Cushing's Van Helsing (who alternately is called "Helsing" in the film) is suitably authoritative, but I find his amoral Frankenstein more fun to watch. He definitely wields a mean stake, though. Unlike so many vampire pics, the act of staking clearly takes a strong forearm (remember that Buffy ep where Willow dispatched a vamp with a sharpened number two pencil?) and more than one hammering. Director Fisher knew that dispatching vampires was exertive work more than a calling, and his staging of the story's second big vampire slaying - the second death of the once innocent Lucy Holmwood - emphasizes that fact. In Hammer's heroes, you can also see the roots of Sean Connery's teeth-gritting James Bond; when Cushing's fearless vampire hunter leaps and slides across a table to bring down a light-shielding curtain in his final fight with Drac, you can't help flashing on Bond sliding across the floor of Fort Knox, reaching for that big ol' wire to electrocute the imposing Odd Job.
In short: an enjoyable DVD and my favorite of the early Hammers (Curse of Frankenstein shows its budgetary limitations more clearly, while the studio's remake of The Mummy is kinda plodding). And as with the recently issued Universal Legacy mosnter movie packs, I'm hoping that the upcoming Van Helsing renews enough interest in this type of material to spark future DVD sets. Keep your candlesticks crossed. . .
Article comments
1 - Chris Kent
Bill,
As usual, an excellent post on one of Hammer's finest horror films. If memory serves, wasn't this the second Hammer horror film? Curse of Frankenstein coming out the year before?
Christopher Lee has always been my favorite Dracula for numerous reasons, with your definition - "he's an attractive vicious bastard" - being just about as good as it gets. I believe there were seven Lee/Dracula films, and I am quite fond of Dracula Prince of Darkness (#2) and The Scars of Dracula (#5)......both including spectacular death scenes of the Count.
Didn't Christopher Lee also star in an Italian Dracula film outside of the Hammer stable? I believe it was a traditional (though dubbed) version of the Stoker novel? I recall seeing it on the late, late, late show about 100 years ago, and Lee was adorned in mustache and smoking jacket......I haven't seen it since.
2 - Bill Sherman
Yup, Curse of Frankenstein was the first of the all-out Hammer horror pics. Prior to that the company primarily focused on detective pics and other B-pic genre exercises (they did at least one Robin Hood film, for instance), with much of the material being adapted from radio dramas. The company's celebrated Quatermass s-f series, the debut of which predates Curse, had its roots in a radio drama.
I saw the more "traditional" Italian Dracula with Lee on a middle-of-the-night airing, too. Remember it as being pretty stodgy, but perhaps I was just too tired. . .