336. Dracula (1958)

Directed By Terence Fisher


Synopsis

It's Dracula! Only Harker is a librarian, Mina is married to Lucy's Brother and it is all set in Germany.

Review

You never watch Hammer horror film for their lovely acting, nuanced scripts or high-budget special effects. You watch it because it is great fun. And this film is great fun! Unfortunately it is not very good. As an important note it was released in the US as the Horror of Dracula, as that is how you will find it in Region 1 DVDs.

An interesting thing about the film and the main reason why it is included in this list is just how much further it pushes the horror envelope than the MGM horror films of the 30s and 40s. There is blood and gore and the sexual content is very visible, there is more red in this film that anything else on the list until now.

This again shows the audiences growing and demanding more adult material. It seems funny now that this came out with a X qualification, now it is a 12A in the UK. But the contrast with all that came before it is so great that this must have been shocking for the time. As a document for the development of graphic violence in cinema it is essential, as a camp film it is essential, as a cult film ditto... but the script is risible, the acting even by the great Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is deliciously hammy and the sets are terrible... frankly you wouldn't want it any other way.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The filming of Dracula's destruction included a shot in which Dracula appears to peel away his decaying skin. This was accomplished by putting a layer of red makeup on Christopher Lee's face, and then covering his entire face with a thin coating of mortician's wax, which was then made up to conform to his normal skin tone. When he raked his fingers across the wax, it revealed the "raw" marks underneath. Still photos of this startling shot exist, but it was cut out of the disintegration sequence in the film.

Lucy Gets Staked!