142) The Horror of Dracula (1958)

"With God's help, I will forever end this man's reign of terror." 

Director

Terence Fisher

Cast

Peter Cushing - Dr. Van Helsing

Christopher Lee - Count Dracula

Carol Marsh - Lucy Holmwood

Michael Gough - Arthur Holmwood

Melissa Stribling - Mina Holmwood

John Van Eyssen - Jonathan Harker

Valerie Gaunt - Vampire Woman

"The Horror of Dracula" is a movie that shouldn't be forgotten.  Like so many other horror films from British movie company, Hammer Film Productions, it manages to be co-foundational in the horror genre though Universal Studios made the classic monster films first.

It's thanks to Universal that the monsters above all other monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the Mummy still possess a firm place in pop culture. 

Beginning in the 1950s, when Hollywood had moved on to the atomic age of SciFi and horror, Hammer Productions took those Universal characters and made them partly their own. And, thus, Hammer Horror was born. 

I've written about a few other Hammer films on here - Vampire Circus (1972), Tales from the Crypt (1972), and To the Devil...A Daughter (1976). 

Now, I want to get to a Hammer Horror film that's considered a horror classic among horror classics, "The Horror of Dracula." Released in the U.K. as simply "Dracula" and directed by Terence Fisher, it stars British acting legends Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, Michael Gough, and Christopher Lee as Dracula. 

It's also the final film role of British actress Valerie Gaunt, who stars as the vampire woman of Dracula. Her previous film was Hammer's 1957 movie "The Curse of Frankenstein" which also stars Cushing and Lee. 

"The Horror of Dracula" is the first of nine Dracula films produced by Hammer - "The Brides of Dracula" (1960), "Dracula: Prince of Darkness" (1966), "Dracula has Risen from the Grave" (1968), "Taste the Blood of Dracula" (1970), "Scars of Dracula" (1970), "Dracula A.D. 1972" (1972), "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" (1973), and the martial arts horror movie "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" (1974). 

The story in this movie takes place in the late 1880s as Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) arrives at the castle of Count Dracula located in the city of Klausenburg, Romania.

Christopher Lee as Dracula in "The Horror of Dracula."

Harker introduces himself as the new librarian for the castle. 

As soon as he walks through the castle doors, a young woman (Valerie Gaunt) begs for his help. She claims she's a prisoner of Dracula who's keeping her in the castle against her will. 

Soon, Dracula (Christopher Lee) enters to show Jonathan to his room. Once Harker is alone in his room and begins writing in his diary does the audience learn his true intentions. Harker intends to kill
Dracula and end his reign of terror.

Later, Harker returns to the main room of the castle where he's confronted again by the same woman.

As she again begs for his help, she bears her sharp teeth revealing herself to be a vampire. She then bites his neck.

Dracula quickly enters the room to chase her down and expel her. 

Harker passes out. By the time he awakens, it's daylight outside near the end of the day. Once he realizes that he has been bitten, it's a matter of time before he becomes a vampire himself. 

He writes one last entry in his journal before searching for Dracula's tomb. 

Sure enough, he finds the undead Dracula in his coffin with the vampire woman in another. 

Rather than stake Dracula first, he kills the woman. This turns out to be a fatal mistake. 

Dracula awakens at her screams as she dies. 

He closes the crypt door, trapping Harker inside with him. 

Days later, Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) shows up to town looking for Harker. He first stops at an inn.

For some reason, the owner's daughter has Harker's journal, which she gives to Van Helsing. 

He then goes to Dracula's castle. Nobody seems to be around. But he does come across a picture of Harker's fiancée, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh).  

Van Helsing finally finds Harker lying in Dracula's coffin. He checks for bite marks. Sure enough, they're there. 

Knowing what he has to do, though reluctant to do it, he puts a stake through Harker's heart. 

After, Van Helsing wastes no time leaving the castle to tell Lucy's brother and sister-in-law, Arthur and Mina Holmwood (Michael Gough and Melissa Stribling) about Harker's death. 

Lucy, unfortunately, has become ill and bedridden. 

When day turns to night, Dracula visits Lucy, whom she allows into her bedroom, to drink her blood. 

Worried about Lucy, Mina asks Van Helsing to examine her. 

He finds the bite marks on her neck and places garlic cloves around her bed - a common vampire repellant. 

Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing.

Lucy later begs the house maid, Gerda, to remove the garlic. Of course, Gerda is oblivious to everything going on, she ignorantly removes the garlic. Stupid Gerda!

And the next morning, they find Lucy dead.

Three days after they bury her, Lucy rises from the dead and lures Gerda's daughter, Tania (Janine Faye) to the graveyard where she (Lucy) was buried.

But Van Helsing discovers Lucy's empty tomb and is ready to confront her with a crucifix. 

