Brides of Dracula ***½ (1960, Peter Cushing, David Peel, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur, Freda Jackson, Mona Washbourne) – Classic Movie Review 2,942

Peter Cushing returns as vampire hunter Dr Van Helsing in Hammer Films’ 1960 horror film Brides of Dracula, Terence Fisher’s first sequel to the 1958 Dracula, but David Peel replaces Christopher Lee as chief vampire Baron Meinster. 

Peter Cushing successfully reprises his role as vampire hunter Dr Van Helsing in Hammer Films’ 1960 horror film Brides of Dracula, director Terence Fisher’s first sequel to the 1958 Dracula, but David Peel replaces Christopher Lee as chief vampire, Baron Meinster.

Brides of Dracula proves one of the pick of the Hammer horrors as Van Helsing returns to Transylvania to destroy Meinster, who has bloodthirsty evil designs on beautiful young French student-schoolteacher Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur), after she is invited to stay the night at Meinster’s Transylvanian castle, where she unleashes the vampire.

It is sad that there is no Christopher Lee, who refused to reprise his Dracula role for fears of becoming typecast, but Peel is good value, too, as the handsome young bloodsucker who has inherited Dracula’s cloak and mantle.

A big plus is the excellent female casting, with Martita Hunt as the baron’s mum Baroness Meinster, who locks him away in his castle and procures women to satisfy his blood lusts, and Freda Jackson as the crazed nurse Greta, who coaxes the victims back to life, plus Mona Washbourne as Frau Lang, Marie Devereux, Vera Cook and Andrée Melly as Gina.

Lurid sets, lush costumes and lovely photography give the film a gloriously colourful Gothic look. Jack Asher’s extremely nice Technicolor cinematography, a lusty tone in the screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan and Edward Percy, Malcolm Williamson’s score and a decent enough production complete the nifty package, along with a fine support cast headed by regular stalwarts Miles Malleson (Dr Tobler), Henry Oscar (Herr Lang) and Michael Ripper (coachman).

Also in the cast are Fred Johnson, Harold Scott, Norman Pierce, Vera Cook, Marie Devereux, Susan Castle, Jill Haworth, Harry Pringle, Stephanie Watts, Michael Mulcaster, and Ted Carroll.

Production design is by Bernard Robinson; wardrobe mistress: Molly Arbuthnot.

It runs 85 minutes.

The script was rewritten by other hands, including producer Anthony Hinds and director Fisher, who made changes to the script on the set just before shooting scenes.

Christopher Lee found worldwide fame as the Count in Hammer’s 1958 Dracula but then refused to return for the sequel to try to avoid being typecast. He did not return to the role until Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966).

There is an astonishingly bad bat in the movie. The prop department made a realistic model bat but it got lost and had to be replaced on short notice with a risible, totally unconvincing model.

Miles Malleson is the only actor other than Peter Cushing to appear in both this film and Dracula (1958).

Originally Count Dracula was meant to have returned from the dead at the film’s beginning. Then later, Baron Meinster was supposed to be a disciple of Dracula and the film was then called Disciple of Dracula. There is still a title problem as the title character of Dracula is called Baron Meinster in the film.

David Peel wears a full blond hairpiece as Baron Meinster and wears lifts in his shoes to make him the same height as the six feet tall Cushing.

The vampires were to be destroyed by a swarm of bats but this ending proved too expensive to stage and shoot. However, the concept was revived three years later for the climax of Hammer’s The Kiss of the Vampire (1963).

[Spoiler alert] Cushing and Fisher disagreed over the climax. Cushing said Van Helsing using powers of black magic to destroy Baron Meinster went against everything his character represented.

In 2004 Universal made new prints and restored a brief shot of gore from Baroness Meinster’s staking cut from cinema releases in a version released on DVD in 2007.

Brides of Dracula is followed by Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (1970), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,942

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