Scars of Dracula (Roy Ward Baker, 1970)

That's it.  Dracula has defeated me.  I've nothing to say.  It's not a great movie by Hammer (or any) standard, it's not terrible (as grade B horror goes).  It just...is.

 Christopher Lee makes his fifth appearance as Hammer's Count Dracula, 6th film in the series, a rush job debuting a mere half a year after Taste the Blood of Dracula in 1970.  Seems longer, many years longer, in human years, long enough for  Christopher Lee to have lost his vitality.  His Dracula is now a dough-faced stay-at-home who sends his manservant Klove for take-out.  He doesn't scowl, he doesn't lust or smirk.  Worse, he doesn't engage.  In order for the movie to serve up any victims people have to oblige the script by wandering into his ruined abbey through contrivance, and even for them he can't muster any enthusiasm.  He reads his lines at them, not to them.  Watching the movie makes me feel the same way. 

How did this happen?  The last film was bright in image, color, and idea with lively characters in an engaging premise.  Hammer must have spent it's vampire budget for that year, because the production values for Scars are immediately revealed to be low.  The first life onscreen is a rubber bat vomiting red paint in one of the Count's less memorable resurrections.  That's followed by a string of threadbare interior sets, some obvious painted backdrops, a model castle, and no establishing shots to lend a sense of locality.  Not that the photography is terrible, just severely curtailed.  We still get a few beautiful shots of English forest, and splashes of vivid reds and purples.  And warm cleavage, of course, Hammer has not forgotten itself.

Scars is not a loss, entirely...I suppose...if one were to look at it as an example of Saturday night horror schlock then it does hit the obligatory notes.  It's certainly better than many B-grade genre offerings.  By Hammer standards it is horror on auto-pilot.  When I first bought the DVD I was happily surprised that it wasn't as awful as I'd been led to believe.  On the contrary, it passes the time well in spite of it's limitations.  Ah...but this is now my third or fourth go-round for the movie, and like the Count it no longer engages.  The Satanic Rites of Dracula earns disparagement as well, I've not been kind to it myself, but at least it has a fascinating idea behind it (we'll get to that review eventually).   Scars tries to get on by ramping up the graphic bloodshed.  It makes for a shock but not for a story. 

For that you've got your standard protagonists-who've-wandered-afield plot.  It works well enough, it always does. 

One of our heroes is Paul, a charming young rogue and scoundrel who every woman he meets wants to bed.   See, that's supposed to be Dracula's provenance.  No wonder the Count looks so demoralized.  His own film series has robbed him of his identity. 

Paul has blundered into a film contrivance that takes him from a burgomaster's manse (more specifically, the bedroom of the burgomaster's daughter) to a birthday party to the border of the nation and beyond. It doesn't get any clearer than that, really, the slashed budget means being pointedly vague as to cities, towns, hamlets, and borders.  Paul's transport was a carriage yoked to a pair of spooked horses.  Must've been pretty spooked to have hauled Paul across two countries, or maybe the mansions were already out in the boonies.  Dunno.  The horses ditch Paul near a small village (which we also  don't see), and he is quickly run off by townsfolk who've had it with wandering strangers rousing the damn vampires.  Paul makes it to a small studio set that hints that the ruins of a castle must be nearby.  You won't see the castle either, although a scale model of a castle helps you imagine what it might look like if there were one.  Paul's brother Simon and the woman he loves, Sara, will come looking for him and meet the same welcome. 

They will meet the town's priest, a dispirited man who lost his courage when a previous attempt to rid the town of Dracula led to a mass slaughter of the raiding party's loved ones.  That could have been interesting to explore but the priest isn't a good hook for the target youth audience so we get Sara and Simon instead.  Then there's Klove (Patrick Troughton), Dracula's hapless slave, who takes a liking to Sara.  Dracula likes Sara.  Simon likes Sara.  Sara pines for Paul.  No, seriously, it's not a sex farce.  Really.  There's no subtext, no theme, nothing of depth transpires. The story moves at a pace, and Hammer asks nothing more of it.  If you're happy with horror that checks all the ingredients  then Scars will be enough for you.  It leads to a fittingly uninspired finale in which Evil is felled by his bad judgement in exposing himself to the weather. 

