Director: Terence Fisher
Writers: Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan
Stars: Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur
1 Hour, 25 Minutes
Amazon has it: https://amzn.to/2MN8JGM
Synopsis
Dracula is still dead, but his disciples live on.
A wagon with a single passenger, a young woman named Marianne, heads into town, but a man hops on the back for a ride. After they arrive in town, the man pays the cab driver to go away. The man enters the pub and everyone is silent; even the music stops. The coachman leaves without her; that’s why he was paid. The villagers really don’t want her to spend the night, even at the inn.
An old woman comes in on her carriage and asks for wine. She’s the Baroness Meister, and she invites Marianne to stay with her in her home that night.
Marianne is shown to her room. It’s now a dark and stormy night in the house on the hill. The Baroness explains about her son, who is ill; he’s insane, she says.
Later that night, she looks out the window and see the son standing on a ledge beneath her. It looks like he’s going to jump. She runs down to see him. She tells him she wants to help him. She finds him literally chained to the floor. He explains that his mother has told everyone that he is dead to get his land and power. He is the Baron. He asks her to go get the key to the lock.
She throws him the key and then gets dressed to run away with him. The Baroness insists Marianne give back the key. “You don’t know what you’ve done, you little fool!” The Baron waits at the bottom of the stairs and his mother gets all bug-eyed when she sees him free.
The servant Greta freaks out and screams when she sees the Baron is free. Greta shows Marianne to the Baroness’s corpse. “She’s dead, and he’s free!” Greta then monologues and cackles to herself for about ten minutes about family history. She knows he’ll be back, because she knows where his coffin is.
The next morning, Van Helsing just happens to drive by and finds Marianne passed out in the woods. They go back to the pub and learn that a girl was killed last night.
Van Helsing goes along with Marianne to the school where she was going to work in the first place. Van Helsing overhears the dead girl’s father in the pub. She’s already been buried. Everyone already knows she was killed by a vampire; no one needs convincing in this film. Van Helsing explains how the vampire cult grows, one after the other, turning more and more people.
That night, Van Helsing waits at the cemetery for the dead girl to rise. He finds Greta there, talking to grave, “Get up! Get up! Push!” Urging the girl out of the grave. Greta and the girl, run off.
Van Helsing goes to the house on the hill, but the coffin has been moved. The Baroness is no longer dead, and the Baron comes in, hissing. They quickly do battle, and the Baron gets away in a coach. The Baroness blames herself for not killing Meister when she had the chance, instead she actually protected him.
The Baron announces that he and Marianne are going to be married, and Marianne doesn’t object. The Baron then eats Marianne’s roommate.
Morning comes, and Van Helsing dispatches the old Baroness with a stake. A doctor in town mentions that a girl died up at the school last night. It’s Marianne’s roommate, Gina, and Van Helsing knows what’s up.
That night, the roommate’s coffin opens up and she comes after Marianne. Van Helsing interrupts the attack, but Gina runs away.
Van Helsing tracks the vampires to an old windmill where the Baron attacks Van Helsing as his two “brides” look on. The Baron leaves the job half-finished and goes after Marianne. Van Helsing gets up, burns the Seal of Dracula, and then pours holy water on it. The would heals instantly and doesn’t even leave a mark. Van Helsing throws holy water on the Baron, and the Baron kicks over the fire pit, setting the windmill on fire.
The windmill turns, and its shadow makes a giant cross on top of Baron Meister. The fire in the windmill kills the two brides.
Commentary
Really? Killed by a shadow of a building? That’s pretty lame. The first dead girl’s coffin was buried an inch beneath the surface. She opened the lid and it was level with the ground! Toward the end, the Baron has Van Helsing unconscious, and he bites him but doesn’t kill him. We don’t known why he let Van Helsing live.
It gives a very different feel when everyone in the movie knows about vampires, and there’s no one that needs convincing. Not all the characters know about vampires, but no one doubts Van Helsing.
Van Helsing explains that the bite marks are called “The seal of Dracula,” a term I’ve never heard before.
The acting is fine, the sets are good, the pacing is fine, even the not-Christopher-Lee vampire is good, but the whole movie is just nothing special. There’s nothing terribly wrong, it’s just… lackluster.