stake from his heart and throws it back at out- classed would-be slayers), a stretch of Lewtonery as the Count abducts the virginal heroine in a period hearse and walks with her through the woods, and Dracula’s death like a butterfly im- paled on the business end of a cast-aside cruci- fix, weeping blood before melting away to a large red stain on his cloak. Elsewhere, there are signs of production problems: Lee, as often, is given little to do, and this Dracula is much reduced by having to spend most of the film lurking in the basement of a bakery-cum-pub; usually stalwart players like Davies (MATTHEW HOPKINS— WITCHFINDER GENERAL, FRIGHTMARE) are just as tiresome as handsome haircuts like Andrews (his gormlessness plays much better in THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW); and, as in an amaz- ingly high proportion of Hammer films, key play- ers have been completely redubbed (Hooper and a grumbling villager both sound like David Gra- ham, famous as “Parker” and “Brains” on THUNDERBIRDS and a much-in-demand voice-over artist). The shortest of the three films in the set, this feels like the longest and slowest. Considering that it’s sandwiched between HAS
RISEN and Roy Ward Baker’s shoddy THE SCARS OF DRACULA [VW 78:62], it’s easy to overrate TASTE—Lee’s Dracula still seems an add-on (lit- erally so, the script was written so that Dracula could merely possess Ralph Bates’ Lord Courtley rather than replace him if Lee didn’t come to the table) and much as we enjoy snake-dancing brothel scenes modelled on those in Fisher’s THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) we can un- derstand that often-made snips in them weren’t so much censorship as an attempt to cut to the chase or at least the ritual resurrection of the main attraction. However, it’s also hard not to respond to a Hammer Dracula that is actually about some- thing: the muddled religious themes of HAS RISEN (which do recur in the climax here) go nowhere, but TASTE sets forth a trenchant exposé of Victo- rian hypocrisy very much in key with the late 1960s. This Dracula becomes a more impressive, pur- poseful, evil character when set against three vari- ously bad or weak fathers (Elder had used the “three must die” theme recently in FRANKEN- STEIN CREATED WOMAN) and his tendency to stand around rather than do anything is here used to make him a more imposing villain—his mere presence can warp or destroy. Rather than unsubtly abducting the Monsignor’s niece, the Count avenges the impulsive murder of his cloak- swishing disciple by initiating the corruption of the fathers’ powerless children, acting in the
Manson manner as a guru who sics dangerously liberated kids onto their rotten parents and rel- ishes the outcome. This is a film that really does turn the tables
on the vampire-hunters, as dilly-dallying Peter Sallis (WALLACE AND GROMMIT) is staked by his own daughter (Isla Blair) after he has shot his own comrade (PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES’ John Carson) to protect the creature. Sasdy can de- liver shock images that stand next to Francis’ (the red marble eyeballs of the newly revived Dracula) but also works a tighter story weave, incorporat- ing more characters and playing on their com- plex interrelationships in a manner that harks back to the often-neglected (in a Hammer context) Bram Stoker. Even the comedy relief (traveling salesman Roy Kinnear) serves a plot function, as he spies a chance for profit in bringing a vial of Dracula’s powdered blood to London where it can be sold to the dashingly Satanic Courtley—then, like Russell Hunter’s foppish brothel-keeper, he gets out of the picture and lets the serious stuff predominate. Many Hammer traits are still in evi- dence, like the use of familiar Black Park loca- tions (highly unconvincing as the “mountainous region” of HAS RISEN) and Michael Ripper’s clueless policeman, but Sasdy shakes things up more than Francis. Especially striking are odd bits of visual trickery: the powdered blood seeming to come to life in the chalice, the backwards-run cocooning of Courtley’s corpse with dust (and then its cracking-across to reveal Dracula, a Gilliam-like effect), near-subliminal flash-cuts that show a glowing and richly-appointed church rather than a deconsecrated ruin and imply the divine presence which finally overwhelms Dracula when the guilty have been punished and only in- nocents remain. Fine and exciting as Peter Sasdy’s semi-revi-
sionary approach is, the pick of this batch comes from the oldest hand. Conoisseurs have so long rated MUST BE DESTROYED as the highlight of the Hammer Frankenstein series that it has been necessary to reaffirm the various fineness of RE- VENGE, CREATED WOMAN and MONSTER FROM HELL as worthy of comparison (now that all the Fisher-Frankensteins are on DVD, such reapprais- als are easily available to all). A minor mystery is that the screenplay is signed by Bert Batt, a pro- lific first assistant director who has written noth- ing else, from a story by Batt and producer Anthony Nelson Keys (whose only other script credit, also at Hammer, was a fourth share in John Gilling’s PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER). The con- struction is so much more ambitious than the
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