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The castle is seen with autumn-afternoon brightness in the opening credits, the camera pans from the stony bird of prey on the tower and tilts down to the crypt and blood drips on the coffin inside. The paraphrasing of Stoker wastes no time, Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) is a slayer disguised as a librarian and promptly bitten by the beautiful captive (Valerie Gaunt). A gong announces Christopher Lee wrapped in a cape at the top of the stairs, he descends for an El Greco close-up and there's Dracula—not the Lugosi courtliness but a brute's seductive thrust, hissing ferally when in full flight. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) arrives just in time to see the Count depart in a hearse, the "vile contagion" reaches home: At once pallid and flushed, Lucy (Carol Marsh) flings open the bedroom window and trembles in anticipation, caressing the teeth marks on her lithe neck. "Victims consciously detest being dominated by vampires but are unable to relinquish the practice," pontificates the prim professor, "similar to addiction to drugs." An irruption of the visceral into the antiseptic, the Hammer aesthetic consolidated by Terence Fisher as an advance upon The Curse of Frankenstein. The vampiress in flowing gown beckons the servant's young daughter in the woods, her attentions shift to her brother (Michael Gough) until a crucifix leaves a smoldering mark on her flesh. The gothic dance of repression and desire continues later as Mina (Melissa Stribling) blossoms from demure housewife to eager mistress in Dracula's company, a shrieking owl alerts the cuckold outside. (A hearty cameo punctuates the stateliness, Miles Malleson as an undertaker with an anecdote: "He came to pay his last respects and he remained to share them!") Crossed candlesticks and stained glass prepare the concluding composition, the dusty ring and the Aquarius glyph. With Olga Dickie, Janina Faye, and Charles Lloyd Pack.
--- Fernando F. Croce |