Hammer Horror

  (Wikimedia Commons)

HORROR OF DRACULA-1958-Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) goes to Castle Dracula to be a librarian for Count Dracula. No one is there when he arrives but a woman (Valarie Gaunt) appears and asks Harker to help her but she runs away when Dracula shows up. It seems Harker is really there to destroy the vampire. Later the woman shows up again and begs Harker to help her. But when she gets close she tries to bite him. Dracula intervenes. Harker awakes the next day with bite marks on his neck and goes looking for the count's resting place. He finds it and destroys the woman but Dracula wakes up and makes Harker a vampire. Later Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) arrives in town looking for Harker. A helpful waitress gives him some info but he's too late. Dracula is gone and he has to put a stake in Harker. Arthur Holcomb (Michael Gough), the brother of Harker's fiance Lucy (Carol Marsh) doesn't accept the doctor's story of her husband to be's death. Especially since Lucy is kind of sickly and waiting anxiously for his return.

 Unfortunately Dracula decides to make Lucy his next conquest. Dr. Seward (Charles Lloyd Pack) thinks she has some kind of anemia. Mina (Melissa Stribling), Holcomb's wife asks Van Helsing for a second opinion. He suggests putting garlic around the windows but the maid removes the smelly stuff and the next day Lucy is dead. Holcomb blames Van Helsing but when his maid's daughter says she talked to Lucy he starts to think differently. He and the courageous doctor find Lucy's resting place and drive a stake into her. While the men search, Dracula puts the bite on Mina. In the great climax Van Helsing and the king of vampires have a memorable showdown. 

This Hammer production was freely adapted from the Bram Stoker novel by Jimmy Sangster and directed with style by Terence Fisher (the two had collaborated a year earlier on THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN; also with Cushing & Lee) and would go to make REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN the same year. Fisher and Sangster would also concoct THE MUMMY (with Cushing & Lee) in 1959 and BRIDES OF DRACULA in 1960 with Cushing reprising his role as Van Helsing. Lee wouldn't play the infamous count again until 1966's DRACULA-PRINCE OF DARKNESS (also by Fisher & Sangster).

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