Social Media Post - Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) or Father Doesn't Always Know Best.

 Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) or
Father Doesn't Always Know Best. 

In the fifth installment of Hammer Films’ Dracula series, director Peter Sasdy and screenwriter Anthony Hinds (as John Elder) visit the theme of corruption from the older, patriarchal generation in conflict with the youth, themes Sasdy would revisit in his script for Twins of Evil, his final Karnstein trilogy story. Count Dracula himself undergoes an unusual change as he becomes an anti-hero, removing three of society's hypocritical leaders. To do this, he sets their children against the fathers in a revenge orgy of spilled familial blood and terror.

Three wealthy men, William Hargood, Samuel Paxton and Jonathon Secker, all fathers and pillars of society, bored with their lives, search for more extreme and exotic pleasures in the brothels of London.  One night during their revels, they meet the disgraced and penniless Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates). Courtley promises to give them an experience that will take them to infinity. Intrigued by his claims, the men purchase Dracula’s cloak, ring and dried blood for a satanic ritual.  When the ritual does not go off as planned, the men beat him to death in the desanctified church where they were performing the ritual. 

Courtley’s corpse transforms into Count Dracula (Christopher Lee). Breaking the fourth wall, Dracula declares the men who killed his servant will die. (NB: Lee was famously reluctant to give speech to his character. In many of the Hammer Draculas, the count was nonverbal). The count becomes into a proxy father to Alice, Jeremy, Lucy, and Paul, enlisting their aid to punish their fathers. 

The hypocrisy of the older generation is clearly illustrated in the way Hargood (Geoffrey Keen) treats his daughter Alice (Linda Hayden - The Blood on Satan's Claw). He calls her a harlot and accuses her of behaving immorally. As if she reminds him of Dolly (Madeline Smith), a prostitute who is roughly the same age as Alice.

Dracula uses the children as his instruments of vengeance, then discards them. He hypnotizes Alice, who kills her father with a shovel.  Next, he turns Lucy Paxton (Isla Blair) and she kills her father (Peter Sallis) by driving a stake through his heart. Last, Jeremy Secker (Martin Jarvis) is induced to stab his father Jonathon Secker (John Carlson). Paul Paxton (Anthony Higgins), Linda’s lover, saves her from the ancient vampire and kills Dracula by re-sanctifying the church he is using as his lair. As Dracula turns to dust as Paul recites the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, bringing an end to Taste the Blood of Dracula.