When she shows up, the crucifix wards Lucy off before she can harm Tania. 

Van Helsing tells Arthur that Dracula turned Lucy into a vampire as a replacement for the woman Harker killed earlier.

Lucy goes back into her coffin. And Van Helsing has the brilliant idea to use her as bait to find Dracula. Arthur, however, rejects the idea. 

So, Van Helsing stakes her in the heart.

He and Arthur then go to Ingolstadt to find Dracula's coffin. 

While they're off looking for it, Mina gets a note which she thinks is from Arthur telling her to meet him at a specific address in Karlstadt. Little does she know that Dracula is waiting for her. 

When Van Helsing and Arthur get to the undertaker, Dracula's coffin is gone. 

Concerned about what Dracula has up his sleeve, he gives Mina a cross to wear for protection. The cross, however, ends up burning her. So, that's not a good sign.

Van Helsing tries giving her a blood transfusion to cure her vampirism. 

When he tells Gerda to go get some wine in the cellar, she tells him she's not allowed down there.

Van Helsing goes down himself and finds Dracula's coffin. Now Van Helsing can confront Dracula and try to kill him. But Dracula won't go down easily. 

My personal introduction to the character Dracula begins with a picture of Bela Lugosi as Dracula hanging in the basement of the Cliff House in San Francisco. 

Back in my youth during the mid to late 1980s, my family used to venture once in a while from Oakland to the Cliff House to spend a Saturday drinking hot chocolate, exploring the seaside area, having a picnic and wandering through the Musée Mécanique penny arcade that was once housed in the Cliff House basement. Those old animation machines and coin- operated games are now housed at the Musée Mécanique located at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. 

Anyways, I distinctly remember seeing this large black and white photo of Dracula, striking a pose like the one in the image posted here, on the wall and asking my mother who that was. She told me. And my young mind took the story of a man who drinks the blood of women (or moms as I considered all women to be in my youth) as a real possibility. Terrifying. 

"Horror of Dracula" has the same trepidation I sensed back then as my imagination wrapped itself around the disturbing idea that such a person might exist. How would this Dracula character haunt and prey on his victims? Couldn't anyone rid the world of this wicked man? 

Hammer horror films establish a strong branch in the horror genre. After the 1931 Tod Browning film "Dracula," this movie is as classic and unforgettable. It's the quintessential vampire movie and one of the most solid adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel. 

As the movie was shot in and around the U.K.'s Bray Studios, which has an antiquated castle appearance, the wide shots are fantastic in capturing a macabre and haunted atmosphere. 

Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film "Dracula.

Thanks to legendary film set designer, Bernard Robinson, the set on this film is amazing. It certainly builds upon, and rounds out with careful detail, the imagery seen in Universal's "Dracula." The design mixed with unique and sometimes daunting camera angles works impressively well together.

Lee's performance as Dracula is menacing and conspicuous. His presence on screen is demanding as he creates Dracula's apparent evil nature but without having to say or do much to convey. Lee is as sensual as the women he victimizes who both desire and disdain their experience with him. 

Their souls struggle under the weight of temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. It's conveyed on screen brilliantly. 

Yet, Lee makes Dracula's faux charm precisely and intentionally that. His depiction here and in later films is what makes "The Horror of Dracula" truly foundational in the genre. 

With its cast of stellar actors, "The Horror of Dracula" has aged well with time. It has certainly kept its rightful place among memorable horror movies.  

141) NEW HORROR RELEASES - Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022)

"Cops, and everything. Teachers. It's like everybody's had it out for me forever." 

Creators

Ryan Murphy

Ian Brennan

Cast

Evan Peters - Jeffrey Dahmer

Richard Jenkins - Lionel Dahmer

Molly Ringwald - Shari Dahmer

Niecy Nash - Glenda Cleveland

Penelope Ann Miller - Joyce Dahmer

Khetphet Phagnasay - Southone Sinthasomphone

Rodney Burford - Tony Hughes

It feels like it's taking me days and days to write my thoughts on the current Netflix series "Dahmer."

The 10-episode series, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, premiered on the streaming service on Sept. 21. I finished watching it in mid-October. 

It centers primarily on the life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters), one of the worst murderers and sex offenders in American history. It's thought that this guy killed 17 victims starting in 1978. Dahmer terrorized the city of Milwaukee for several years before finally getting caught by police in 1991. 

I think it's a safe assumption to say that my initial reaction upon hearing about this series matches those of so many others in the audience. How many series on this guy do we need?

And by the end of the last episode, my mind still pondered why was this made?

Though "Dahmer - Monster" is a biographical true crime drama series, I include it on my horror blog simply because Jeffrey Dahmer was a horrific person. And this series was released just in time for the Halloween season. Was that intentional? I'll assume it is. So, I'm putting it here.

