Horror of Dracula
(1958)
Terrence Fisher
Hammer Studios are known for their "remakes" of the 1930's 1940's horror films. There is a question about "remakes" and just what it means, especially when it comes to material from source which was not a film. For example, is the Polanski Macbeth considered a remake of the Welles Macbeth? Generally not. So in a sense a remake is not a film which adapts the same material, but perhaps can be defined as one in which material which occurs only in the first film but not in the original source is repeated. The Hammer films are sufficiently different that one wonders if the term remake actually applies, or whether these are simply films using the same source materials.
Although the the Universal films are often held to begin with the 1931 Dracula, there are several horror films which pre date it.
Some Universal films pre-1931
Universal began to make a series of horror films which would become the classic films of the genre. The major films start with Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932) through The Wolf Man (1941) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
The early sound films made stars of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney Jr. (whose father had starred in the earlier ones).
By the late 1950’s a British studio called Hammer Studios (later known as “the house that dripped blood”) decided to remake the Universal films and thereby made stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The first horror experiments started with The Quatermass Experiment based on a British TV show
Something about XXX rating and subtext of many horror films as sexual.
DRACULA - THE HORROR OF DRACULA (U.S. Title)
1958
Terence Fsher
The film is one of the early releases of the Hammer Studios which came to be known as “The House that Dripped Blood”. The studio is well known for its series of horror films which it produced during the 1950s and 60s which relied heavily on the ones produced in the US by Universal International. Hammer was founded in 1934 by William Hinds. Its first film was The Private Life of Henry the Ninth a spoof on a film called The Private Life of Henry the VIII. Henry the VIII was produced by the famous Alexander Korda who would be involved with Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger. Later he company entered into distribution under the name “Exclusive Films after Hinds met a Spaniard living in Britain named Enrique Carreras and the two joined forces. The first 4 films were a rather odd assortment = a mystery called The Bank Messenger Mystery, a rather strange The Mystery of the Mary Celeste (US – The Phantom Ship with Bela Lugosi); Song of Freedom with the famous Paul Robeson and finally a farce called Sporting Love. The company was liquidated in 1937, but survived.
The company was revived in 1938 as the production arm of Exclusive. It did a number of “quota quickies” – low budget films to keep the number of British films up and showing (this had all kinds of ramifications with the US whose exports became limited).
In 1951 the company began shooting at their Bray Studios. It is however in 1955 that Hammer starts its move into the science fiction/horror genres. The first production in this vein was an adaptation of Nigel Keene’s BBC television serial The Quatermass Experiment. The company had become involved with an American producer named Robert Lippert and Lippert and Exclusive became the distributors of Hammer Films on both sides of the Atlantic. It also meant that American performers would appear in the Hammer films. About this time, Britain had introduced a rating system and there was a new “X” rating for horror and so The Quatermass Experiment (1955) changed its name to The Quatermass Xperiment and was followed by X the Unknown (1956) to capitalize on the X rating. The scripts were submitted to the British Board of Film Censors, some of whom were appalled by what X the Unknown promised viewers. Problems with Keene and his stories delayed the third (and probably the best) of the Quatermass series until 1967.
It is however, with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) that the horror cycle referencing the Universal series really begins. Terence Fisher who had been hired by Hammer to direct their 1952 film The Last Page (Man Bait in the US) was given the task of directing the Frankenstein film and would be forever involved with the Hammer Horror cycle.
One of the problems was that while the Mary Shelley story. Frankenstein was well out of copyright, the The Curse of Frankenstein was closer to Universals The Son of Frankenstein and hence copyright infringements became a problem. From the British point of view there were worse problems. Not only did the film promise all horror and graphic violence expected, but it would all be shot in Eastman color! The Board paled when the read the script and from that alone, they claimed it went well beyond anything they had given the X rating to and could not promise the film would get past them. Non the less, Hammer went ahead with an “uncompromised” script and teamed friends Peter Cushing (26 May 1913 - 11 August 1994) (Frankenstein) and Christopher Lee (27 May 1922 - 7 June 2015,) (the monster). Vincent Price was also born on May 27 but 1911 died 25 October 1993) They had appeared together earlier in a 1948 production of Hamlet, Moulin Rouge in i952 and Alexander the Great on 1956. The “Frankenstein” film was followed by Dracula (The Horror of Dracula) the next year once again pairing Cushing and Lee this time as van Helsing and Dracula.
The studio revived all the Universal horror film characters except the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Frankenstein Films after The Curse of Frankenstein
Dracula Films - After Dracula
The Mummy films (n Addition to The Mummy)
Additional Films
DRACULA
Dracula was written in 1897 by Abraham (Bram) Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912), an Irishman who was involved with theater. It is a “gothic horror” novel. Gothic horror is a narrative form which is defined by a combination of horror, death and romance. Generally seen as starting with a 1764 novel The Castle of Ortranto by Horace Walpole. Generally Romanticism is seen as a reaction against the Enlightenment which argued for “intuition” and “pastoral” over “scientific/urban/rational” It often involved in the romanticism of death and the literature usually had young lovers dying. Some places were actually built to appear as though they were “ruins”. The term “gothic” refers to an architectural style in which the stories happened
In addition to Dracula, Stoker wrote several novels including The Lair of the White Worm which has also been made into a film.
