Dracula
All actors and roles (10)
All team (15)
Short description
Jonathan Harker arrives at Castle Dracula in the Carpathians to settle a business matter with its owner, but the count is a vampire, and the visit goes badly for the visitor. When Dracula then leaves his castle and settles in the West, he begins visiting a young woman by night. Her family, alarmed, turns to Doctor Van Helsing, a friend of the late Harker and a man determined to destroy the vampire no matter what it costs. The story is drawn from Bram Stoker's novel, and the central conflict pits Van Helsing against Dracula while those close to him fall under the count's influence.
This British production was directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Film Productions, with a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster and production by Anthony Hinds, and it comes third in the run of sixteen films Fisher directed in chronological order, between The Curse of Frankenstein and The Revenge of Frankenstein. Peter Cushing plays Van Helsing and Christopher Lee plays the count, with Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh and Olga Dickie among the credited cast of twenty-five.
The film runs eighty-two minutes and took four million dollars at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from around 31,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3 out of 10 from 733 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.9 out of 10 from forty-four reviews places the critical response somewhat above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the United States, the film was released under the title "Horror of Dracula" to avoid confusion with the 1931 film.
- The film is a color remake of the 1931 film of the same name.
- When the film was released in the United Kingdom in a shortened version in 1958, it was given an X rating, while the director's cut reissue released in 2007 was given a 12A rating.
- The scene in which the vampire's skin crumbles to dust was filmed stop-motion by applying red makeup to actor Christopher Lee's face, as well as a thin layer of wax that matched his normal skin tone. In the frame where the skin peels off the wax fingers, markings can be seen underneath.
- The film is based on Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (Dracula, 1897).
- At the end of the film, on the castle floor, is shown an inlaid circle marked with the signs of the zodiac, which features several quotes in Latin and Greek. Inside the circle is a quote from Homer’s “Odyssey,” Book 18.136-7. On the outer side of the circle is a quote in Latin from Hesiod, as interpreted by Bartolomeo Anglico (On the Nature of Things, Book 8, Chapter 2).
- For many years, film historians have pointed out that the most complete version of the film was released in Japan in 1958. Attempts to find the mythical "Japanese version" were fruitless. But in September 2011, Hammer announced that fragments of a Japanese film copy had been found at the "National Film Center" in Tokyo. The first five reels of the film were destroyed in a fire in 1984, but the last four were preserved. These films, with a total duration of 36 minutes, include two "extended" scenes, one of which reveals key footage of the film. For example, the complete scene of Dracula's attack on Mina, which was cut by censors from the English and American versions due to its sexual frankness, unacceptable for films of those years.
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