EDITOR’S NOTE: Dracula A.D. 1972 was on the CBS Late Movie on March 18, 1981. You can download the full episode with commercials at the Internet Archive.

Warner Brothers and Hammer saw how well Count Yorga, Vampire did with young moviegoers and decided that it was time to make a modern Dracula.

While today, many associate Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing with their roles as Dracula and Van Helsing, this was the first time that Cushing played the role since Brides of Dracula. And while this was the sixth time Lee played the Count, the two had not battled since the original Hammer Dracula. It would be the next to last time they faced off in the roles and the next Hammer Dracula, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, would be the last for them to both play these characters.

It opens with Count Dracula and his nemesis Lawrence Van Helsing battling atop a carriage that crashes, impaling Dracula. With his mortal wounds about to end his life, Van Helsing finally destroys his archenemy. This is a thrilling opening — kind of like a Bond movie — but to Hammer continuity lovers, this invalidates the last few movies and starts a new timeline.

In 1972, Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham, And Now the Screaming Starts!) and her hippie friends are convinced to come and watch Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame, The Love Factor) perform a Black Mass — set to White Noise’s “Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell” — at the deconsecrated St Bartolph’s, the same church where her descendent Van Helsing and Dracula were both buried.

He soon draws the blood of Laura Bellows (Caroline Munro!) and brings Dracula back from the dead, as the Count quickly drains the lifeblood of the young girl. Then, they start to turn all of Jessica’s friends like Bob (Philip Miller) and Gaynor Keating (Marsha Hart) into vampires, all to draw her back to the Lord of the Vampires so that he can keep getting revenge on Van Helsing, who has a descendent, Lorrimer (also Cushing), the grandfather of Jessica.

This movie features controversial Page Three girl Flanagan — who was the Kray Twin’s mother’s hairdresser and campaigned for their release — and Concord, CA ten-piece band Stoneground. Three members of that group — Cory Lerios, Steve Price and David Jenkins — would later form Pablo Cruise. They were in the movie to replace The Faces, which would have been wild.

In the U.S., a brief clip was played before this movie in which Barry Atwater (Janos Skorzeny from The Night Stalker) rises from a coffin and swears the entire audience in as members of the Count Dracula Society as part of a HorroRitual.

This played as part of some great double features with Trog, Twins of Evil and Crescendo.