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MOVIE NIGHTS

Every weekend we're watching movies together...whether you're in Pennsylvania USA, or Sydney Australia. It's a throwback! Back to the days when you had the anticipation for waiting till the weekend to see the classic horror or science fiction film that was listed in the TV Guide. The plan is to watch a movie at 7:30PM on Saturday night in your own time zone. Or, if you can't Saturday night...anytime during the weekend. Then, we'll all get together and e-mail our thoughts on the film...a few paragraphs...or simply a sentence if you'd like. They after-viewing reviews appear on our Creepy Classics/Monster Bash News Page. See the latest thoughts posted by viewers ther now.

Concept submitted by Mike Adams of Cartaret, New Jeresey.

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Creepy Classics Spotlight Movie Last Weekend - DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972)

Every week, readers here are selecting a movie to view...then we all try to watch it together utilizing our DVD/video library. This past Saturday night, many of us watched DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972). Suggested by Suggested by Steven Thorton, Lasalle, Michigan. Details about movie nights to come are HERE. Please include your name and location after your comments, so we can see how we're all joining together from diffeent locals around the globe! Let's all Synch-Up Saturday nights at 7:30PM, or catch this week's movie sometime over the weekend!

Hey Bash Synchers!

I'm back! After a busy time where I couldn't synch up with you guys, I am back with Dracula AD 72.

I think the opening scene of this flick is cool, great action and an original way of dispatching of Dracula.
I love the way they jump into 1972, reminiscent of 2001 when the bone turns into a satellite, the plane suddenly appears in the modern sky.
Cheesy 70s music, gotta love it!
One of the songs is called Alligator Man...a homage to Alligator People???
The beautiful Caroline Munro's first appearance, the main reason to love this movie.
Hot pants! Groovy styles, did you guys in your 50s wear this stuff? Will you ever wear it again?
The group sounds like Dire Straights.
Did the hippies crash the fuddy duddys party, or did they crash the hippy party? Strange!
Johnny has an evil look, perfect as the villain in this pic.
Just out of the car wash, and the window is filthy!
The classic Peter Cushing, raises the quality of every movie he is in.
Demonic Drum solo!!!
Evil and gruesome baptism.
Christopher Lee, the greatest Dracula!
Laura will be there, a bit drained, but she will be there.
The film starts dragging with the investigation...
What a groovy blue outfit Jessica has on. I am glad I was too young to embarrass my self with them fashions!
Alucard, Dracula spelled backwards...hadn't he seen Son of Dracula???
Skimpy negligee to be wearing around her grandpa!
Spooky scene in the cavern with the two young vampires.
The wild death of Johnny Alucard.
The wilder death (Twice in one movie!) of Count Dracula.
A worthy installment in the Hammer Vampire Pantheon, slow in some spots, but good, and dig that groovy 70s jazz rock score throughout. See you next week for Vincent in the House on Haunted Hill.

Ken Blose
San Luis, Mexico

This is actually one of my favorite Hammer films! I love the setting of the early 70's and Caroline Munro always looks so very good.
Christopher Lee is the perfect Dracula and Peter Cushing in the only movie Van helsing in my opinion. Stephanie Beacham as his granddaughter is sexy as ever and in deep trouble when her group of friends bring the Count back to life.

I also have to admit I love Stoneground and their Alligator Man song at the beginning, and Caroline Munro looks great. All in all
a great Saturday night movie and a top notch horror from Hammer, oh and did I mention that Caroline Munro is in it?

Kevin Coon
Twin Falls, Idaho

Hey baby, far out, dig it! swinging scene man, I'm hip to the holy water
and the crosses baby. Now where was I?

I have to give Hammer some points
for trying to update the Dracula story. It would become a little
redundant to keep having him pop up in the 19th century.

I think
Christopher Lee refined his evil glare over the years and he was in rare
form in this film. I think it's also safe to say that by this time
Dracula had become a franchise for Hammer, meaning they were putting out
product that grew more from the characters than the story. "Let's see,
what can we do this time, we've got to work Cushing and Lee into the
picture together..." That being said I didn't think the story so weak.

The whole swinging late sixties-early seventies however doesn't age so
well... man. It really no more of a period piece or costume drama than
any of the earlier films in the Hammer cannon but then they didn't have to
fit ten minutes of Stoneground into the picture either. And the music
wasn't so bad really, it's just that it sounds so cliched after all the TV
detective shows we saw forty years ago, and more recently on re-runs.

The
only really laughable part for me was the black mass with the extended
drum solo going in the background and Johnny Alucard (Didn't any of these
kids watch Son of Dracula? for crying out loud they should have figured
that one out!) doing his master of ceremonies rant. Wow, bad trip man.

-Kevin Slick, Colorado

Hi Ron,

Here are my thoughts on DRACULA A.D. 1972.

Full disclosure – I requested this one so throw the brickbats at me, folks!
I like the intro. It’s more exciting than the endings of some of Hammer’s other vampire films.
Cushing and Lee are really showing their age by this point. Poor Peter looks too frail for all those physical stunts.
As a band, Stoneground isn’t half bad. They remind me of a cross between the Band and the Grateful Dead.
The reactions of the old folks during the party scene are a hoot (“Shocking, shocking!”). But the young crowd is even more ridiculous, giving off a clichéd hippie vibe that was already out of date by the time the film was made. This is a problem that the film never really overcomes.
Boy, oh boy, does Caroline Munro look great in that outfit. I really wish that Hammer would have used her in more substantial parts. The role of Vampiria was just made for her.
Stephanie Beacham looks really cute too.
The Black Mass is really over the top, but it’s fun in a Saturday night drive-in kind of way.
Caroline’s death scene – pure gold.
Halfway thru, the film turns into a police procedural and starts to run out of gas.
Johnny Alucard – That gag was corny when Universal used it the first time.
Having Dracula stuck in those desecrated church grounds really limits the plot.
Gotta love those three inch vampire fangs.
I had forgotten how high the body count was in this film. Nearly all of Jessica Van Helsing’s friends bite the dust.
The jazzy soundtrack gives this film the feel of a 70s television show.
Cushing vs. Lee at the climax – Hammer’s last great vampire battle. For Gothic horror, these two were irreplaceable.
Despite its sad sack reputation, DRACULA A.D. 1972 has a few really good sequences. But these are offset by moments that leave me shaking my head. In retrospect, I think this film illustrates the fundamental problem that faced Hammer in the early 1970s - how to make the Gothic horrors relevant in a world of modern cities, sexual permissiveness, pot smoking and rock and roll. They never did find an answer, of course, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Purely for nostalgic reasons, I’ll give the film two stars.

