Dracula Goes Hammer

Hammer-Amicus time…

Vampires are so common in the Hammer-Amicus universe as we all know, and Dracula is no stranger, either. One of the first ones of these, at least for Christopher Lee, was the 1958 film, Horror of Dracula, which nails a lot of its marks. Mostly, anyway. Also starring the equally durable Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, respectively, the movie broke new ground in terms of the horror genre having viable mass appeal as opposed to being essentially a niche. It’s also one of the first times that Dracula was seen on the big screen with fangs.

It starts out with Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) hiking through the forest to Dracula’s castle, mostly because no one will take him out there. The place looks ordinary except that when Jonathan crosses the vigorous mountain stream he doesn’t hear any birds chirping.

No biggie, though, because Jonathan’s supposed to work as a librarian for Count Dracula, and things are bound to be a little unusual in such an isolated place, right?

Jonathan installs himself in the guest quarters, where a nice little meal has been laid out for him, and after enjoying a solitary repast, he meets the master of the house, Count Dracula (Christopher Lee), who tells him to make himself at home. He’s going out for the evening and won’t be back until the next night.

Okeydokey. While hanging around the castle, Jonathan meets a young woman (Valerie Gaunt) who begs him to take her out of that place, that Dracula’s holding her prisoner, and she’s afraid for her life. When Jonathan asks why, she’s extremely evasive.

Yeah, long story short, the woman turns out to be a vampire and tries to take a bite out of Jonathan. Fresh from his evening excursion, Dracula shows up, presumably mad that this woman has stolen his latest meal. After cringing from across the room, Jonathan wakes up on his bed and makes a mournful entry in his journal about succumbing to Dracula’s curse. He’s lost a day, and now he’s going to have to end Dracula and his bride.

While driving a stake into the woman is easy enough, Dracula isn’t so easy to kill, and into the fray comes Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), who wants to know what’s happened to Jonathan. The local innkeeper doesn’t want anything to do with helping Van Helsing, but the waitress, Inga (Barbara Archer) slips Van Helsing Jonathan’s journal when she brings him some dinner.

Quickly putting two and two together, Van Helsing makes a beeline for Dracula’s castle, presumably after dinner, only to find the corpse of the vampire woman rotting and looking pretty old. Dracula, however, is nowhere to be found and Jonathan’s room is ransacked.

Fearing that Dracula has gone after Jonathan’s fiancee, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh), Van Helsing goes back home and arms the family with wolfsbane, garlic, and crucifixes, telling them that they need to keep that stuff in Lucy’s room no matter how much she begs otherwise.

What follows is pretty familiar to Dracula fans because it sorta sticks to Bram Stoker’s novel, only none of the slain vampires have their heads cut off, Mina is Lucy’s mother instead of her friend, and Jonathan isn’t a real estate agent. Oh, and “back home” seems to be Germany like in Nosferatu.

While the movie is gripping and Cushing and Lee are fantastic, there are some narrative issues. Harker goes into Dracula’s castle on the pretext of being a librarian but also being fully aware of who Count Dracula is and how to take him out, yet he takes no precautions. No garlic, no rosary, no silver bullets, nothing. He’s got wooden stakes, though. I hate to be nitpicky, but it doesn’t pass the smell test because initially there’s an air of mystery. Why not continue that?

However, it all paves the way for Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, who is quite the tour-de-force. He doesn’t have as many gadgets as some of his progenies (looking at you, Hugh Jackman), but he does have an endless supply of crucifixes and rosaries that he seems to pull out of nowhere. They’re strangely absent in the crucial moment, though, although Van Helsing is nothing if not resourceful, and as anyone who’s seen more than one Dracula movie knows, there’s more than one way to take out a vampire.

And how did the public like the movie? Pretty well. Horror of Dracula grossed $56M in today’s money, sharing a bill with The Thing That Couldn’t Die, and among other fun stuff, spawned a Christopher Lee fan club.

The reviews were favorable, too. Harrison’s Reports opined,

The lavish but spooky settings, the eerie atmosphere, the gory sight of blood dripping from the mouths of the vampire characters — all this and more makes for situations that will send cold chills up and down the spines of even the most hardened horror-picture fans. The film, of course, is not for the squeamish, but those who can take this type of entertainment should have themselves a terrifying good time.

In another review, Film Bulletin added, “The close ups of a wooden stake being driven into the above madenisi hearts to stifle the evil spirit should give the small frys the willies for days.”

Motion Picture Daily’s assessment was a bit more measured, although they predicted Horror of Dracula would clean up at the box office:

Jimmy Sangster’s screenplay, based on the Bram Stoker novel, takes a couple of important and effective liberties with the original which serve to heighten belief in the weird events. These vampires cannot turn into wolves or owls or bats or whatnot, but must exist according to rigidly disciplined a schedule as any mortal lady taking off weight at a health farm.

Critics in the United Kingdom were much less enthusiastic. According to TCM, the mass amounts of cleavage and stage blood didn’t go over so well. In fact, one review said, “This British film has an X certificate. This is too good for it. There should be a new certificate – ‘S’ for sadistic or just ‘D’ for disgusting.”

Forbidden fruit is always the most tempting, though, and Horror of Dracula was successful enough that later Hammer films such as The Hound of the Baskervilles, which also starred Cushing and Lee, and The Brides of Dracula, piggybacked off of Horror’s success by saying that they would be even bigger than Horror had been.

Horror of Dracula was one of a whopping twenty-four movies Cushing and Lee would make together, making theirs one of the longest working relationships in film history. It’s safe to say their respective turns as Van Helsing and Dracula are two very memorable performances.

For more of the Hammer-Amicus universe, please see Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry at Cinematic Catharsis. Thanks for hosing this, y’all–it’s always fun, Thanks for reading, everyone, and I’ll see you on Tuesday for a new installment of “Cooking With the French Chef.”

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