Drac Pack

Here's a quick look at a DVD four-pack, containing four old Dracula movies (Horror of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave!, Taste the Blood of Dracula, and Dracula A.D. 1972), that I recently picked up for about 10 bucks:

Usually I have to pass on these inexpensive four-movie collections that have popped up lately, as I either have no interest in the movies (the Police Academy compilation, for instance), or I already own one or more of the movies in the set. Finally, though, with this cool Dracula offering, there were four movies that I didn't own and was actually interested in seeing.

All four of these old Hammer Studios Dracula films are engaging fun, often shocking and scary, too. Of course, I was immediately struck by the fact that Christopher Lee's Dracula really doesn't have much to do in any of them. Basically, his rarely-speaking character is there to set the story in motion, appear once or twice throughout, and then show up at the end to bring it to a close. The four movies devote much more of their attention to the activities of the characters surrounding Dracula, which is actually sort of interesting.

Though I liked these movies a lot overall, I have to point out one ludicrous (but nonetheless entertaining) sequence in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave!, the second film in this set. In this movie, Dracula is actually revived by a priest stumbling around in the forest who trips, bumps his head on a rock, and falls unconscious. Blood from his head wound then trickles onto the surface of the frozen creek under him, drips down through a crack in the ice, and into the lips of a frozen Dracula, who just happens to be directly under where the priest tripped! The trickle of blood revives Dracula for that particular movie. Amazing! Oh, I should mention that the priest was actually in the forest because of Dracula (he was on a mission to sanctify Dracula's castle, to make it unusable for the vampire in the event he ever tried to return to it), so it was really unlucky that the priest decided to trip- after traveling hours through the forest- right above the spot where Dracula's corpse was frozen in the ice. I thought that was really funny.

Anyway, aside from that head-scratching moment, the stories here are mostly solid, the prints are sharp and clean, and there are even a few modest extras (mostly in the form of the films' trailers). If you enjoy horror movies of years past, you can't go wrong with this entertaining set, especially considering the price.

By the way, to add an actual Kindle connection to this post, Bram Stoker's original novel, Dracula, is now being offered for free in the Kindle store, where it's currently ranked as the 46th most popular title there.