wolves to be put down, then Etoile stumbles in on Christine and one of her wealthy tricks about to partake in a business transaction, and you can pretty much cue the red-tinted wolf cam yourselves. Paul's relentless snooping soon ties Etoile to the murders, and it's down to the sewers to heroically track the mythic beast, though his efforts to reason with the half-human monster (can't remember the last time I saw a werewolf use it's human voice while transformed) are soon thwarted by the familiar silver bullet, as fired by Inspector Gerard (Stefan Gryff), effectively wrapping up both the case, and our movie.


Looks like somebody's been throwin' tomatoes at the busted ol' picket fence again.
Cushing and Moody are game performers here, and the experience on the whole is a satisfying one, but I can't help thinking that something is definitely missing from the production. Go ahead and call me a male chauvinist, but Tyburn should have gone further in aping its once formidable Hammer (fading fast, by then, seeing but two more releases by decade's end) competition in enlisting a nice bit o' strumpet to dress it's stage here. Seeing a Veronica Carlson or Madeline Smith-type bursting out of a corset here would have gone a long way towards me endowing more than the average score of two wops upon tonight's movie. I make apologies for neither the score, nor my appetites. Both are permanent.


"You play Jonathan King's version of Una Paloma Blanca one more time, and your throat's getting bitten out, mate..."

"Tales from the Crypt"(1972)d/Freddie Francis

A couple of spot on British horror anthologies would cap off the week rather nicely, eh wot? This Amicus production based upon stories that appeared in the E.C. Comics titles Tales From The Crypt and Vault of Horror was helmed by renowned genre director, Freddie Francis, who had handled previous anthologies Dr. Terror's House of Horrors in 1965, and Torture Garden two years later.Amicus had unsuccessfully expanded their collective oeuvre in the sixties to include sci-fi and arthouse films, and after 1971's I, Monster, a 3D Jeckyll and Hyde variant starring Christopher Lee that failed to make a lasting impression on anybody, they got back to what they did best, the horror anthology.As a grade schooler with a wealth of British hardcover examinations of horror films to gawk at at my disposal, thanks to 70's mall staple, Waldenbooks, I often came across luscious full page color stills from tonight's movie and the sequel that followed(next on our agenda, I assure you)and couldn't wait to finally see it for myself.While most other boys my age assuredly read comic books involving superheroes, horror anthologies like D.C.'s House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Tales of the Unexpected, and The Witching Hour were my ocular narcotic, and even then, E.C.'s graphically horrific line of comics were the stuff of legends to me.My father, who had worked in book and magazine distribution for years, kicks himself to this day over the number of mint E.C. comics he discarded in the trash back then.Tsk, tsk, Chaz.As for Crypt, a menagerie cast of familiar actors like Joan Collins, Peter Cushing, Patrick Magee, and Richard Greene all signed on for the studio's big return to the portmanteau formula, and the result? Well, you'll have to read on for that, won't you...

Congrats Joan, you got choked the fuck out by Santa Claus for Christmas.
A tour of some underground catacombs leaves five tourists separated from their group, and sealed into a chamber where a mysterious hooded figure recalls terrifying stories involving each person.All Through The House finds Joanne Clayton(Joan Collins)trying to dispose of her recently murdered husband down the fire escape on Christmas Eve, without rousing their daughter from her slumber, or more importantly, letting in an escaped psychopath who happens to be dressed in the guise of old Saint Nick. Things don't work out the way she had planned.In Reflection of Death, Carl Maitland(Ian Hendry) checks out on his family for greener pastures with his mistress, but wrecks his car in the process.He awakens in the wreckage, trying to hitchhike home, but no one's interested in stopping for him.At his house, his wife, who's in the arms of another man, screams and slams the door on him.He visits his mistress who isn't taken aback by the sight of him, and finds that she was blinded in their accident, the same one that took his life, as he discovers in the horror of his own coffee table reflection.In Poetic Justice,the Elliots, a snobbish father-son pair smear and terrorize their neighbor, Arthur Grimsdyke(Peter Cushing), a retired garbageman whose flat is filled with dogs and visiting neighborhood children, ultimately resulting in the lonely old man's suicide.One night, his corpse pulls itself from the grave and ends the class struggle in the most horrible way imaginable.

