HORROR OF DRACULA by Eric Lindbom
Five Snakes Out of Five
Since 1923, the venerable Vista Theater in Los Feliz has enraptured movie mad LA locals and visitors. After emerging from a pandemic shut down, its benevolent recent owner Quentin Tarantino has brought new life to the glorious single screen theater with its Egyptian-styled interior (catnip to MUMMY fans). Beyond the technical enhancements (a 70 mm projection system and sound system), gussied up bathrooms and expansive refreshment counter (White Castle sliders anyone?), Tarantino has gifted audiences with pre-show cartoons and the same programming moxy on display at The New Beverly which he also owns.
Since 1978, The New Beverly has remained a rep house and loyal fan Tarantino happily preserved that format. The Vista is a hybrid. It features first run movies (shot on film only and never digitally), but sprinkles in 70 mm time-tested wonders like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and GIANT along with 10 AM weekend laugh fests with comedy teams like Martin & Lewis, Bing and Bob and the Marx Bros. He’s also added a 21-seat screening room and a COFFY house next door named for Pam Grier that features breakfast goodies like Captain Crunch. He’s brought the fun back to film going, a necessity in our couch potato era.
Over the past few months, the Vista has coincidentally been on a horror (and horror adjacent) high showing THE FIRST OMEN, THE EXORCISM (with Russell Crowe), LONGLEGS, CUCKOO and STRANGE DARLING. Those of us lucky enough to catch CUCKOO at the theater received one of three free (!) lobby cards, just another example of the many extras Tarantino has brought to the theater including weekend midnight movies.
courtesy of John Skewes
In celebration of the Vista, here’s a time stamped recommendation: Friday and Saturday August 30th and 31st comes a witching hour screening of 1958’s HORROR OF DRACULA usually cited as the crown jewel of the immortal Hammer Studios horror cycle. The British studio updated Universal’s ‘30s and ‘40s monster classics with spurts of spilled blood, ample sex via pin up, buxom beauties and especially due to two actors in Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee who rivaled Karloff and Lugosi as terror titans.
HORROR OF DRACULA enjoys a rightly exalted position in the Hammer canon. No reader of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine has ever forgotten the oft re-printed image of Christopher Lee’s Count Dracula with blood red eyes (courtesy of contact lenses) and crimson smeared fangs bursting in on Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen). At six foot five, Lee was an imposing figure. His MUMMY didn’t drag bandaged feet but was all forward thrust as is his Dracula. Lee also leans into the sensuality of the character in a way Lugosi only hints at. When his Drac puts the bite on Melissa Stribling’s Mina Holmwood, she turns orgasmic. Lee meets his match here in Cushing’s no nonsense Dr. Van Helsing. As always, Cushing brings layers of gravity to any line reading even in hokier later Hammers. His on-screen chemistry with Lee resulted in numerous team ups.
While most of its revered works are set in Victorian times, there’s nothing fusty about Hammers particularly HORROR OF DRACULA and that’s due to its many contributors. Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster penned multiple Hammer horrors and thrillers and maintains a typically taut pace. Director of photography Jack Asher earned an Oscar nomination for his gorgeous, red-hued Technicolor work. James Bernard’s foreboding, musical score crescendos during Lee and Cushing’s rousing finale face off.
Many once game-changing works lose their luster over time but HORROR OF DRACULA still drives viewers gratefully batty and I expect many to re-live the experience this weekend.
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DRACULA DONE DIRT
Many instantly associate Hammer with Christopher Lee’s banshee stare and enormous fanged choppers. Bizarrely, the studio did their franchise character dirt with often mediocre sequels. While Hammer’s six-film Frankenstein cycle (focused on Peter Cushing’s complex portrayal of Baron von F.) was smart, varied, and imaginative, the Lee Dracula films quickly turned from full-blooded to anemic. Even more perverse, many of Hammer’s vampire films WITHOUT Lee’s Dracula are better for it (KISS OF THE VAMPIRE, VAMPIRE LOVERS, TWINS OF EVIL, VAMPIRE CIRCUS and CAPT. KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER). Sadly, the writers sometimes reduced Lee to a prop. Here’s the rest of his Hammer Dracula cycle and we’ll start with an asterisk because the title is too terrific to ignore:
BRIDES OF DRACULA: Five Snakes.
