After the great success of
Horror of Dracula, Hammer studios wanted badly to
make a sequel.
However, Christopher Lee, so effective as the
count in Horror, refused to star. Lee was
afraid of being typecast forever as Dracula.
Hammer’s answer was to use a misleading title and
then state in a prologue that Dracula is dead, but his many
disciples live on. Brides of Dracula is the
story of one disciple, Baron Meinster. You get a sense
throughout this movie that Hammer did not want to change a
successful formula. They used the same director,
Terence Fisher, writer Jimmy Sangster (along with two other
screenwriters) and the other star of Horror,
Peter Cushing, again playing Dr. Van Helsing.
What they got was the same intensity, possibly
more. The music tended to be melodramatic, over-the-top at
times. But it adds to the atmosphere. And you feel a
sizzling tension between the vampire, Baron Meinster, and his
mother, who has kept him prisoner for years.
In Brides, you feel right away that the
countryside is a dangerous place, especially after sunset.
Everywhere is mist, but it has a foul appearance to
it, especially where it hangs over ponds and swamps.
(In Horror of Dracula, Jonathan Harker
notices the silence surrounding Dracula’s castle: No
birds sang.)
Even at the inn, the atmosphere is tense. The
student-teacher, Marianne feels like an outsider the minute
she enters.
As thunder crashes, the tension increases with the
arrival of a strange, severe-looking, aristocratic old woman
dressed all in red and black. She speaks one word to the old
couple, “Wine.” She is the Baroness Meinster, and
immediately invites Marianne to share a drink, then to spend
the night in her castle. The landlord and his wife are
clearly shaken and abruptly offer Marianne the chance to stay
at the inn. But Marianne has already accepted the baroness’
hospitality.
You first see the castle in a low-angle shot, showing
it perched on a mountainside. Inside, it
is exquisitely decorated, suggesting a great family
fortune. Yet somehow Marianne still appears to be
in danger. Greta, the baroness’ one servant, gives off
suspicious, controlling vibes; you get the impression that
she will bully anyone who lets her. For a moment, Marianne
steps onto her balcony. From there she can see a man
standing outside in another wing of the castle.
Instead of denying what Marianne saw, or trying to
avoid it, the baroness speaks freely about the man, her
son. “My son is ill,” she says. When Marianne
asks if he is ill in his mind, the baroness does not deny
it. She says that he has caused her endless pain. Once
the castle was a place of grand parties and gatherings, but
those days are long-gone, because of her son. You can
hear a mix of great sadness, regret, and bitterness in her
words. She has not seen him or spoken to him in years,
she says; he is fully in Greta’s care.
Marianne goes to sleep then wakes suddenly, her mind
on the man she glimpsed before. She finds her way to
his room. For a long time he does not step out of the
shadows. He asks Marianne to come closer, explaining
that he cannot come to her. It is then that Marianne sees he
is held prisoner by a long silver chain.
The baron says that his mother has kept him chained
and told people that he is dead; that she is motivated to
keep the fortune, land, and castle that would be his
inheritance. As Marianne does, you wonder now if the
baroness is the insane one, the monster. Marianne agrees to
find the key to the chain. As Marianne walks from the
baroness’ room back to the baron, his mother seems to
stalk Marianne, the lighting on the baroness’ face making her
look truly evil. But Marianne is able to throw the
baron the key.
As Marianne finds the baron, his mother condemns her,
“You little fool, you don’t know what you’ve done.”
The baron speaks with quiet assurance, “She can’t harm you
now.” Then,” Mother, come here. Now mother, come
along with me.”
Like Marianne, you can only guess what happens
next. But you get a clear enough idea
when Marianne speaks to Greta, now
hysterical. Greta tells her that the countess is dead.
“He’s free, the cunning devil… She’s dead and he’s free.”
Baron Meinster (David Peel)
Marianne leaves. Greta, still hysterical, speaks a long while to
the dead baroness. She is able to sum up her twenty
years with the family into a few minutes of monologue.
Keep in mind this movie was made in 1960, with many
limitations in effect on what movies could not show, not
mention, only hint at. I think any aspiring screenwriter
could do a lot worse than to listen to Greta’s words, for the
way they hint at family dysfunction, with so many
suggestions, implications, so much between the
lines.
“Twenty years…You encouraged him. You drank
with him and his friends, laughed at their
wicked games…brought women to him…”
Critics have read many suggestions in these
words: Bisexuality, procuring victims after the
baron became a vampire, just for starters. But the more
subtle suggestion: an incestuous relationship between mother
and son (in all senses of the word). Whatever the
relationship was like once, it degenerated into hatred and a
vicious struggle for power, stalemated for years until Marianne’s
arrival. The contempt the Baron feels for his mother is
obvious in his voice. Their years of separation have
only made the situation uglier.
Next morning, Marianne is found unconscious on the
road by Dr. Van Helsing. The story now takes a new
turn: Van Helsing matching wits with Baron Meinster. As in
Horror of Dracula, Van Helsing is a man of
great courage, knowledge, and dedication. In absolute
contrast, Baron Meinster is ruled by his passions.
But you soon learn that he has an ally; Greta’s
devotion to the Meinster’s is unchanged, even after the baron
has turned his own mother into a vampire.
After the baron kills a woman from the village, she is
buried in the churchyard. In a truly chilling scene,
the undead woman struggles to get out of her coffin and through
the soil above it. Greta stands above her, and like a
sinister midwife, urges her to push herself free. Even Van
Helsing’s eyes open wide.
As in Horror, Van Helsing is
dedicated (some would say, fanatically) to wiping out the plague
of vampirism. Though not a particularly pious man, he
sees this struggle as one between absolute good and absolute
evil. He calls staking the dead village woman, “an act of
healing.” When he meets the baroness, now a vampire
herself, she asks Van Helsing if he knows who she is. “I know who
you were,” he tells her calmly.
Van Helsing–again, the only one to offer protection from
the Undead
She has become a tragic figure, telling Van Helsing she now must
do all the wicked things her son tells her to do; there is no
salvation for her. Again, Van Helsing tells her salvation is
still possible.
Marianne sees Meinster’s powers–former friend, now a
vampire
In the end, Van Helsing must face the baron, along with Greta and
two other vampires: the woman from the village, and Gina,
another student-teacher at Marianne’s school. Van Helsing
shows true courage after Baron Meinster bites his neck,
cauterizing the wound with a red-hot iron, then cooling it
with Holy Water.
At least one critic has called
Brides of Dracula the best movie Hammer ever
produced. I couldn’t quite go that far, but the
direction, acting, and especially the screenwriting are all
excellent. As big a Hammer fan as I am, I seldom
remember much of their dialogue.
Here, there are some memorable
lines. Marianne says good-night to the baroness,
adding, “God bless you.”
“If only He could,” the Baroness replies.
David Peel, better known on-stage than in movies, is
excellent in a demanding role, requiring (among other
things): charm, vengefulness, pleading, gloating, bloodlust, pain,
viciousness, even vulnerability. Terence Fisher’s
direction underlines Marianne’s struggle to find the truth behind
the family’s masks. Marianne is trusting, probably too much
so, and her ability to judge from intuition is limited.
Fisher shows you the anguish in her confused search to find the
truth.
It’s hard to believe now, but at the time, the
director Fisher, and Hammer films were widely attacked for
the violence they showed onscreen, the sexual innuendo they hinted
at. Years later, Fisher, and screenwriter Jimmy
Sangster’s work was put into clearer perspective, and many critics
began to praise them.
Both Sangster and Fisher wanted to show just
how corrupt and foul vampirism was. Here, the evils
of vampirism are often overshadowed by the festering illness
of the the Meinster family. In Brides,
you get the feeling this illness must be disinfected, or cut out
like a cancer. 
Baron Meinster’s disciples
Fisher made a point of showing what that surgery was like, without
much subtlety. He believed that suggestion
cannot show this visceral ripping, this tearing
out. Long before TV had ER, Fisher
and Sangster showed you the operating room, up close and
personal. Ultimately this is what Van Helsing meant
when he tells the dead girl’s ( bitten by the Baron) father that
unearthing her body and staking her will be “an act of
healing.”