Director
Terence Fisher
Cast
Peter Cushing - Dr. Van Helsing
Christopher Lee - Count Dracula
Carol Marsh - Lucy HolmwoodMichael Gough - Arthur Holmwood
Melissa Stribling - Mina Holmwood
John Van Eyssen - Jonathan Harker
Valerie Gaunt - Vampire Woman
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.
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| Christopher Lee as Dracula in "The Horror of Dracula." |
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.
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.
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| Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing. |
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.
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| 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.
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