Hammer Dracula: Horror of Dracula + The Brides of Dracula (1958/60, dir. Terence Fisher, UK) by Kymm Zuckert
“Doctor Van Helsing, I am not at all satisfied. You suddenly appear and tell us that Jonathan Harker is dead. And yet you will not tell us where or how he died. I find it extremely suspicious!”
Last year I decided to do a theme month for October, and watched every Halloween movie, all twelve of them. Some of them were a treat, some a trick (see what I did there?), but I soldiered on and got through them, living to tell the tale at sunrise on November 1st.
I said to Craig, “What am I going to do next October? The Friday the 13th movies?“ He visibly shuddered and said, “God no! Why not do Hammer films?“ which was an excellent idea!
And here it is, next October, and I decided to concentrate on the Dracula Hammer films. There are nine in total, made between 1958 and 1974, with Christopher Lee as Dracula in seven of them, Peter Cushing as Van Helsing in six, and four with them together.
The first film was called merely Dracula for its UK release, but retitled The Horror of Dracula for the US, so nobody would think it was a Bela Lugosi re-release.
Peter Cushing gets lone above-the-title billing, so i guess we know who was the bigger star at this point. It also stars Michael Gough and Melissa Stribling, with Christopher Lee as Dracula.
They can’t have Dracula listed too far down, but it just shows you what an international movie star of renown Lee wasn’t. He had been working since 1948, mostly in small or uncredited roles, though he did play The Creature in Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957. But this was the 36-year-old Lee’s first big chance at big, sexy, starring role, and boy, did he take a bite out of it.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
It starts with, beefy, honest, open-faced Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) striding happily through the Transylvanian forest towards Castle Dracula. I notice that John Van Eyssen is only billed seventh, so Jonathan Harker might not have quite as large as role in this film as he usually does. He might not make it out of that castle he’s so anxious to enter.
Apparently, he’s Dracula’s librarian. So that’s new.
And there’s our Chris! Tall and handsome and distinguished, wearing a black cape that covers him completely from neck to toes, that’s not weird one bit. He takes Harker to his room, ogles the picture of Lucy, his fiancée, that is strangely two nearly identical portraits in a frame. The production designer didn’t think to have maybe a close up and a body shot? Or a full face and a profile?
Anyway, then Dracula locks Harker in his room, and his reaction is to smile fondly in an, “Oh, that Dracula!” kind of way. Then he writes in his diary that he’s planning on ending Dracula’s reign of terror. That won’t backfire at all, I’m sure. Nothing like keeping those secret plans in writing.
A young woman in an appalling wig begs Harker to help her escape, and he lets her a little too near his jugular. Never trust ladies in diaphanous gowns in Dracula’s castle, they are always a little pointy of tooth. She has a nibble, and then Dracula himself comes crashing into the room, leaping across a table in a single bound, eyes flashing, face and fangs smeared in blood, and it is SO AWESOME. I feel that the audiences in 1958 were probably quite startled, and I also feel that at that very moment was when Christopher Lee became a star.
The next day, Harker sneaks around, stake in hand, and finds Dracula in his coffin. It seems like Harker could wrap up this whole situation toute suite, except for a couple of small things. 1. We are only 22 minutes into the film and there is an hour left to go, 2. Top billed Peter Cushing as Van Helsing hasn’t shown up yet, and 3. There are eight more of these films, they wouldn’t be about much if Dracula got killed 22 minutes into the first one.
Welp, he decides to kill the lady first, just as the sun is setting, so clearly they didn’t send the smartest anti-vampire warrior to Transylvania.
And here comes Van Helsing, just after the nick of time.
Back home (which I thought was England, but turns out to be in driving distance from Castle Dracula), he informs a new and previously unknown to Bram Stoker character Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough, 30 years later, he would be Alfred in Tim Burton’s Batman) that Harker was dead. There always has to be a Mina and a Lucy in any classic version of Dracula, and in this case, we have Mina as Holmwood’s wife and Lucy as his sister. Lucy is mysteriously ill, and we all know what that means.
