Wednesday, October 27, 2010

TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA - Bernard/Martell - "Ready When You Are" (1970)

It's the same people who don't want to admit that turd is in the word Saturday, that also don't want to admit that Monday and Tuesday are followed by W T F! And then they expect us to be normal, Right! Tonite's feature, "That Tasty Blood Of Dracula" is about as Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as vampire movies get, and there's a moral to the story too that's very apropos, since we've got elections coming up soon, and that message would be, don't be a hypocrite, cause bad karma is a bitch!

"Taste The Blood Of Dracula" all starts innocently enough with Roy Kinnear as Weller, trying to sell his fellow passengers a snowglobe! All you Beatles fans will recognize Roy as Algernon in the movie "Help!"

This dude freaks out and Weller finds himself on his keister out somwhere smack dab in the middle of Hell's half acre!!

Weller has the experience of a lifetime, and sees Dracula die, and his blood turn into scarlet dust, so he scoops up the dust and saves the vampire dogtags he finds! Roll credits!!

Next thing you know, church is over, and everything is hunky dory, and the camera focuses in on a young couple in love! That young couple would be Linda Hayden as Alice Hargrove and Anthony Higgens as Paul Paxton! Linda would go on to be Angel Blake in "Blood Of Satan's Claw" & she was also the singing nun in "Queen Kong," and Anthony was Emil in "Vampire Circus," and Seaman Berg in "Voyage Of The Damned," and he's still working today!

Alice's duplicitous two-faced phoney jerk of a Father, played by Geoffrey Keen, has other ideas, and forbids her to see young Paxton for good upstanding moral reasons!

After Hargrove crushes his daughter's world, then it's time for him to join his buddies, in their own peculiar little fantasy world! His partner here is a gentlemen that is only a minor acquiaintance of his, according to his family, and he's also the Father of the fine upstanding young fellow attempting to court Alice! Peter Sallis is Samuel Paxton! Both of these guys have got credits up the wazoo, Peter Sallis has 137 credits, and is the voice of Wallace in "The Wallace & Gromit" shows and video games, and Geoffrey Keen has 142 credits including the James Bond movies, "The Spy Who Loved Me," Moonraker," and "Living Daylights, just in case their faces look familiar!

Well, well, well, I do believe their families believe they are out doing charitable work for the needy. This guy needs some help, that's for sure! This is pimpdaddy Felix, the proprietor of the joint played by Russell Hunter! It's said that Peter Jackson kept Russell's facial expressions and mannerisms in mind when designing Gollum for the trilogy! I believe it!!

All eyes are upon them, who will be the chosen ones tonight?

Champagne and cigars are evidently not quite good enough, so homey Hargrove adds something a little extra to the mix. I'm sure somebody knows what they were abusing during this time period in history, absinthe maybe?

The extra added special attraction of the evening is the addition of the snake charming stripper!

So everybody's just having the time of their life as you can well tell! The guy in the bottom photo is the third member of the perverted three musketeers, the very prolific John Carson, as Jonathon Secker! John has 151 titles to his name including "Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter," "The Plague Of The Zombies," and "The Man Who Haunted Himself!"

The merriment gives way to caution as the great, great nephew of Louis Pasteur, Ralph Bates, bursts onto the scene as the nefariously evil Lord Courtley. Ralph did a few good Hammer titles like "The Horror Of Frankenstein" and "Lust For A Vampire," but his career was cut short at the age of 51, another victim of cancer!

The party's over! (You're supposed to sing that line!)

Most of the music in "Taste The Blood Of Dracula" is pretty straight forward James Bernard Hardcore Hammer style, with Phillip Martell at the reins of the music department. The only real fun stuff is at the bordello, but then that IS where all the action was!

Pretty dang sexy shot of Linda's back without really showing anything at all!!

Time to tie up some of the loose ends. Lord Courtley promises the trio that he can intensify their pleasure experience to the 100th degree if they will just give him some cash, that he can use to buy Weller's Dracula trinkets!

They all meet up in this place that has the coolest stills in the whole movie!


Lord Courtley does a little ceremony, but the guys are grossed out, can't handle drinking the blood, and end up kicking the holy Hell out of Lord Courtley and killing him, alas, he had already drank his share of the ghastly red cocktail, so death was no longer good enough for him!

Lord Courtley comes back to life as death, as Christopher Lee as Dracula, and boy, is he seeing red!!

I don't think it takes a Rhodes Scholar to figure out the rest of the story, it's all about death and sweet revenge, and Dracula delivers the karma payback with help from some of the trio's children, but then Drac has some dues to pay too, but then, doesn't he always??

3 comments:

  1. nice review of the only Chris Lee Dracula film i haven't seen but would really like to...

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  2. I have like 3 differen't dvd copies of this..I forgot Linda Hayden was in this..I watched Blood On Satan's Claw a couple of times recently where theres more of her on display..

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