Blood for Dracula

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Movie
German title Blood for Dracula
Original title Dracula - Prince of Darkness
Logo blood for dracula.svg
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1966
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Terence Fisher
script John Sansom
Jimmy Sangster
production Anthony Nelson Keys for Hammer Productions
music James Bernard
camera Michael Reed
cut Chris Barnes
occupation

Blood for Dracula is an English horror film by the English film production company Hammer from 1965. It is based on the title character of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker .

action

From the Hammer production, Blood for Dracula was shot in 1965 as a sequel to Dracula . Consequently, the film also begins with the death scene from Dracula (1958) . Van Helsing overwhelms Dracula with a crucifix in his castle and opens the curtains, whereupon the count crumbles to ashes in the rays of the sun.

Ten years later, the English brothers Charles and Alan Kent are vacationing in the Carpathian Mountains with their wives Diana and Helen . There you meet the abbot Shandor, who warns you not to continue your journey to Karlsbad and above all to the castle there. Nevertheless, the two couples travel in the direction mentioned the next day. Shortly before arrival, near the castle, her coachman leaves her because he is afraid of the falling darkness. However, they find refuge in the castle that belongs to Count Dracula, where the grim Gabor (originally "Klove"), the Count's servant, receives them. During the night the servant lures Alan into the castle's crypt and murders him. His blood, poured on Dracula's kept ashes, is used to resurrect Dracula. Count Dracula then immediately claims Alan's wife Helen as his first victim and turns the brittle housewife into a lustful vampire. When Charles and Diana search for the two missing, they are cornered by Dracula and the disinhibited Helen. But they manage to escape anyway: Diana's cross jewelry burns itself into Helen's unclean flesh like a red-hot iron; with the cross the two keep the vampires at bay.

Abbot Shandor gives the refugees accommodation in his monastery. The count is following her there, as he is particularly after Diana. Helen begs in front of Diana's window until she opens the window for her former sister-in-law, the vampire immediately rushes forward, bites Diana on the arm, but is driven away by Abbot Shandor. With the assistance of Charles, he burns the young woman's bite out again with an oil lamp, so that Diana is spared the evil of vampirism. Meanwhile, Helen was captured by the monks, the strong men have trouble dragging the mad woman onto a massive table. Helen writhes and bites until Shandor drives an iron rod through her heart and ends her undead existence. When Count Dracula fails to make Diana one of his victims, he takes her, with the help of Gabor, to his castle in his carriage. Charles and Shandor follow him. At the bridge in front of Dracula Castle, the Count's coffin falls from the carriage onto the frozen castle moat. Charles runs to the coffin to stake Dracula, but the sun sets and Dracula wakes up. When Dracula presses Charles, the desperate Diana shoots at the ice, the vampire pauses when water gushes out of the ice hole. With targeted shots at the ice sheet, Shandor succeeds in drowning the Count in the icy water of the moat.

production

Blood for Dracula follows directly on from the 1958 film Dracula by starting with its death scene.

Christopher Lee doesn't speak in the film - he just makes hissing and hissing noises. Lee claimed that he made up his own mind after reading the script and being dissatisfied with his lines. Other sources say that Anthony Hinds , son of Hammer founder William Hinds , insisted after Lee's complaints about the quality of his text that he had no text to speak at all. Screenwriter Sangster provided a simpler explanation in his autobiography: “Vampires don't chat. So I didn't write him a dialogue. "

Immediately after Blood for Dracula , Rasputin - the mad monk for whom the same stage structures were used - was recorded. A number of actors also appear in both films.

Reviews

“ Horror film from the genre-proven British hammer kitchen. "

- Lexicon of international film

" Christopher Lee doesn't speak a word in his second" Dracula "appearance - allegedly the script sentences were too stupid for him - but that makes his appearance even more demonic. "

- Cinema

“ [...] one of the weaker films in the sub-genre. (Rating: 1½ stars = moderate) "

- Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz

Sequels

In the last film in the Dracula series, Christopher Lee was no longer ready to take on the role of the Count, so Hammer hired actor John Forbes-Robertson for the part.

Others

  • At its premiere, Blood for Dracula was mercilessly panned by the critics , but that didn't hurt the box office success. That is why numerous sequels to the Dracula series were filmed at Hammer in the following years.
  • Was filmed in the same scenes from the 1958 film version, in addition they are also the best selling films, The Plague of the Zombies ( The Plague of the Zombies ,) Rasputin the Mad Monk and The Reptile (all from 1966) to see.
  • Working titles for Blood for Dracula were known as Revenge of Dracula , The Bloody Scream of Dracula and Dracula 3 .
  • Francis Matthews later starred in the television series Paul Temple ( Durbridge films ), Charles Tingwell was Inspector Craddock in the " Miss Marple " films with Margaret Rutherford , where Francis Matthews also starred in Murderers Ahoy .
  • Composer James Bernard was practically the house composer of the Hammer production and set almost all of the company's horror and science fiction films to music.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0059127/combined
  2. ↑ Interview with Christopher Lee on cinefantastiqueonline.com (English, via archive.org), accessed on December 29, 2018
  3. ↑ a b Denis Meikle, Christopher T. Koetting: A History of Horrors: The Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer , Scarecrow Press, 2009, p. 150 ff.
  4. ^ Jimmy Sangster: Inside Hammer , Reynolds & Hearn, p. 114.
  5. ↑ Blood for Dracula. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 98.