TheRetroCritic

In this 57th episode, Adam (aka The RetroCritic) and fellow film buff Jamie discuss movie news, review  Jurassic World  and talk retro stuff. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE Email us here if you have any questions, requests or contributions:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on  iTunes ,  Stitcher  and  Player FM  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic #TheBigRewind retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

In 1970, Hammer wanted to continue making Dracula movies yet reboot somewhat their franchise, so they made Scars Of Dracula . A sort-of follow-up to Taste The Blood Of Dracula and a sort-of re-adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel, this movie means well but unfortunately falls pretty flat as a whole. It opens with a plastic bat inexplicably vomiting blood onto Dracula's ashes, thereby resurrecting him once again. I guess it makes more sense a bit later, when you know that Dracula has bats working for him, but if he's nothing but ashes, how can he still have any power over them? Never mind, it's a Hammer film, we're just gonna have to accept it. The plot follows a young couple who are about to be married and a guy called Paul (Christopher Matthews), a cheeky playboy who tries to escape a girl's father when he finds himself being dragged to some creepy village and, ultimately, Dracula's castle. The second scene of the film is actually really good: vi

So you've got Christopher Lee playing Dracula, an actor with one of the most amazing, most sinister voices in cinema history, so what do you do?  Make him play a wordless, lumbering drone!  Although it was Lee himself who refused to read the lines he was originally given, a rewrite would have probably been a better solution as the lack of lines really takes a lot away from the character. He is still somewhat threatening but just feels altogether pretty bland and lacks the presence and style of Bela Lugosi's original Dracula . Can you imagine if Saruman just walked around saying nothing in the Lord Of The Rings movies? People (and hobbits) would just give him weird looks and ignore him like some crazy hobo wizard. By showing a recap of Dracula (1958) at the beginning of the movie, Dracula: Prince Of Darkness really makes you miss that film which had the ever brilliant Peter Cushing as vampire hunter Van Helsing. The plot is typical: English tourists ignoring vil