Milks the opening satanic ritual footage for all its worth; flashing back to it throughout the film. You know a movie's bad when it keeps flashing back to the best part. Cushing sinks his teeth into what little meat is thrown his way, but Lee gives barely a nibble to the bones he's tossed. Dracula seems to get less and less powerful as the series goes on and his death scene is sound in concept but incompetent in execution. Why bother?

One of the nails in Hammer Horror's coffin.

Passes the time.

Lee's last stand as Hammer's Dracula (though the series still had one more entry, _The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires_, to go) is another uneven modern vampire tale, though a slight improvement on its predecessor, _Dracula A.D. 1972_. This owes more to Ian Fleming, Sax Rohmer, and "The Avengers" than it does to Bram Stoker, but it does boast the usual fine turns from the Brit horror boys (though Chris has even less screen time than he did in _A.D. 1972_).