Featured Audience Ratings

• Randy T

  
  Lee's frustration with typecasting actually seems to improve his performance (as if that were even necessary!).

• Chris W

  
  This was the first film in Hammer's series devoted to updating Dracula, making variations that, unlike Universal, were filled with a bit more mature content such as blood, cleavage, and being in color. This film follows the basic story as created by Bram Stoker, but of course… More
  This was the first film in Hammer's series devoted to updating Dracula, making variations that, unlike Universal, were filled with a bit more mature content such as blood, cleavage, and being in color. This film follows the basic story as created by Bram Stoker, but of course takes plenty of liberties. The result though, is a very entertaining and gothic take that I actually enjoy a tad more than the Bela Lugosi Dracula, mostly because this one, despite a couple of slow patches, doesn't really come off as boring like the Universal film did. Yell at me all you want, but that's how I feel. Christopher Lee maybe speaks like 17 lines during the movie, all of them to John Van Eyssen's Jonathan Harker, and all within the first like 15 minutes or so. The rest of the time he's a silent (save for some grunts or snarls) suave badass with some killer red eyes and one of the coolest "don't mess with me" faces ever. He's a joy to watch. Another good performance comes from Peter Cushing as the classic nemesis Dr. Van Helsing. He's the guy who knows something's up, and is bound and determined to put things right. The film has a great look, Terence FIsher provides competant direction and, though some of the effects look a little dated and cheesy, they're still pretty cool. You might think that if you've seen on take on Dracula, then you've seen them all. Well, even though that's sorta true, you should give this one a watch, if only for the awesomeness that is Christopher Lee.

• Cassandra M

  
  It's difficult to overestimate the significance of Dracula. Far more so than its predecessor, The Curse of Frankenstein, it set the tone for Hammer's movie output over the next two decades - the two decades (1956-1976) when British films, or at least British horror films,… More
  It's difficult to overestimate the significance of Dracula. Far more so than its predecessor, The Curse of Frankenstein, it set the tone for Hammer's movie output over the next two decades - the two decades (1956-1976) when British films, or at least British horror films, were among the best, most admired and most imitated in the world. A far cry from the terribly English whimsy of the Thirties and Forties, or the provincial, "arty" stuff that's predominated since the end of the Eady levy in the 1980s. With this movie, Hammer not only created an international star out of Christopher Lee, but a worldwide phenomenon that persists, in series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and films like Sleepy Hollow, to the present day. Taking the Kensington gore quotient of The Curse of Frankenstein, and combining it with an unprecedented dose of eroticised violence, Dracula revolutionised horror, ultimately leading to the breasts and blood exploitation movies of the Seventies, as well as the heavy sexual overtones of films such as Alien and The Company of Wolves. The movie benefits from two astonishing central performances. Christopher Lee's Dracula is a creation of passionate intensity, to whom Cushing's monomaniacal Van Helsing is the antithesis - fire and steel; hot-blooded animal instinct versus cool scientific rationalism. This has led some critics to identify Van Helsing as the real villain of the piece, a brutal fanatic who coldly pounds a stake through the vampirised Lucy. Either way, both actors give supremely effective performances. The final confrontation between the two remains the single most iconic scene in any Hammer film. Hardly surprising, given their on screen charisma, that Lee should reprise his role six times and Cushing four. The most influential British movie of all time, Dracula's electric mix of sex and death fuelled a global revolution in genre film-making, and presented Hammer with a formula that they would return to again and again over the next two decades.

• AJ V

  
  Hammer's first Dracula movie. It's really very cool, it's slow and atmospheric, but Lee is so perfect as Dracula, I loved him.

• Mister C

  
  Christopher Lee launched one of his signature roles as the bloodsucking count in the lavishly produced 1958 adaption of Bram Stoker's famous vampire yarn. This familiar storyline finds Dr. Van Helsing(Peter Cushing)hunting the legendary king of the vampires who has left… More
  Christopher Lee launched one of his signature roles as the bloodsucking count in the lavishly produced 1958 adaption of Bram Stoker's famous vampire yarn. This familiar storyline finds Dr. Van Helsing(Peter Cushing)hunting the legendary king of the vampires who has left Transylvania for the blood-rich shores of England. Produced by England under the legendary Hammer Studios,this 90 minute horror yarn features a strong cast including Michael Gough,and Carol Marsh. This was the movie that launch a string of Hammer-produced "Dracula" films all starring Christopher Lee.

• Stella D

  
  who needs twilight when there's peter cushing and christopher lee! hammer rebooted dracula with a good dose of sex and most of the original story, minus renfield and the bats. cushing was fantastic and lee became an icon. terrific ending!

