A real film oddity that intrigues because the vampire looks to be an amalgamation of Max Schreck’s decadent invader and Bela Lugosi’s belligerent philanderer. The fangs hinting at the shape of things to come and preparing everyone for the technicolour horrors of Christopher Lee’s interpretation of the role in Dracula (1958).
CHAPTER FIVE
Christopher Lee
DRACULA (1958: Hammer Films, UK) aka: The Horror of Dracula
Director: Terence Fisher
Synopsis
Over the imposing shot of a stone eagle the words A Hammer film production, in blood red gothic script, set to James Bernard's rousing score. The camera begins a slow pan and comes to rest on the door of a cellar. Venturing inside, we see a stone sarcophagus with but just one word on it: Dracula. Blood falls onto the tomb. End credits.
The Diary of Jonathon Harker.
Jonathon Harker enters providing a voiceover narrative that informs us that it is the 3rd of May 1885. He has journeyed by carriage from Klausenburg, Romania, but has had to walk the remaining few kilometres on foot. At the castle, he notes that :
"Everything seemed normal, but there were no birds singing".
Carrying his luggage, he enters the castle that boasts some decorative set designs. In the main dining hall, he is welcomed by a table spread with good food, a burning fire and a letter from the Count:
"My Dear Harker, I am sorry I was unable to meet you. Eat well. Make yourself comfortable. Dracula"
in an elegant hand.
After dinner, Harker deposits another log on the fire and accidentally knocks a plate to the floor while clearing a space to write in his diary. Whilst he retrieves the fallen cutlery, we notice a girl enter from behind. She implores Harker to help her. Before Harker can give a response, the girl seems to respond to an unheard command and quickly turns and leaves. Harker turns and sees a tall gentleman waiting at the top of a staircase.
The man descends and walks right up to the camera. He speaks a crisp welcome and introduces himself as Dracula. He takes Harker's luggage and leads him to his room, stating that his housekeeper is away due to a family bereavement. Harker confesses to liking the quiet and seclusion that the castle offers and the Count leaves, returning a few seconds later with a key to the library. He notices a picture of Harker's fiancée. Applauding his choice, he turns and leaves. There is the sound of a key turning and Harker finds that his door has been locked.
In voiceover, Harker reveals that he is not a librarian, but a man on a mission to end Dracula's reign of terror. The music blares as we see Dracula leaving the castle, his cloak billowing behind him.
Harker hears his door unlocked from the outside and ventures to investigate. In the library, he finds himself face to face with the strange girl who again pleads for his help. She claims that Dracula is keeping her prisoner but is reluctant to give any reasons why. She cries into Harker's chest when he agrees to do what he can.
Then we see her eyes hungrily dart to his neck. She reveals fangs. And bites. Harker pushes her away as Dracula, eyes blazing red and fangs dripping blood, enters. With lightning speed and enormous strength, he pulls the girl from Harker and throws her sadistically to the ground. They hiss and glare at each other, the girl still eyeing Harker hungrily. She makes another grab but the Count is too quick.
Again, he knocks her to the floor as Harker intervenes. Dracula takes him by the throat and renders him almost unconscious on the floor. Off-screen we hear the girl scream and then see Dracula carrying her from the room with one final glare at Harker. Harker then collapses.
The passage of time is evidenced by a burnt out candle as Harker wakes in his own bedchamber. Disorientated, he rises from the bed. The door is locked but he has worse troubles: on his throat, he sees two puncture wounds streaming blood.
Despairingly, he takes out his diary and writes his final entry. More voiceover tells us he has become Dracula's victim. He prays that the person who finds his body will possess the necessary knowledge to do what must be done.
There is a shift in thought as he resolves to find Dracula's resting place before nightfall. He climbs through the window clutching his bag. Hiding his diary in a nearby tree, he heads into the castle. He finds the cellar and two coffins. The first is revealed to be Dracula's resting place; the second occupied by the girl.
Harker takes a stake and mallet from his bag, hammering the stake into the girl's heart. As she screams, a close up on the Count's face reveals his eyes spring open. He grins malevolently as he sees the sun going down. Harker looks up to see the result of his handiwork. The girl has withered into an old woman.
Overcome with horror, he staggers to the Count's coffin and finds him gone. We see a shadow pass on the stairs outside the cellar. A close up as Harker is rooted to the spot. Dracula enters the tomb. Closing the cellar door behind him, he fades the scene into darkness.
Tinkling music leads us into a scene at a village inn. The landlord welcomes a well-dressed gentleman who orders brandy and a simple meal and then begins to question him about the garlic hanging profusely about the inn. He knows they are not for decoration and asks the innkeeper if he knows anything of the whereabouts of his friend, a Mr Harker.
The innkeeper eyes him suspiciously when the gentleman reveals that he is Dr Van Helsing, and that he is involved in an obscure investigation that will benefit the whole of mankind. The innkeeper refuses to answer questions and tells Van Helsing to leave them in peace. Inga, his daughter, gives the doctor Harker's recovered diary as he sits to begin his meal.
