Review of Dracula (1958) by Stephen C — 06 May 2013

The funny thing about Director Ternece Fisher is that he is seen by some higbrow critics as nothing more than a genre director who churned out films for Hammer over 3 decades.

For those in the know and the true horror film fan Fisher made some of the greatest films in the genre and even his misfires are interesting .

After Hammer had put there own spin on the Frankenstein legend Fisher and his crew turned to Bram Stokers classic tale of Count Dracula and his reign of terror.

Owing to budget issues Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster only kept the outline of the original source novel.

But what they left set the template for Hammer films througout the 60s and this was of course the golden period of Hammer films before the sex was amped up and the stories became more silly.

Christopher Lee has of course gone on record saying he wasnt a fan of the latter Hammer/Dracula movies, but his performance here is suitably towering and its one that sets the bar high for other would be Counts.

The other great performance is of course Peter Cushing as the determined Van Helsing.

Cushing rarely gave a bad performance in his film career despite some of the films being a bit dog eared.

He simply IS Van Helsing and the performance he gives pushes the film into horror masterpiece territory aided of course by lashings of Kensington Gore blood as Fishers assured and well paced direction.

The other thing which makes this film worthy of note is the fact that the film is now virtually complete thanks to Hammer fans tracking down some missing sequences which were thought lost,but turned up in Japan.

The restoration of these key scenes which include a more graphic Dracula death scene really add to the films gothic edge .

If you want to explore the work of both Hammer films and Terence Fisher then this really is the perfect place to start as everything which made Hammer a great studio is on display here.