Dracula (1958)

I'll tell you why so serious

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

Considered quite brutal and excessively graphic in its day (1958) - "Horror of Dracula" (a Hammer Production) was really surprisingly tame by today's gore-infested standards of over-the-top, blood-saturated vampire movies.But - All the same - This particular horror film of glorified blood-lust is notable for being one of the very first vampire films to initiate the whole ultra-violent, blood-thirst trend that has continued (at full-throttle) to this very day.I think that it's interesting to note that this particular film-version of Bram Stoker's famed vampire story has Count Dracula's castle situated just outside the paranoid, little village of Klausenberg (not the expected, Transylvania).Anyway - Though this film did have its horrific moments - (Stake through the heart, anyone?) - It really wasn't anywhere near to being as sinister and savage as I was expecting it to be.

Yes to this movie if you are a fan. It captures the theme quite nicely and as a bonus we get to good movie stars to play important parts making this entertaining. The movie travels along nicely and keeps the viewers interest no problem. I am currently reading the book by Bram Stoker and highly recommend this to all fans of the subject matter. I don't mind telling you that when I was a kid, I thought those two little holes in the neck were made by those fangs and then the fangs functioned as straws slurping it all up. Just recently I was surprised to find out that those fangs are puncture type tools and that a process similar to giving one a hickey pulls the blood out. It changed my whole perspective watching these movies with this new knowledge. So the fangs are not straws but sort of like a can-opener LOL. I like eating while watching movies but go lightly here as well as on the drink too. Good snack movie however. I enjoyed the sound track when the Count shows up. It sets the mood quite nicely. The Horror of Dracula delivers...enjoy

This is really not a very good movie.It is nowhere near the quality of the 1931 film and at times it is so confused that it approaches Ed Wood levels; and Wood's characters were seldom as lacking in energy and intention as the characters here.The one thing I will give it credit for is the frank sexual aspect that it gives to the vampiric relationship between Christopher Lee's Dracula and his female victims, and I have given it an extra star or two on that account. Although that makes the movie pretty much a celebration of rape fantasies: the tall virile man dominates his prey! The woman is ashamed and fearful, but she thinks only of his coming to her bed! etc.In order to claim that this movie is of higher quality than I've indicated, some process other than normal evaluation must be in play. Perhaps one feels that because this movie played an important part in the history of the Hammer studio and its Dracula franchise, it deserves to be uprated just because of its historical significance? I don't think that's how it works.The story is nowhere near as well thought out as the Abbott and Costello monster movies always were. I will rant about geography for a few sentences just to make my point. The Stoker novel begins in Transylvania; the Count voyages to London; then it ends up in Transylvania again. This is a lot of unnecessary traveling, so the 1931 movie (based on an earlier play) starts in Transylvania and then just has all of the conflict take place in London.The Hammer film decides to save on travel even more, by putting all the action into a sort of tiny space-warped Europe-themed park, at one end of which is Klausenburg (the capital of Transylvania) and at the other of which is Karlstadt, a German city populated by English people, which is 800 miles from Transylvania on the map of Europe but only about 20 miles away in this movie, a brief carriage ride away. You may think this is a picky point, but my real point is that any middle-school student would come up with a geographical approach that made more sense. The middle-school screenwriter would also have more of a sense of the do's and don'ts of vampire-hunting: for example, when you have only a few minutes before sunset to go and kill vampires, don't waste time writing about it in your miserable journal! (In fact it seems that Harker could have just dispatched Dracula in the first minute of this movie if he had had any gumption.)The middle-school screenwriter might think that the male characters should devote more attention to actually preventing the female ones from being killed and converted to vampires, and to care more if they fail in it. But I can't blame that entirely on the screenplay; the blame for the characters' languid attitude has to be shared by the actors and director as well.Much of the vampire-chasing action involves Dracula running out of rooms in order to come back in and make an entrance, taking no thought for the time of day or presence of windows (why does he even have windows in his castle, why hasn't he boarded them up in 600 years). Meanwhile his opponents act as if crucifixes and garlic cost their weight in diamonds, and decline to deploy them as they should. I could go on in this regard, but it isn't worth it.

The first in the Hammer Dracula series--and perhaps the best. I have a hard time deciding between this one and "Risen From the Grave" or even "Dracula: Prince of Darkness."In any event, this was the first on screen clash between Cushing as Van Helsing and Lee as the Immortal Count. Not sure how closely this version follows Bram Stoker's novel having never read it--but it definitely is a departure from the old Universal classic with Lugosi.Dracula can't transform into a bat or a wolf here, but all the other traditions with sunlight, the stake and the crucifix still apply. Here, Jonathan Harker travels to Dracula's castle with the hopes of destroying him, but becomes a victim of Dracula's bride who he destroys before becoming a victim himself.Enter Peter Cushing as the Count's greatest foe, who uncovers Dracula's plot to seek revenge and destroys him in a great finale at the castle when the sun and a makeshift crucifix put an end to Dracula's evil.9 stars...