As game as most of the actors are, there is a brighter spark of life in the unlikely form of a landlord played by Hammer regular Michael Ripper.  He's a brusque, unfriendly man who reluctantly reveals to his barmaid that he is driven by fear and precaution.  He'd like to protect her and alienates her instead. 

From the Stoker novel, we finally have our shot of Dracula traversing the side of his castle bat-wise, and the mysterious window that can only be reached by bedsheets tied together.  Don't look for continuity, this production has no ties to the rest of the series.  Even Klove is a different character than appeared in Dracula, Prince of Darkness.

Scars was directed by Roy Ward Baker, who also helmed the superior Quatermass and the Pit and The Vampire Lovers., both for Hammer Studios.  Script was by Anthony Hunds (credited as John Elder).  Hinds had written many previous Hammer films including the prior Dracula sequels (uncredited on the best of them, Brides of Dracula).  I would have guessed that a less taelnted outsider to Hammer had penned Scars.

Taste the Blood of Dracula (Peter Sasdy, 1970)

*******SPOILERS Included*******

Do you remember Jaws: The Revenge?  That was the fourth in the series, in which the shark avenged itself on the Brody family in Jamaica, quietly intoning after each of its victims, "The fuhst", "The second", "The thuhd"...  Taste the Blood of Dracula is at essence a pretty good movie but it suffers a number of missteps, and one of them is making Dracula as mechanical as Bruce the shark.

Picking up where Dracula Has Risen From the Grave ends, a merchant happens upon the (un)dying Dracula as he disintegrates.  The merchant, Weller (Roy Kinnear) gathers the vestments and some of the blood, which has turned to powder.  He knows who Dracula is, and his instincts tell him it's a mistake...but the mercenary in him can't turn away from a sure sale.  Someone is going to want these. 

Cut to an unknown time later.  A trio of family men and respected elders spend one Sunday night a month in secret debauchery.  These are monied men, to be sure, the finest that polite society can offer.  One of them, Hargood (Geoffrey Keen)  treats his wife and daughter especially cruelly in his guilt.  Secker (John Carson) is a decent man, learned, traveled, experienced: in a word, jaded.  He's the closest thing to a Van Helsing character in this movie, full of useful knowledge and will voluntarily  do the right thing, but it;s not his vocation.  Paxton (Peter Sallis)  is the weakling, easily cowed into going  along with anything the alpha dogs want.  Problem is, they've grown bored withe the same old thrills. 

Enter young Lord Courtley, snotty, arrogant, and much farther along their path than they reckon.  Courtley lives for satiation and offense.  His latest quest is to meet Satan himself - or, if not Satan, then the closest thing to him.  To that end he needs the unholy treasure waiting to be purchased in Weller's shop: the blood of Dracula.  To get it, he'll need the money of the three thrillseekers.  Lucky for him they want his services in guiding them into darker pastures. 

Pretty good stuff so far, right?  The movie doesn't actually belong to them but to their children, innocent bright young things with bright untainted futures ahead of them.  They laugh and smile and talk of their pending marriages and elopements.  Paul Paxton and Alice Hargood are madly in love with each other.  Neither can comprehend why the elder Hargood hates Paul with such depth.  That Paul's offense is simply being the son of Hargood's partner in vice is lost to them.  The film has a Christian theme that is a little muddy - the sins of the fathers and all that.  Children and parents alike are going to pay.  Like the previous Hammer Dracula, this one is targeted at the older adolescent audience but this time trusting them with stronger meet and an earned adult rating (stronger material, an early glimpse of nudity for Hammer, and more bright red blood).  The darker nature of the film is leavened by the forthright sweetness of the kids, backed by a tender ballad from composer James Bernard (replacing his usual theme for Dracula) and by beautiful locales.  Taste the Blood is the series peak for cinematography,  with natural colors, almost no use of gels, and baroque art design. Every frame is full of details and textures to keep your eyes busy. 

Courtley performs a ceremony at a lonely, abandoned cemetery  (Highgate Cemetery provides the exteriors, a highly photogenic location).  This involves flattering himself by donning the Count's cape, clasp, and ring.  Assembling his three conspirators, he fills their goblets with Dracula's powdered blood revivified into a foul brew with a few drops of his own.  If the drink looks muddy, the plot is even muddier on the mechanics of Dracula's resurrection.  Courtley doesn't know precisely what is supposed to happen, and is taken by surprise when the potable gives him intense pain.  Hargood, Paxton, and Secker had already balked at drinking, and when they see Courtley felled they proceed to kick and beat him to death in their horror and revulsion.  They go home vowing the night never happened. 