"Have you been snorting lines off the coffee table again??!!"
Wish You Were Here finds the unscrupulous Ralph Jason(Richard Greene) uncomfortably close to bankruptcy when his wife stumbles upon a Chinese statuette that grants wishes.Her first wish, financial security, comes when her husband is killed on his way to the lawyer's office, resulting in her inheritance of his insurance monies.When she wishes for his return just as he was before the accident, she learns of the heart attack he suffers when he notices Death personified following his car on a motorcycle.I was under the impression Death drove a Mini.Blind Alleys has Major Rogers(Nigel Patrick) drastically cutting finances as the new director of a home for the blind, greatly reducing heating and rationing food for the residents, while he enjoys a luxurious existence with his Belgian Shepard, Shane.He ignores all complaints from the residents until one of them dies due to the cold, and the remaining tenants force comeuppance upon him when they build a basement maze with razor blade-laden walls, place him in the middle, turn out the lights, and release his dog, who they've deliberately starved.Ouch.At this point, the hooded man tells the visitors that the tales were not cautionary at all, but events that had already happened.The tourists watch the gate to Hell open then walk inside."And now...who is next?" ponders the Crypt Keeper."Perhaps...YOU?" he asks, looking at us.

Oh,dear.Grimsdyke(Peter Cushing) seems to have left his cheerful disposition in the afterlife.
The stories within all appeared first in E.C. anthologies,Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Haunt of Fear, before their silver screen debut here, and all were reworked to different degrees again for the popular puppet-hosted cable series of the same name in the eighties.Francis, who had toiled previous to tonight's entry in 1970's Trog with Joan Crawford, went on to helm Tigon's The Creeping Flesh the following year.Joan Collins stayed the genre course over the next few years, appearing in Fear in the Night(1972), Dark Places(1973), and even 1973's Tales That Witness Madness(also directed by Francis), another anthology!Not to be outdone, genre legend Peter Cushing worked on two horror portmanteaus shortly afterwards, Asylum(1972), and From Beyond the Grave(1973).Patrick Magee remained a genre staple himself,in Asylum(1972), Demons of the Mind(1972), And Now the Screaming Starts!(1973),and later with maestro Lucio Fulci.Though one or two of the stories are a little flat, the overall result is excellent, especially due to the Cushing short.Three solid big ones on the scale.

Possessing a ceiling like this above my bed, quick haircuts would come lemon squeezy.

"Dracula Has Risen From The Grave"(1969)d/Freddie Francis

How about that poster,eh?Completely brilliant ad campaign for tonight's focus,which would be the fourth in Hammer's Dracula series,the third with Sir Christopher Lee donning the cape n' pronounced eye teeth as the Count,and the first without Terence Fisher at the directorial helm,although it's been said he was indeed slated to take the chair before walking knackered into traffic.I can't laugh,I've done that numerous times myself.Freddie Francis,another favorite of mine,takes over here,and puts his personal stamp on the series with the help of Rupert Davies,Barry Andrews,and the buxom charms and striking of Hammer girls,Barbara Ewing and Veronica Carlson,who ranks at the top of the list for me,truth be known.Despite the glaring set differences from the previous films,as Risen was filmed at Elstree rather than the familiar Bray Studios,where the "carshoo"('at's a castle,innit?) is only reachable now by a certain degree of mountain climbing,and the frozen moat that contains Dracula's body is now a bit of a stream,that can barely house Lee's impressive frame,and some silly connecting rooftop path that allows our young couple to sneak out during the night to see each other via attic windows,and some ham-fisted ideas about religious discovery,this one has always been one of my favorite of the Hammer Dracula series,with enough cleavage,carnage,and crucifixes to satisfy any nosferatu-phile worth their weight in type O.
Did I mention Veronica Carlson?I know I'm not the biggest pro-blonde advocate in the world,but even as a kid,repeated viewings of tonight's film had me walking out into my parents' living room confused as to why I was pitching a tent downstairs,and earning me the nickname 'Stovepipe' from my father,who's also a tenth degree cocksmith from way back.I offer no apologies for being a man who loves women,here at the Wop,droogies.Lee gives a classically spirited performance as lord of the blooddrinkers,and even gets a few lines of dialogue this time around.We're gonna dedicate the review to Dominique of Netotchka Nezvanova,who despite having a blog with a name that chokes Italians(In Russia,blog writes you.),is a cool broad indeed who requested some Hammer,and that's something nobody should ever get tired of.