Though Lee didn’t appear in BRIDES (reportedly due to a salary hold out), I rank it as the tip top Hammer horror. Director Terence Fisher’s first rate production stars Yvonne Monlaur as a schoolteacher fooled into releasing a chained prisoner who’s actually a vampire (David Peel). He’s a dandy and Peel memorably taps into the androgynous Anne Rice vein to come. Cushing’s take action Dr. Van Helsing uses a hot iron to burn fang bites off his own neck and the finale vampire kill is a corker.
DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS: Two Snakes.
Lee’s long awaited return to the role after seven years deserved better than this ho hum effort about stranded visitors to his castle. Dracula never talks (since Lee refused to speak what he considered embarrassing dialogue). He’s upstaged by victim Barbara Shelley who goes from repressed and scared church mouse to a feral blood sucker who’s staked not while asleep but still alive! Despite that nightmarish scene, the poster out spooked the movie.
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE Three Snakes
Director Freddie Francis revived the series with this vivid entry featuring Veronica Carlson as the fetching daughter of a Monsignor (Rupert Davies) who goes Medieval on the evil count. Sensual and scary, RISEN was the last time Lee’s Dracula was gifted with a vehicle worth his time.
TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA Four Snakes
In TASTE, the comely children of jaded Victorian hypocrites pay dearly for their fathers’ vices. TASTE has an ice cold serrated edge, enough gore for contemporary audiences and a potent turn by Ralph Bates as a charismatic, decadent practitioner of dark arts. The only problem. Lee’s vengeful Dracula was shoehorned in for no good reason and is more sneering score keeper than killer. Good movie but not a good Dracula movie.
SCARS OF DRACULA Two Snakes
SCARS returned Lee to a Gothic setting and gave him ample screen time and dialogue. Still, Hammer’s vaunted quality control dipped and the shoddy production resembles a DARK SHADOWS episode. The result was such a sloppy mess Warner Bros. refused to release it in the US where it turned up years later. Among its lapses, Dracula pointlessly tortures a hunch back henchman and wields a rubber knife. Drac also gets dispatched with a half-assed, deus ex machina bolt of lightning.
DRACULA AD 1972: Two Snakes
Pressured to update Dracula to modern day after the well-earned success of American International’s terrifying, intelligent COUNT YORGA VAMPIRE, AD finds our anti-hero at loose in UK Hippie land. Despite the return of Cushing as a Van Helsing descendent, this often silly entry is more a kitsch proposition particularly due to Christopher Neame’s obnoxious Drac groupie Johnny Alucard (spell his name backwards). Tim Burton adores it and if he re-makes it, it can’t be any worse.
SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA One Snake
Lee’s Dracula degenerates into a James Bond villain in this bizarro sci-fi/spy movie amalgam featuring the Count’s most laughable demise. Cushing maintains his dignity and ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS fans will get a kick out of Joanna Lumley in a straight role. RITES plays like a second-rate episode of the UK AVENGERS series minus Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel. For the very curious and Carnaby Street-era Brit-o-philes only.
(Editor’s Note: Lee was no doubt relieved Hammer finally drove a stake through this series. He returned to his trademark role in the restrained COUNT DRACULA (1970) an international production for a Spanish studio. COUNT DRACULA faithfully adapts the Bram Stoker novel and Lee even wears a moustache more in line with Stoker’s original vision of the character. The juicy casting of Klaus Kinski as Renfield and Herbert Lom as Van Helsing aside, it’s largely boring and inert and will drive some drowsy gorehounds to the goofier late Hammer Dracs.)
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weaned on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
