The Count’s Last Bow, and the Beauty of Dracula’s Final Scene: Part Two
In Part One we celebrated Dracula’s return to terrifying form in the movie that proved to be Christopher Lee’s last appearance as the Count in a Hammer production. We covered the star’s very public criticism of the films, how recent commentators have warmed to The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and the elements which make it such an engrossing watch. Now we delve into its release and how filming those final glorious moments proved to be an ordeal that was bloodier than anyone had counted on…
Numerous critics have bemoaned the contemporary setting of Satanic Rites. In Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography, the authors state flatly, ‘The updating idea had failed, and that was that.’ In doing so, they sum up the feelings of many. But the very fact that the Count is hauled into the present day is what gives the story its potency. Its immediacy. Its terror! Dracula is no longer a bogeyman in the history books. He is a businessman in London. The targets of his bloodlust are not simply the jittery villagers, peasants and noblewomen of a previous century. No. We are his targets, and the time of his vengeance is now!
Sensibly, Don Houghton’s script embraces the possibilities its 1970s setting provides. The covert agents Lorrimer works with feel like a cross between ‘the Section’, as featured on the stark and compelling espionage series, Callan, and the altogether more flamboyant team central to The New Avengers. (Indeed, Joanna Lumley later played Purdey in that show which began production just three years after Satanic Rites was released.) Houghton also makes a great deal of government conspiracies, the misuse of science and the unjust power of society’s wealthy elite. All these fears could have played out in a period horror, but presented here as symptomatic evils of our own age, they emerge with considerably more bite.
The great shame is not that Dracula was transported to (what was then) the here and now. It’s that Lee’s last two Hammer films playing the ‘Lord of Corruption’ don’t exploit their setting to a greater extent.
Freddie Jones (right) had previously appeared in Hammer’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969).
The Satanic Rites of Dracula premiered in January, 1974. Some historians have suggested the film died a death at the box office, but it performed, if not spectacularly, then reasonably well. It’s also been mooted that bad word of mouth curtailed the movie’s takings, but there’s scant evidence of this.
Similarly, literally dozens of commentators have stated that Satanic Rites underperformed because the public had moved away from the type of movie it typified as they now wanted horror more akin to The Exorcist (1973). This feels unlikely as that picture wasn’t even released in the UK until March, 1974, several weeks after Satanic Rites opened. And in truth, a slew of horror films produced in 1973 and the following five years achieved considerable success without being anything like William Friedkin’s head-spinning hit. Wildly differing flicks including Dawn of the Dead (1978), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Lee’s own The Wicker Man (1973) indicate the public’s appetite for horror remained broader than is sometimes suggested.
In all probability, audiences didn’t flock to The Satanic Rites of Dracula because the franchise was 15 years old and this was the eighth entry in the series. Very few IPs can survive five or more films without showing a decline in pulling power and Hammer’s Dracula was no exception. In May, 1974 Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was released and proved to be the studio’s swansong for the Baron. The New York Times said the movie was, ‘Chock full of the old horror film values we don’t see much of anymore.’ Very true, although it’s hard to tell whether they were being scathing or celebratory. Those two venerable old characters, Dracula and Frankenstein, had served Hammer well and had captivated audiences since the 50s, but it was time to bid them adieu.
Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell (1974) proved to be the end of another era for Hammer.
And it’s worth remembering that UK audiences no longer needed to leave their living rooms to see Hammer’s undead. In the early 70s, movies including The Mummy (1959), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and yes, Dracula, had been sold to ITV who began broadcasting these classics from 1972 onwards. For the first time in history, any British household with a TV licence could become a Hammer House of Horror. Fans of Lee’s iteration of the Count no longer required a cinema ticket to get their fix, just a copy of the TV Times to ascertain when his debut appearance would next be on telly. As Bob Dylan had memorably phrased it during the previous decade, the times they were a-changing.
Lee had been in his mid-30s when he’d filmed Dracula. A relatively unknown actor paid £750 for the gig that boosted, and to an extent, defined his career. (Interestingly, discussing the role with Gloria Hunniford, he attributed his perceived typecasting to ‘the constant repetition of the films on TV’.) He was in his 50s when shooting began on Satanic Rites. A global superstar who commanded £2000 for the part. After a 4-day Christmas break he returned to work on Wednesday, December 27th in order to film the death of Dracula. The session began badly. Director Alan Gibson told him, ‘We’ve got a bit of a problem, Mr Lee,’ to which he replied, ‘Tell me about it!’ Later, with perhaps a touch of dark humour, he explained he’d responded in this way because ‘…these films were nothing but problems from the first day to the last.’
