Thirty-One Days O’Horror: The Brides of Dracula (1960)

“He was my son. Now he is only…..a beast of the night.”

A French schoolteacher unwittingly releases a vampire on a small village in the 1960 Hammer production of The Brides of Dracula. In the film, Marianne Danielle is lured to the palace of Baroness Meinster. Little does she know that the baroness actually plans to use Marianne as a meal for her undead son, Baron Meinster. While watching the baron from her window, Marianne rushes to stop him when she believes that he is about to commit suicide. He tells her how his mother has imprisoned him in her castle and asks Marianne to help him escape, which she does. Soon enough a young woman is found dead in the nearby village and then another death occurs at the school where Marianne has recently become a teacher. Thankfully the resident priest has called on Doctor Van Helsing for assistance and he arrives in the nick of time to battle the baron and his growing brood of the undead. Who wins the battle? Watch The Brides of Dracula and find out.

The film features some amazing performances from Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing, Yvonne Monlaur as Marianne, and Martita Hunt as the regretful baroness. Freda Jackson chews her way through the scenery as Greta, the baroness’ servant and an unhinged ally of the baron. Marie Devereux and Andree Melly are fun as two of the baron’s victims. Miles Malleson turns in a brief but hilarious performance as Doctor Tobler. As for the baron himself, David Peel gives a somewhat bombastic performance as the fanged villain of the film.

The film is okay but nothing particularly special. The climactic face off between Van Helsing and the baron is actually pretty anticlimactic. The brides are much more interesting than the baron and Melly’s Gina delivers some of the most wicked lines in the film when trying to draw Marianne closer to her in order to drink her blood. The film has quite a few plot holes and a “quick fix cure” for vampirism in one scene that just didn’t work for me. Still, the overall film is worth a look if for no other reason than to see the brides spook Van Helsing and Marianne for a bit.

Thanks for checking out my post. I really do wish that this film had expanded the roles of the baron’s brides in this film. It had a ton of potential but ultimately fell flat. See you tomorrow with another Hammer film!