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Synopsis: French schoolteacher Marianne Danielle is on her way to a new post in Transylvania. She stops in a sleepy little town just short of her destination, where her coachman will take her no further after dark. The innkeeper won't give her a room, but advises her to stay inside after dark. With nowhere to go, she accepts the hospitality of Baroness Meinster, who resides in the nearby castle. Marianne soon learns that things aren't quite right at the castle. The baroness's son, the rightful Baron Meinster, is kept prisoner in his room. He implores Marianne to help him escape from his hateful mother, and Marianne agrees. Unfortunately, the Baroness has a valid reason for imprisoning her son: unbeknownst to Marianne, the Baron is a vampire. During the row between the Baron and his mother, Marianne flees back to the village, where she falls under the care of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing sees Marianne to her teaching post, then begins to investigate the strange doings at Castle Meinster. Meanwhile, the Baron follows Marianne to her school and proposes marriage to her. Smitten--and still ignorant of the Baron's true nature--she agrees...

Cult Reputations: Some fans of Hammer Horror movies rate Brides of Dracula as the second best entry in the series after the first film. Part of that reputation is earned by the film--it's pretty good for what it is--but part of it comes from its intermittent availability. The other Hammer films have been relatively easy to see. Not so this film. Nothing builds a cult reputation like being hidden from sight. I like the film, but it's not my favorite of Hammer's Dracula films.

Nit Picking: To my mind, The Brides of Dracula has two major problems:

First, there's no Dracula. Christopher Lee, fearing that he would be typecast as Dracula, refused the film. Eventually, Hammer DID lure him back to the role (in Dracula: Prince of Darkness six years after Brides of Dracula and afterwards) and Lee's fears about the part proved to be entirely justified. Lee's replacement, David Peel, isn't in the same league. Oh, he's fine with what he's given to do, but he doesn't command the screen the way Lee did, or the way Peter Cushing does as Van Helsing. There's nothing to be done for it, really, because charisma isn't something one can bottle. In any event, this tends to make the film relatively one-sided, and creates a minor deficiency in the first half of the film, given that Cushing doesn't make his appearance until after the forty-minute mark.

The second problem is one of internal consistency. Horror of Dracula established certain rules for Hammer's vampires: no transformations into bats, no fogs, no controlling vermin. Hammer drastically limited Dracula's powers. The Brides of Dracula, by contrast, puts those powers back into play. Baron Meinster can turn himself into a bat. Whether he gets the full spectrum of vampiric abilities isn't specified, but the film doesn't deny them to him, either. Subsequent films in the series revert to the rules of Horror of Dracula. Mind you, as a one-off creation, I have no real problem with this in principle, but in demonstrating Baron Meinster's abilities, it calls into question some of the plot points that set up the movie. If, for example, the Baron can turn into a bat, how can he be restrained by the shackles that are shown to imprison him? This is nit-picky, I admit, but the accumulation of these kinds of details bothers me, especially in light of the film's ending, in which the laws of physics are broken to give the audience a baroque, unexpected method of slaying the vampire. As the Baron flees a burning windmill, Van Helsing dangles himself from the vanes so that their shadow will make a cross over the Baron, thus destroying him. Unfortunately, the wall of the windmill is visibly intact behind Van Helsing, so the shadow cast upon Baron Meinster is physically impossible. Alas...

Performances: Unlike many Hammer productions, the supporting characters are asked to bear this film on their backs for great whacks of its running time. Of particular note is Martitia Hunt as the Baroness Meinster, who seems like the villain of the piece at the outset. When she plays her final scene, in which she begs release from Van Helsing, the audience has come over to her side. Also of note is Freda Jackson as the Meinster's servant, who gets the film's most grotesque scene as she coaxes one of the Baron's victims out of her grave. Ultimately, the film belongs to Peter Cushing. Cushing was an amazingly flexible actor, capable of complete monstrosity or deeply-felt goodness, and many points in between. His Van Helsing is the polar opposite of his turns as Doctor Frankenstein, in spite of the common profession. Cushing's Van Helsing is a model of moral rectitude and the light of reason. He understands evil and knows what steps must be taken to combat it. In a surprising turn late in the film, Van Helsing is actually bitten by a vampire; Cushing sells the idea that Van Helsing has armed himself with the knowledge of how to cure himself of the bite. Another actor might not be credible, but the audience believes Cushing implicitly.

The Road Not Taken: One aspect of The Brides of Dracula that Hammer chose not to pursue when Christopher Lee returned to the cape was the notion that Van Helsing was a character worth following in subsequent movies as a hero in his own right. They could have built a franchise around Van Helsing. Forty-four years later, Universal Pictures would get this idea into their heads. That experiment didn't turn out so well, alas, so anyone who likes the idea should content themselves with this particular oddity.

5/06/06.