Into dead Courtley arrives Dracula, helped by a dubious fx shot.  Courtley's corpse transforms into Christopher Lee who vows revenge on the three who have destroyed his servant.  Let me stop there for a moment, because I've got a few questions.  First, drinking Dracula's blood has always been a part of every adaptation, but it already had a function - it seals the bond.  Hammer was never concerned with continuity, though, and here it seems to have a different use...and the script is unclear just what that is.  If Courtley wasn't supposed to die by the ceremony alone, then was Dracula not meant to return in person?  Else, what's the difference?  He's got a body, what's he bitching about?   A servant isn't much use if he's sharing his body with you.  And what of the other three who were supposed to imbibe?  Would this have resulted in four Christopher Lees running around London spouting wooden dialog and glaring a lot? 

In any case, Chris Lee is reduced to glowering a lot.  He's out for revenge, just like the last film only with even less flair.  There's is none of the usual lust for life, the passion, the ferocity.  When he drinks from a woman, the pleasure he takes from it is fleeting, almost perfunctory.  He's the addict whose fix no longer satisfies.  Like Hargood, Paxton, and Secker he's grown bored, his thrills are no longer strong enough.  But, no, actually, that's reading into it a more interesting film than it really is - he's just badly utilized by an otherwise engaging script, and played by an actor who really  is bored by what his script offers.  That's the biggest flaw in this Hammer entry, it's a Dracula film in which Dracula is a mere engine to get us from A to Z.  He's the least interesting thing in his own movie.  He gets by on Lee's presence alone. 

That's too bad because his revenge is an interesting idea to explore.  His choice is to use the children against their parents.  In short, he corrupts them before their parents can and aims them homeward again as killers.  The earlier theme of vampirism as sexual liberation is out the window for a more puritan take, as patricide becomes a DeSadean pleasure for the girls.

Taste the Blood comes to a close with more muddled writing, in which the grand conflict sees Dracula ineffectually throwing bits of church from as much distance as he can get inside the church.  Pretty disappointing from a led villain.  He's been using this crypt as a hangout as it's long since been desecrated by the likes of Courtely holding black masses.  We know he can't be on hallowed ground.  This makes his demise one of the more interesting, and had the potential to be satisfying were it handled better - the church is re-consecrated with him inside it, trapping and killing him.  That's the idea, anyway. but it's Paul doing the re-consecrating.  Not a priest, not anyone at all qualified...ah, that's okay, Jesus would instruct that all it takes is faith, and anyone is worthy, but the movie never builds Paul as a man of any particular faith.  In fact, all he does is light a couple of candles and that seems to redeem the whole building. 

I've identified three problems, all of them found in the writing.  A little tweaking would have helped. none of these flaws touch the core story, yet are enough to blunt the movie as a satisfying whole.  It took me time to warm to Taste the Blood.  Today I find the bulk of it to be worthy...more weighty and fully formed than Dracula: Prince of Darkness or Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.  It's just too bad that Dracula himself is upstaged by...just about everybody.

"The first!  The second!  The third, Aaaah-HA-HA-HA-HAAA!"

*     **     **     **     **     **     *
On a personal note, I'm more of a Secker than a Van Helsing (See review for Hammer's 'Horror of Dracula').

I am in the process of moving and have not had internet access for a while now, except a few minutes each week.  Also, a few of my titles are packed away.  So, I won't be putting these up in chronological order...pretty sure Jess Franco's Dracula should have been up before this.  Also, still no decent screencap capacity.  Apologies for the lack of shots.

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968)

How do you set about fighting vampires if you happen to be an atheist? That's the central dilemma of this fourth film in Hammer's Dracula franchise. It's an oddly gentle movie for standard vampiric fright fare. Oh, you get your bloodlettings and wanton cruelty (it does star Christopher lee, after all), yet when it's all over the lingering impression is of an idealistic good nature, almost a gee-whizness concerning the good will between rival systems of belief. The world could use more of that.

