Vampires (15 page)

Review

Hammer had begun a film treatment for a sequel to their phenomenal success of
Dracula
almost immediately titled
Dracula the Damned.
Despite extensive searching, there is little information to be found on this proposed movie other than it
was
scheduled to star Christopher Lee. Instead another film was drafted by Jimmy Sangster under the title
Disciple of Dracula
that would become known optimistically as
Dracula II
. Without going into too much detail, the script centered on two girls coming under the attention of Baron Meinster. Meinster flouts the laws of the undead by taking the blood of his mother. Van Helsing doesn’t appear in this movie and the vampire hunting is left in the hands of a character named Latour. Latour is versed in the Black Arts and conjures the ghost of Dracula to reap revenge on Meinster by sending a swirling horde of bats to carry his soul to Hell.

Dracula II
became
The Brides of Dracula
and underwent many rewrites. Dracula was dropped from the tale altogether and Van Helsing returned to replace the hunter, Latour. More rewriting removed the extra damsel in distress and a climatic attack on the king vampire by the swarm of bats. This last plot device would be woven into Hammer’s next movie,
Kiss of the Vampire (1962).
The final draft begins with the darkest monologue spoken in Hammer’s
resume:

“Transylvania; land of dark forests, dread mountains and black, unfathomed lakes. Still the home of magic and devilry as the 19
th
century draws to its close. Count Dracula, monarch of all vampires, is dead. But his disciples live on, to spread the cult and corrupt the world!”

Young schoolteacher, Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur) arrives in Transylvania to take up the teaching academy at Badstein. Her coach is waylaid by a mysterious stranger at the inn and she finds herself stranded until the Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt), offers her lodgings at her Chateaux. On the surface everything seems fine until Marianne spots a young man seemingly prepared to commit suicide. Further investigation reveals that he is, in fact, the Baron Meinster who has been chained to his own suite of rooms by his domineering mother. When quizzed by the girl about her unorthodox parenting methods, the Baroness spins a yarn about the Baron being taken ill over a number of years and is only administered to by the housekeeper, Greta, a very unsettling Freda Jackson. After some smooth talk by the Baron, Marianne follows her heart and steals the key to release him from his chains, thereby setting free perhaps the most influential and dangerous vampire in cinematic history.

In lengthy conversation, the Baroness describes her young son being taken in by the wrong crowds. She has indulged her brat and his friends by enjoying their games and their wild drinking until one of them,
“took him!”
Meinster charms the ladies and takes their blood to romantic violin strains on the soundtrack. When cornered by Doctor Van Helsing. He reveals stout lengths of chain from beneath his cloak and his face betrays his happiness at taking blood from another man.  As Greta lament’s,

“The wolves are about, he’ll get ‘em all astir, trust him!”

And so he does, with her as a kind of distaff Renfield whose obsessive love for the boy is never put into question. Using his decadent nature as a tool, he terrorizes the neighbours – none of whom seem to be under fifty years old.

Van Helsing himself turns in the fight of his career. Dracula had been a man of breeding and honour, with an outlook similar to that of the good doctor. Baron Meinster, however, was
a young and strong rebel with no courteous asides to his nature.  His lusts had to be fed in all areas, regardless of whoever stood in his way. Meinster charms and cajoles the young schoolmistress into helping him regain his freedom and turns the tables on mummy by turning her into one of his followers. Greta is given orders to move his coffin to a safe place, a conveniently empty windmill. His eventual downfall is left to the dynamics of Van Helsing who has the knowledge and the courage to defeat his kind. After a very physical battle – in which Peter Cushing’s double is a little over exposed – the doctor forms the shape of the cross from the shadows of the burning windmill as experience triumphs over youthful exuberance.

David Peel retired from acting soon after completing this film. He found that his roles decreased and his last movie role being that of an air pilot, little more than an extra, in another remake of
The Hands of Orlac,
must have swayed his decision to leave the acting profession. He indulged his passion for antiques, art and real estate. He owned an antique shop,
David Peel and Co. Ltd, at 2 Carlos Place, Mount Street, London.
His year of death has conflicting reviews. Some sources quote 1980, others 1981 and further still, 1982!

Peter Cushing cements his reputation as the vampire’s most hated foil in this movie. The actor had insisted on a rewrite to the character before committing himself to the project. This being to omit the final scene of the first draft, in which Van Helsing summons the bats from Hell to defeat the Baron. Cushing reasoned that the doctor would never resort to using black magic. When he enters the film as Van Helsing, he helps the young school mistress and asks that she accompany him on his trip to Badstein. He is answering a distress call from the local priest. Finding Marianne passed out in the forest; he wins her trust with his calm bedside manner and her respect when dealing with the belligerent ogre, Herr Lang, who is the school Dean. At the climax of the movie, the audience is tending towards the thought that his courage against the undead Baron has also won her love. When caught off guard by the Baron, Van Helsing is bitten in the throat. He cauterizes the wound using Holy water and a burning brazier He stakes the Baroness Meinster after she shows him her fangs and witnesses a flapping bat being frightened away by his crucifix. This must have been a real shock to his system, as he had scoffed at the idea of the vampire’s ability to shape shift as,
“A common fallacy”,
in the previous movie. Although, in fairness, we only suspect the bat as being the Baron, as we never see him change on camera. For the record, vampires in Hammer movies only changed into bats in
Vampire Circus (1972)
and
The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974).

