Horror of Dracula was an eye-opener when it was first released (in 1957). In his great book of short reviewsThe Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Michael Weldon calls it “The best vampire film ever made.” I think he’s absolutely right.
Its studio, Hammer, had a small budget to work with. Much less freedom to use special effects likethose, for example in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, years later. Hammer had to leave out several parts of the novel requiring special effects.
Still the stripped-down plot taken from Bram Stoker’s great 1897 novel is focused and absorbing; scenes and images will stay with you. Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and director Terence Fisher got what they wanted.
They believed that, to tell the story right, their movie needed two elements. First, to spill blood like never before. Second, the freedom to show women lusting for Count Dracula. It meant pushing the censors (even stricter in the United Kingdom than in the USA) to new limits. Remember, 1957 was still the era of Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies.
Horror of Dracula did not share much with the 1931 Universal Studios Dracula.But surprisingly, this was a good thing. Most of that movie had been based on a Broadway play; the longer it goes on, the more stage-y it feels. The new Count Dracula, Christopher Lee,had never seen the Universal movie. Instead, he reread the novel–many times, for his inspiration.
Christopher Lee–Dracula
The opening scenes succeed in translating much of the
book’s atmosphere. The count is polite and speaks good
English. You don’t immediately feel anything sinister about him. But all this is just a mask; you learn real fast that things are wrong here.
Jonathan Harker has come to Castle Dracula in the disguise of librarian, his real mission to destroy Dracula. The count gives Harker a brief, but warm welcome. He says little except for his compliments while he looks at photos of Harker’s beautiful fiancée Lucy.
But you learn how false this mask is. That night Harker walks downstairs and meets a woman begging him forhelp. She tells him that Dracula is keeping her prisoner.
Harker is unsure whether to believe her. But when he later wanders downstairs, he accepts her word for everything. Again the same embrace but this time with a savage difference; she turns her mouth to his neck and bares her teeth to bite him.
What follows is probably the most intense scene in director Fisher’s career. You see Dracula at the top of the staircase, face in close-up, eyes bright red. In an instant he is down the stairs, throwing the woman to the floor. She hisses back at him in pure fury.
.
The savagery behind the polite shell
.
The two of them literally snarl at one another, hungry cats fighting over a scrap of food.
Or maybe; two junkies fighting over just enough dope to get one of them off. You feel a sense of viciousness, rarely experienced onscreen 70 years ago. It shows another side of Dracula, one that stays with you. A truth about him that makes Lucy and Mina’s craving for him more unsettling. You have already seen his animal side.
Harker abruptly realizes what he is dealing with
Harker is soon dead, a victim of his own bad judgment in trying to
stake Dracula. But Harker’s work is taken up by a new vampire
hunter—Dr. Van Helsing. An insightful, intelligent, imaginative, articulate, courageous man. Someone who’s able to deal with vampires, but with others too: Superstitious peasants in Transylvania, terrified of strangers. Members of the Victorian-era middle class with just enough scientific knowledge to reject anything they believe is superstition. (The movie is set in Germany but its characters seem much more English than German.)
Worst, a middle class that puts down its women, ignoring both their intellect and their sexuality. The men, mostly pompous, self-satisfied, know-it-alls. The women’s lives empty and boring. It’s no great surprise these women are ready to follow a figure as charismatic as Dracula.
Van Helsing knows all this and knows he must deal with these things alone.
As he moves from each closed world to another, Van Helsing must deal with the peasants’ mistrust, and the Holmwoods’ (Jonathan’s close friends) lack of belief. His job is especially difficult with this family. Van Helsing needs to respectfully, yet forcefully convince them their rational, scientific outlook is accurate… but limited. Vampires still exist, and modern science is helpless against them.
Most of all Van Helsing understands vampires; their craving for blood, a craving that inevitably strips away all humanity. A craving more potent than friendship, love, even the taboos against harming a child. He knows what Harker did not; how to use the weapons he has.
