(imdb)BLOOD OF DRACULA-1957-Nancy (Sandra Harrison), a trouble teenager is dropped off at Sherwood, a prep school, by her stupid father (Thomas B. Henry) and his new gold digging bride (Jean Dean). With her headstrong attitude she runs afoul of Myra (Gail Ganley) and her secret society. Myra also assists a mad woman teacher scientist Mrs. Branding (Louise Lewis) who wants to save the world from itself and says "We live in a world ruled by men for men" when her thesis is rejected. She decides to use Nancy in her incomprehensible experiments. The girls have a party crashed by three boys where a dork (Jerry Blaine) sings a song called "Puppy Love". Under Branding's subliminal hypnosis Nancy turns into a scary fanged vampire. She kills several people. Lt. Dunlap (Malcohm Atterbury) doesn't believe it when one of his officers (Richard Devon) says it's a vampire. Nancy's boyfriend comes to rescue her but all she can think about is his neck. In the climax she kills the doctor and falls on a stake and dies while her boyfriend cries and Myra regrets not telling about Branding's weird experiments.
This AIP teenage drive-in horror was produced by Herman Cohen who held the same capacity on I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. Both those movies had been written by BLOOD's screenwriter Aben Kandel (who would work with Cohen later on when the producer relocated to England). Director Herbert Strock had also made TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. BLOOD OF DRACULA is ok as AIP teen oriented horror films go. The vampire is creepy but I kind of felt sorry for the Nancy character, a troubled kid no one seems to care about except her boyfriend who shows up to help her, only to see her die. Should have been called “I Was a Female Dracula”.
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