Dracula or in the US Horror of Dracula was the first film in what would be called The Dracula Cycle. It is (loosely) based on the novel. It was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Carol Marsh, Melissa Stribling and Christopher Lee. In the United States, the film was retitled Horror of Dracula to avoid confusion with the 1931 film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi.
Production began at Bray Studios on the 17 November 1957 with an investment of £81,000.
Plot[]
The film starts with a reading of Jonathan Harker's diary entry for 3 May, 1885. He note that the coachman from Klausenburg would not take him all the way (requiring him to walk kilometers) and that there are no birds singing at Castle Dracula. There he meets a young woman says he will help her but then runs away when Dracula appears. It is revealed that Harker is there, not to finalize the sale of property as in the novel, but as a private librarian. After Dracula leeds him to his room and then locks him in it is revealed that Harker is really a vampire hunter who has used the post to get close to Dracula so he can destroy him.
Later the door is mysterious unlocked and Harker is confronted by the woman from before who quickly revealed herself to be a vampire but just as she bites Harker Dracula bursts in and knocks her to the ground. Dracula quickly overpowers her and leaves with her in his arms as Harker collapses. Harker wakes up into his room which is again locked. Harker writes in his diary that he is uncertain if he will become a vampire but hopes whoever finds his journal with destroy him if he does. He then hides his journal in a shrine to the Virgin Mary outside the castle and makes his way to the crypt. There he finds the two vampire and impales the woman with a stake waking Dracula in the process. As the woman turned turns old the sun sets allowing Dracula to leave his coffin and lock Harker in the room with him.
Sometime later Doctor Van Helsing arrives in Klausenburg looking for Harker. The innkeeper's daughter gives the diary to Van Helsing who is nearly run over by a carriage wiht a while coffin in when he arrives at Castle Dracula. Searching the castle he find the portrait Harker had of his fiancee Lucy, with the photos now gone. In the crypt he finds the now vampire Harker and stakes him. Van Helsing gives a veiled account of Harker's death in person to a wary Arthur Holmwood and his wife Mina, brother and sister-in-law of Harker's fiancée Lucy Holmwood in the town of Karlstadt some miles away. Lucy is ill and so the news is kep foom her. Left along she opens the windows and removes her crucifix revealing what she has already been bitten before Dracula bites her again.
Elsewhere Van Helsing is listening to a recording of his notes on vampire (sunlight fatal, garlic repels, the crucifix, vampirism is similar to addiction to drug). Later Mini pleads with Van Helsing to look as Lucy and he quickly discovers the marks. His efforts to save Lucy are prevented when Lucy begs Gerda the maid to open the windows doors and remove the garlic. Lucy dies and Van Helsing turns over Harker's diary. Three days after Lucy is interred, Tania is spirited away into the night and is returned by a policeman, claiming to Arthur and Mina that Lucy had beckoned her, much to Arthur's shock. Arthur goes to Lusy's tomb and finds it empty. He then confronts Lucy who has lured Tania away planning to turnt he little girl into a vampire and is saved by Van Helsing who wards her off with a cross (which burns her when it touches her) which drives her back to her tomb. During the day Van Halsin explains that what they are destroying isn't Lucy but a shell animated by the evil of Dracula to replace the vampire Harker destroyed and then stakes her.
Arthur and Van Helsing talk aobut how old Dracula could be with Van Hesling saying the records suggest 500 to 600 years and that the ability to change into bats and wolves is a fallacy but that vampires must rest in their native soil. Helsing and Arthur go to Ingolstadt to learn the address the coffin was sent to and it turns out to be the address Dracula has lured Mina to. When Arthur and Van Helsing go to the address (a mortician) they find the coffin gone. They decide that an old neglected graveyard is the best place to search but Arthur discovres that across burns Min meaning she is infected and well on her way to becoming a vampire. Despite their efforts Dracula bites Mina again but she is saved via a blood transfusion from Arthur. They hen discover that Dracula has had his coffin in the wine cellar. While they are in the cellar Dracula grabs Mina and uses a carriage to return to his castle.
Saving Mina from being buried alive Van Helsing runs into the castle and confronts Dracula. During the battle Van Helsing rips some curtains down letting the sunlight in. Using a makeshift cross he keeps Dracula in the sunlight until he crumbles to dust.
Cast[]
- Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing
- Christopher Lee as Count Dracula
- Michael Gough as Arthur
- Melissa Stribling as Mina
- Carol Marsh as Lucy
- Olga Dickie as Gerda
- John Van Eyssen as Jonathan
- Valerie Gaunt as Vampire Woman
- Janina Faye as Tania
- Barbara Archer as Inga
- Charles Lloyd Pack as Doctor Seward
- George Merritt as Policeman
- George Woodbridge as Landlord
- George Benson as Official
- Miles Malleson as Undertaker
- Geoffrey Bayldon as Porter
Gallery[]
Commentary[]
The changes to the original novel and the geography presented creates some logic problems.
- How did Harker learn of Count Dracula being a vampire?
- A 500 to 600 old Dracula makes the connection to the historical Dracula nil as that would put Count Dracula's creation c 1300 to c 1200 CE well before Vlad III was even born.
- If Dracula has simply been sitting in the area for some 500+ years why in the name of sanity go after him? Better to keep an eye on him and any vampire he creates rather then cause him to leave the area.
- The distance from Karlstadt to Klausenburg is 1,357.9 km or or 14 hours by motor car. There is no way a horse and carriage could make the trip before the sun rose and turned Dracula into burnt offering.