Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)

Three rich men do charitable work once a week, by which I mean they go hoaring. When they realize that their transgressions no longer tips their triggers, they enlist the help of a ne’er-do-well, who has just the thing. What if we were to summon the devil? And by the Devil we mean Dracula. Things don’t go as planned and now Dracula wants to kill the three men.

At this point in his career Christopher Lee was increasingly reluctant to reprise his Dracula character. The filmmakers initially intended to make a Dracula film without Dracula, but the producers wouldn’t back it without Lee, so they found a number that Lee was agreeable to.

When the film isn’t following the three leches, it focuses on their collective pure of heart children. It becomes a little difficult to remember who are sibling or courting, and which lecher is their father, but the effort isn’t necessary. Nor does the film deserve that level of attention. Pretty Alice Hargood and good Paul Paxton are the only important ones.

Hammer horrors from this time period tend to blend into each other. Vaguely interesting, vaguely scary. The bad guys are bad enough where Drac almost becomes the hero. Almost. Surprisingly someone does literally taste the blood of Dracula. So, there’s that. AMRU 3.