Hard to say whether this is a good movie or not. On the one hand, there is nothing truly bad about but on the other, it's also being a movie that doesn't has any truly great or entertaining moments in it. You could say this movie is being average, in about every regard and I can do see this movie ending up being a disappointing one for a lot of people, including the Dracula and Hammer fans out there.
As often is the case with Hammer movies, you could so easily skip the first 30 minutes of it. Hardly anything happens and it attempts to set things and characters up, by showing and doing stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
But what follows isn't being anything all too great or entertaining neither. The movie lacks some good interaction between the Dracula character and the 'heroes' of the movie and I did wish there was some more vampire action in this as well. It's not like this is a boring movie but it at the same time also does very little to excite you or get you involved with anything. It's as if the Hammer studios 'demanded' another Dracula movie but the writer Anthony Hinds just had no good ideas at all and instead decided to put in some stuff we had all seen before in previous and far better Hammer studios Dracula productions, making this movie as generic and unremarkable as it could be.
It's a shame, since there were still some ingredients for a great movie present here. One of them is obviously being Christopher Lee, who once more plays the blood sucking count, who once again gets resurrected from the death. The other is being director Roy Ward Baker, who had directed some of the best Hammer movies and simply was being a great director, in general. Both of their talents sort of go to waste in this movie, since they are given very little good to work with.
And I'm still not really sure whether or not Dennis Waterman was a good leading man in this. Don't really think he had the right charisma and star-power and this movie is being one of those cases that really could had used a Peter Cushing, or someone of his caliber, in this.
I know I'm sounding mostly negative but in all truth, I did not hated watching this movie at all. Can't say there is anything truly bad about it but there just isn't being anything in it that makes me truly like this movie, or makes it one that stands out from the tons of other Dracula movies.
6/10
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