Dracule Has Risen from the Grave (1968)

Directed by Freddie Francis. Starring Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson, Ewan Hopper, Barry Andrews, Christopher Lee, Barbara Ewing, George A. Cooper, Marion Mathie, Michael Ripper.

Uneven Hammer outing for Drac; boasts the typically evocative ambience and preternatural Gothic trappings, but the plot (clergyman Davies exorcises the vampire’s castle with a large cross, which revives the count and sets him on a wrathful mission) is on the feeble side. Lovers Andrews and Carlson—the latter being Davies’ niece, the subject of the aforementioned wrath—are a bloodless pair (no pun intended), and Lee’s fanged freak hardly figures into the story at all until the final act. Has its moments, and the beautiful bloodletting remains a proud fixture of these British fright-fests, but this resurrection needs more life (pun…okay, that one was intended). Most audiences must have thought otherwise, though, since this was Hammer’s most profitable venture.

56/100