A documentary is one thing. There's a lot of them about this one psychopath. I couldn't find how many movies and documentaries there are about Dahmer. I found one website, bustle.com, that lists nine movies, documentaries and T.V. shows about him "to watch ASAP."  That makes an entire 10-episode tv series seem even more unnecessary. 

MSN posted an article headlined, "10 Jeffrey Dahmer Documentaries, Movies, and Series to Watch After ‘DAHMER — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’."

Both articles pretty much list the same titles - "The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer" (1993), "Jeffrey Dahmer: Mind of a Monster" (2020), "Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes" (2007), "My Friend Dahmer" (2010), "Dahmer" (2002), "The Jeffrey Dahmer Files" (2012). Or you can just watch the trial itself which is currently available on YouTube. 

This series depicts moments from Dahmer's childhood, including his relationship with his mother Joyce (Savannah Brown as young Joyce, and Penelope Ann Miller as the older version), his father, Lionel (Richard Jenkins) and also his grandmother, Lionel's mother, Catherine (Michael Learned). 

It also covers specific moments during the period his killing spree terrorized the people of Milwaukee. 

The series does include episodes that focus on other people such as his victim, Tony Hughes (Rodney Burford), his suspicious neighbor, and his father. 

The final two episodes depict Dahmer's trial, his time in prison, the fan mail he received, and his final days. 

With the large number of films and such about Dahmer already out there, I don't see this as any different from them aside from details surrounding the events of Dahmer's life and murders. While I haven't watched any of these other productions, though I have seen various episodes of true crime TV shows about Dahmer, I fail to see what sort of new insight this new series covers. In fact, I fail to see why audiences need new insight into the life and crimes this psychopath. 

Audiences certainly have a fascination with the serial killers that have terrorized societies through the decades. And the more demoralized and debased they are, the greater is audience fascination.

While Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan boast that this series strives to put the stories of Dahmer's victims and their families at the heart of the production, it primarily feels like just another Jeffrey Dahmer story... approximately 10-hours long. 

Evan Peters as serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer.

As of Oct. 27, Murphy responded to the backlash from the angry families who voiced their displeasure at the idea of producing this show. 

During an event for his series at the DGA Theater somewhere in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter quotes Murphy as saying, “And we — over the course of the three, three and a half years when we were really writing it, working on it — we reached out to 20, around 20, of the victims’ families and friends trying to get input, trying to talk to people. And not a single person responded to us in that process. So, we relied very, very heavily on our incredible group of researchers who … I don’t even know how they found a lot of this stuff. But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people.”

There are more episodes about Dahmer than episodes about victims, their families, and Dahmer's family. Afterall, the show is called "Dahmer." 

Episode six, "Silenced," is where the series really begins to veer attention off of Dahmer. 

It's about Tony Hughes (played by Rodney Burford), a young gay black man who's aspiring to be a model and happens to be deaf. 

He meets Dahmer at the night club the murderer would frequent to pick up young men, and the two start what could have been a solid relationship. But the demons inside Dahmer take over. The episode portrays how close Tony is to his mother and family, and his friends in the gay community.

Episode seven, "Cassandra," centers on Dahmer's neighbor, Glenda Cleveland (Niecy Nash), who's a combination of multiple people personified in Glenda. Nash portrays the character's frustration and anger as she calls police multiple times to report screams and rancid smells that intrude from Dahmer's apartment into her own. The Milwaukee Police ignore calls and concern from Glenda and others in the black community about Dahmer. Glenda is later visited by Rev. Jesse Jackson (Nigel Gibbs) who inserts himself into the situation primarily because Dahmer's victims have mostly been members of the black community.

Nash plays the role incredibly well. Her story is the one I was most invested in. 

The eighth episode, "Lionel" centers on his father and the demons he faces as the crimes of his son are exposed for all the world to see. 

While the series as a whole isn't as exploitative as something like "Dahmer vs. Gacy" (2010) - yeah, that's a thing - it still offers barely anything new on this particular topic. It's another showcase of Dahmer's abhorrent crimes and sick ways that go beyond perverse.  

It could certainly be much more focused on victims and family, but then again, that's not nearly as interesting. 

This series, while well-acted, especially on the part of Even Peters, is just the same sad, horrific true story about a loathsome and maniacal individual told once again. 

A documentary is one (informative) thing. Again, how many documentaries do we need on one murderer? 

Normally a drama series with however many episodes it includes is simply a TV show that's made to entertain. "Dahmer-Monster" is no different. Each episode leaves with a cliff hanger of sorts, making it "necessary" for viewers to quickly get to the next episode to see what happens. Why use the Dahmer murders as the basis of such a show? 

Having content in a series format based on actual people and events seems to be the current growing trend. Shows like "The Crown" and "Unorthodox," inspired by Deborah Feldman's autobiography in which she recounts her escape from a Hasidic Jewish community, come to mind. 

