Vampires Read Online Free PDF Page A

Does he retire, or take a holiday? Peter Cushing would play quite a few variants on the image of Van Helsing in Hammer’s sixteen year run that will be discussed later. His doctor here would be carried over to the next movie, The Brides of Dracula (1960) that would permanently typify him as the one and only Van Helsing. Vampire slayer par excellence!
    Michael Gough and Melissa Stribling play the Holmwood’s, Arthur and Mina. They live quietly in Victorian seclusion with Arthur’s sister, a precocious Carol Marsh as Lucy, their maid Gerda, Olga Dickie, and her daughter, Tanya, Janina Faye, although the action is never transferred to London and everywhere can be reached by the comfort of a swift coach ride. When Dr Seward, Charles Lloyd Pack, fails to diagnose Lucy’s symptoms, Mina calls on the services of Van Helsing. He immediately pinpoints the illness as vampirism and swings into action. Unfortunately, the heroes are beaten back when Gerda removes the prescribed dose of garlic flowers and the girl becomes a victim of Dracula. She entices young Tanya to take midnight walks and hints at an incestuous relationship with her camp brother, Arthur, before succumbing to Van Helsing’s graphic staking. When Lucy is dispatched, the vampire turns his sights on Mina, who moves his coffin into her own cellars to outfox the hunters. Drained of blood, she is forced to take the blood transfusion, and, when Gerda refuses to go into the cellar on her mistress’s command, Van Helsing realizes why their midnight vigilance failed to trap the vampire. He was already inside!
    Hammer’s Dracula is the first movie to convincingly allude to the Count’s sexual magnetism. Valerie Gaunt, Melissa Stribling and Carol Marsh are pioneers in the aspect of showing visible lust and satisfied smirks after Dracula’s advances. The only other Count Dracula film to even hint at an underlying sexuality with blatant arrogance had been the little seen Dracula Istanbul’da/Dracula in Istanbul (1953) with Atif Kaptan. When Lucy is on the turn, she lays on her bed, wild-eyed with anticipation and stares at the open French windows awaiting her lover, while lovingly revealing the two pin pricks of passion at her throat. Mina secretes the Count’s coffin in her cellars and waits for her lover to rise. The vampire in the Count’s castle retreat played by Valerie Gaunt is a man-eater of the worst type, telling lies with tearful, breathy excitement to wandering strangers before eagerly snapping at their throats. One of the few constants in the Hammer Dracula series, indeed, their whole film output, would be the beautiful ladies who graced their movies with such deadly, sensual charm.
    Christopher Lee came to world-wide prominence in the role of Count Dracula. He had featured in the company’s earlier excursion into horror, The Curse of Frankenstein , as the creature – a role that nearly went to Carry On regular Bernard Bresslaw – and admits regularly in interviews that he had played all kinds of characters in the preceding ten years. His first part was a gate-crashing, spear carrying, extra in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1947) and by the mid-fifties; he was becoming very disillusioned about continuing his acting career in the UK, deciding instead to take himself across the pond where tall actors were very much in demand. But, like Boris Karloff before him, Frankenstein’s creature proved to be the lucky turning point in his life. When Dracula was announced, no other actor was auditioned for the part, and history has proven that not many more have been able to fill his midnight cape. With a bare minimum of screen time and even less dialogue that amounts to just fifteen lines, Lee takes full command of the role, keeping his brides in check with glaring, red-eyed, ferocity and swatting aside puny male resistance with the sweep of the hand. His Dracula is a jealous domestic abuser whose motive for his vampire shenanigans is the killing of his bride as she