Dracula appears as a play in 1924. The adaptation was authorized by Stoker’s widow. It was adapted by Hamilton Deane, who had planned to play Dracula but in the end opted for van Helsing and Raymond Huntley (London cast) or Edmund Blake (Derby cast) became the first Dracula. The play was performed in England for 3 years before settling in London.
An American version opened in 1927 with revisions by John L. Balderston. In this production Hungarian born Bela Lugosi played Dracula and van Helsing was played by Edward van Sloane – both of whom made the film.
A filmed version (Drakula) is reported to have been made in 1920 in Russia and would have been the first Dracula filmed although virtually nothing is known about it. A 1921 version called Dracula’s Death (also presumed lost) It seems not to have followed the Stoker book though, and deals with a woman who visits an insane asylum who meets an inmate claiming to be Drakula and she has trouble deciding whether his tales are real or not.
The most famous early film still in existence is F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors). The Stoker estate sued (and won) for copyright infringement (there was no permission to use the Dracula – it had been refused) All copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed and the company went bankrupt. Some pirated copies went untouched.
When the play ran on Broadway, there was a nurse in attendance in case someone fainted, and faint they did (whether real or staged who can say). But the fainting was generally in the same place: when Dracula enters the woman’s bedroom. The sexual implications were obvious along with the bite on the neck.
The 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi made by Universal is seen as the first film in the “Universal Horror Cycle”. The English version and Spanish version were filmed with different casts on the same sets at the same time – the English one in the daytime, the Spanish at night.
The novel is told in a set of diary entries kept by various people. The staged and films versions alter the book in many ways by merging characters and so on. This is not unusual in theatrical adaptations.
Comparisons between the Universal film with Lugosi and Hammer’s with Lee are inevitable. Lugosi didn’t speak much English and did the part virtually phonetically which gives him a strange almost otherworldly quality. Pauses are in odd places and so on. The intonation is clearly not native. This is fine, since English would not have been native to Dracula anyway. The Lugosi Dracula (6 ft 1 inch) is suave and continental, Lee’s Dracula at 6’5” is far more athletic and physical.
The film is in Eastman color and had a few short scenes cut out of it which have been restored from a Japanese print in poor condition.
A WORD ABOUT THE ANTI RATIONALE. DOES IT RELATE TO REFLEXIVITY? Review 5 subtexts: Socio-political-economic; religious; scientific technological; psycho-sexual; reflexivity.
Is art anti-rational?
The idea of set pieces, scopophila and specularization.
Set piece: high point of film (often as it relates to a genera).
Scopophilia (Desire to see – for the audience it is the set piece)
Specularize (The way in which the director makes the set piece stand out)
There are many things to observe in the film both in images and in sound. See what you can find.
AFTER THE FILM
For those who have seen the Lugosi Dracula will see the enormous differences between the two Hammer was headed very much in an exploitation direction but non the less managed a powerful film well shot by Jack Asher who shot several of the Hammer Horrors.
The music for the film is by James Bernard who scored many of the Hammer films. The background music (non diegetic) and that wothin the world of the film (diegetic) may come entirely from outside sources (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey) or may come from other films (e.g. Flash Gordon). Some films may have music is is partially original and partially from other sources (e.g. Sunrise) .Often the scores are in a romantic style and often use "leitmotifs" as developed by Richard Wagner in whose operas many people, things and events have a specific melody associated with them and can often be heard when he wants the audience to think of something other than what the character is singing about, or to give information to the audience. bernard here, for example, uses a three note melody which says "Dra-cu-la".
The film plays with some horror film elements which we have not discussed. Generally one technique is to hide of mask things. For example, Dracula’s first entrance is a very menacing silhouette on the top of the stairs. He rapidly descends the stairs but is most cordial. These reversals of a common trope cause the audience to be unprepared for what is happening.
The film also supplies the viewers with some information in case they do not know anything abut vampires: In his dictaphone speech the viewer hears about the problems vampires have with sunlight, garlic and crosses. The film also argues against any kind of animal trnasformations (costly - and physically akward since the change in shape would not change the mass. A 180 pound human vampire at 6 feet would become a 180 pound 3 foot bat. The ability to fly would be more than slightly limited! The only one missing is the one concerning mirrors. Mirrors are a trope in most vampire films. They produce something unreal (it is a reflection not a person) and hence show the "double" of the person - the soul which vampires ostensibly lack. Compare for example the mirror sequence in Dead of Night
Film opens with slow camera movement which makes the stone bird appear to move. Inanimate thing given life (like corpse?)
This Dracula far more physical than Lugosi’s. Sexual innuendoes are still there – violence has grown, but not sexuality.
Special effects are not involved in transformations into bats, wolves and so on (budget problems). Lighting and set design, photography and music crucial
Dracula’s castle interiors done with “false perspective” to give greater depth to the sets.
Color schemes: lots of red and blue (blood night) very little green (life? Vegetation?) What is the danger from Dracula? Loss of life and soul. Van Helsing likens vampirism to an addiction like drugs, but the vampire story predates the drug cultures of the 60's, but in this film. not by much. There are many questions about vampire stories and their meaning, How is the danger transmitted? Through bite. Does this sound like a sexually transmitted disease (STD)? In some senses this is what is happening and by and large, in the context of women’s bedrooms. The female vampire attempts to bite Harker.
Compare the first appearance of Dracula with the one where he enters with blood on his teeth. Build up?
What about his entry into Lucy’s bedroom? Far more subtle and “sexual”
There are comic scenes in the film. What do yu make of these?