This movie was better known to many of you as The Satanic Rites Of Dracula. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee co-star in this classic thriller where Lee returns to his role as Dracula and Cushing is the only man that can stop the evil vampire and and his brides from spreading a deadly plague around the world.
Late at night in Dracula’s castle, a satanic ritual is taking place. While this is going on, a man is tied down to a bed upstairs, he is able to untie himself and strangle his captor and leaves the room. As he tries to escape, he sets off and alarm that alerts all that were in the ritual that he has escaped. While the man is being questioned by investigators, the ritual continues. We see a beautiful woman lying on a bed waiting to be killed as a sacrifice to the evil one. The ceremony begins with a baptism with the blood of a rooster who had it’s throat slit. Inter-spliced is the investigation of the cult by Inspector Murray.>Each of the people involved in the satanic cult are introduced by the investigators through a slide show taken by the man who escaped early in the film. As each cult members name is mentioned, he or she walks up to the woman who is covered with blood, takes a small part of the blood and rub it on their forehead. This is great way to introduce each character and explain why they are important to the story.
Hammer studios who produced this film did an exceptional job of inter-splicing the scenes enough to build a solid foundation for the rest of the film to be built on and to establish that those involved in the occult are wealthy, intelligent individuals who contributed to the good of society but have become addicted to a type of worship that calls for worshiping human blood. Or were they?
Any student who is taking film school, should be encouraged to watch this film. Hammer studios produced this movie and did an exceptional job of injecting large amounts of emotion into each character. The shocking twist and turns are complimented with great cutaways and head shots that add to the shock and horror. The downside to this movie is Dracula is not in the movie very often. His role in the film is limited and Lee is limited to just a few lines which does not allow him to show his great acting skills.
After both David and Muriel are fried to a crisp, Steven takes her body back to his lab to drain blood from her body to use in an experiment that will make the old female servant young again. He disposes of the bodies by having them cut into small pieces and placed into a pot as base for a plant.