Count Dracula has been resurrected many times in the movies, especially in the Hammer ones. Conversely, he has also been killed off much more than once. When it came to coming up with some pretty novel – and gruesome – ways of disposing of the evil count, Hammer films were certainly outstanding in this respect.
In Dracula (1958), Hammer’s debut film in the Christopher Lee series, the count is vanquished by his arch enemy Professor Van Helsing (played so brilliantly by Peter Cushing), who bravely leaps across a table, whilst chasing Dracula through his castle, and pulls down the curtains, exposing the bloodsucker to the thing that is always guaranteed to roast a vampire into dusty nothingness: the sunlight of dawn. As Dracula crumbles away under the combined destruction of the sun’s rays and Van Helsing’s makeshift crucifix, hastily formed from two pieces of candelabra, we are witnessing the start of what would go on to be such an entertaining, iconic series involving the vampire lord.
In Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965), the count is resurrected in the most gruesome manner imaginable: servant Klove cuts the throat of a suspended corpse over the sarcophagus containing Dracula’s remains… and as the blood flows down onto the ashes, the count slowly materialises back to life, whereupon he proceeds to feast on the vulnerable female visitors to his castle. At the climax of this sequel, Dracula slips under the ice to a watery grave as a priest shoots at the frozen moat around his castle.
But you can’t keep a good vampire down. In Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968), the count is resuscitated from his icy grave by the blood from the head wound of a priest who stumbles and falls down onto the spot under which Dracula’s body is lying in suspended animation, cracking the ice and trickling the blood onto the vampire’s lips. The death scene in this movie is truly my favourite Dracula exit of all. After a desperate struggle with the hero Paul (played by Barry Andrews) outside his castle, Dracula falls off a cliff and becomes impaled on a large cross, previously thrown down there by the hypnotised heroine Maria (Veronica Carlson). Some awesome Dracula death throes ensue, with the impaled count staggering around the woods with the top of the huge cross protruding from his chest, gasping and screaming in agony, blood pouring profusely from his body, as he gradually disintegrates, leaving only a crimson, viscous mess all over the cross and ground.
In Taste The Blood of Dracula (1969), which follows the story right on from where Risen From The Grave left off, a businessman (played by Roy Kinnear) who sells valuable artefacts, stumbles across Dracula’s remains, along with his cloak and ring. He gathers them up and takes them back to his shop, where he locks them away. However, he is bribed into parting with them by the sinister Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates), who then uses them for an occult ritual in an old desanctified church. The way Dracula meets his end in this movie has often been deemed a rather weak and questionable one by many Hammer fans. After the hero has put a large cross on the door and set out the altar as if in preparation for a holy mass, Dracula suddenly experiences strange hallucinations of the church coming to life, with priests chanting litanies amid a general atmosphere of religious ceremony. Becoming dazed and confused as this surreal mass rings unbearably through his head, Dracula falls down to his death onto the altar and, as always, crumbles to red dust.
