If this isn't one of the best lookin' title cards you've ever seen, I'll bite your neck!!!
It was a cold and windy night when it all began!! Yes, it's yet another classic Hammer vampire tale, this time, it's the story of "The Brides of Dracula!"
It's quite a simple story really, and it all begins when the totally lovely Yvonne Monlaur as Marianne Danielle first appears on the scene!
One of the first people Yvonne meets is Martita Hunt as the Baroness Meinster, or as everyone else knows her, Dracula's mother!!!
Yvonne goes off to spend the night with the lonely baroness, and, of coure she doesn't listen when told not to release the baroness's nice guy son, because he's not really a nice guy!!
Yvonne is pretty dumb, and is quite surprised when she sees that the baroness has been killed by her own son, the nice guy she just released!! Maybe you should have listened to the Mama!! Duh!!!
Unlike last night, now here's a guy that really does look like a vampire!!! David Peel was mostly a TV actor, and this was one of his rare film appearances, and only horror role, except in "The Hands Of Orlac" he played an airplane pilot!!
The rather somber and stoic soundtrack is provided by Master of the Queen's music, Malcolm Williamson, in his only 60's horror outing!!
The brides start coming to life, so enter stage right, the man of many hours, Peter Cushing, this time as Dr. J. Van Helsing again!
Here we have Andree Melly as Gina, before and after she meets Dracula! Gina's appearance as the bride scarred many a young boy's psyche in the 60's, who found it confusing, to be attracted to the devil with her hair down, instead of the innocent angel!!
Time for the big showdown between Dracula and Van Helsing!
You would have thought with Peter Cushing's experience, and the fact that David Peel was such a novice, that he would have put up a better fight!! Pretty easy to see what an amazing actor Peter Cushing really was as he delivers this incredible eye-popping performance!!
Any self-respecting vampire just wouldn't stand a chance to ever feel comfortable in a land with giant burning crosses like this scattered across the countryside. You'd of thought all the vampires would have moved out of the region by now!!
You can find "The Brides Of Dracula" on a double feature DVD with "Curse Of The Werewolf!" Now, that's a bargain you can sink your fangs into!!
7 comments:
Andree Melly! she's even sexier in The Horror Of It All, another guilty pleasure of mine.
Unfortunately "The Horror Of It All" is just one of the many movies that is still lost to our budgetless want list!!
i have a VHS copy- eventually when i get to transfering my tapes to digital i'll send you a copy...
Never cared for blonde Draculas, but his brides are lovely, and Cushing has a chance to make like the swashbuckler at the end.
Said it before and I'm saying it now, Hammer missed an opportunity in never casting Cushing as Von Helsing's black sheep pirate nephew and having him fight Dracula on the bounding main.
That would be very cool Prof, but you know then we'd owe you big time!!
The blonde vampire is a hoot. I really love Hammer films from this era when the film style was very dignified and very British. "We are making a film about vampires, but stiff upper lip and all that."
This is my favorite Hammer movie. It has so many great atmospheric details; the closed locks falling off of the coffin, the midwifing of one of the brides rising from her grave...
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