One of the biggest of many puzzles surrounding this film remains:
Why did Hammer wait twelve years before they used Peter Cushing as Van Helsing again?
This movie is left wide open as a continuing saga. The doctor has found love and acceptance by the townspeople. It is never made clear if the two brides in the burning windmill actually escape and, on a more positive note, the performance given by Cushing embeds him as the only actor to be able to play the role. Peter Cushing is still the definitive Van Helsing of the cinema.

Martita Hunt plays the haunted Baroness Meinster. She keeps her son chained to his own suite of rooms and takes regular trips to the village in order to procure lunch for him in the shape of young comely females who are travelling alone. Too frightened and repulsed by her son’s curse, she leaves his well-being in the hands of her lifelong maid, Greta, whose carping observations and intuitive advice were proven to be correct in the end. When Baroness Meinster succumbs to the bite of the vampire, she wanders the Ancestral home praying for release that comes in the way of Doctor Van Helsing’s wooden stakes. A truly intimidating actress, Martita Hunt entered into movies in 1932 and had scored a hit as Miss Havisham in David Lean’s
Great Expectations (1946).
She never married and died in 1969. Her nephew was Gareth Hunt of the hit television series
The New Avengers (1976).
Sadly, he also passed away in 2007 from pancreatic cancer.

The brides in the movie are actually left open to debate. Dracula never appears in the finished film – although his name is mentioned twice, once in the prologue and then once again by Van helsing - and his appearance is really only hinted at in the discarded portions of the original screenplays as a vengeful phantom. In
Dracula,
Christopher Lee’s austere Count was witnessed leaving his mountain retreat to make nightly attacks on the neighbouring villages. The staid audience of the 1950s always assumed that his purpose was to pick up wandering ladies. His bi-sexuality is more than hinted at in Bram Stoker’s original novel when the Count beats back his snarling wenches from the prone body of Jonathon Harker and proclaims,
“This man belong
s
to me!”
The Baroness Meinster openly states that,
“We had gay times here”,
when describing her son’s fall from grace. The ladies in the movie are very alluring indeed. Yvonne Monlaur, Andre Melly and Marie Deveraux make up the triplet of fetching females in Stoker’s original draft, but only enter the film as pivotal plot devices. There is more than one hint in the scenario to be led to believe that the real
Bride
of Dracula is the blond Baron Meinster.

Miss Monlaur is billed as the heroine, Marianne Danielle, a ditzy schoolmistress in the Hammer mold who agrees to marry the Baron in just two days after discovering him in their first meeting, shackled to his bedroom by his mum. It is interesting to note that she falls for Cushing’s more experienced Doctor Van Helsing. Andre Melly plays Gina and her jealousy is pricked when Marianne announces her engagement to the Baron. She is bitten soon after and has a great resurrection sequence; rising from a locked coffin she whines to Marianne,
‘Don’t be upset for letting him love me!’
Gina has become something of a cult figure in the world of Horror indeed. Marie Deveraux is a village girl who is attacked off-camera and is coaxed out of the grave in perhaps the film’s most unsettling sequence by mad Greta. Both girls run out into the night to escape Van Helsing, but, disappointingly, have very little to do afterward as the changing scenario of the three drafted scripts seems to lose their focus somewhat. When the Doctor and the Baron face off at the climax, the vampirettes simply huddle into a corner to watch the action unfold and it is never made clear if they burn with their master at the end.
The Brides of Dracula
was one of the first vampire movies that I saw and is, for this author at least, Hammer's finest film on the subject.

Baron Meinster is highlighted as David Peel’s most famous role. Although two years older than Studio Dracula, Christopher Lee, he played the twenty year old blond-haired, blue-eyed mummy’s boy to the hilt and his influence is felt in the descriptions of Anne Rice's character, Lestat De Lioncourt, and those wayward vamp champs that people the cast of television’s
True blood, The Vampire Diaries
and Joss Whedon’s phenomenal hit,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
eventually morphing into the angst-ridden, sparkling teenagers of the
Twilight
movie phenomenon.

With his lavender cloak and pretty boy looks, Peel's undead and debauched aristocrat led the way f
or them all.
The true daddy of the modern vampire.  

Kiss of the Vampire aka Kiss of Evil (1963)
Clifford Evans as
Professor Zimmer
. Noel Willman as
Count Ravna.
Edward De Souza as
Gerald Harcourt
. Jennifer Daniel as
Marianne Harcourt.
Isobel Black as
Tanya
. Screenplay; John Elder/Anthony Hinds. Director; Don Sharp

Synopsis

A honeymooning couple, Gerald and Marianne Harcourt, are stranded in a Bavarian town when their car breaks down. The town is ruled by the mysterious Count Ravna who is the leader of a coven of vampires. Ravna invites the couple to dinner at his castle and, with the help of his son and daughter, begins to seduce Marianne. Meanwhile, Professor Zimmer, the town alcoholic is bitten by a young vampire who is trying to resurrect his dead daughter. When Harcourt wakes from a drunken haze to find all traces of his wife missing, he approaches Zimmer for help. Harcourt finds his wife at Ravna’s castle; she disclaims her love for him by spitting in his face and swearing undying love for the Count. Making the sign of the cross in his own blood, Harcourt escapes. Professor Zimmer concocts an occult spell and thousands of bats attack and kills the vampires in their lair as Marianne is saved and Ravna’s influence fades.