Dracula's Last Rites (1980) User Reviews

Bloody hell!

[Rrrobert · 5/10 · 2 January 2003]

Low budget horrors about a small-town undertaker who, in league with the town's doctor and sheriff, are secretly vampires feeding off accident victims and other faked fatalities. After vampirising their victims this thirsty threesome stakes the victim to prevent them becoming a vampire too.

Their shady dealings arouse the suspicions of Ted Fonda, the son-in-law of a recently deceased old lady. Then when the woman in question is not staked she escapes to becomes a bizarre comedy vampire creeping around the town scaring people.

The makers of the film tried for some arty shots but overall the film looks cheap. Some footage seems to be missing with a conversation that is yet to occur played over generic driving a car footage. At other times the film seems padded with several establishing shots of farm animals and rural fields.

With its combination of some shaky acting, artistic camera angles, Halloween-style music, talky scenes that go nowhere, disregard for accepted vampire lore, scenes switching from day to night to back again, a few bloody slasher-film type murders plus some traditional style fangings, this film is a delightful must for any bad movie fan.

Not One of the Better Vampire Films Out There

[Uriah43 · 3/10 · 23 April 2019]

This film essentially starts off with Dracula having changed his name to "A. Lucard" (Gerald Fielding) and operating as the mortician of a small town in the United States where he has successfully turned certain key people into vampires in order to continue his evil ways. So when an emergency medical call is placed he sends an ambulance and the local doctor to the scene where they dishonestly pronounce the victim dead and feast upon the body once they bring it to the morgue. Immediately afterward, they kill the victim to prevent it from turning into a vampire and-after disguising the wounds-bury the body as soon as possible so that nobody will be the wiser. This all changes, however, when a young couple by the names of "Ted Fonda" (Michael David Lally) and "Marie Fonda" (Patricia Lee Hammond) lose their mother "Mrs. Bradley" (Mimi Weddell) to an apparent stroke. At least, that is what they are told. But rather than killing her after their feast, Lucard is shocked to learn that the body has been taken away from him for a burial service to be conducted at another location. And this creates all kinds of problems for everyone involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off well enough but it subsequently proceeded at a painfully slow pace afterward. Not only that, but the cast wasn't as well-chosen as it could have been either. For example, having Gerald Fielding play the part of Dracula was rather odd to say the least. He just didn't fit that particular role. Likewise, the low-budget special effects and action scenes were equally bad. In short, this is clearly not one of the better vampire films out there and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

Not nearly as bad as pretentious reviews say it is

[berg-74532 · 4/10 · 26 May 2019]

Not great but nowhere near as bad as some gear say. How could a movie that came out when this movie came out get hammered by someone as dated, it's 30 + years old of course it's not up to date in any part BECAUSE it's 30 fricken years old. Even a 30 year old Sci Fi movie is dated that is of course if Pan Am is doing daily trips to the moon and we have archeologists on Saturn digging up slabs that portend our past and future like 2001 a space odyssey. Would anyone say that's dated. And I'm not saying you can compare this to that because as most people know that is one of the most boring movies that have no plot this is just an old movie with huge gaps in the plot. I never talk about details of movies I talk about and as you see I don't call this a review. And most discussion about movie I do usually takes issue with other people and what they think. Childish probably, but I don't think when you're some Bozo who believes himself (herself) to be a closet movie expert to tell people what to watch and why you should not watch, I rip movies all the time but try to show that this is why I didn't like it on a personal scale. I I'm watching a 30 year old movie I'm not going to rip it because of that and not sure why anyone else would. No one seeing an Ed Wood film when it was released in the 50s would ever believe how many people would for whatever reason love watching his movies. And I truly like this movie it's small it's plot is not what you would expect and the ending surprised me. Watch it knowing it's not the greatest movie ever made and if you watch it knowing you will not recognize anyone and at time lighting is bad and dialogue is a little annoying muddy but this should all be things you should know already.

Fangs for nothing!

[GroovyDoom · 20 July 2004]

SERIOUS SPOILAGE

I can remember seeing trailers for this on television when it was released, and being interested in all things vampiric, I longed to be old enough to see it. Boy, I didn't know what I was missing, that's for sure!

This is a face-off between vampire and...non-vampire. In the vampire corner, we have Lucard. A. Lucard, to be exact (haw haw). Lucard is a mortician, which is a great business for a vampire to be in, especially when mortician's wax seems to help vampires come out during the daylight. Lucard and his vampire buddies (the sheriff, the paramedics, and a few miscellaneous others) like to rush to the scene of accidents, declare the victims dead when they're not, then whisk them off to the mortuary for some bloodsucking. Immediately after biting them, the vampires stake the victims, for fear of any newly-minted competition getting a leg up on them.