The dilemma above is faced by Paul, a forthright young man in love with the niece of a disapproving Monsignor. Paul is an atheist, and when the Monsignor tells him he admires honesty Paul makes the mistake of telling the truth about his convictions. It causes a schism between everyone at just the wrong moment, as the Monsignor has unwittingly gotten on the bad side of the newly resurrected Dracula. For revenge Dracula targets the Monsignor's niece, Maria., as his next conquest.

There are a few of things that are slightly off about Dracula Has Risen, and Paul is one of them. He's a nice guy, sure enough, highly personable and no character flaws. He's an earnest and forthright fellow, wishing offense to no one but eager for “Truth”, which he seeks in books. It's his upbeat persona and interactions that give the movie a G-rated feel in spite of the violence involved (bizarrely, the movie has even been granted a G rating by the MPAA). Paul seems displaced in tone and also in time. He and his drinking buddies come of as anachronistic in their manners and ideals (and their hairstyles...) DHRFtG was made to appeal directly to the youth audience at a time of spreading protest among college students - 1967 had seen protests against the Vietnam War, and within months of Risen's release in February '68 those youth protests would spread worldwide to become the “Year of Barricades”. It was a generational conflict, youth shaking up and shaking off the institutions of their elders.

Yet Dracula Has Risen is not an angry film, far from it. The generational conflict is represented here as that of atheist Paul and the film's most learned man, the Monsignor – who rejects Paul the moment he learns of Paul's convictions. To this point in the film the Monsignor has been shown to be a somewhat affable man but one who will bully and coerce to enforce his views. A visit to the discussion boards on IMDb brings up conversations in which people see his hostility to Paul as a sour surprise. Actually, though, it isn't nearly negative enough to be accurate to the period – another anachronism, the entire community shows the film's Paul far more tolerance than a real-life counterpart would have met. In reality Paul would have been a scandal regardless what a swell guy he was.

Even so, Paul really is presented as scrubbed so clean he's nearly glowing pink. Don't alienate the core audience! His character never hints of anger or rebellion, not even at odds with society at large. Paul's boss loves the boy, Maria's mother asks him to leave only our of deference to the Monsignor who cares for the family but is clearly pained to do so. Paul's friends are as inoffensive as he is, with the possible exception of the barmaid who chafes a little resentfully at romantic boundaries. Essentially: what conflict? The world's a happy get-along place! If DHRFtG is taking pains to be a part of the movement and not just being opportunistic, then it's the voice urging calm and understanding amidst passions. We can work together. 

So how does Dracula fit into this? Erm – well, yeah. Exactly. I mean, the movie isn't thematically deep, the subtexts are there but they float on the surface like oil, never quite convincing that they are organic to the whole. Dracula is the catalyst for reconciliations. Furthering both the faith angle and the message of cooperation, Dracula has taken as his servant a fallen priest suffering a crisis of faith and conscience. Contrast this with his direct opponent, the Monsignor who must rely upon a disbeliever to defeat evil. If the movie is ultimately a little unsatisfying in resolving these themes, it's still full of tantalizing little provocations.

Not the film is all hope and joy: Christopher Lee is back as wild as ever. I don't recall seeing look quite so cadaverous before – not Lee himself but the makeup, which has taken a more sallow hue. Nothing dead about his performance, though, he's even vicious to the horses that take his carriage. The only thing that can stop him flat is the flavorless dialog he's given. Honestly, the actor is a lot happier when his vampire is snarling.

Freddie Francis replaces Terence Fisher as director, and he does a fine job of keeping things lively if tonally awkward (e.g. there's a bit of business with a porcelain doll pushed off a bed by one of Dracula's victims – succinct but unsubtle). Early in the movie I was concerned that the look of the picture would be a bit dull, as the natural lighting threatened to undo any atmospherics with the Count's castle, or it's surroundings, or with a profaned church where a bit of grue is discovered, but Francis has a new trick up his sleeve. Whenever Dracula appears on screen he's shot with a filter that goes deep amber in a halo around the center of the screen. The effect is that of a miasma of sickness or evil surrounding the count. Or even more, perhaps, late in the movie I was struck by the way the yellow seen in a fireplace matched the filtered shots, and how it reflects the religious bent of the movie – perhaps the yellow filter suggests the suffocating nearness of hell itself. Not inapt, as Dracula has already been conflated with the Prince of Darkness if only by title. As the movie progresses its lighting becomes more and more dreamlike with colors intensifying, mostly by an increasing use of gels.

