2014 Horror Countdown: The Brides of Dracula (1960)

The Brides of Dracula (1960), dir. Terence Fisher, Hammer Film Productions

Moving into the swinging sixties and to another country entirely, the British film company Hammer injected some much needed new blood into the monster picture. With their take of Dracula raking in the box office gold and helping to turn stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing into the new faces of horror, Hammer set out to capitalize on their stars. 

Lee, however; and there are roughly a dozen different versions of the story, refused to play Count Dracula for any sequels. He would later relent, but at that moment that put Hammer in a bind. Instead of simply recasting the part, they decided to shift the sequel onto the sole actor remaining: Peter Cushing.

Thus, we get a Dracula film that doesn’t actually have a Dracula in it.

Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur) is a young teacher traveling into the Transylvanian countryside to take a position at a girl’s finishing school. When her coach is waylaid and later leaves her alone in the only village for miles, she is picked up by the visiting Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt). The villagers seem to be freaked out by the older woman, but no one stops Marianne form going with her. 

Dining at the baroness’s castle, Marianne is told the older woman lives totally alone, save for her maid Greta (Freda Jackson). She does, at great length, reveal that there is exactly one more person staying in the castle: her son (David Peel). The young baron, however, is suffering from an incurable disease and thus the baroness is forced to keep a lonely vigil. 

Marianne is moved, but later that night she spies a well-dressed and seemingly sane young man perched on the edge of a balcony. She pleads with him not to jump and when sneaking into his rooms, finds him perfectly sane. The silver chain that keeps him from leaving does presents another set of problems. The baron insists that his mother is the dangerous one and has been spreading lies about him. Moved, Marianne sneaks into Greta’s room and steals the key. When she breaks the baron out, however, is when all hell breaks loose.

Unknown to Marianne, the baron isn’t sick-he’s a vampire. A fact he proves he proves by murdering his mother and driving Greta insane. Marianne wakes to the horror and when confronted by the mad maid and the dead baroness, she flees into the night. She’s found the next morning by Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing).

Van Helsing, who has been summoned to the area to investigate rumors of vampires, notes what Marianne says soon tracks a newly risen vampire to the Castle Meinster. There he gets the whole story from the newly risen baroness. It seems her son was transformed some time ago, but she was unable to go through with staking him. Van Helsing promises to help her and stakes her the next day.  

Marianne, meanwhile, has finally reached the school and tries to start her job as the baron visits. His two reasons are to seduce Marianne and create more vampires from the student body. Van Helsing tracks the baron back to the school and there the film has the most action packed and dare I say original send off to any vampire story made at this point. 

A vast improvement over the preceding Dracula despite the title; Cushing would return to play Van Helsing again, but sadly it would be far too long before we would see a swashbuckling take on vampire fighting.