Your Daily Dracula – Peter Jakeson, Dracula Rise of the Vampire (2025)

Your Daily Dracula – Peter Jakeson, Dracula Rise of the Vampire (2025)

This very low budget British picture at least has the decency – unlike 99% of other Dracula-related movies – to give Bram Stoker a ‘characters created by’ credit, also extending the courtesy to another 19^th century author in a way which slightly spoils the mid-end-credits sting.  However, writer-director-producer-star-fight choreographer-CGI artis-tons-of-other-gigs Dean Meadows probably ought to have included credits for Don Houghton (especially), Anthony Hinds and Jimmy Sangster since this is basically Hammer Dracula fan fiction and perhaps a sequel to The Satanic Rites of Dracula (with Pauline Peart sort of reprising her role) though it might also just be a spot-the-reference game as variants on the titles of every Hammer Dracula film except Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires are worked into the dialogue.

It’s set in contemporary London, but was shot in Barnstaple – and it’d take a harder heart than mine to lay into something put together on a down payment on a shoestring in Devon with a cast who are mostly coming up to or well past their bus pass taking part in satanic rites, vampire massacres and kung fu fights.  However, don’t expect anything more than a fan film – it’s closer to things like Dracula’s Bride of Horror and Bad Girl Dracula than such British indie efforts as Wrath of Dracula and Crucible of the Vampire.  Meadows plays ex-copper Gabriel Lee, who acts as if he’s in a sequel to a complicated film about how his last occult case went south, and he’s drawn into the investigation of a church attack by cultists wearing Baphomet masks.  He’s also looking after homeless pickpocket Zoe Van Helsing (Cerys Piper), last of her line.

The official plods are Gabriel’s mum (Ailsa Roanne), who looks younger than he does (and seems to be the sister of Caroline Munro’s character from Dracula AD 1972), and DCI Jessica Murray (Emma Fletcher), who we’d guess is the daughter of Inspector Murray from Dracula AD 1972 rather than descended from Mina Harker (nee Murray) from the book.  The most acting comes from Eileen Daly as blood-bathing cult leader Elizabeth, who puts up with grumbles in the ranks from followers who wonder just when she’s going to get round to resurrecting Dracula like she promised – and the Count only rises from the grave an hour into an hour and forty eight minute film, to be given what looks like Christopher Lee’s cape and fuss a bit about that signet ring which might have power over him.  Peter Jakeson isn’t a Lee lookalike, but might pass for Mike Raven or Ferdy Mayne in a mist – or even Charles Macaulay in Blacula.

This Dracula seems to have spent so much time in Whitby that he’s picked up a bit of a Yorkshire accent.  In a major break from the Hammer model, he gets a lot of dialogue – more ranting in half an hour or so of screen time than Christopher Lee managed in his entire Dracula series.  The title suggests that just as Hammer melded their vampire formula with sex, contemporary thriller or kung fu this is pitting Dracula against the sort of shavepate cockney hardnut found in all eighty five Rise of the Footsoldier films.  And, yes, there’s a scene where Dracula and other vampires invade a pub during a lock-in, not to mention a mass punch-up in a graveyard.  There’s quite a bit of plot but it’s all shrugged off.  And most of the action has that run-through-before-a-take non-contact look.  Honestly, I’ve seen worse.