Adding to the sense of surreality are some anomalies. In the city of Kleinenberg, where Dracula tracks down the Monsignor, our principle characters have a habit of getting around by rooftop rather than by street. By the end of the movie all of the characters are traversing the roofs. It's absurd, but it has an endearing dream logic to it. Similarly the cellar of the inn where Dracula secretly takes up residence is ridiculously extensive for a meager establishment with a cramped bar and closetlike rooms. The guests and servants can hardly get around upstairs but down below are more spacious work and storage areas that include a spooky Gothic structure that must be well out from under the building. It could have no possible function except as an invitation to furtive evil monsters. Personally, I find the dreamlike aspects of Dracula has Risen are ultimately the most endearing thing about it.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness (Terence Fisher, 1966)

If this third film in Hammer's Dracula franchise hadn't starred Christopher Lee, it would be a well-mounted but unremarkable no-frills vampire suspenser. I use the term 'starred' carefully, because it depends on his star charisma to make us overlook the fact that he's in it for all of about nine minutes and never utters a single word. It's a decent movie in it's own right, but it's Lee that gives it a kick – not a bad feat for a villain who last time we saw him had the physical consistency of Nestle's Quik (1958's Horror of Dracula saw the Count dusted by daybreak).

A group of travelers is warned away from Carlsbad and the castle there but go anyway. The survivors flee to the safety of a monastery. Dracula pursues. Plotwise and storywise, it's that basic. .The traveling foursome – couple Charles and Diana, Charles' brother Alan, and Alan's wife Helen - monopolize the film's runtime, and they are pleasant enough (barring Helen, an unceasing scold and killjoy) but bland as the script requires nothing more of them than to be vampire bait.

Early on they meet Father Sandor, our substitute for a Van Helsing type. Over multiple viewings I'm beginning to have a problem with Sandor: first he is scolding the locals for being overly cautious and superstitious about vampires, Dracula having been defeated ten years earlier (and disregarding the thriving vampire community he left in his wake, per Brides of Dracula – really, do not look to Hammer for any kind of continuity), so he wins audience sympathy for being both learned and holding a modern contempt for superstition...then once the menace is unveiled Sandor takes up their methods without a hint of irony. He presents himself as a man of the world, weary and crass as a shock tactic, yet dignified in speech. Played with gravitas by Andrew Keir, Sandor carves out a presence distinct enough from Cushing's Van Helsing that he could have well continued for further sequels...though he's beginning to wear on me a little. When he warns the wedded couple to beware the castle, he neglects to offer any reason why they should, and then rescues them later (those that survived the night) with an I-told-you-so. He's a 'designated hero', Sandor is: we're fully expected to admire him simply because he is the script's answer to the villain, and never mind that he comes across at times as a sanctimonious hypocrite. It's s not that he's unlikeable, actually he's quite warm-hearted beneath a thin gruff veil. The problem is that he's not credibly likeable...he's a little too good to be true.

More intriguing are a couple of minor villains, Klove (Phillip Latham) and Ludwig (Thorley Walters). Klove is an invention of Hammer's, an all-around manservant at Castle Dracula, a dusty old wreck faithful long after the Count has been vanquished. Ludwig is a crafty, flighty stand-in for Renfield, a mental case staying at the monastery. Thorley Walters is one of those great character actors that you instantly know (and love) from countless other films without ever quite being able to recall what they were, and he's most welcome here.

Unusually for a third film in a series, Prince of Darkness doesn't cut straight to the horror. Instead we're reminded just what a threat Dracula is via a flashback prologue (James Bernard's Dracula theme playing a vital role). It's that reminder, and Lee's unquestionable presence lying in wait, that powers the entire first half of the movie. We know the danger but our happy travelers do not, setting Hitchcock's proverbial bomb under the table of oblivious diners for fully half the film's running length of mounting suspense. Director Terrence Fisher guides the film with a a sure hand, taking his time. The careful build has a hell of a payoff, too, with Dracula's resurrection one of the nastiest bits of grue in the series and an especially ghastly death. From that point on there's no let-up in pace nor time for the characters to rest, down to one of the best of the Count's countless demises.