In this instance the problem was a thorny one. The fake hawthorn bush which had been ordered for the end scene hadn’t been delivered, meaning Lee would have to work with the real thing. The genuine thorns drew genuine blood as the actor struggled through the genuinely spikey foliage. ‘I got quite cut up,’ he admitted. ‘A lot of that blood [seen onscreen] is real.’ In hindsight, the authenticity an actual hawthorn brings, together with Lee’s painful plunging through the shrubbery, enhance the scene tremendously.
In vampiric lore, stakes used to attack the undead were often fashioned from hawthorn wood.
The passage is a deceptively simple one. Lorrimer makes his way through the woodland and momentarily becomes caught on a hawthorn bush. This triggers a recollection that the plant is deadly to vampires. He swiftly forms a plan and calls out, ‘Count Dracula!’ (Good to see him using the correct form of address. He may be engaged in a life-or-death struggle, but good manners cost nothing.)
Dracula follows the sound of Lorrimer’s voice, becomes caught up in the bush and weakened by its lacerating thorns, falls to the ground whereupon Lorrimer grabs a piece of wood from a nearby fence. Using it as a traditional stake, he drives it into his struggling opponent’s heart. Dracula dies. Lorrimer doesn’t. Everybody’s happy! Cue end titles. Cue critics complaining that one of cinema’s greatest villains should not have been killed in such a straightforward and obvious trap.
Fine. Except… he wasn’t. The above description of the film’s final minutes is how many have read and described the scene, but it’s not what really happens. Not at all. To characterise it as such is to miss the whole point of the film.
Dracula wants to die.
Yes, he’d like to wipe out mankind before he goes, but his whole deadly motivation throughout Satanic Rites is the desperately unhappy goal of suicide. Fittingly, it’s one which Lorrimer Van Helsing, who knows him better than anyone, immediately understood after uncovering his plague plan. ‘Perhaps deep in his subconscious, that is what he really wants. An end to it all… he yearns for final peace…’
Facing the future… Does the look in Dracula’s eyes suggest a degree of prescience?
Dracula, of course, is aware of his ultimate purpose and there’s a poignant moment when he’s forced to confront both its reality and tragedy. When Lorrimer demands, ‘Is this your own death wish?’ it’s the one instance in the film where he’s evidently thrown. He pauses for over five seconds, considering the question. Gibson gives us a close up of Dracula, and his expression - one of unspeakable hurt - proves surprisingly effecting. Unable to process the truth he ignores Lorrimer’s point and reverts to type, spouting off about ‘messengers of death’ instead.
By the time the two face each other in the forest, Dracula’s genocidal plan has gone up in (literal) smoke and his death wish has become his only wish. When Lorrimer calls to him, summoning him to the hawthorn, he isn’t setting a trap. He’s making a suggestion. Offering an option.
As he moves through the semi-darkness, Dracula does indeed get snagged by the hawthorn. But we clearly see him notice this. For the briefest of moments he considers the situation. Alan Gibson has just shown us that pulling away from the shrubbery is simplicity itself. We know Lorrimer simply walked around the bush and that this option remains open to his pursuer. But after noting the presence of the hawthorn, Dracula makes a decision. He chooses to go on. He consciously opts to thrust himself into the thing which will kill him.
‘The films that dear Christopher Lee and I do are really fantasy…’ - Peter Cushing, 1973.
Lorrimer doesn’t bait his old foe – he remains silent. Respectful, even. And Dracula has no one chasing him to cloud his judgment. He accepts the hawthorn’s embrace of his own volition. He submits to it. The thorns begin to tear and slice and draw blood, but he makes no move to pull back. Quite the reverse – he moves further into its killer clutches.
Dracula wants to die.
Seeing Lorrimer watching his plight, he makes no threat or sinister vow. He simply gestures with his right arm. But to what? Apparently prompted by this movement, Lorrimer glances to his left where he spots… A line of wooden stakes. It’s a ramshackle fence, but in this context it is unmistakably the means to end Dracula’s life.
The Count staggers from the bush, but in a fabulous touch of storytelling, nature will not let him go. Thin, thorny tendrils grasp his ankle, and already injured by the hawthorn’s barbs, he stumbles and tumbles and now lies supine on the ground.
