The Brides of Dracula May Be Hammer's Best

Hammer Films, the British studio that revived the gothic horror movie in the late 1950s, launched its signature series with 1958's Dracula (US: Horror of Dracula). The studio's colorful reworking of Bram Stoker's vampire novel made genre stars of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Lee chose not to appear as Count Dracula in the immediate sequel and Hammer dared not to replace him after his popular portrayal. The studio's solution was to make a Dracula film without Dracula, with most of the focus shifting to Cushing's energetic and intellectual vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing.

Due to Lee's absence, The Brides of Dracula never achieved the popular and critical success it deserved. It is not only Hammer's best Dracula entry, but it may also be the studio's best film. Regular Hammer scripter Jimmy Sangster and his co-writers seemed to have compensated for the loss of Lee by making Brides more of an ensemble film with Cushing providing the star wattage. The result is a horror film with surprising depth and a vampire villain who has some juicy dialogue to go along with the neck-biting.

The film opens with Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur), a young French woman traveling to a girls academy to accept a teaching position. When a coach driver abandons Marianne in a small Transylvanian village, she accepts an invitation by the elderly Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt) to spend the night in a nearby castle. She soon meets young, handsome Baron Meinster (David Peel). His mother keeps him in shackles and you can guess why—but Marianne doesn’t. Pretty soon, there’s an outbreak of vampirism at the boarding school and it’s Van Helsing to the rescue. His climatic encounter with Meinster in a dilapidated windmill sets the stage for one of the most ingenious endings of all vampire films.

As in the earlier Dracula, Cushing's Van Helsing may be an intellectual, but he is also a man of action. He is not afraid to physically confront vampires--given the proper weapons--even though he knows they possess superior strength. In Brides, Van Helsing's zeal gets the better of him and he winds with teeth marks on his neck. The result is a marvelous scene in which he demonstrates what to do when bitten by a vampire.

Though Cushing's performance centers the film, Peel exudes evil as Meinster. His vampire may not be as physically imposing as Lee's Dracula, but he comes across as almost more threatening because he is devious and intelligent. Let's face it: the idea of spreading vampirism by means of a girls' boarding school is pretty crafty (i.e., when each girl goes home, she infects others). Meinster is also incredibily cruel--heck, he bites his own mother (marvelously played as a reluctant vampire by Hunt).

Director Terence Fisher propels the proceedings at such a lively pace that one barely notices the screenplay's obvious flaws. For example, if Meinster can transform into bat, as he does at one point, then how can shackles hold him? Also, the relationship between Marianne and Meinster is poorly developed. They meet at the castle and then they become engaged when Meinster visits Marianne for the first time at the school.

Sadly, The Brides of Dracula marked Peel's only appearance as Meinster. Christopher Lee returned as the bloodthirsty Count in Hammer's 1964 series entry Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Cushing would not return as Van Helsing until Hammer made an unwise decision to update the vampire saga to modern times with Dracula A.D. 1972. Hammer eventually made eight Dracula films, but the only subsequent entry to compare favorably with Brides was 1968’s Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.