Dracula AD 1972

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Dracula A.D.1972
Region 1 DVD cover
Directed by	Alan Gibson
Produced by	Josephine Douglas
Written by	Don Houghton
Starring	Christopher Lee Peter Cushing
Music by	Mike Vickers
Cinematography	Dick Bush
Editing by	James Needs
Distributed by	Hammer Studios
Release date(s)	September 28, 1972
Running time	96 min. (USA)
Language	English
Preceded by	Scars of Dracula
Followed by	The Satanic Rites of Dracula
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Dracula A.D. 1972 is a 1972 Hammer Horror film directed by Alan Gibson, and starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Stephanie Beacham. It is the seventh film in Hammer's Dracula series, and the sixth film to star Christopher Lee in the title role.

The soundtrack was composed by Mike Vickers, and features two songs from the band Stoneground, who were a late replacement for The Faces. The film was marketed with the tagline "Past, present or future, never count out the Count!"

1 Plot synopsis
2 Cast
3 Release dates
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Plot synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In 1872, Count Dracula is destroyed in London in a confrontation with Lawrence Van Helsing on the top of a coach. As Dracula dies from a stake made from the remains of a wooden wheel, Lawrence dies from his wounds and is buried. This opening sequence was not in the previous film Scars of Dracula, but is completely new and not part of the Hammer Horror Dracula chronology up to this point. One hundred years later, Johnny Alucard (Dracula written backwards), a disciple of Dracula, performs a black magic ceremony in the abandoned, de-consecrated St Bartholomew's church and restores Dracula to life.

Dracula builds up a new horde of disciples from amongst Alucard's swinging teen friends, one of whom is Jessica Van Helsing, grand-daughter of Lorrimer Van Helsing, the current descendant of Dracula's old nemesis and also a vampire hunter. As Lorrimer is drawn into the fight, Dracula plans to take his revenge on the Van Helsing family by turning Jessica into a vampire. But Van Helsing successfully destroys him with a stake through the heart and Jessica is spared eternal damnation.

[edit] Cast

Stephanie Beacham and Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee (Count Dracula)
Peter Cushing (Lorrimer Van Helsing)
Stephanie Beacham (Jessica Van Helsing)
Christopher Neame (Johnny Alucard)
Michael Coles (Inspector Murray)
Marsha Hunt (Gaynor Keating)
Caroline Munro (Laura Bellows)

[edit] Release dates

Sweden 28 August 1972
UK 27 September 1972
USA 17 November 1972
Norway 14 December 1972

[edit] Trivia

This article contains a trivia section.
Content in this section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article or removed, and the trivia section removed.

Christopher Neame and Stephanie Beacham would later be reunited in the American soap opera, Dynasty.
The film has a number of different titles: Dracula '72 (UK working title), Dracula Chases the Mini Girls (UK working title), Dracula Chelsea '72 (UK working title), and Dracula Today.^{[citation needed]} It was also called Dracula '73 when it was released a year later in France.
The song "Symphony for the Devil", by industrial musician Raymond Watts of PIG, features a sound sample of the Black Mass performed in the film.
When the film was released in North America, a brief clip was played before the film in which actor Barry Atwater (the vampire Janos Skorzeny in The Night Stalker) rises from a coffin and swears the entire audience in as members of the Count Dracula Society.