These Brides Are A Pain in the Neck

It an oddity that the second vampire film released by Hammer Studios mentioned Dracula's name, but does not have him in it. Leaving that aside, it's a very good picture in its own right.

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The opening establishes continuity with Horror of Dracula, making it clear that while the master vampire is dead, those he turned during his reign of terror are still at large. And Professor Van Helsing is still hunting them.

Into this environment comes a beautiful French girl, Marianne, played by Yvonne Monlaur. When her carriage wheel breaks, she takes an invitation from Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt) to stay the night at her castle. While there, Marianne discovers that the Baroness has a son who she keeps chained in his room. Marianne releases the Baron, who is a vampire, and he begins a reign of terror, transforming Marianne's girlfriends into monsters like him.

An interesting point: ever since Bram Stoker's Dracula was released, the term "vampire brides" has been used to refer to female vampires in the power of the master vampire. But the implication--and sometimes it's made explicit--is that the vampire has no love for his "brides" and is only interested in sexual domination. And that seems to be the case here. The producers did their homework in that regard.

Also, this film is among the first (if not the first) to show a method of curing someone of vampirism before it can take hold.

The Good: Peter Cushing returns as Van Helsing, and his role is much more dynamic here. Van Helsing is a man who can think on his feet. Martita Hunt plays the Baroness as equally villainous and sympathetic. Even though she does some awful things (off-screen), what happens to her is truly horrific. And Freda Jackson as the insane human servant is a hammy delight.

The Bad: Christopher Lee refused to participate in this film, fearing he would be typecast. (I guess he changed his mind later.) Also, a lot of material was cut from the film, which would have revealed that Dracula himself made the Baron what he is. (Freda Jackson hints at it in the finished film.) Plus, Peter Cushing himself had to step in vis-a-vis his character. The original script had Van Helsing using black magic to summon demon bats from hell to destroy the vampires. Cushing said that Van Helsing would not commune with the forces of evil. But Hammer used the same concept in Kiss of the Vampire.

The Ugly: What happens to the girls Baron Meinster victimizes. And, it might be noted, some of the film's subtext that vampirism is a curse brought on by indulging in pseudo-homosexual relations can be rather off-putting today.

Even so, it can be counted as one of Hammer's finest. Have a look:

Death on a Hacienda

Mexico is no stranger to vampire myths. The Aztecs and Mayans believed in vampiric spirits and gods. So it should come as no surprise that Mexico has produced its share of horror films. Among the best and best known, is El Vampiro Translation: The Vampire

Abel Salazar produced this 1957 film and stars as the hero, a Van Helsing-type. Ariadna Welter is the heroine, and German Robles is Count Laszlo Lavud, a Hungarian nobleman who lives in Mexico on a large estate. The film takes many cues from 1943's Son of Dracula, including a name switch early on.

View the trailer:

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The Good: Given Robles' appearance, it may be tempting to say that this film was a rip-off of Horror of Dracula, but it was actually released a year before Lee donned the famous cape. Which makes El Vampiro notable in that the vampire has fangs before Lee did. And what fangs they are. The film is not a "cheapie" by any means. It was made with sincere effort, and the overall effect is like being inside a haunted house. And there are compelling twists to the story.

The Bad: Ariadna Welter's screams are obviously dubbed. It was typical in the mid-Fifties to dub Fay Wray's screams in horror movies, so maybe this can be forgiven.

The Ugly: Don't bother with the English dub. It's pretty hard on the ears.

Don't bother with other versions. Casa Negra has the only one worth having. Their release includes both El Vampiro and El Ataud del Vampiro (The Vampire's Coffin), in which Robles is revived to pursue his enemies once more.

Bela Returns

In 1943, Columbia Pictures figured "maybe we can make some money on a vampire film." So, they did the obvious thing: they hired Bela Lugosi and made The Return of the Vampire.

Bela is Armand Tesla, a vampire who preys on England during the First World War, with the help of his werewolf slave. Two intrepid humans stake Tesla, freeing the werewolf in the process. But when the Germans blitz London, Tesla is revived. He re-enslaves his werewolf, and seeks not only blood but revenge.

Here's the trailer:

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The Good: Bela was a great actor, and he loved doing it. He WAS the idea of a vampire that most people had, even now to an extent. Also, Columbia hired some great supporting players.

