First things first – this is not a particularly great movie. For a horror film it’s not particularly scary; whilst not shying away from heaving cleavage, it’s not particularly sexy, and, to some extent, it’s not particularly coherent either: it has the kind of plot holes you can drive hearse through - bodies appear unnoticed (and by unnoticed, I mean by everyone, not just the cast – I must have watched the film 4 or 5 times before I noticed the unexplained body in the dumpster outside the nightclub), or lie unexplained across random tombs, or even just walk off halfway through the film never to reappear – but that being said DRACULA AD.1972 is an enjoyable period romp that (if you’re high enough) transcends the films limitations and instead celebrates a snapshot of swinging London just as it was drawing to a close. Scenes are shot around Chelsea, a King’s Road coffee bar and a Notting Hill mews – it actually looks out of date, as if it were set four or five years earlier at the height of the sixties and not, well, AD 1972. It’s hard to believe that punk was only four years away.
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The plot is nothing to jump up and down about, but, following a rather exciting fight scene between Van Helsing and Dracula (Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, respectively, both reprising classic roles and hamming it up for all their worth) aboard a runaway stagecoach at the beginning of the film (filmed during the day and on location at Aldenham Country Park in Hertfordshire but with a cheap night filter, no doubt to save a few pennies on a tight budget, so you can’t actually see anything) in which Dracula dies on the end of a broken wagon wheel that rather tiresomely stakes him through the heart, the action jumps forward 100 years to, oh look, 1972, and the tail end of swinging London where we meet a gang of groovy, far out youngsters living for today and otherwise swinging and grooving, gate-crashing posh parties (crazy!), escaping just before the police arrive (madness!) and hanging out in The Cavern, a real live coffee bar along the King's Road to plan their next whacky expoits , you know, looking for escape from a tired scene (hippies, we call ‘em these days). Mis-led by the enigmatically aloof Johnny Alucard – yes, that’s right, this is the one with Johnny Alucard in it, he of the worse anagrammed surname ever (played by Christopher Neame who’s clearly having a whale of a time) - the gang take part in a perfectly innocent Black Magic ritual (you know, for kicks) in a bombed out church, little knowing that the aloofly enigmatic Alucard has an agenda of his own. Well, as you can imagine, what with the kind of goings-on that actually go on at a Black Mass, one thing inevitably leads to another, blood gets spilled and mixed up with some dehydrated Dracula dust and before you know it, the count is back, working his way through Alucard’s wayward followers, hoping to get his teeth into Jessica Van Helsing (played by Stephanie Beacham and her rather splendid cleavage) the great grand-daughter of the Van Helsing that did for him all that time ago.
This all possibly sounds better than it actually is but in truth, it’s kind of lame – Dracula, for example, for some reason that remains entirely unexplained, can’t even leave the church, which is a bit poor, given the number of demons Johnny had to invoke to get him back (“I call upon Andras, Grand Marquis of Hell, provoker of discord; and upon Ronové, demon of forbidden knowledge; and upon Behemeoth, arch-devil of the black delights; I call upon Asmodeus, the destroyer; Astaroth, friend of all the great lords of hades; I call upon the many names of prince Satan: Beelzebub, Lucifer – I demand an audience with his Satanic Majesty!” Actually, the Black Mass scene is kind of cool) – so the scheming acolyte is reduced to luring young women back to the churchyard through subterfuge, Camberwell Carrots and the use of some some laid back jazzy vibes on the stereo (“They were all zonked when they recorded this”, he tells a luscious hippy chick, played by the hot Marsha Hunt. “Aren’t they always?”, she replies). Eventually, bodies drained of blood are turning up around town, the police are called in, there’s a very exciting scene in The Cavern (that looks like exactly the sort of place that I'd have hung around in had I not been seven in those days), Johnny gets his come-uppance in way that's never really satsifyingly explained (who knew vampires aren't supposed to take showers?), there's an eventual showdown between Dracula and Van Helsing in the church and it all ends badly for the Count. Again. It’s not generally regarded as one of the better Hammer films.
One of the things that saves the film, however, is, you’ll perhaps be unsurprised to hear, the soundtrack, which was recently given a collectors edition release on CD in 2009. Produced by former Manfred Mann guitarist Mike Vickers it contains a funky blaxploitation feel that places the film very nicely at the right end of the decade; it also features an appearance by little known American pop band Stonewall, a communal ten-piece very much of its time who appear playing at the posh party scene at the beginning of the film, and most excitingly of all, perhaps, a segment by Mind De-Coder favourites White Noise (check out Mind De-Coder 22), the highly experimental electronic pioneers featuring Delia Derbyshire from the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop and David Vorhaus, a classical bass player with a background in physics and electronic engineering, whose atonal Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell, which largely takes up most of side two of their only album An Electric Storm, released in 1968, is used for the, well, Black Mass scene –a piece of music I’ve never included in Mind De-Coder because it pretty much sounds like it says on the label and I’d be very reluctant to hear it whilst tripping, but its weirdl experimental sound gives that scene an undeniable psychedelic quality that’s almost hallucinogenic.
Some films are timeless, others very much of their time. Dracula A.D. 1972, of course, couldn’t more of its time if it tried, what with the date and all, and what was, at the time, supposed to be a modern, shocking thriller, is now best enjoyed as a slightly camp retro period piece in which everyone is taking it all ever so slightly too seriously. If it works at all these days (and I’m not entirely sure it even worked those days), then it’s because it shines a light on a time now sadly gone and as such entertains a kitsch hauntological quality which makes it almost inevitable that I was going to be a fan. Best enjoyed with a spliff, I think. I understand Tim Burton is a big fan too.
The trailer makes it look fab.
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