Continuing the aesthetic from Horror of Dracula, D:POD eschews the standard Gothic scenery – the cobwebs, the forbidding ruins, the German Expressionist shadows, thankfully no rubber bats, and instead gives us rich colors subtly used. There are a lot more deep reds employed this time, some in subtly gel-lit sets, while the rest of the screen often is splashed with color in the set décor.

 

Like Brides of Dracula, there is no subtext and no overt sexuality aside fro that inherent in Lee himself as Dracula. He functions as Bruce the shark from jaws, without pretense to anything other than raw hunger. Interestingly, we never see him feed this time out, but we do get our first screen treatment of the Count slicing his own bare chest for his intended to drink from. If POD brings little new to the table, we do get that nuance to the vampiric treatment of sexuality.

Ultimately the movie is a Miller Lite – tastes great, less filling. I think it's more deft than some of the later sequels, but at the same time less interesting...and it pales beside Brides of Dracula for involving story and characters. It's the shallower treatment of the characters that hurts the film a little, though there's also something to be said for the limited role Dracula plays in it. It must be remembered that in both Horror of Dracula and Stoker's novel our villain hardly puts in much of an appearance nor has has much to say once the set-up is through. Having been in development well before Lee signed , the script went through a number of revisions that could have seen it filmed as a stand-alone vampire film outside the franchise. This accounts for the slow build, as a new vampire would have needed to build its world and villain rather than get right down to business. Lee liked to claim that the dialog was so dreadful he refused to speak his lines (which begs the question of the godawful lines he uttered in Drink the Blood of Dracula), but like any good actor Lee was known to dramatize his bio a bit. Attested to by everyone else involved, there was never a script draft for POD that included lines for the Count.

Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) aka Horror of Dracula

Thanks to this movie Van Helsing was my second action hero after Batman. Chasing down vampires, flinging himself at windows, striking heroic poses with improvised crosses, saving the day...all made an indelible impression. I wanted to be Van Helsing.

None of the rest of it stuck, though, because my older sister watched the movies too and always ordered me out of the room whenever someone was about to get bitten. Christopher Lee never had the same chance with me that Peter Cushing did, the scares never registered, and my sexuality was not imprinted by Hammer's women. How would one put it – that I was left unscarred for life? Hammer should have been a natural for me but, sadly, acquiring that taste has been an uphill slog.

If that's an awkward introduction to the movie, I guess it's a bit of excuse-making. I could argue the impact this movie had on the genre but if I did I'd be passing along half-understood observations from the scholarly works of others.

I should have opened the review the way the movie opens: with blood, bright red and dripping. Dracula has always been a lurid tale...corpses reanimated by evil, victims exsanguinated for thirst, submission to urges for illicit sex. Before 1958, these feverish haunts of the mind had remained matters of suggestion on screen. Hammer made them explicit and gave them color. Before the opening credits have even finished, audiences are jolted with a score blaring simple notes of straight-out alarm, the sight of flowing blood, and an enveloping widescreen image just to make them feel overwhelmed .

The funny thing is that Hammer didn't get there first. Two months prior to Horror of Dracula's release, The Return of Dracula had done the same thing: vivid red blood welling up from what might have been the first explicit closeup of a staking, in a widescreen format. The shot is all the more shocking for the rest of the film having been shot in black and white. Yet it was the Hammer film that is remembered for it, and which has taken its place as a seminal film in the genre, while Return is largely forgotten.

In The Return of Dracula, a contemporary California family welcomes long-estranged relative Bellac Gordal home from Romania, unaware that the real Bellac has been killed and his identity stolen by Dracula to escape capture in his homeland. Cousin Rachel, an older teen, at first takes a sentimental approach to Bellac, but he remains reclusive even as he moves into the family home. Soon he vampirizes Rachel's friend Jenny and has designs on Rachel herself. It's a good movie, with fine production values and acting, competent low-key direction, and lovely if unimaginative photography. Its story is directly modeled on Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, and in tone plays more like film noir than horror. That's why it failed where Hammer succeeded: while there's nothing at all wrong with Return, it did nothing to challenge viewers. They'd seen it before. This Dracula didn't even have the taboo factor as his feedings were strictly asexual – that is, family friendly.