The Bad: This would have been pretty familiar territory for Lugosi. He only officially played Dracula twice: once in 1931 and again in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. But as Hollywood historian David Skal has pointed out, Armand Tesla is basically Dracula in everything but name. You could look at Return of the Vampire as an unofficial sequel to Dracula. Columbia also took a cue from Universal with the werewolf character, who is clearly modeled on Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man. The actor even looks like Chaney.

The Ugly: The ending. Not because it's badly filmed, it's just never pretty when sunlight and vampires meet.

Welcome to the Circus...of Death!

As I've mentioned, by the 1970s, Hammer Studios in Britain was going great guns with its horror movies. But they were branching out from the Christopher Lee films. And one of their truly weird pieces was the 1971 release of Vampire Circus.

In the beginning, the townspeople of a Serbian village gather to rid themselves of Count Mitterhaus, a truly vile vampire. Having seduced the wife of a respectable citizen, he has her bring him village children to prey upon (the implications are truly horrible). As he is staked, he curses the town. His concubine is banished, running the gauntlet on her way out.

Ten years later, the village is suffering an outbreak of plague, and the government has the town ringed with troops to make sure no one gets in or out, so the disease won't spread. The town doctor makes it out to gather medicine, while at the same time, a traveling circus arrives in town. Glad to have something to take their minds off their problems, the villagers don't realize that the head of the circus is the cousin of Count Mitterhaus.

The Good: Typical stalwart British performers (none very well-known, I'm sorry to say) give their best to bring this slightly koo-koo production to life. And honestly, the SFX guys went all out with what they had. Once the climax gets going, it does not slow down.

The Bad: Probably more as a result of the time when it was made than anything else, this film may give wise-ass viewers the impression that it was made on psychedelic drugs. It's a truly weird film.

The Ugly: The Tiger Woman dance probably doesn't come off as erotic as was intended, but Your Mileage May Vary. Also, this is one of the most violent Hammer Films, the opening and the climax being standouts.

Oh, I almost forgot. David Prowse, the man in the Darth Vader suit himself, plays the circus strongman.

For a long time, Vampire Circus was hard to come by outside of the UK. Now it's available to all:

Lee Dons the Cape

It's no secret that I have boundless respect for the late Sir Christopher Lee. World War 2 hero, legitimate descendant of Charlemagne, fluent in numerous languages, and actor non-pareil.

And it was as Count Dracula that I first heard of him. Lee took what Bela Lugosi and John Carradine before him had done and made the role his own, adding a layer of animalistic sexuality that loosened censorship would allow. He also made fangs a necessary part of any vampire's repetoire.

In Horror of Dracula, released in 1958, immediately on the heels of Curse of Frankenstein, Lee set a new standard of vampire movies, and began a spate of them for Hammer Studios over the next fifteen years. And his good friend Peter Cushing

The Good: Lee's performance, for one. He never spoke much in the entire run of Hammer Films (because Hammer was cheap), but his presence and knowing what to do at the right moments was all that was needed. Also, Peter Cushing brings great conviction to his role as Van Helsing. The supporting players give their all as well. The sets look like a fairy tale land as well.

The Bad: As I said, Hammer was cheap. So Lee isn't seen much in the film. (What he does do will stick with you, though.)

The Ugly: Have I mentioned that Hammer was cheap? None of the special effects associated with vampire films will be seen here. The characters explain this in-story to get around it. Which makes their use of such things later on a bit jarring.

Final Thoughts: To call Horror of Dracula a landmark vampire movie would not do it justice.

Now you can have Four Hammers at once:

Fear Those Who Are Marked

I mentioned earlier that the "Hollywood Legends of Horror" set contained a second vampire film, Mark of the Vampire.

MGM cranked out this chiller in 1935. It was directed by Dracula's own Tod Browning, essentially as a re-imagining of his lost silent mystery film, London After Midnight. Bela Lugosi plays the lead vampire, with Carole Borland as his vampire daughter. They terrorize the area around Prague, so police inspector Lionel Atwill calls in a Van Helsing-like specialist, played by Lionel Barrymore.

The Good: Browning, with access to a larger budget than Universal had in 1931, creates a very opulent universe in this film, especially the manor that the vampires occupy. He even recreates the "walk-through-the-web" moment from Dracula, this time from the vampire's POV. Also, Barrymore, Atwill and Elizabeth Allen give great performances, with able support from Jean Hersholt. Lugosi, as ever, radiates power and provides a laugh at the end.

