Dracula AD 1972 | 1972
- Locations |
- London;
- Hertfordshire
- DIRECTOR |
- Alan Gibson
Gruesomely enjoyable (for all the wrong reasons) attempt to update the fag end of the Hammer series to the Swinging Seventies, set around the Kings Road, Chelsea, years after Chelsea’s sixties heyday. As the years roll by, the film has acquired a kitschy charm, but the only thing likely to wake you up screaming are those Seventies fashion nightmares.
The church in which Dracula is revived is obviously a set, but the groovy “Cavern’ coffee bar where the trendy young things gather was Italian restaurant La Bersagliera, which stood at 372 Kings Road, up towards World’s End. After remaining unchanged for decades, the block has recently been redeveloped.
It's a kind of coming-home, in a way. Further east along the King's Road, toward Sloane Square, you can see the home of Dracula author Bram Stoker, at 18 Leonard's Terrace, at the southern end of Royal Avenue.
Over in Notting Hill, 75 Hillgate Place, just behind the Coronet Cinema (a location for – surprise – Notting Hill) was the home of groovy vampire Johnny Alucard (come on, Van Helsing, grapple with that fiendish anagram).
The country scenes filmed at Tykes Water Lake at Aldenham Country Park, west of Elstree between Bushey and Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.