Released practically simultaneously, the two Dracula films could not have made a stronger contrast.

The difference? Christopher Lee. Christopher fuckin' Lee! Women do love their bad boys, and Lee was the baddest. Casting the Count as a handsome romantic idol had already been a standard set by Lugosi, but Lugosi's Dracula had been charming, urbane, witty. Not Lee. Lee was hate in a cape. When we first meet, he's at the top of a staircase with us looking up at him, and after descends the camera gets a good intimate shot from inches away – still looking up. That is to say, him looking down at us where we belong. For his guest Jonathon Harker, Dracula manages a chilly civility, but the facade doesn't last past his second appearance minutes later when he's crossed by one of his vampirized women. Suddenly he's snarling like a beast – there's a table between them that he had set for Harker's meal, and instead of running around it Lee leaps upon it and pounces on her from it. That same snarl lurks beneath the surface of his sneer when he takes his bedded victims: another easy conquest, and his contempt is as naked as his lust. Chris Lee has a scant few minute of screen time, and no dialogue whatsoever beyond his introduction, but the indelible impression he makes with those few minutes make his presence felt throughout. 

Dracula is only half the equation. The women are the other half. In previous cinema the women of Dracula put up an agreeably pious struggle against their own desire for him, or showed no desire at all if the film were restrained (timid) enough. Hammer changed all that. These women are eagerly complicit in their own ostensible demise. Yet, it's a demise that would see them live on unshackled from society's mores. It's an interesting move, but more immediately it caught audiences breathless: no more faux objections, no pretending that sex is undesirable or that the vampire really just wants to feed. Fuck no, he wants to feast.

Had Chris Lee never made another movie, he would still have been a rock star for Dracula.

The first time we see Dracula take a new conquest, before his arrival she behaves like a teen girl about to sneak out the bedroom window to meet the date her parents disapprove of or a wife hiding the fact she's about to join the lover she's cheating with. She's so breathless with anticipation that she almost blows her pretense of calm before the unsuspecting members of her family as she rushes them out of her bedroom, throws open the veranda doors, and arranges herself on the bed. In this movie Dracula's women are not victims. This time the women eat him up.

That's led to a theory among some that Dracula is actually the hero of the film, and Van Helsing the villain trying to stamp out the sexual liberation of womankind in the name of all that's Holy and patriarchal. I don't entirely buy that, but it's a strong case worth considering. Under that reading, Dracula is a cypher rather than a character, and so cannot be judged as a character: he has no motive, he simply is - a force of nature one either denies or accommodates. I can hear poor Arthur Holmwood arguing with Van Helsing - “But the female orgasm is a myth, everyone knows that!” If Van Helsing seems kindly and concerned, well, that's often the demeanor of unwanted help...”Love the sinner, hate the sin” and all that. Surrender your own identity to society, we know what's best for you. Let's not let the men slide on social morality either – if your sweetie threatens to enjoy her sexuality, men, who better to brutally stamp that out than you who love them most? Pick up that stake, Arthur Holmwood, and run her through. You're saving her immortal soul.

Hell, I'm starting to convince myself the theory has merit. Still, I can't adopt it without major reservations. In vampire fiction one has to actually die in order to live forever. That can be taken as spot on to the above theory because Western mores do tend to treat sexually active women as dead to society, but in Dracula the vampire's loved ones become dead to the women in return. Freedom in this tale isn't just freedom from stricture, it's freedom from conscience, from feelings of love or compassion or empathy. Sexuality shouldn't be a matter of one or the other – sex or love. The metaphor has worth but it has its limitations too.

Besides, I'm biased in wishing to see Van Helsing as a hero. It's the more simplistic reading, I admit, less challenging, but it makes me happy. Chris Lee gives the movie its edge but I'd contend that Horror of Dracula could not have worked with Lee alone. Peter Cushing provides Dracula's polar opposite in sentiment and is his equal in presence. They need each other or the tale is lopsided. As Van Helsings go, I think Cushing is my favorite...not the most accurate to the novel (that would be Frank Finlay in the 1977 BBC version) but the most even-handed, the most empathetic, and arguably the most effortlessly personable of them all. Unlike some this VH refuses to railroad his allies, and is unfailingly kind to those watching helplessly as their loved ones succumb to forces beyond them. Cushing, who can be one cold bastard when he plays a villain, has big puppy dog eyes fixed in that skeletal visage of his. When he feels pain, you can't help but feel it with him.

