It's a case of what might have been in this 5th Hammer Dracula outing - Vincent Price had been touted to play the role of Lord Courtley, but due to other commitments he couldn't oblige. Nevertheless, I doubt whether Vincent Price could have elevated this lame effort to anything more than watchable.
It is a well-documented fact also that Christopher Lee had "dug his heels in" with regards to playing Dracula and wasn't going to star in this film. The distributors weren't going to touch a Dracula film without Lee so it was only desperate grovelling which got him to appear. Sadly, this resulted in Dracula being awkwardly inserted into a script that had already been written.
This is patently obvious in the film as Dracula tends to pop out from the shadows at various intervals to oversee the revenge on those who killed his servant at a ritual. The idea of the children exacting justice on their own parents is decent enough, but I can't fathom out why Dracula's servant didn't just revive Dracula himself.
The only real redeeming features of this insubstantial encounter are the start - where Roy Kinnear is thrown out of a stagecoach and stumbles upon Dracula impaled on a cross (following on from "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave"; and the ending - where the director really excels in depicting Dracula's torment as he is overwhelmed in a church. Distinctly average entertainment at best though!
It is a well-documented fact also that Christopher Lee had "dug his heels in" with regards to playing Dracula and wasn't going to star in this film. The distributors weren't going to touch a Dracula film without Lee so it was only desperate grovelling which got him to appear. Sadly, this resulted in Dracula being awkwardly inserted into a script that had already been written.
This is patently obvious in the film as Dracula tends to pop out from the shadows at various intervals to oversee the revenge on those who killed his servant at a ritual. The idea of the children exacting justice on their own parents is decent enough, but I can't fathom out why Dracula's servant didn't just revive Dracula himself.
The only real redeeming features of this insubstantial encounter are the start - where Roy Kinnear is thrown out of a stagecoach and stumbles upon Dracula impaled on a cross (following on from "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave"; and the ending - where the director really excels in depicting Dracula's torment as he is overwhelmed in a church. Distinctly average entertainment at best though!