Dracula (1958)

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Movie
German title Dracula
Original title Dracula
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1958
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Terence Fisher
script Jimmy Sangster
production Michael Carreras
Anthony Hinds
Anthony Nelson Keys for Hammer Productions
music James Bernard
camera Jack Asher
cut Bill Lenny
James Needs
occupation

Dracula is a 1958 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher . The film is based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker , with Christopher Lee as Count and Peter Cushing as his adversary Van Helsing. The film opened in German cinemas on December 12, 1958.

action

Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania , where he has applied to be a librarian at Count Dracula's castle . But in fact Harker is a vampire hunter who has decided to destroy the unsuspecting Dracula. In the library, Harker is attacked by a vampire woman who pretends to be one of the count's prisoners. But Dracula himself intervenes with red eyes and bared teeth. With a wave of his hand he throws the woman across the room and knocks Jonathan unconscious. When he comes to, he looks for the crypt, where he first eliminates the vampire woman by driving a wooden stake through her heart. However, when Harker turns to the count's coffin, the latter has already woken up and makes him his equal. As Harker's partner, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, who has not heard from him for a long time and visits the castle himself, only has the sad duty to redeem Jonathan. Meanwhile, the Prince of Vampires sets out to find Jonathan's fiancée Lucy Holmwood and take revenge.

Van Helsing visits Lucy's family to express his condolences on Jonathan's death and learns that her health has been going downhill for several days. Van Helsing becomes suspicious and recommends draping the room with garlic , but Lucy's brother Arthur does not believe in the peculiar treatment methods and rejects the doctor. It is only when Lucy dies and is resurrected as a bloodsucking revenant that he realizes what he is dealing with. Together they stake her, giving her peace.

Meanwhile, Mina, Arthur's wife, has come under Dracula's influence. Arthur and Van Helsing try to protect Mina by watching her room from the garden. Dracula still manages to bite Mina a second time. By donating blood, the two succeed in preventing Mina's death. They find out that Dracula's hiding place is in the basement of the Holmwood house.

After Dracula's hiding place has been found, he kidnaps Mina and escapes back to his castle. There he tries to hide in the vaults under the castle, but is tracked down by Van Helsing and a fight ensues in which the doctor seems to be defeated. At the last moment he notices the rising sun shining through a crack in the heavy curtains. He tears down the curtains and uses a crucifix to force the vampire prince into the glaring sunlight, where he finally passes. Only his clothes, the signet ring and some ashes remain.

Differences from the novel

The film uses set pieces from the novel by Bram Stoker , but the content is very different. For example, the characters Morris and Renfield are missing. As in the original, Harker is not a realtor who traps Dracula ignorantly, but works with Van Helsing as a vampire hunter. While Harker escapes from the castle in the novel and ultimately helps Dracula to be killed, in the film adaptation he dies in the castle and is found in a coffin by Van Helsing.

At the end of the film, Dracula dies from daylight, which is fatal for vampires, with Stoker, on the other hand, Dracula was able to walk through London in broad daylight, where he only loses his supernatural powers in daylight, which only come back after nightfall .

The person constellations have also been changed, so instead of Mina, Lucy is now Harker's lover. Because the entire plot takes place in Transylvania (in the German version in Great Britain), the original location of the plot, which begins in Romania, then mostly takes place in London and ends up traveling back to Transylvania, is also not kept.

background

  • The film version of Dracula from 1958 was the first adaptation of this classic material by the English film production company Hammer , which coined the term "Gothic horror" coined on them with this successful film. The loving equipment and the excellent actors contributed significantly to the success of the film. The film was shot in color, which, however, met with displeasure from some horror film fans because, in their opinion, black and white creates a better atmosphere in this film genre .
  • The production and acting team, with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the leading roles, was mostly retained in the following hammer films. In particular, film templates from Universal Studios from the 1930s were reworked. However, these were not just simple remakes , but rather Hammer often managed to create his own interpretations. Compared to the famous Dracula film from 1931 with Bela Lugosi in the lead role, this film is more action-packed. The almost two meter tall Christopher Lee gave the person Dracula a very unique appearance, and for Peter Cushing the role of Van Helsing was another star role after his appearance in Frankenstein's Curse (1957).
  • In the original English version of the film, Eastern Europe is never left because the film company could not afford to portray a crossing by ship. In the German version, however, the entire action takes place in Great Britain , the town of Klausenberg becomes Waterfield in the synchronization .
  • By thick makeup barely visible, played a supporting role depicted as an old porter Geoffrey Bayldon with which more than ten years later, also by thick makeup almost unrecognizable, the title role in the youth series Catweazle embodied.
  • The film works with a whole series of barely noticeable but effective psychological “tricks”: Towards the end of the film, van Helsing audibly runs up the stairs in Dracula's castle, while the steps of the pursued Dracula cannot be heard.
  • Many inscriptions can be found in German in the film , for example Dracula's letter in the castle, which is deposited with Harker, is in German, and the sign at the funeral home reads “Burial Institute J. Marx”. This is already included in the original version and does not constitute post-processing for the German version.

Sequels

The film was a huge financial hit for Hammer and resulted in a number of sequels. In Dracula and His Brides , which was written in 1960, Peter Cushing played Professor Van Helsing again, but Christopher Lee was not there. Instead, there was a blond-haired vampire named Baron Meinster, so this film is usually not included in the Dracula series by Hammer Studios.

In the following six sequels, Christopher Lee again played Count Dracula, with Blood for Dracula (1965) directly following the 1958 film by starting with the latter's dying scene.

In the last film in the Dracula series ( The 7 Golden Vampires from 1974), Christopher Lee was no longer ready to take on the role of the Count. So Hammer hired actor John Forbes-Robertson for the part.

Reviews

“ Remake of the Stoker film from 1931, smoothed out, less dramatic than dramatically impressive; Lee reshaped the role of the vampire; this British version of the bloodsucking Count is considered literary correct. (Rating: 3 stars = very good) "

- Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz : Lexicon "Films on TV"

“In this version of the English Hammer production, the multiple filmed material by Bram Stoker is prepared true to the factory and with staging care. "

- Lexicon of international film

“ This 'vampire' story, too, was staged so disgustingly absurdly that one has to put in custody. Discouraged. "

- 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958.

Film music

  • James Bernard: The Dracula Suite. On: Music From the Hammer Films. London: Silva Screen Records 1989

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV". Hamburg: Rasch and Röhring 1990. ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 166.
  2. ↑ Dracula. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958. - Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism. Düsseldorf: Altenberg 1963, p. 79.