Dr. Van Helsing–great personal courage
When the scene shifts from Transylvania to middle-class Germany, Van Helsing has the difficult job of telling Harker’s friends that Jonathan is dead. With great tact, Van Helsing wins over Mr. Holmwood.
At this same moment, Van Helsing faces a new crisis. Lucy, Harker’s fiancée, has been suffering anemia without explanation. Lucy is a kindhearted but naive woman, over-protected all her life. Her future already determined: wife and mother in the privileged class.
Slowly but surely you sense a change in Lucy. As much as any British movie at that time could show, you feel her yearning, then lusting, for an unknown force to possess her. Watch her reaction to the garlic placed at her window for protection (no, it’s not the smell that makes her uneasy.) Watch her lie down in bed and open her nightgown to expose her throat. Then watch her look of quiet
expectation as the wind swirls the leaves outside her window.
Lucy waits for the Count; subtle images yet nearly censored in 1957
She waits for someone, the opposite of the gracious but utterly bland Jonathan. Someone with no hesitation about taking what he wants. The count has left his castle and descended upon a society with no defense against him. Gasoline and matches.
Lucy dies from loss of blood. She is buried, yet Tania, a servant’s young child, has seen her at night, in the garden. Van Helsing knows what must be done.
Already, Lucy has asked Tania to go walking with her. Without showing any violence, the movie makes it clear; though Lucy has known Tania for years, the girl is nothing to her now. Only an easy blood-meal. You are light-years away here from the little girl in
Interview with the Vampire.
Van Helsing, not a pious man, is described by critics as a man with an intimate knowledge of sacred objects as weapons
in his arsenal. He uses a cross to stop Lucy in her tracks
by placing it against her forehead, burning her deeply. She
flees back to her crypt. Tania watches, one small step from
hysteria. Her plea, “I want to go home,” only hints at how
close she is to chaos.
But Van Helsing stays in control. “And so you shall,” he tells her, his words symbolizing the calm presence he brings. Very quietly, very assuredly he asks Tania to wait for him.
Van Helsing must convince Holmwood that their only way to save Lucy’s soul is to drive a stake through her heart. (In the novel, they must also cut her head off.)
Blood gushes, but Van Helsing finishes his work. Afterwards, his wisdom is clearly shown by the transformed expression on Lucy’s face, the sweetness, the innocence of the old Lucy.
The violence that Fisher believed he needed to show is essential. Lucy’s demonic urges must be purged from her to restore her to purity. To understand, to taste for yourself the transformation from Lucy to vampire, then back to Lucy, you need to see the cancer cut out of her.
Critics at the time, especially in England, criticized Fisher’s onscreen violence. He believed that storytellers of magical tales needed to portray the struggle between good and evil graphically. Suggestion was not enough. His goal was not the ambiguity Val
Lewton aimed for, and achieved so well, in Cat People and
The Seventh Victim. Instead Fisher strived for something closer to the horror of Germanic folk tales and legends. The ones before well-meaning people created tamer versions, believing these tales must be made suitable for children.
Sadly, time and budget limits meant that many of the novel’s characters had to be minimized or left out completely. Stoker’s theme of a group of brothers and a sister united by common blood against a sinister foe is gone. Van Helsing must face Dracula alone.
In every way, he is up to the task. Horror of Dracula becomes a pure action movie after the count begins his flight back to the castle and Transylvania. And it may be Hammer’s best action movie ever. A fight to the death between two figures, both larger
than life. Peter Cushing, with a style of acting once described as “fussy” proves himself not just scholarly, but tough.
Hammer’s peak years lasted until about 1962. The studio never could top what they achieved in this movie. Only one vampire movie The Brides of Dracula, even comes close, along with a scattering of others. Hammer tried to ride the wave of freedom to show more sex, nudity, and violence in the late 60’s but it was too late. Horror of Dracula remains their best, the real deal, especially when you imagine how it must have felt to people accustomed to Rock Hudson/Doris Day. Don’t miss this one.