• Michael G

  
  Horror of Dracula has got to be one of Hammer's best. Any time you get Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee together in front of the camera with Terence Fisher behind it, you're going to be hard pressed to go wrong. Fisher creates eerie atmosphere (the first shot of Dracula… More
  Horror of Dracula has got to be one of Hammer's best. Any time you get Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee together in front of the camera with Terence Fisher behind it, you're going to be hard pressed to go wrong. Fisher creates eerie atmosphere (the first shot of Dracula alone is scary as hell) and even the dated but still effective make up don't bring Horror of Dracula down. Cushing is THE Van Helsing just as Lee is THE Dracula and this movie is a damn near perfect showcase for both actors at the height of their powers. Great, great stuff.

• El Hombre I

  
  After Bela Lugosi defined the role in the original DRACULA in 1931, countless sequels followed which eventually lead up to the character being featured in films alongside Abbott & Costello and other tiresome Universal monsters. The horror was played out and Dracula became a… More
  After Bela Lugosi defined the role in the original DRACULA in 1931, countless sequels followed which eventually lead up to the character being featured in films alongside Abbott & Costello and other tiresome Universal monsters. The horror was played out and Dracula became a rather silly villain. Over 25 years later, Hammer Studios would recreate/reinterpret the novel and give us Christopher Lee, who would own the role for years to come. Then there's the perfect casting of Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. The image of Dracula which had become campy was gone and in its' place we get a film with eerie atmosphere created by great cinematography, good acting, simple but effective special effects and a new horrific Dracula who is genuinely creepy with his bloodshot eyes and awful hissing. <a href="http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/?action=view&current=Dracula.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/Dracula.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

• Conner R

  
  This is by far one of the most well acted interpretations of Dracula ever. It has such a well rounded cast. The deviation from the story is actually not distracting in the least, it actually makes sense and creates a more believable film. I would go to say that it surpasses… More
  This is by far one of the most well acted interpretations of Dracula ever. It has such a well rounded cast. The deviation from the story is actually not distracting in the least, it actually makes sense and creates a more believable film. I would go to say that it surpasses Universal's version in nearly every way.

• Tim S

  
  Very well-shot and atmospheric. Peter Cushing steals the show here and Christopher Lee is very scary. My only complaint may be the pacing of the film, which seemed to drag on a bit here and there. Otherwise, fantastic!

• David L

  
  I still say that F.W. Murnau and Max Schreck did it before and did it better in "Nosferatu", but I can say that "Horror of Dracula". runs a very close second After watching this film again, I have no doubts why Christopher Lee is so well remembered for his… More
  I still say that F.W. Murnau and Max Schreck did it before and did it better in "Nosferatu", but I can say that "Horror of Dracula". runs a very close second After watching this film again, I have no doubts why Christopher Lee is so well remembered for his portrayal of Count Dracula and not just because he happened to put in the most screen appearances as said anti-hero to date. The black cloak clad over his well-over six foot frame lends an aura of menace and intimidation that no other version since Max Schreck has held with such ease. The initial scenes of him showing his charming side are, in my opinion, sorely missed later when he seems to have been reduced to the level of stereotypical vampire on the loose, but I'm willing to overlook this as I descended through the Dracula film series. Forget Lugosi; Lee is the definitive version of the Count. Peter Cushing, meanwhile, takes center stage as Dracula's driven, calculating adversary, Professor Van Helsing. Here, the script uses an old trick of literature by using the phonograph recording scene to subconsciously ask the viewer that if a man as intelligent and sophisticated as Van Helsing can believe in vampires, than why not the audience? As determined as a bloodhound on the scent of his prey, Van Helsing is not unsympathetic to the suffering of the Count's victims and their loved ones. But, by necessity, he must remain hardnosed and decisive on what needs to be done and not being afraid to tell the parties responsible for carrying out his wishs that this must be so. The ending suggests the influence of "Nosferatu" (the first instance in cinema were a vampire could be killed by sunlight), but I must admit that it stands, head and shoulders, above what Murnau's film wrought and, indeed, what Stoker's original novel had. Oddly enough, I feel no victory in Dracula's death. Rather, I feel that the world has lost something irreplacable, no matter how brutal that something was. It almost makes me kind of glad that the Count would rise again in several other Hammer sequels... Still a great film and well worth checking out.

• Dr Blood  

  
  A great atmosphere, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing fighting it out, beautiful actresses, rubber bats on wires, and all done on a budget which wouldn't even pay for Keanu Reeves' voice coach in a modern production!

