CHRISTOPHER LEE WITH PETER CUSHING IN 'HORROR OF DRACULA'

Valerie Gaunt facing Christopher Lee's poster image for HORROR OF DRACULA/DRACULA Year: 1958 Rating: ***1/2

While Hammer's groundbreaking horror-remake THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN proved that Frankenstein was a man and not the monster, their follow-up HORROR OF DRACULA was to also show the monstrous Dracula as a man...

And quite dashing and attractive he is... especially when Christopher Lee first shows himself, along with a barrage of sinister music, to solicitor Jonathan Harker, exactly what he's supposed to be... a gentleman wealthy enough to need someone to look over his books, getting his business in order...

Valerie Gaunt in HORROR OF DRACULA

Business both curtailed and ignited by Valerie Gaunt, billed simply as Vampire Woman, the first human baring fangs in a Hammer picture: her first-act with John Van Eyssen's Harker seems like a short film all its own...

In Hammer's previous year's game-changing FRANKENSTEIN remake, she was equally desperate and sexually-driven towards that vehicle's titular character, played by Peter Cushing...

Peter Cushing in HORROR OF DRACULA

Who, as Van Helsing the vampire hunter (and Jonathan Harker's mentor), is actually the true star here: getting not only more screen-time but whose expository-driven investigation (alongside Michael Gough) makes DRACULA (renamed HORROR OF DRACULA) a kind of dark crime-thriller involving bitten/transformed women connected to the film's introductory Harker...

His finance's the rudimentary victim who, played by girl-next-door-cute Carol Marsh, morphs into a zesty vampire-vixen... but should have had more screen-time or perhaps a backstory on her first two bites that we never experience, which would possibly make this DRACULA scarier...

From HORROR OF DRACULA

Made by Hammer's master of atmosphere Terence Fisher, who directed most of their iconic monster classics, DRACULA relies on a brooding sense of impending doom over what his CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN used with more intensely sporadic bursts of monstrous action...

And while that feature is, despite the equally plush Victorian setting, more sparse and steely green-hued, this blood-red HORROR is where Hammer truly proved that Universal's B&W classics could/should be bathed in portrait-like colors: like a Gothic novel's cover brought to life...

Christopher Lee in HORROR OF DRACULA

In fact, many of Hammer's dialogue-driven creature-features feel like watching a book being read, or reading a book you can visually experience, particularly in this somewhat otherwise hit/miss venture that gets repetitive with the rotation of women under the same passive-to-sinister transformation... plus the fact we never see enough of Lee's initial seduction of either starlet...

Where middle-aged wife Melissa Stribling is a far more intriguing, sexually-driven conquest than the younger/prettier fiance while Peter Cushing and the underused Christopher Lee, beginning what would always seem like guest-starring in his own films, are part of a climax so enthralling you'll wish this DRACULA was more hellbound than spellbound throughout.

Christopher Lee in HORROR OF DRACULA

Valerie Gaunt in HORROR OF DRACULA

Valerie Gaunt in HORROR OF DRACULA

Christopher Lee in HORROR OF DRACULA

John Van Eyssen in HORROR OF DRACULA

John Van Eyssen in HORROR OF DRACULA

Valerie Gaunt in HORROR OF DRACULA

Peter Cushing and Barbara Archer in HORROR OF DRACULA

Michael Gough and Melissa Stribling in HORROR OF DRACULA

Carol Marsh in HORROR OF DRACULA

Janina Faye with Melissa Stribling in HORROR OF DRACULA

Peter Cushing in HORROR OF DRACULA

Carol Marsh in HORROR OF DRACULA

Carol Marsh in HORROR OF DRACULA

Carol Marsh in HORROR OF DRACULA

Carol Marsh in HORROR OF DRACULA

Michael Gough in HORROR OF DRACULA

Carol Marsh in HORROR OF DRACULA

Peter Cushing in HORROR OF DRACULA

Michael Gough and Melissa Stribling in HORROR OF DRACULA

Melissa Stribling in HORROR OF DRACULA

Christopher Lee in HORROR OF DRACULA

Peter Cushing in HORROR OF DRACULA

From in HORROR OF DRACULA