“Dig the music, kids!”
Steven Thornton
LaSalle, MI

Hey gang..well I wish I had something good to say about this movie. Its not one of Hammers finer moments!!!But on the plus side the opening sequence is great..then of course Caroline Munro is in it!! and the ending is ok..other than that, well, no wonder Christopher Lee was so unhappy! and of course the next Dracula film was so way worse!! Its a shame Hammer went this way..they should have kept there Dracula films gothic.

I think I'll watch Horror of Dracula and Brides of Dracula.

Happy Howl-o-ween!!
Malcolm

The movie starts off well … Van Helsing and Dracula, fighting to the death. The party is a little silly, but the band is pretty good. (I want one of those Kaiser Cement hats.) The language cracks me up … “It was a tired scene”, “way out”, “dig the music, kids”. It can be a distraction at times. But the occasionally corny dialogue isn’t half as distracting as the movie’s score. I think the movie is pleasantly dark, but the mood is often ruined by the loud early-70’s score.

I think the ritual scene is quite good. I like Alucard’s devotion set against the horrified faces of the other participants. (The music at the climax nearly ruins it for me.) Somewhere along the way, it turns into a Van Helsing family drama in parallel with Law and Order. Too many scenes with the heroes, and not enough of the villains. When we finally get to Van Helsing vs. Dracula, the final battle is very good … but again, the music gets in the way.

There are some decent chills … bloodless bodies, the ritual. As it should be with Hammer, the ladies (in this case, Caroline Munro and a buxom Stephanie Beacham) are lovely. Cushing lends a sense of class to each of his scenes, and I think this is Lee’s most menacing and brutal Dracula performance. There should’ve been more of him in this film.

On the whole, it doesn’t work for me. I like my beer cold, my pizza hot, and my Hammer ... Gothic.

Dinosaur1972.

-Neil Kerr

Got around late to viewing this. I remember seeing it on the CBS LATE MOVIE at 11:30PM one Friday night way back on TV. I think it lost me around the party scene after the opening credits. It did again. I think the overblown seventies "kids" language was goofy even to kids at that time. Seems like it was written by an older person projecting an overblown steroeo-type of what he thought was cool, hip dialogue.

If they could have just expanded the first five minutes into a feature...and thrown out the rest.

Give me HORROR OF DRACULA, BRIDES OF DRACULA, or GILLIGAN'S ISLAND instead. Poor Peter.

-Ron Adams, Ligonier, PA

There is much to love about Dracula A.D. '72, but the dialog from the young "mods" just kills me! Johnny Alucard's "Dig the music, kids!" during the Black Mass is a real lowpoint. Lee and Cushing hold the whole thing together with their customary professionalism.
Dig the music, kids!

Brian Nichols, Dallas, TX

Hello Steven (Super Hammer Pick, Sir!), Ron and all other Classic Gothic Horror Fans from around the world - I hope you enjoyed watching this UNDERRATED vampire thriller as much as I did! (I just finished viewing it this SUNDAY evening) Believe it or not, I did not catch this one for the first time until 1997. (When I TAPED it off of CINEMAX during the week while I was at work!) Now on to the movie.....

Many Hammer critics and fans and horror fans in general have a very low opinion of this production (due to the fact that Count Dracula`s character is bound to the church setting and because of the dated clothing/dialogue used by the young adults potrayed in this film) That being said-compared to the Christopher Lee Dracula film(s) that came right before it ("Scars Of Dracula") and immediately after it ("The Satanic Rites Of Dracula") this movie is much more coherent, enjoyable and boasts better production values all around. (Better acting, better casting, better set design, better music soundtrack (LOVE THAT STONEGROUND!), better SPFX, etc.)

Personally, I LOVE THIS FLICK A TON! ---What`s not to like here?

--First and foremost, there`s that GREAT opening scene of Lawrence Van Helsing and Dracula duking it out on top of that horse driven carraige in 1872 rumbling through Hyde Park! (With our loyal hero winning the battle by driving a wheel spoke through Drac`s heart (after the vehicle crases and Dracula is partially impaled by the wheel already) Unfortunately Van Helsing dies from his injuries and a stranger comes to collect Dracula`s ring along with his ashes...Shift 100 years to the future! (1972) and Dracula is resurrected by Johnny Alucard (one of his disciples) during a black mass ceremony for the ages (wonderfully staged using giant fans off screen to create wind, mood and tension) in which he invites a group of his young adult "friends" to join him in.

Most of them flee when they get scared, but one of the young ladies (Laura Bellows) screams to be the ceremonial "participant" - Not knowing, of course that she will be Dracula`s first victim!

.----All in All a really fun movie- My rating: 3.25/5 stars! ---Dan Brenneis- Strongsville, Ohio - Monster Bash Staff Member And LifeTime FilmFan Extroadinairre

You can get DRACULA A.D. 1972 on DVD in the Complete DVD Catalog on-line at Creepy Classics.

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