Film Reviews

Dracula (1958) • The Brides of Dracula (1960) • Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)

The Unholy Trinity of Hammer Horror, at the beginning of its seven (or eight?)-part Dracula cycle…

Dracula (1958)

Hammer Film’s domination of horror in cinema truly began with their Technicolor reinvention of Dracula, which updated Bram Stoker’s novel with a pace and sensuality unseen in vintage Universal classics like Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). The film, which played as a double feature with The Thing That Couldn’t Die in the US, was even retitled Horror of Dracula to prevent Americans mistaking it for the one starring Bela Lugosi.

Stoker’s groundbreaking 1897 novel organised medieval vampire folklore into something cohesive and modern, for its time, but the early-20th-century film adaptations perfected the public’s perception of bloodsucking vampires. The literary Count was able to walk around in daylight until Henrik Galeen, the screenwriter of Nosferatu (1922), decided the sun’s rays would destroy his take on the character. Dracula ’58 also added to the vampire…