Michael Gough also must be mentioned, and that's a surprise because he's the one with the unenviable task of playing Holmwood. Holmwood typically is one of the young paramours watching his intended slip away. He's young, strapping, forthright...and that's all there is to him. He's usually considered a complete drip. Actually, in most adaptations he doesn't make any impression at all, so the ones that leave the worst impression are the only ones that are memorable.

But not this time. Holmwood is always the last character to be convinced that vampires are real, and the last on board with killing Dracula. Most often he has to be bullied a bit to see the light. Horror of Dracula gives us a Holmwood who is credibly disbelieving at first but who has the initiative and intelligence to investigate on his own without having to be dragged every petulant step of the way. Gough does a superb job with the role, making wholly dimensional (and wholly sympathetic) a demanding character arc. If there has been another Holmwood half so compelling it isn't coming to mind.

Universal was very protective of its own Dracula and kept Hammer wary enough to make sure their production couldn't be mistaken as a copy. That meant changes to the script, which streamlines the tale to a great degree, but also the whole look and atmosphere. Gone are the ruins and cobwebs, the chiaroscuro shadows, the forbidding crags of the Carpathian Mountains, the old-world solemnity of moneyed English estates...and the fog, that wonderful mysterious fog that cloaks so much. I miss all of that. No doubt it's the foremost reason that it's taken me so long to give the movie its due, I was looking at what was missing rather than what was offered.

Changing things up led to some alterations I've struggled with a little. There's no Renfield, but with the swift pace of the telling his absence isn't noticed. OTOH I can't help notice that the interior of Dracula's castle is a cheery, well-lit place, clean, far from an air of menace or mystery...nor does it convey Dracula as a being of enduring immortality. Likewise his home locale is a minor complaint first in that it's apparently in a valley rather than the usual remote height (contradicting those great intro shots of the Count seen as superior), and that his home nation is but a few hours ride from his European target. It reduces his menace for me in subliminal ways as h is no longer quite the alien invading from a remove. In fact, he's practically domestic. They're all good neighbors!

It's only conjecture, but I think perhaps all this is another reason why Horror of Dracula made such a splash. It's been said that the cobwebs and Gothic cliches of the Golden Era of Universal monsters had become risible. Certainly the Abbot & Costello flicks didn't help. I can't agree, though, when you had Mario Bava and the Italians making such affecting use of the same imagery beginning with I Vampiri only the year before. It even translated well to color under Bava's masterful guidance. Dracula, though, that's another thing. Dracula has baggage, carries expectations. When you see the cliches in a Dracula movie, they're comforting. They feel like home. You can kick back and chuckle at every wolf howl, scurrying spider, every familiar line, you can turn to the people with you and do a Lugosi impression for a laugh. Horror of Dracula denied audiences of the day that comfort zone. It must have been thrilling.

Mentioned before, this is the first Dracula in color. That means blood, of course, but just as important it means flesh at its warmest and most alluring. When Dracula gets an eyeful of invitingly soft decolletage, so do we. For all the lack of Gothic atmosphere, I find myself mesmerized by the stained glass windows of all things. Don't know why. There's a shot near the finale when the windows themselves are hidden from view yet their colors softly bathe a wall with the promise of sunrise to vanquish the vampire. I couldn't tell you why, but I'm taken with that shot.  The entire movie is subtly lit and photographed, never overstated or lurid.

I finally got my chance to play Van Helsing too, on the stage in two different productions (Franklin High School and Artists' Repertory Theater, both using the same terrible script). Cushing remained firmly in mind as our high school drama teacher (and the play's director) had to tell me not to strike action poses wielding the crucifix. I don't know which is the more absurd, me striking action poses or (atheist) me running around thrusting crosses in people's faces. Even more ironic if Van Helsing's mission in life is really to save women from their own sexual autonomy – not my values at all. Got to do the poster art though someone else added the lettering. And I had already fallen in love with Dana Cooper, our Mina, and managed not to skewer her on the actual splintery wooden stake I was handed in lieu of the collapsible prop I was supposed to hit her with. That's another strange story, and it hasn't ended yet...but that high school production is a cherished memory.