Halloween Countdown Day 15: Dracula Has Risen from the Grave!

As a crossover between the Halloween Countdown and The ISB's Dracula Week, today I'm going to cover Hammer Films' Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1969)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is Hammer's third Dracula movie, following The Blood of Dracula (1957) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) (The Brides of Dracula [1960] is not technically a Dracula movie because he never actually appears in the movie, though Peter Cushing does reprise his roll as Van Helsing). Blood of Dracula is a relatively loose adaptation of Stoker's novel, while Dracula: Prince of Darkness spends a huge chunk of its running time with Dracula's resurrection. In this third outing, Hammer's formula for these Dracula movies becomes set: Dracula threatens a woman and is then challenged by her lover.

Many of these Hammer vampire movies also begin with an effectively suspenseful opening scene that builds toward a horrifying reveal. In this case, a young mute boy arrives at the local church for his job as caretaker. As he goes about his rounds, he grabs the bell rope and finds it covered in dripping blood. The priest arrives and investigates the mystery that the mute boy can't explain, and he finds a dead woman hanging upsidedown inside the bell. The woman has two distinct bite marks on her neck, which leads the priest to cry out, "When will we be free of his evil?"

This scene works great on its own, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that the scene has no real place in the movie. As we find out shortly, Dracula has not yet returned; in fact, he is still encased in ice as he was left at the end of the last movie (which is, by the way, one of the worst methods for disposing of Dracula. All you need is a good thaw and Dracula's free again.) So, this movie never explains how the girl got into the belltower in the first place.

However, after this incident, no one in the village goes to church anymore, and the priest is left to hold mass for an empty hall. It is here that Monsignor Mueller (Rpert Davies) comes to town--a man with experience dealing with vampires. Father Mueller decides to take care of the village's fears once and for all by climbing the mountain that overlooks the town and exorcising Dracula's castle.

Mueller and the village priest make their way up the mountain, but a combination of fear and exhaustion causes the priest to lag behind. Mueller successfully performs the exorcism, which seems to cause a thunderstorm to break out. The lightning causes the priest to fall, cut his head, and crack the ice surrounding Dracula (Christopher Lee) (this also puts the lie to the film's title, as Dracula does not actually rise from a grave. But then, "Dracula Breaks Free from his Icy Tomb" is not as catchy a title). The blood from the priest's headwound then runs down Dracula's mouth and revives him. So, Monsignor Mueller has only succeeded in locking Dracula out of his castle, though the Monsignor does not know this yet and instead returns to his own village, comfortable in the knowledge that Dracula has been defeated once and for all.

Dracula finds that he can no longer enter his castle, so he vows revenge on the one that did this. To track down Mueller, Dracula takes control of the village priest, who then leads the vampire to his prey.

Meanwhile, Mueller returns home to his sister and niece. Maria, the niece, is nervous to introduce her uncle to her new beau, Paul, whose shirtless introduction makes him look like a buff, 19th-century version of Roger Daltry. During their introductory dinner, Paul reveals to the Monsignor that he is an atheist, which, as you can imagine, doesn't sit well with the holy man.

One of the major flaws in these more formulaic Hammer movies is the fact that nothing much happens in the second acts. So, while the movies are only about 90 minutes long, they tend to drag in the middle 30 minutes or so.

Paul works at the local bar while he also studies for some undefined degree. A co-worker at the bar--a saucy redhead named Zena--is always hitting on Paul, but he remains true to Maria. We know, however, that the redhead is obviously going to come under the thrall of Dracula, and this proves true soon enough.

Dracula, now accompanied by both Zena and the cowardly priest, seeks to take revenge on the Monsignor through his niece, and this brings Paul into the fight as well, and his atheism becomes an obstacle for defeating Dracula.

In fact, the movie makes a weird addition to the rules for destroying vampires--not only is a stake through the heart necessary, but the "staker" must also pray while doing so. This is actually closer to the rules established in Stoker's novel, but it's highly inconsistent with the other Hammer vampire movies, and it seems to be here only to present a challenge for Paul.

The director of this film, Freddie Francis, was one of the greatest cinematographers in film history, and he got the chance to direct at Hammer. As such, his films for Hammer have a distinctive visual style. Here, Dracula is always shot through an odd, prismatic filter that gives a rainbow hue around the edges of the frame while making Dracula's skin look unearthly in the center. He also uses a lot of closeups of Dracula's bloodshot eyes, and Dracula has almost no lines in the movie.

This movie also makes up for the weak ending of Prince of Darkness by giving Dracula one of the most awesome, most visually exciting deaths in the Hammer films. You can see it here if you don't mind the spoilers:



Also, as an added bonus, here's one of the posters for Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, which serves as a perfect marketing strategy for what Hammer was trying to do with this series.


This film was followed by Taste the Blood of Dracula, and that title reflects the increasing luridness of Hammer's Dracula films.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Hammer Week: The Mummy!

The first Hammer horror film I ever saw, though I was far from aware of the Hammer brand, was The Mummy (1959). I saw it, like much of my early exposure to classic horror movies, as a 3:00 Movie on WPIX when I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s.

And, like many of the horror movies I watched at that time, it scared the shit out of me.

Specifically, the flashback scene that reveals the origin of the Mummy etched itself in my memory like very few movie scenes at the time. Nothing is particularly graphic in this scene, but enough is suggested that activated my young imagination. I was especially disturbed by the scene of the priest Kharis (Christopher Lee) having his tongue cut out. We see the clamp go down on his tongue in a medium shot, and then the film cuts to a reverse shot from behind Kharis's head, as the guard slices the tongue off, though the cut is not visible to us (this sequence is used in the preview below).

This series of shots best encapsulates my appreciation of the early Hammer horror films. They are slightly more graphic in their violence than the classic horror movies of the 30s and 40s, but they still rely heavily on suggestion--the suggestions, however, are more disturbing.

Other than this long flashback scene, Christopher Lee doesn't get much to do as the Mummy in this film. However, he is still effective as Kharis, with an imposing presence, a slow, lumbering gait, and expressive eyes that reveal his inner conflict toward the end of the movie. And Peter Cushing once again plays the hero role that he nailed in so many of these movies: the deadly serious hero who is utterly, single-mindedly convinced that the supernatural exists and must be destroyed.

The Mummy is among the first group of classic horror revisions that Hammer undertook, with the creative team of writer Jimmy Sangster, director Terence Fisher, and producer Michael Carreras on board as they were for The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula. Unlike those other two movies, however, The Mummy varies little from the basic plot of the Univeral Mummy movies: the Mummy sets out to seek revenge on those British archeologists who desecrated the tomb of the queen he protected.

The Mummy does have problems with an overt colonialism that's never really challenged, and this may affect the way the movie ages. England is presented as the locus of order, which is only disrupted by the intrusion of a chaotic, foreign, Eastern influence. Also, Cushing provokes Mehemet Bey, the Mummy's keeper, by insulting his religious beliefs. But, despite those inevitable problems with this particular property, The Mummy serves as a model for Hammer horror at its best: a lean, efficient, and effective movie, with a creative team and ensemble of actors at the top of their game. Though the movie no longer gives me nightmares like it did my 7-year-old self, I find that the shocking moments in this movie still earn their shocks honestly, and the Mummy itself is well-designed and haunting.

Here's the trailer for The Mummy, which highlights many of the qualities I've referenced above.


Next: An atypical Hammer film.