As Van Helsing's carriage pulls up outside the castle, we see another carriage carrying a coffin leave at a frightening speed. Van Helsing searches the castle. Harker's room is in total disarray and the portrait of Harker's fiancée has been torn from its frame.
On further investigation, Van Helsing notices the open door of the tomb. Inside, he finds the body of the old crone, still staked, in one coffin. In the other, he sees a fanged Jonathon Harker. He steps back and his foot kicks something across the floor. It is Harker's stake and hammer. He picks them up and stares into the coffin at his colleague as the scene fades.
Ten days later Van Helsing visits Arthur and Mina Holmwood to break the sad news of Jonathon's death. He informs a sceptical Arthur that Jonathon was cremated due to his own wishes. Van Helsing's own name on the death certificate increases Arthur's suspicions. When the doctor leaves, Arthur and Mina contemplate breaking the news of Jonathon's death to Lucy, Arthur's sister. They decide against it amidst claims that she is too ill.
We meet Lucy in bed ready to retire for the night. She does appear weak. As the maid leaves however, she is out of bed checking the door and opening the French windows. She drapes herself across the bed and fingers two small puncture wounds on her throat. Leaves blow past the window silently as she waits in anticipation.
A switch as we see Van Helsing chronicling his notes in a phonograph. Sunlight, garlic and the crucifix are the best weapons to defeat the vampire we are informed. A knock on the door breaks his monologue as a porter enters with a letter. Looking extremely puzzled, he mentions that he heard the doctor talking to someone while he was outside. Van Helsing claims to have been talking to himself. The bemused porter leaves as Van Helsing continues his commentary. He states that the crucifix protects while revealing the vampire underneath. He also parallels the disease as similar to drug addiction. Dracula, he states to camera, must be found and destroyed.
Switch again as James Bernard's thunderous score introduces Dracula at Lucy's window. He prowls stealthily into the bedroom, fangs bared, towards the expectant girl, raising his cloak over her as he bends down towards her throat.
The next day, Dr Seward is miffed and diagnoses Lucy's condition as anemia. An honest remark from the housekeeper’s daughter, Tanya, prompts Seward to instruct Mina to find a second opinion. She immediately visits Van Helsing. On hearing the symptoms, the doctor agrees to go at once.
Lucy startles everyone by claiming knowled
ge of Jonathon's death. Van Helsing's examination discovers the telltale marks on her throat. Mina confesses that Dr Seward had thought them to be bee stings and that they appeared about ten days ago. Van Helsing prescribes garlic flowers to be placed in the room and all windows to be kept locked.
Surrounded by the flowers, Lucy can't get her breath and implores Gerda, the housekeeper, to remove them and open the windows. Gerda does. Lucy gazes longingly at the windows. A shot of the moon leads to a fade. The next day Lucy is dead. As Arthur and Mina grieve, Van Helsing appears. Gerda confesses her actions of the previous night, around midnight, when she moved the flowers. Arthur warns the doctor to leave them in peace. Van Helsing does, but not before leaving Harker's diary for them to read.
A policeman arrives at the Holmwood residence. He has found Tanya wandering alone in the dark. Tanya cries and confesses she has been frightened by Aunt Lucy. Arthur is shocked and ventures to Lucy's tomb. It is empty. Tanya is again walking through the woods. She meets Lucy who smiles with fangs and leads her back to the tomb.
Arthur gives away his hiding place just before she bites the child by calling her name. Lucy goes for him, she wants to kiss him. A cross is suddenly thrust into frame, wielded by Van Helsing. He burns Lucy's forehead and she angrily escapes back into the tomb.
Giving the child his coat and the crucifix, Van Helsing joins Arthur in the tomb and suggests that he allow Lucy to lead them to Dracula. Arthur refuses. Van Helsing takes out his stake and hammers it home. Arthur seems to feel the impact. When he looks in the tomb again, he sees Lucy, the burn mark and fangs disappeared; she is at rest.
Holmwood it seems has now been converted. He reads Jonathon's diary and questions its contents. Van Helsing tells him that Dracula is believed to be five or six hundred years old. He dismisses shape changing to bats or wolves as a common fallacy. He also reveals that with some of the greatest authorities in Europe, he has made the study of vampirism his life's work. Holmwood agrees to do all he can and Van Helsing says that they must find Dracula's resting place.
A tottery old customs guard greets them at Ingstadt as they ask the whereabouts of Dracula's coffin.
Back home, Mina receives a message delivered by a young man. He tells her that Arthur Holmwood has asked her to meet him at 49 Friedrickstrasse. Back at customs, the guard has to be bribed by Holmwood to instruct them that Dracula's coffin was taken to… 49 Fredrickstrasse.
Arriving alone, Mina discovers that the address houses the local undertaker, J. Marx. On entering, she finds many coffins but no Arthur. The lid on one coffin begins to open and we glimpse Dracula rising before the scene changes.
Van Helsing and Holmwood return home to discover Mina not in her room. She promptly walks in the front door with a satisfied look on her face and her collar pulled tight.
