I enjoyed Dracula and I immediately caught the fever, wanting to see the further adventures of the titular Count, even though he died in the first one. We all know that you can’t keep a good vamp down! However, he isn’t even in this film. I am curious to see how this plays out, since he pretty much was the heart and soul of the film. Peter Cushing returns as Van Helsing, so at least we have that, and I hope he can carry the entire film on his shoulders.
Synopsis:
Vampire hunter Van Helsing returns to Transylvania to destroy handsome bloodsucker Baron Meinster, who has designs on beautiful young schoolteacher Marianne.
IMDb: 6.6
Rotten Tomatoes: 78%
Tagline: He Turned Innocent Beauty Into Unspeakable Horror.
Originally, Dracula was to make a cameo, however, they wrote him out of the film. They ended up only referring to him twice. Instead, they added Van
Helsing to the story, to retain at least one of the actors from the original. Lee had declined to star due to his fear of getting typecast, but with the success of this film, he would come back, playing the Count in a total of seven films for Hammer Productions, once for Jesús Franco’s Count Dracula (1970), once in Jerry Lewis’s One More Time (1970) and once in Édouard Molinaro’s Dracula and Son (1976), for a total of ten times.
As per the previous film, we get an incredible gothic setting and beautiful colors, mainly purples, reds, and grays, mostly thanks to cinematographer Jack Asher, who was also involved with the first one as well as many other Hammer films. Sadly, this would be his last film in this particular franchise, as he has no further film credits after 1965.
The film’s runtime is only 82 minutes, and the opening sequence in the castle of the Baroness lasts for over 30 minutes. I am not sure where this is going, as we are a third of the way into the movie, and I am not seeing any brides of Dracula. As a matter of fact, the one vampire we HAVE seen is a man. In the 1897 novel, the brides of Dracula were the 3 women in his castle that he kept basically as “pets,” who he would feed unsuspecting guests to. In the 1992 movie, Keanu Reeves was nearly seduced by them.
The sideburns in this movie are incredible. I would kill to have such long and pointy things on my face. I think I could pull it off. My jaw is shaped weird though, if my sideburns get too long, they end up down my neck and then I look like a teenager with a terrible neck beard.
In a lot of ways, the film feels like it is a play on a soundstage. Everything feels fake, like a set. I realize this is the case, that it is filmed in a studio, but it shouldn’t FEEL like it is.
The actors appear more like theater actors, as is the case for most old movies that I struggle with. We are still years away from abandoning theater-like acting performances, but slowly inching closer to motion picture acting. This one in particular, as well as a lot of British pictures of the time, really feel like this. Marianne and the Baron in general are poor actors. He is too over the top cheesy, and she is lackadaisically boring and lifeless. And the less said about the house servant Greta’s acting abilities, the better. Cushing really classes up the place and is both charming and one bad mutha at the same time.
I have to say, I struggle mightily with the characters’ hair. The Baron is such a fake blonde, and Marianne’s hair is so perfectly shaped and red, she seems like an old lady at a hair salon that just got her hair did. The Baroness has hair that not even a monsoon could move. I don’t know if it is a wig, but if it is, that mother is glued on.
I can say that I enjoyed Brides of Dracula a lot less than the first one. I respect the original, for what it did for the character, bringing it into the spotlight throughout the 60s and 70s, but this one, without Dracula, is not as influential. The Baron is a poor substitute for Lee, looking more like spoiled Justin Bieber wannabe than a diabolical head vampire. And I am not a Belieber.
5.5/10 Stab Wounds