In the other corner is one Ted Fonda. Ted's mother-in-law is the latest in the town's not-really dead but definitely soon-to-be undead category. Mrs. Ted is frantic, especially after they decide they want to have the wake at home and Lucard doesn't want to give back the body. Every shady businessperson's nightmare, Ted Fonda isn't one to be pushed around by any mortician, and he brings the old lady's corpse back home so they can put it in their living room for a few days until the wake--unembalmed, no less!

The match is on when Lucard sends one of his minions to steal the body back, but he winds up impaled on a picket fence in Fonda's yard instead. Grandma rises from the coffin later that same night and wanders the rural countryside looking like Grandmama Addams with Halloween vampire fangs, while the next day the Fondas are sure Lucard stole the body after all.

Meanwhile, there are social problems in the vampire community. The doctor and the sheriff think Lucard is getting too many victims, so some bickering leads to a few bat-fights. Fonda calls the doc over to give his already-sleeping wife a sedative, and he can't resist turning her into a late-nite snack. Fonda is out on his own little stake-out, following Lucard around while they search for Granny vampire before she can cause too much trouble and blow their cover. They find her and hold her down so the sun can kill her, but not before she makes eye contact with Ted, who finally figures out something strange is going on (duh!). Lucard tries to literally hold Ted back, stopping his car with his bare hands and sheer vampire strength, but Ted escapes and goes home to find his lovely wife completely drained.

When Lucard returns to the mortuary he finds the sheriff snacking on a 'drowning victim' Lucard had been saving for himself, so they have a slugfest that finds the town minus one undead lawman, and the town's vampire population dwindles. With only Lucard and the doc left, they employ some vague sort of deduction to guess Ted's whereabouts, while Ted sets a booby trap for them by dousing his car (and his wife) with gasoline and rigging it with an extension cord. The vampires fall for it--they're undead and not too bright--and Ted manages to stake both of them while they wriggle in flames.

In the film's stunning denouement, Ted stumbles away thru a pasture, while a title card informs us that Ted was found guilty on four counts of murder, and that nobody believed his vampire conspiracy theory. Furthermore, the body of his wife was NEVER FOUND! EEEEEEE!

"Last Rites" was probably a real scream to make; it looks a lot like a home movie and seems to have been assembled by filmmakers who were just jazzed about making a vampire movie and didn't really care about having an actual script. Truth be told, some of the 'arty' shots really do work up some atmosphere, and the shamelessly hokey vampire lady is great. Then something comes along and goofs it up, like those long unnecessary shots that track the characters as they drive in their vehicles along endless rural roads, or Ted and his numerous phone calls, or when some stray filming equipment or a Pizza Hut or something enters the frame and reminds us that we're watching a cheesy flick. This movie's imaginary story doesn't even exist within the frames of the film itself. Just like the vampire lady, who wanders around dazed and realizing she's dead, the movie knows it's baloney.

This Dracula should have been staked

[Brassknuckle Sandwich · 1/10 · 19 November 2001]

It's not often that you find a movie vigorously contending for the coveted, "Worst in it's own Genre" award, but if there is such an award, then that would have to go, hands down, to Dracula's Last Rites.

Low budget horror films are a staple of the genre, and films such as Dead Alive, Bad Taste, Evil Dead, and Halloween have proven that it can be done with style. Dracula's Last Rites, on the other hand, show that low budget horror films can also be done without style, taste, substance, and with actors more wooden than Pinocchio.

To summarize this film, vampires in a small Mid-Western town take up residence in the local mortuary where they stage "accidents" to cover up for their bloody thirsts. Some unintenionally funny moments arise when the mother of the hero is bitten and turned into a vampire - badly fitted vampire teeth and poor make-up gives her a startling resemblance to Roddy McDowall in a fright wig, and her acting "skills" only serve to egg on the fits of laughter.

As a camp film, Dracula's Last Rites cannot be rated any higher than 2.5 out of 5, while as a straight horror film, it drops off any measurable scale.

badly dated vampire nonsense

[dbborroughs · 3/10 · 15 September 2009]

Low budget tale of a a bunch of vampires in a small town who control things and use their connection to th sheriff's department and funeral home to remain well stocked with blood. Into the mix the son of one of their victims who seeks to break their hold.