Returning to the undertakers, Van Helsing, Holmwood and J. Marx, find that the coffin has disappeared. Searching maps of the area, Holmwood breaks off to give Mina a crucifix. She is hesitant to accept it and faints when he drops it into her palm.
Van Helsing investigates and sees that the rosary has burned into Mina's flesh revealing her to be under Dracula's spell. The doctor suggests that they watch the house at night to safeguard Mina. Outside, the sound of wolves punctuates the air, but no sign of Dracula. Inside, Mina ventures from her room and sees the Count as he ascends the stairs and makes his way towards her. She falls back on the bed as he comes ever closer.
An owl screeches, momentarily startling Arthur. The men return satisfied after a good night’s work. Arthur goes to Mina's room and finds her prone across the bed. A blood transfusion is performed as they wonder how the vampire gained entry.
Holmwood orders Gerda to fetch some more wine. She demurs saying that she doesn't like to disobey orders again after the last time. She says that Mina had ordered that on no account was she to go down to the cellar.
Van Helsing bolts to the cellar and finds the Count’s coffin. In bursts the Count but departs just as quickly locking the door. Holmwood frees Van Helsing and a scream is heard upstairs. Gerda is frantic; the Count it seems has carried off Mina. Van Helsing states that he is heading home.
On the road, they come across the body of a dead coach driver. The customs guard shuts up shop for the night as he hears a loud bang. Going back out, he notices that the customs barrier has been broken. He throatily admonishes the unseen coach waving his fist in the air. Another fade and we see him finally repair the barrier as Van Helsing drives his coach towards us. Cut to the guard and another loud bang!
At the Castle, as dawn approaches, Dracula tosses Mina into a freshly dug grave and begins shovelling earth on top of her. She screams. Van Helsing's coach pulls in as Arthur spots the vampire. He shouts a warning and Dracula streaks into the castle, Van Helsing on his heels. Arthur goes to rescue Mina.
Inside, Van Helsing and Dracula become embroiled in a physical fight. Grabbing the doctor by the throat, Dracula all but renders him unconscious. Van Helsing recovers and escapes before the Count can put the bite on him. Squaring off, Van Helsing notices a shaft of sunlight peering through the curtains.
Jumping onto a long refectory table, he runs and dives for the curtains pulling them from their rings. The Count hits the floor with a scream as his foot, caught in the rays of the sun, melts down to nothing. Van Helsing grabs the two candlesticks on the table and brings them together to form a cross, forcing Dracula back into the sunlight. Dracula's hand melts and then his face dissolves to nothing but bone. Outside we see the crucifix burn disappear on Mina's palm.
Van Helsing surveys the sanctified castle. A wind blows the remains of the Count across the floor, leaving only his signet ring on view as the end credits come up.
Review
A successful release of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) prompted Hammer to go ahead with this film, shattering every horror convention that had gone before it. Blood, sex and death were dangled right under the noses of the British censor and the public lapped it up, inaugurating a whole new attitude towards the making of X-rated entertainment.
As with the Universal film, a review is difficult from someone who never actually saw its first release and I don't want to rehash the views that are being printed as Hammer prepares to take the Internet by storm.
Most of the action still works. My particular copy is rated certificate 15 and utilises the teeth clenching title, The Horror Of Dracula! bestowed on it by our American cousins to distinguish it from their jealously guarded Bela Lugosi version.
The film itself, like the previous Frankenstein, is screenwriter Jimmy Sangster's, as opposed to Terence Fisher. Sangster wisely avoided copying the Universal film with the real Dracula and went back to Stoker's novel for inspiration. Unfortunately, throwing away references to Dracula’s violent history unconsciously limited the Count’s transference from film to film, a similar oversight that hampered the Universal series. However, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee rightfully take up their mantles as the new masters of horror, easily walking away with every scene that they appear in.
This was Christopher Lee's very first time in the cape and he grabs his opportunities with both hands just as tight as he grabs his victims. Like the following films in the series, barring the execrable The Scars of Dracula (1970), he has very little screen time, but takes advantage of every second onscreen to immortalise his performance.
He is the ambiguously charming host of Stoker's story, a gracious aristocrat, given to bouts of tiger-ish ferocity when reprimanding a straying underling. Not having the powers bestowed upon his literary counterpart, he seems totally at ease to go striding boldly into the village to pick up a wayward traveller.
Being a Hammer film, generally a woman.
But he always has the drawback of picking up very loose women indeed: a cute young thing in flimsy nightdress and push up bra.
The Count regularly beats his partner and drains her blood away on a nightly basis. She has few, if any, friends and is never allowed to leave the castl
e. For the first time, Dracula becomes the jealous perpetrator of domestic abuse. When his girl makes a play for Harker, Dracula savagely reacts by throwing her to the ground. He attacks the new suitor in a paroxysm of snarls and jealousy. Finding his brides’ marks on him, Dracula leaves Harker wasted in his rooms while he thinks of a fitting punishment.
The Romance of Dracula; a personal Journey of the Count on celluloid Page 7