Review of Dracula (1958) by Danny M — 11 Aug 2009

Christopher Lee does surprisingly little in this movie, although once he gets all snarly, he gets very snarly indeed. What's interesting about him is that in his few scenes with dialogue, when he's talking to Jonathan, he's extremely unsuspicious. You kind of expect Dracula to exude creepiness, but this guy is far more casual, making him all the scarier when the fangs come out, and also, far more believable. If I'm a vampire, am I going to deliberately creep everybody out?

But this movie really belongs to Peter Cushing, who is probably the reason that Van Helsing is so popular a character, instead of the weird Dutch guy he was in the book. Cushing turns him into an absolute badass.

Plays merry hell with the original book, but a very good movie in its own right.