The film opens with a prologue in which shady salesman Weller witnesses the destruction of Dracula (as shown in “Dracula has Risen from the Grave”) and collects the vampire’s blood. The action then moves to seemingly respectable Victorian England, where pillars of society William Hargood, Samuel Paxton and Jonathan Secker travel to London, a journey they make every month ostensibly to do charity work with the poor. However, the real reason for the trip is to indulge in sex orgies at a brothel run by the seedy Felix, who introduces them to the debauched Lord Courtley. Challenging them to plumb even lower depths of depravity, Courtley takes them to Weller’s shop and persuades them to buy Dracula’s blood for use in a sickening Satanic Black Mass ritual…..
Production Details
A Hammer Film production released through Warner-Pathe Distributors Limited (UK) and Warner-Seven Arts (USA)
Copyright MCMLXIX Hammer Film Productions Limited – All rights reserved
MPAA Approved Certificate No. 22364
The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious and any similarity to the name, character, or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional
Based on the Character created by Bram Stoker
RCA Sound Recording
Technicolor 95 mins
Filming Began: 27th October 1969
UK Release: 7th May 1970
Studio:
Elstree Studios of Associated British Productions Ltd., Hertfordshire, England
Locations:
Black Park, Tykes Water Lake, Buckinghamshire, England
Highgate Cemetery, London
St Andrew’s Church, Totteridge Lane, Totteridge, London
Aldenham Country Park, Hertfordshire, England
Scratchwood, Hertfordshire, England
Stills from film
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Original Poster
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Footnotes
The film had the tagline “Drink a Pinta Blood a Day”
The American distributor would not accept Hammer’s original idea to have a Dracula film without Dracula and it took quite a lot of persuasion to convince Christopher Lee to resurrect a character with which he was becoming increasingly disenchanted.
This was the first of three films directed for Hammer by Hungarian Peter Sasdy, the others being Countess Dracula (1970) and Hands of the Ripper (1971). For Christopher Lee’s Charlemagne company, he also directed Nothing but the Night (1972, starring Lee and Peter Cushing).
This was also the first Hammer film for actor Ralph Bates, who later appeared for them again in The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1970), Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and Fear in the Night (1972). He later starred in BBC TV’s sitcom Dear John, before his premature death in 1991. He was married to actress Virginia Wetherell, who appears in Hammer’s Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde and Demons of the Mind (both 1971).
Linda Hayden enjoyed a short career in horror films and also appeared in Tigon’s Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970) and the American International/Amicus co-production Madhouse (1974, starring Peter Cushing and Vincent Price).