Dracula’s relationship with the natural world is a fascinating one. Bram Stoker created the lore, referenced in Hammer’s Dracula, whereby he must rest in a coffin filled with soil from his homeland in order to ‘recharge’ his powers, which implies a supernatural bond between vampires and the Earth itself. Considering this symbiosis, surely it’s no coincidence that his plan to destroy humanity was not via a pollution of the oceans or anything as indiscriminately destructive as a bomb. It’s entirely possible he chose the plague as it would leave nature itself unharmed.
As the life ebbs from his being and he lies dying on the forest floor, nature returns that respect and hails the fallen warrior. The Prince of Darkness has been adorned with a crown of thorns. Christpher Lee often spoke of the character’s nobility, and the crown feels as though nature itself is acknowledging this status. Dracula makes no effort to remove the headdress, tacitly accepting the tribute.
Despite his criticism of the films, Lee later commented, ‘The Dracula movies are probably some of the most famous and enduring ones there are, and I am very grateful to them, for sure.’
In her 1989 memoirs, Stare Back and Smile, Joanna Lumley wrote of Christopher Lee, ‘All his villains are somehow victims at the same time, and his victims are as noble as kings.’ Nowhere and at no time was this observation truer than during these crown of thorn moments.
What Dracula does next is telling, however, because he does nothing. Compare his actions to those in the original Dracula where assailed by daylight, he begins to perish and dissolve into nothingness. Even at that point he sought desperately to escape. To survive. Clutching the edge of the table he stretched every sinew to move away from the lethal light. And when Doctor Van Helsing stood over him with the makeshift cross, and one of his hands had already turned to grey dust, he used the other to cover his eyes, trying frantically to shut out the elements that would end him.
Now, in the forest, he makes no such endeavours. No move to haul himself up and lurch away from Lorrimer and the hawthorn. He simply waits. He’s clearly in pain and raises his arm. Although it’s not immediately apparent, when Gibson cuts to a wide shot we can see that Dracula had again been gesturing to the fence. Finally taking the hint, Lorrimer races to it, grasps one of the staves and tears back to Dracula. He stands over his old acquaintance.
‘It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.’ The Count’s passing, as described in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Still Dracula makes no move to stop him. He raises his hand, but we can tell it’s not a defensive move, more a plaintive one. He’s not protecting his body or threatening Lorrimer in any way. If anything, he’s beseeching him. And finally, the ‘demon vampire’ killer obliges and drives the stake into Count Dracula’s oft-punctured torso. This time, though, it feels different. Lee skilfully conveys his character’s turmoil, agony and fear. But there’s no anger. In its place, a kind of painful acceptance, and then the stillness of slipping away.
Lorrimer takes a pace back, aware his job is done. Theres’s no triumph written on his features. He follows what unfolds with sad, weary eyes.
Dracula is dead and the earth dutifully takes him back. White mist wraps around his cadaver like a spectral shroud. His flesh has already melted away and we watch his bones crumble to dust. In the quiet of the night his corporeal remains begin to seep into the soil. With the help of his staunchest enemy, Count Dracula has achieved his greatest feat. He has perished. He is no more.
‘Till death do us part…’ Lorrimer Van Helsing is left alone after Dracula’s destruction, and to an extent, perhaps we, the audience, share his sense of loss.
Lorrimer picks up the vampire’s ring and holds it thoughtfully. It’s as if after his family’s centuries long quest to kill the ‘Master of the Undead’, he’s unwilling to leave him entirely, and it’s clear why this should be. The end of Dracula’s story is the end of the Van Helsings’. The final shot shows Lorrimer gazing at the ring, a symbol so often associated with relationships and togetherness. He looks grief stricken. As the credits roll, the mood of melancholy is overwhelming.
In that cold, dark woodland, Alan Gibson shouted ‘Cut!’. The crew derigged. The actors went home. Four days later it was New Year’s Eve, that unique time of year that brings with it the vigour of fresh beginnings, but also, inevitably, a sense of an era passing. The midnight bells rang out across the world, mourning the year gone by, and unknowingly mourning the death of the greatest Dracula ever to chill us, thrill us and capture our imagination forever.
If you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into the final scenes featuring Hammer’s Count Dracula, you can read our celebration and exploration of his debut in I am Dracula… The Scene that Started a Legend.
