Poor sweet, ever unsuspecting Yvonne Monlaur in 1960's The Brides of Dracula. Even after she flees the castle in terror and encounters Van Helsing, she still wants to marry the handsome young Baron she'd found shackled to a wall by his ankle.
She trusts the Baron's youth and beauty, I suppose, over the elderly mother who locked him up, Martitia Hunt.
I don't think there's another Hammer vampire who seems so completely unchanged, personality wise, by her transformation. After Marianne (Monlaur) sets the Baron (David Peel) free, he of course turns the woman who'd kept him locked up, his mother, even though she'd also kept him fed with people she could lure to the castle. Hunt played Miss Havisham in David Lean's Great Expectations, I suppose her impeding vampirehood wouldn't have been much different. The life of a Hammer vampire was certainly not very appealing. She gets no super strength, no powers of hypnosis or transformation. She just gets a new restrictive diet and a deadly sun sensitivity. Immortality? Maybe, but it's a wonder any of these weaklings live a decade, let alone a century. This was all parodied wonderfully, by the way, in Andy Warhol's Blood for Dracula.
Jack Asher's department store lighting cinematography shows glossy paint on everything and yet there's a magic about that castle. No comparable American production could quite fill a place with ancient knick-knacks the way Hammer could.
I love how Marianne first talks to the Baron from a balcony in her room, seeing him in another balcony across a courtyard. We get an impression of a vast labyrinth of hidden passages and complicated corridors. This is definitely one of those movie homes I would love to live in.
I'm also particularly fond of Peter Cushing's heavy duty tweed outfits in this movie.
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