Time has not been kind to this film which probably never played all that well to begin with. The glowing beds, the fright wigs and other hip tidbits from the time this was made date the film badly and make it seem like a comedy of errors.

Not really scary, this film is more comedy. Unfortunately even as a comedy its not really funny, certainly not in the way it needs to be to be a good bad film.

I'd take a pass.

Dracula's Last Rites

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 24 August 2022]

You know, vampires think they're so smart. They've been pulling that Alucard scam for decades and humans haven't figured it out. Like in this small town, where a drag race leads to two injured teens. The girl is declared deceased - she isn't - and rushed to the A. Lucard Funeral Home. Soon, A. Lucard himself(Gerald Fielding), Dr. Cummins (Victor Jorge) and an assistant drink her blood and then stake her. Yes, the most important people in town are vamps and they're using the locals as feeding stock.

Marie (Patricia Lee Hammond) and Ted Fonda (Michael Lally) call Dr. Cummins when her mother (Mimi Weddell) gets sick. He gives her a sedative, says she's dead and drinks up. Then he calls in Lucard to bury the body. Then Marie decides she wants a home funeral - what kind of maniacs want a dead body just sitting at home? - so mom comes home. She could turn at any minute, so Lucard sends his assistant to stop that. Well, Ted tosses him out the window and the kindly Mrs. Bradley is now walking the night.

A low budget regional New Jersey movie - made in Vineland - that spends as much time hanging with vampiric small town politicians as it does showing that fanged bloodletting that you expect, this movie has a blue collar take on blood drinking ghouls.

Director, writer and producer Domonic Paris was also behind the movie Splitz and a series of documentaries including Amazing Masters of Martial Arts, Bad Girls of the Movies, Afros, Macks & Zodiacs and Film House Fever. Now he writes movies like A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures.

Of everyone in this movie, Mimi Weddell - who has no lines - did the most afterward. She was already 65 when this was made, but ended up being in everything from Student Bodies and The Purple Rose of Cairo to Hitch, The Thomas Crown Affair and an episode of Sex and the City.

I'm all for movies having endings like this one.

If its a Canon release expect to be disappointed and ripped off

[pmc-17741 · 2/10 · 15 May 2021]

I have seen the review for this movie in the Psychotronic Movie Guide 1983, by the way, mine is split into 4 pieces after 38 years of consulting. I would recommend avoiding all of Canon's releases as always putting out a inferior effort to save money for the next idiot concept. Look at AIP instead who became Orion and you get top shelf movie like fantasy Excalibur which still holds up in our post modern era, smerk. Canon's answer is to make a quick knock off to reach the constant cheesy level and no originality. These movies are often available on free streaming channels and sub channels of your local TV station which is how I watch them

This becomes true for everything they released since 1979, but you maybe able to find something that appeals to you going backwards to 60s and just depends on your preferences, as I developed an interest in Jean Rollin movies from France.

I really do like B movies and with digit media documentary commentaries are often more interesting to how they put it all together. Most of the directors where movie buffs like we are, and had to learn as they went along. Clint Eastwood is the most successful of this type of director, where as film school gave us Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg.

A great tale of terror

[jacobjohntaylor1 · 9/10 · 20 July 2016]

This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. This is a sequel to Dracula. And it is one of scariest movie ever made. This not a 3.8. This is a great movie. I give it 9 out 10. If this movie does not scary you then no movie will. Dracula (1931) is better. But still this a great movie. Dracula (1992) is also better. Nosferatu (1922) is also better. But still this a very scary movie. A lot better then that crap Blood for Dracula. This one movie you do not want to miss. More people need to see this movie. It is a classic horror film. I need more lines and I am running out of things to say.

Sometimes it just clicks for you.

[lost-in-limbo · 6/10 · 29 June 2020]

I hate it when a synopsis, virtually goes on to tell you the entire story. I mean everything from plot twists, to who dies and what happens at the end. Is it a ploy to stop people from watching it? Should I be afraid? My acquired DVD copy of "LAST RITES" does exactly that. Lucky I didn't pay too much attention to it, until after the film had finished and was putting the disc back in the case. When I originally picked it up, I just grabbed it and took it home. The title was enough to entice me on the unknown vampire film. So I chucked it on the shelf, leaving it sit there for a week or so. Late last night I thought I'll give it a spin. As I grabbed the case, I had a quick glance at the back cover, but the tiny red writing across the murky background made it hard to read with little light. This was a case length worth of writing too. Anyhow the main lights were off and I didn't feel like turning them on. So I just went with it. Glad I did too.

