Monster of the Day #3512

Halloween Watch Party went from Universal’s Son of Dracula to Hammer’s Brides of Dracula. Brides, despite the crushing absence of Christopher Lee (who had yet to return to the cloak), is really good Hammer vampire shenanigans. The reason is obvious; the central character is Peter Cushing’s vigorous Dr. Van Helsing, and its hard to make a bad movie that centers on Peter Cushing.The film around him is pretty decent, but Cushing really carries it. He’s so much fun to watch.

I’d put this up against Lee’s second turn in as the Count, Dracula Prince of Darkness. The script could have been tightened a bit, there’s a not necessary comic relief character, etc. The heroine is irksome, one of those leads who cause all the deaths but is let off the hook because she’s pretty and Pure of Heart (i.e., dumb as a post). David Peel is pretty good as the lead vampire. The sets are sumptuous in the Hammer manner. Terence Fisher’s direction is as good as ever. Hammer never scaled the vampire heights of Horror of Dracula again, but this one’s pretty good.

People seemed to like just watching straight horror movies in October, so next year we’ll probably make it a weekly thing instead of biweekly.

Tomorrow we get back to T-Fest.

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Eric Hinkle

I like this one. Not as much as 'Horror' but it's got some good moments in it. Like Ken said, Peter Cushing is the best part of this movie.

Then again I like the Universal Son of Dracula too, if for no other reason than the Dracula in it being so dumb that he gets outwitted and played for a chump by his 'bride' and her still-human lover. That must be almost unique in vampire movies. At least it is in my limited experience.

But then I'd say that even the second-strong Universal Horror films have small unique touches that raise them above similar fare from other studios. Even the Kharis the Mummy movies had their moments. In the first one, it's the comic relief character who kills the real villain, Andoheb, and who plays a major role in (temporarily) destroying Kharis. The third movie has Kharis winning, taking his resurrected girlfriend off to the swamp; and the fourth one has Kharis unintentionally saving the unconscious hero and his girlfriend from the villain's flunky — who in turn becomes the real menace by the end.
Gamera977

A weird thing I heard is that the original Dungeons & Dragons cleric was based off Cushing's van Helsing. Seems that the DM had allowed one of the players a vampire character named 'Lord Fang' or "Sir Fang' or something like that who was screwing up the game with his vampiric immunities. So rather than removing the character from play the DM introduced an undead hunter.
Ken_Begg

I agree with all of that, including Son of Dracula basically being a film noir (I once referred to it as The Vampire Always Bites Twice) with Dracula as the chump.

As for Universal over Hammer, I agree that the stronger argument isn't that Universal had more classic films (which it did), but that the goofier smaller films are still all fun. Eric is right in picking the Mummy movies as an example, as a couple of the Hammer ones are a bit of a slog.

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