• Byron B

  
  The previous couple decades had been dominated by Universal as the horror producing studio. Hammer made a couple Frankenstein pictures just slightly earlier than Horror of Dracula, and yet it surprised me that only two years had passed between Universal making The Creature Walks Among… More
  The previous couple decades had been dominated by Universal as the horror producing studio. Hammer made a couple Frankenstein pictures just slightly earlier than Horror of Dracula, and yet it surprised me that only two years had passed between Universal making The Creature Walks Among Us and Hammer making this. The torch was passed. For the next couple decades Hammer dominated the horror genre. Though this film is still relatively free of excessive sex and blood, it feels like a whole new era in horror. As the synopsis here says, "[this] is far closer to the letter (and spirit) of the Bram Stoker novel." There are still some liberties taken with Stoker's novel, primarily in regards to Harker being colleagues with Van Helsing and taking a more active role in trying to stop the well known vampire. The color photography, the British (European?) locations, and Cushing and Lee make this well worth a watch. Cushing's and Lee's performances with more action packed fights are the best representations of the battle between Van Helsing and Dracula. Adding Arthur (Gough) to assist Van Helsing strengthened the story, so that it isn't a battle of old men. The women are luscious. The blood looks like it is colored a bit too brightly. The end is a thrill.

• Matthew Y

  
  A more violent, scary and even sexy version of Dracula than the 1931 original. Widely considered the best of the Hammer Films low-budget Monster movie remakes and I tend to agree. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee have become screen legends and both shine in arguably their best… More
  A more violent, scary and even sexy version of Dracula than the 1931 original. Widely considered the best of the Hammer Films low-budget Monster movie remakes and I tend to agree. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee have become screen legends and both shine in arguably their best respected roles. While considered tame by todays standards Horror of Dracula was some very violent and gory stuff for 1958 and showed graphics that the Code would never have allowed in American films of the time. A must see for Horror fans and anyone whose a fan of good cinema.

• Greg A

  
  Christopher is dead sexy in this role. I remember the scene where he briefly makes out with Mina before biting into her neck and watch as my knees get weak. He is a murderer, he is a creep, monster, whatever you'd like to call it he makes it so hot. This is kind of vampire… More
  Christopher is dead sexy in this role. I remember the scene where he briefly makes out with Mina before biting into her neck and watch as my knees get weak. He is a murderer, he is a creep, monster, whatever you'd like to call it he makes it so hot. This is kind of vampire character is the answer to the question "why do people hate Twilight?" Because Count Dracula makes bad look so good, he is scary but in a sexy sense. All that tension is released, any angst is quickly made out with and bitten and killed by Lee's Dracula. This is a really satisfying watch and great to watch back-to-back with Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman.

• Brandon K

  
  One of the first great modern horror movies. It's valuable as much for it's shlock factor as its shock factor.

• Darik H

  
  The horror... The horror. I'm a die hard fan of Bela Lugosi's iconic performance as the prince of the night, so it's taken me a long bloody time to get around to actually watching this thing. The first word that I'd use to describe it is... British. Undeniably… More
  The horror... The horror. I'm a die hard fan of Bela Lugosi's iconic performance as the prince of the night, so it's taken me a long bloody time to get around to actually watching this thing. The first word that I'd use to describe it is... British. Undeniably British. I spent almost half the movie trying to decide if I was watching a bunch of stuffy Brits trying to be actors or a bunch of actors successfully (and brilliantly) becoming stuffy Brits. Either way, this movie has much less atmosphere than its forebears, going instead for more visceral horror (by the day's standards, at least) and vividly colorful compositions (thanks, Technicolor!). The scary bits are surrounded on all sides by languorous minutes of conversation between our leads, all of which is delivered either mechanically or overly melodramatically (depending on the situation) by the actors. The Count's first moments on screen were an incredible disappointment: he appears in heavy shadow at the top of a staircase to heavy fanfare on the score, only to walk briskly down to the waiting Harker and deliver his few lines as if he were trying to get past them as quickly as he could. Worse, he didn't even sound too menacing; his voice wasn't as deep as it would grow to be, and I couldn't detect much of any accent as he spoke- bizarrely, he sounded... American. But at the very least, the filmmakers know they have a piss-poor gentleman vampire on their hands, and so he only has one speaking scene. In fact, they are straying as far from that as possible, and the remainder of the film made up for his disappointing entrance. This Dracula is either a monolithic shape that fills a doorway or a snarling fanatic with fangs, flinging his foes across floors or bolting violently from danger. While Lugosi was a plotting prince, Lee is a wild animal; this is a Dracula that gets his hair mussed. On the other side of things, Peter Cushing plays a far more formidable Van Helsing that we've yet seen- decisive, intelligent, as fleet of foot as the speedy Count, and far younger than most interpretations have him. This Van Helsing is so effective that he actually gets into a physical confrontation with Dracula- and WINS. On the supporting side, it was great to see Michael Gough as a young man (I'm used to seeing him only from the Batman films), though he never really changes his inflictions or expressions throughout the film unless something really horrible happens (in which case he goes a little overboard). As for the rest, Harker is a stereotype, Lucy is a joke (red hair and pigtails? What is she, a Wendy's model?), Mina is kind of flat, and all of the other vampires (all of whom are women) are buxom, over-the-top... well, vamps. The horror is actually somewhat effective, as the low budget ensures that we get the stripped-down ugliness of the violence; In particular, the stakings have a sort of bleak matter-of-fact-ness that makes them more disturbing to watch. It's just too bad that the blood is way too damn red to believably be blood. By far, however, this Dracula movie has the best action of any that I've seen; the chases, in particular, are exhilarating, and it actually climaxes in a fight between Van Helsing and Dracula that's so good that they used it as the prologue for the following film. It's not the same as the '31 classic- hell, it's exactly the opposite, truth be told- but Horror of Dracula is an effective film with its own merits, its own weaknesses, and, beneath it all, its own style.