After a car accident, the lone survivor is taken to back to the funeral home where she's fed upon by a vampire coven that hold highly regarded positions (mortician, sheriff, doctor) in the small town. We learn this unorthodox practice is nothing new, but it goes suddenly pear shape. When the body of an elderly woman is given to the funeral home for arrangements, but there's a sudden change of mind by the family to now hold the wake in their own home. The next morning the body is returned to the family, against the best wishes of the mortician Lucard (I know) and that's because he knows what becomes of those that they feed on when they're not staked.

"LAST RITES" in most eyes might be seen as *CRAP*. And to a point maybe so, but I took it for what it was --- a late-70s micro-budget regional vampire horror presented in a raw and minimalist manner. Okay it might be a very slipshod production (just look at the equipment popping into shots), but damn, its limitations (technically speaking) gave it an eerily rustic ambiance and nightmarish dream quality that complemented its creaky, yet offbeat narrative. It can lull at times, and the script can ponder on the trivial. Even so, I wasn't bored. Nevertheless there is shocks punctuated throughout, some practical and others crude (come one who doesn't like the use of obvious dummy stunt-work), but mainly unexpected. And that's what I really liked... it wasn't predictable in a traditional sense and there's a refreshing twist to how the story unfolds. Now making sense of some the plot is a different story. Inconsistencies can pop up, however this structural abandonment added to the strange hallucinogenic air.

The moments that had most impact are when we see the vampires in action for the first time and the creepy presence of an animalistic looking (scraggly hair, pale skin, heavy eyes and fangs) Mimi Weddell as the elderly vampire wandering the countryside in a confused daze with her arms stretched out. For what looks like a sincere home movie at times, which had that made on the run feeling and everything about it shows it up. Be that as it may, filmmaker Domonic Paris sure does use the camera accordingly to compose few striking imageries, slight make-up effects look better than they should and the acting by the amateurish cast is ably done.

"LAST RITES" is a poverty-row midnight offering with its heart in the right place. I don't know how, but it just clicked for me.

So named presumably after those which must have been delivered after they saw the first rushes!

[uds3 · 1 April 2002]

The plethora of reviews here are indicative of the obviously growing cult status of this movie! Methinks Mike and I are probably the only people to have ever seen this flick. I don't know about him, but I "inherited" the film (titled incidentally DRACULA'S LAST RITES) in a bulk purchase of some 1600 movies I made some 16 years ago, from a video shop that had gone to the wall! Unfortunately some four years later in a drunken and obviously disorientated state, I put it on!

Well what can I say? Hey, its a movie from Domonic Paris, a specialist in home-movies who has churned out a total of just four films between 1980 and 1997. This was his finest hour. Obviously filmed over a long weekend with a hand-held camera, script written over cornflakes, and a budget of probably $200. Basically no blood, plastic teeth from K Mart and "actors" from the local pool hall.

Best of all, no Dracula! If you want to find the home movie with the leastest, try and find a copy of this, although I suspect I have the only print left - and its in BETA!

No Dracula actually in sight

[udar55 · 7/10 · 21 September 2021]

Marie (Patricia Lee Hammond) and her husband unwittingly expose a vampire cult at a mortuary after they demand her dead mother's body be delivered to the house for a wake. Problem is the vamps have already put the bite on ol' Grandma and she is expected to get up any minute now. This is one of those regional horror flicks prevalent in the late 70s/early 80s. The film is very low budget (the tops of sets can be seen) and features many other problems (like no Dracula, although I suspect distributor Cannon added that as the on screen title reads LAST RITES), yet it is oddly endearing. I like the desolate country location work (Vineland, New Jersey), the cast is decent and director Domonic Paris seems to have a good eye for his shots. In fact, it reminds me a bit of Don Coscarelli's PHANTASM (this flick also bears a 1979 copyright year) but with vampires running a funeral home.

The Horrible Truth About Funeral Homes...

[azathothpwiggins · 29 October 2021]

As suspected, the funeral home industry is just a front for bloodthirsty vampires. LAST RITES is the video proof.

In a small, rural town, the undertakers are actually henchman, seeking out the nearly-dead from accident scenes, etc., and taking them to the "parlor" for exsanguination by their thirsty master. This works like a charm, including a traditional method for eliminating the newly undead.

Uh oh!

Trouble brews when a woman decides to eschew the norm and display her mum's body in her living room! The dearly departed having already been bitten, but not eliminated, chaos and horror ensue!

While somewhat clunky and "dated", this movie gets extra points for originality. If you're tired of the same old vampiric tales, then this could be a refreshing option...