Dracula A. D. 1972

Estate summary

Roger Ebert responds to Dracula A.D. 1972 with comic scepticism, turning the recurring rituals used to revive the Count into evidence that Hammer’s formula has become exhausted. His review spends much of its energy teasing the mechanics of stored blood, supernatural infection and yet another resurrection, rather than accepting them as frightening. He also argues that the film’s contemporary characters and locations imitate the atmosphere of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. That comparison carries a sharper criticism: a studio he credits with having revitalised horror and established Christopher Lee as a major figure now seems to be following someone else’s fashionable lead. The result is a strongly negative contemporary response to Hammer’s attempt to bring Dracula into modern London. Ebert’s joking tone is itself part of the evidence of how this instalment was received, and should not be mistaken for a literal account of vampire lore.

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