So does the Netflix true crime documentary series "Tiger King" which centers on big cat conservationists and collectors in the U.S. and specifically Joseph Maldonado-Passage, commercially known as Joe "Exotic." 

With that docu-series, underneath the eccentricities is a self-absorbed, greedy, selfish and sick man. Yet, people still love Joe Exotic thanks to all the notoriety he's received. The series ended up with a second season. 

I'm uncertain as to what "Dahmer-Monster" wants me to take from it. Does it want me to see Dahmer's life and crimes like a museum piece? Am I supposed to see him as a sympathetic character? I sure hope not. 

Or does it want me to see Dahmer as the monster that he is and will always be known as? I picked up on elements of each.

Niecy Nash as Glenda Cleveland.

There is a tone of sympathy that is sometimes subtle, and other times perfectly clear towards Dahmer. We see all the drama that he experienced in his life, starting with his parents' tumultuous divorce when he was a child. His mother also took a variety of antidepressants and sleep-aids when she carried him. He had an extensive drinking problem that got him discharged from the military. 

In one scene while in prison, Dahmer suggests to his father how much better he feels since he can't drink in prison. Otherwise, he just carries around this looming sense of failure, topped with more disapproval from his father, throughout the series. 

There's also an incident where during high school, Dahmer sneaks into a group photo of the honor society. However, when the yearbook committee spots him in the photo, he's darkened out of all the copies. When Dahmer sees his blacked-out image in the yearbook, a sense of sadness and dejectedness permeates from his character. 

At one point in the program it's suggested that if Dahmer just received the psychological help he needed, he may not have committed at least some of the crimes that he did. But circumstances prevented him receiving the necessary help. So, someone else is to blame?

Early in the series, Dahmer tells another character, "Cops, and everything. Teachers. It's like everybody's had it out for me forever. They just decide you're a bad guy, and there's nothing you can do about it. They get their mind made up." 

The most demonizing moment for Dahmer comes in episode six about Tony Hughes who is believed to be Dahmer's 17th victim. He was 31 at the time.

In an Oct. 10, 2022 article of "The Guardian" Hughes' mother, Shirley Hughes, stated that the events portrayed in this particular episode, "didn't happen like that" though she admitted she hadn't seen the entire series.

"I don't see how they can do that," she said. "I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there.”

Rita Isbell, the sister of Dahmer victim Errol Lindsey, who famously shouted at Dahmer and referred to him as "Satan" during his trail (also depicted in the series, with DaShawn Barnes as Isbell) wrote that this series is "harsh and careless."

The aspect of a "new angle" on such content seems like the only big selling point for such programs, unless some major celebrities are starring in the lead roles, like Charlize Theron playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in "Monster," or Jared Leto as John Lennon's murderer, Mark David Chapman, in the 2007 movie "Chapter 27." 

In this case, we have Evan Peters, Richard Jenkins, Molly Ringwald, and Penelope Ann Miller.

With the claim that such content makes people and societies "aware" of serial killers, with "insight" as to what might make them commit such actions, I fail to see why a society needs to be so "aware" of each and every detail about a serial killer's horrific past and the murders they've committed, even when new information comes to light.

And the show goes out of its way to criticize the Milwaukee Police Department rather than let the carelessness and incompetence of the police department then speak for itself. 

The show portrays the officers who brought Dahmer's victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone (Kieran Tamondong), who was 14-years old, back to his apartment after he was found naked, bleeding and under the influence outside of Dahmer's apartment. Dahmer convinced the cops, John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, that Konerak was his lover and was simply drunk. 

After the police left Konerak alone again with Dahmer, he was gruesomely murdered. Cleveland tried to persuade the cops to investigate the situation, as Sinthasomphone was clearly a child. But she was brushed off with the claim "Ma'am, we got this." 

Molly Ringwald and Richard Jenkins in "Dahmer - Monster."

Later in the show, Sinthasomphone's father, Southone Sinthasomphone, receives continuous threatening and racist phone calls about his involvement in Dahmer's trial. 

According to a Sept. 23 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the family did receive such threatening phone calls. However, the series depicts police officers as the culprits of those calls. I couldn't find any information claiming cops actually made those phone calls. 

The same Sentinel article states the calls stopped once the family placed a tracker on the phone. That whole premise seems odd and unnecessary. The facts speak for themselves. 

"Dahmer - Monster" feels completely unnecessary.

Perhaps there is something for some people to learn by Dahmer's actions. What that would be, I don't know. But this series in particular, like other such programs and documentaries of the past, attempt to put this monster into a human perspective. No wonder the families of victims found it contemptable. Despite the terrific acting and the effort to keep the facts straight, the entire thing is pointless.