The formula which had served Hammer so well for the previous dozen-or-so years had grown stale with the dawn of the 70s so they tried to revive their fortunes with the introduction of women's naked breasts. It was a ploy that, ahem, perked things up for a while, enabling the studio to limp along for a few more years before devoting more of its efforts to TV tie-ins and series like the Hammer House of Horrors. Boobs can do a lot, you see, but in the long term they're no substitute for good writing.
Although the film refers to Dracula it contains no vampires, merely an ageing countess who discovers she can temporarily resurrect her youthful beauty by having a quick sponge down in virgin's blood. Ingrid Pitt plays the youthful countess and she is rather comely. I saw her at a film fair once, sitting alone at a table littered with memorabilia, hands clenched in front of her, waiting for someone to come and talk to her.
The story is the usual late-Hammer rubbish. The countess grows increasingly reckless as she plunders the village's stock of nubile virgins in order to maintain her youthful looks. The problem is that each time she does so the effects wear off increasingly quickly and she grows increasingly older and uglier. She falls for a dashing young soldier, played with youthful ineptitude by a man called Sandor Eles who would later resurface as a head waiter at the Crossroads motel. I don't remember his acting on that show being as bad as it is here, but watching this it's easy to see why the Crossroads producers figured he'd fit right in.
Although the film refers to Dracula it contains no vampires, merely an ageing countess who discovers she can temporarily resurrect her youthful beauty by having a quick sponge down in virgin's blood. Ingrid Pitt plays the youthful countess and she is rather comely. I saw her at a film fair once, sitting alone at a table littered with memorabilia, hands clenched in front of her, waiting for someone to come and talk to her.
The story is the usual late-Hammer rubbish. The countess grows increasingly reckless as she plunders the village's stock of nubile virgins in order to maintain her youthful looks. The problem is that each time she does so the effects wear off increasingly quickly and she grows increasingly older and uglier. She falls for a dashing young soldier, played with youthful ineptitude by a man called Sandor Eles who would later resurface as a head waiter at the Crossroads motel. I don't remember his acting on that show being as bad as it is here, but watching this it's easy to see why the Crossroads producers figured he'd fit right in.