The Bad: Whether due to executive meddling or feeling an overwhelming need to stick to the source material, this film is almost incomprehensible, plot-wise. The final reveal that the vampires are actors hired by the police to flush out a murderer leaves the viewer with far more questions than answers. Alfred Hitchcock once said that if the audience doesn't notice the switch until hours after they viewed the film, it's okay, but here, the makers really wanted the twist ending that ends up being a swerve that M. Night Shyamalan would be proud of. That is NOT okay. Also, the film is only an hour long, even though it was previewed at eighty minutes, which gives the idea that MGM did not really have their heart in this one. Plus, the cut material would have explained why Lugosi has a bullet hole in his temple. (He shot himself and was condemned to become a vampire.)

The Ugly: Lugosi doesn't even have any lines until the end! I don't know if MGM can be blamed solely for this. By 1935, Lugosi was already considered to be on his way out. In fact, the trailer for the film, which is available on the DVD, is Bela commanding the audience to attend, and shows the magnetism he had.

Final Thoughts: In some ways, this film is a throwback to silent-era horror (not surprising, since it's a remake of a silent film) when movies like this had what I call "Scooby-Doo" endings, where all of the supernatural trappings are scientifically explained and the "monster" is revealed as Cousin Louie, or whatever. Since Dracula established that audiences would accept the supernatural, this film seemed, then and now, to be a step backwards. It doesn't help that London After Midnight had a much better take on the idea: the detective knows who the murderer is, but can't prove it, so he fakes being a vampire to haunt the killer into confessing. Here, the role Lon Chaney Sr. played is split between Barrymore, Atwill and Lugosi. Too many cooks and all that.

Knowing all this, it's possible to view Mark of the Vampire as a satire of vampire film conventions. Judge for yourself:

Fear Bogie's Bite!

If you want truly weird vampire flicks, this one comes straight from 1939, Hollywood's Golden Year. It's called The Return of Doctor X. 

The title refers to the death and resurrection of the character, and is not a true sequel to the 1932 Doctor X. Though both films involve a scientist seeking to replicate human body parts, in this case, blood.

This was the directorial debut for Vincent Sherman, who went on to have a great career at Warner Brothers, the studio that produced this curio. Humphrey Bogart, one of the most legendary actors in Hollywood today, was given the title role, supposedly as punishment for asking Jack Warner for more money.

I'm getting ahead of myself. When Dracula and Frankenstein proved big hits, all the major studios dabbled in horror films, of varying quality. MGM, Fox, Warner Brothers and Paramount all had releases from 1931 to 1936. But, when Great Britain banned horror films, thus cutting off the whole British Empire, Hollywood sent the ghouls back to their graveyards.

Flash forward to 1938, when a flea-pit movie house in Los Angeles began running nightly showings of Dracula and Frankenstein on a double bill. The large crowds that came to watch convinced Hollywood to try again, and a new horror cycle began, kicked off with Son of Frankenstein in 1939, the same year as Return of Doctor X.

Bogart plays the revived mad doctor with a pale complexion and a streak of white in his hair, a la Bride of Frankenstein. He was originally executed for murder, but revived by scientific means. Now, like a vampire, he needs blood to stay alive. That's where the similarity ends. He is not immortal, doesn't sleep in a coffin, doesn't turn into a bat, and does not fear the daylight. He is opposed by a dogged reporter (a staple in Warners' movies from this era) and a doctor who fears one of his colleagues knows more than he's saying.

It's amusing to note that Bogart was not the mega-star he would become as World War 2 was raging. At this point, he was a contract player, taking the roles that were given him, whether he liked them or not. And he hated this one, notably because Warners had gotten cheap and decided not to cast Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi as originally planned. "You can't believe what this one was like," Bogart said. "I was this doctor brought back to life, and the only thing that would nourish this poor bastard was blood. If it had been Jack Warner's blood, I might not have minded as much."

From the time home video came on the market, The Return of Doctor X was not available, though Turner Classic Movies would air it on occasion. But in 2006, it was released as part of a boxed set with other non-Universal horrors including Doctor X, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Mark of the Vampire, The Devil Doll and Mad Love.