Dracula's castle?Yeah,hang a right at the prop rocks,it's the first matte painting you see,can't miss it,padre.
In a small European village besieged by Dracula(Lee),a man with a history of not being very nice at all,an altar boy stumbles upon a bit of dead krumpet up a bell,the trauma of said findings causing him to become mute.A year after the Count has been vanquished,a monsignor(Davies) finds the village still terrorized by Castle Dracula,whose shadow still falls upon their church,which is in a state of disarray,and run by a priest who gives his sermons to empty pews and spends most of his time pissed at the pub.The monsignor gathers up the jaded priest and the two men trek up the mountain with a large metal cross,in hopes of exorcising Dracula's memory from the superstitious townsfolk.The priest cashes his chips halfway there,and while a storm brews and the monsignor places the bulky cross across the castle door,he tries to run back,falling and cracking his domepiece on a rock.The blood from his wound trickles down into a crack in the ice where Dracula is imprisoned(Dracula,Prince of Darkness)and into the lord of the undead's lips,resurrecting him.He quickly dominates the priest's feeble mind,and upon seeing the cross blocking the doorway to his digs and preventing his entry,demands to know who is responsible for this disgusting act.The priest dimes out the monsignor,who has returned to his home in Keinenberg,satisfied that he has dispelled the fears of the townspeople,to the waiting arms of his wife and buxom niece,Maria(Carlson).Niece,you say?Dracula knows now how to exact his bloody vengeance upon the pious cross-happy bastard.

Why,this bell's clapper is a bloody slapper!
Maria is in love with a curly-haired Roger Daltrey look-alike in the form of an atheist student named Paul(Andrews),who, when he's not denying the Lord,enjoys playing booze games involving silly sing songs and broomsticks at the tavern above the bakery where he works.Dracula enslaves the top-heavy draught girl,Zena(Ewing),who,when she's not displaying her bounteous bobblers to any drunk at the bar who'll peer at 'em,is trying to get into Paul's undergarments.The monsignor gets past the beer smell of Maria's suitor but when he admits he's religion-free is told to hit the bricks and forbidden to see her again,causing the two lovers to secretly cross rooftops in the night to be together.When Zena's attempt to bring Maria to the Count fails due to Paul's heroics,the vampire rewards her with a meal of instant,blood-siphoning death,ordering the priest to chuck her lifeless frame into the oven's coals.Dracula then comes to Maria's bedroom in the night,and gives her his patented dual poke-hole throat hickey.The monsignor recognizes the tell-tale signs of vampirism in his niece,but when he follows the fleeing nosferatu,the priest brains him.As he lay dying,he recruits Paul to rid the world of the wretched blood-sipper,but after staking the Count in his coffin,the atheist and the faithless priest fail to recite the prayer to finish the job,allowing Dracula to unstake himself.The vampire makes off to his castle with Maria in tow,and orders his slave to remove the infernal cross from his door,and when she chucks it over the castle's parapet,it lands in the ravine below,jutting out of the ground.Paul and the priest arrive on the scene,and during the young man's struggle with the Count,Dracula clumsily tumbles over the same parapet,impaling himself on the large cross.This time,Paul and the priest complete the prayer,turning the blood-driven monster to ashes and ending his reign of terror(at least until 1970's Taste the Blood of Dracula).Reunited with his squeeze,the now-religious man makes the sign of the cross upon himself.Amen.

Look at those eyes,Dracula's been playing the green saxophone again.
The stoic and regal Lee went on to play the infamous vampire four more times for Hammer,ending with The Satanic Rites of Dracula in 1973,although he has accepted the bloodthirsty role a handful of times for other directors,even Jesus Franco(!).My favorite Dracula,and one of my favorite actors of all-time.We Italians stick together,what can I say.The pale and gorgeous Carlson enjoyed a long run of genre films for Hammer,including 1969's Frankenstein Must be Destroyed,The Horror of Frankenstein(1970),Vampira(1974),and 1975's The Ghoul.Ewing enjoys a long career on the telly to this day,which includes an episode of the excellent Hammer House of Horror series in 1980.Tonight's film was Hammer's most profitable,and enjoys the honour of being the first movie to be rated by the MPAA.Though it feels a little strange not seeing the legendary Peter Cushing rehashing his vampire-hunting Van Helsing to compliment Lee's Count here,this is classic stuff.Risen hoists a beer into the sky on the end of a broomstick,while drinking another one,and the drunken,singing louts that surround it give it three solid wops on the scale.

You know the drill,Maria(Carlson).Get 'em out for the Count.