There’s a marvelous little cameo by an actor named Miles Malleson as the undertaker, and I couldn’t figure out why he looked so familiar. Thanks to IMDb, I found that he plays Old Joe in the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol, so I’ve seen him every year for who knows how long. What a wonderful treat!
Anyway, after much prowling around through the night, at last we come to the battle between Dracula and Van Helsing. Lee and Cushing onscreen together, worth waiting for, and worth seeing three more times in the next eight films!
This is going to be a swell series, I can’t wait for the next one!
“You are very kind, madame.”
“I am nothing of the sort.”
Well, that was quick! Next one, ahoy!
The Brides of Dracula starts with a voiceover that Dracula is dead, but that his cult lives on. That’s an unusual way of thinking of vampires, but you do you, Hammer.
This is a Peter Cushing only joint, Christopher Lee doesn’t appear in this film because he didn’t want to be typecast, though he got over that notion fairly quickly when he decided that he’d rather eat and pay rent, one supposes. Though Lee-free, in addition to Cushing, it also has Martita Hunt, best known as Miss Havisham in the David Lean Great Expectations (as well as being Alec Guinness’ first acting teacher) and also Miles Malleson, see above in re Old Joe. Also, he’s the “room for one more inside” guy from Dead of Night! He’s in all of my faves! Or two of them, at any rate.
A coach goes flying through the night with a young, pretty, French maiden getting sick from the speed (Yvonne Monlaur). There is a log in the road, the coachman stops to move it, and! A suspiciously cloaked gentleman jumps on the back of the coach and rides until the inn, where he pays the coachman, and why? To abandon the lady there, for his nefarious purposes, one assumes.
But no, he leaves, the coach leaves, all of the customers leave. Then arrives the Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt), all grand and imperious. She invites Marianne and her outrrrrrrageous French accent to stay at her castle, which, judging from the reaction of the innkeeper and his wife, is a terrible idea.
The Baroness tells Marianne that she has a mad son (David Peel) that she keeps locked up, but Marianne feels he should be helped. She goes to him in the night, finds him chained up, saying that he isn’t mad, but that his mother keeps him prisoner in order to steal his inheritance. She goes to find the key to set him free. Which one is lying, the Baroness, or her son, the Baron? She seems creepy, he seems sweet, but you never know which way the evil vampire wind blows in these films.
Aaaaand, she chose poorly, as letting the Baron free to roam the countryside seems to not necessarily have been the best course to take, judging by the hysteria of the maid, and the deadness of the Baroness.
And here’s our Van Helsing, co-incidentally showing up to find Marianne passed out on the road, and a dead girl with neck marks at the inn. Marianne, having learned absolutely nothing about strangers, trots happily off with Van Helsing. I mean, it’s okay, he’s the good guy, but get a clue, Marianne.
He takes her to the school where she is to teach, and she is greeted by Frau Lang, played by Mona Washburn, aka Mrs. Pearce from My Fair Lady! These movies are a complete treasure trove of British character actors, everywhere you look, there’s another familiar face.
In The Horror of Dracula, Van Helsing states firmly that it’s only an old wives tale that vampires can turn into bats and wolves, but they completely changed their minds here in the sequel, realizing that the whole bat thing is super fun and a guaranteed audience-pleaser. Unfortunately, they only had about sixpence to spend on the bat, and it looks absolutely ridiculous. Peter Cushing should have gotten an Oscar for keeping a straight face around it.
Okay, so now the young vampire Baron shows up at the girls’ school to see Marianne, who seems entirely welcoming, so either she has forgotten the previous day completely, has hatched a plan with Van Helsing to lull the Baron into complacency for later staking, or she is dumb as a bag of hair. I fear the latter.
Yeah. She’s an imbecile. Fortunately, Dr. Van Helsing will take care of the situation. His big battle with the Baron isn’t as good as it would have been with Christopher Lee, but it was pretty excellent nonetheless. Two down, seven to go!
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog