The Brides of Dracula (1960)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Terence Fisher

Writers:

Peter Bryan (screenplay)
Edward Percy (screenplay)

Release Date:

5 September 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

He Turned Innocent Beauty Into Unspeakable Horror.

Plot:

Vampire hunter Van Helsing returns to Transylvania to destroy handsome bloodsucker Baron Meinster, who has designs on beautiful young schoolteacher Marianne.

Plot Keywords:

Van Helsing | Vampire | Undead | Boarding School | Cross

Cast

Peter Cushing	...	Dr. J. Van Helsing
Martita Hunt	...	Baroness Meinster
Yvonne Monlaur	...	Marianne Danielle
Freda Jackson	...	Greta
David Peel	...	Baron Meinster
Miles Malleson	...	Dr. Tobler
Henry Oscar	...	Herr Otto Lang
Mona Washbourne	...	Frau Helga Lang
Andree Melly	...	Gina
Victor Brooks	...	Hans, a Villager
Fred Johnson	...	The Cure, Father Stepnik
Michael Ripper	...	Coachman
Norman Pierce	...	Johann, Landlord
Vera Cook	...	Landlord's Wife
Marie Devereux	...	Village Girl (as Marie Deveruex)

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Norway:16 (1960) | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:16 | Australia:PG | Finland:(Banned) (1960) | Portugal:17 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Black Park, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Hammer Film Productions

Trivia:

The ending was to have originally had the vampires destroyed by a swarm of bats. This ending proved too expensive to stage and shoot. The concept of this ending was recycled three years later for the climax of Hammer's The Kiss of the Vampire (1963).

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Despite the fact the characters are all wearing winter clothes, in several night scenes crickets and frogs can loudly be heard as if it is summer.

Quotes:

Gina: [resurrected as a vampire] Marianne... my darling Marianne... you haven't forgotten your little Gina? Put you arms around me, please, I want to kiss you, Marianne. Please be kind to me. Say that you forgive me for letting *him* love me.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "SexTV: Blood Lust/Bodies of Evidence/Cake (#4.4)" (2001)

Terence Fisher serves up the High Gothic!

Probably Hammer's best horror, even though it doesn't have Christopher Lee. But David Peel is equally formidable as an aristocratic young disciple, and Peter Cushing's Dr Van Helsing is still the scourge of vampirism in Victorian Europe.

It begins with a wonderfully spooky tracking shot over a misty woodland lake (actually Black Park next to Pinewood Studios) and ominous narration (`Transylvania, land of dark forests, dread mountains and black unfathomable lakes. Still a place of magic and devilry as the 19th century comes to a close.'). Hammer gothic depended heavily on photography for mood and Jack Asher lit their early horrors masterfully, but the always budget-conscious studio let him go as his often exquisite set ups took to long.

Pretty Parisian Marianne Daniel (Yvonne Monlaur), en route to her first teaching appointment in a Transylvanian finishing school, is lured into spending a night at the forbidding Chateau Meinster by its haughty Baroness. Explaining away the extra dinner place set by servant Greta, the Baroness says it is for her absent son, `feeble-minded' and locked away in another wing (`We pray for death, both of us. At least, I hope he prays.'). When naïve young Marianne lets Meinster out, Greta cackles in demented glee as a wolf howls into the night (`There's a wolf down there. And an owl. He'll get them all astir, trust him.').

It all comes together in Brides of Dracula. Script, characterisation and acting (Cushing, Peel, Martita Hunt as the Baroness, Freda Jackson as Greta all splendid; even the comic turns - the inimitable Miles Malleson as a sceptical country doctor and Henry Oscar as pompous schoolmaster Herr Lang - are just perfect).

And its horrors, as directed by Terence Fisher, are sudden and violent. Bitten by Meinster, Cushing purges the wound with a red-hot branding iron, doused by holy water. But perhaps the single most macabre moment Hammer has ever devised is the scene where Greta sits astride a new grave like a hellish midwife, urging Meinster's latest victim to rise out of her coffin.

Can Cushing save the village daughters from a fate worse than death? The stakes are high!