• Adam M

  
  Vampire classic and the first to feature Christopher Lee as Dracula with Peter Cushing on his trail as Van Helsing. When a young woman catches his eye, Dracula attempts to make her his but the girls family are on his tail with Van Helsing in tow but Dracula being all vampy means… More
  Vampire classic and the first to feature Christopher Lee as Dracula with Peter Cushing on his trail as Van Helsing. When a young woman catches his eye, Dracula attempts to make her his but the girls family are on his tail with Van Helsing in tow but Dracula being all vampy means things aren't that easy! One of the classics. If you like vampires and haven't seen it, what the fuck are you doing?! Track it down!

• Jim W

  
  I was never interested in seeing a Christopher Lee Dracula film since I figured the Bela Lugosi version or Nosferatu were superior. But when watching Dracula last year I was thinking it was really good but not as exciting as I remember as a child. While watching Horror of Dracula… More
  I was never interested in seeing a Christopher Lee Dracula film since I figured the Bela Lugosi version or Nosferatu were superior. But when watching Dracula last year I was thinking it was really good but not as exciting as I remember as a child. While watching Horror of Dracula though it dawned on me that this is actually the version I remember as a child. The end of Horror of Dracula is so much more memorable and is the way I thought the Bela Lugosi version ended, because the end is so well made that it could only be from the classic 30's version I thought. The movies are very similar of course but Christopher Lee hams it up less than Legosi. His performance is less talky and more bite. There's just something about the faces he makes with fangs that makes it hard to believe that he's not really a vampire. His performance is all in the fangs. Peter Cushing is also excellent as Van Helsing and possibly the best. Van Helsing isn't meant to be an action hero like in the Hugh Jackman film. He's just an expert on vampires and he's willing to stop them if necessary, but in no way is he a big bad monster hunter. Still, Cushing's Van Helsing has a presence about him that makes you think the guy can handle himself. He steals the show as soon as he's introduced. He may have many lines and the film may be slow at times but you're always intrigued by what he has to say even if you know the story and have already seen many Dracula films.

• MJS M

  
  This is actually the first time I?ve seen this or any other Hammer horror film for that matter. Perhaps the film would have seemed a bit more interesting to me if it wasn?t the 50th version of this same story that I?ve seen. The film is basically just another adaptation of the Bram… More
  This is actually the first time I?ve seen this or any other Hammer horror film for that matter. Perhaps the film would have seemed a bit more interesting to me if it wasn?t the 50th version of this same story that I?ve seen. The film is basically just another adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, albeit a particularly condensed version that?s being done on a pretty low budget. As the film is being done in Technicolor, it?s missing a lot of that bleak atmosphere that really carries the Todd Browing Dracula and Nosferatu. All this version really adds is some bloodier violence, which is pretty tame by modern standards. I had heard an awful lot about Christopher Lee?s acting as Dracula and I expected a lot, I thought he was pretty good in the role? at least when he wasn?t talking, the absence of a weird Eastern European accent sort of takes away a lot from the role. The film really wasn?t working for me for a lot of its running time, but it really picked up during the third act, I loved the effects they used when Dracula is killed and turns to dust. All in all this is a decent B-movie, but it doesn?t live up to some of the classic versions of the story that are out there. I suppose I would have had more affection for it if I?d grown up on this.

Read all 20 featured audience ratings