Blog Post #9 : Film Review

Horror of Dracula (1958) directed by Terence Fisher put a nice twist on Stoker’s classic Dracula. Jonathan Harker is a librarian working for Dracula and also a secret vampire slayer. However, he is killed early on. Dracula targets Harker’s fiancee, Lucy Holmwood, and the plot explores her descent into vampirism. The plot also involves the hunt for Dracula by Van Helsing and Arthur, resulting in the death of the iconic vampire.

Right off the bat, I can say that this film adaptation was shocking because it varied so much from the original novel. I never would have expected Harker from the novel to be hunting vampires, as he was mostly a static character with not much development. The film portrays Harker as almost an action character, giving him an exciting twist from the start. I also did not expect him to die so early on, but his death was what pushed the plot forward.

The acting was not spectacular, as many of the actors tended to have jerky movements, and, though this may just be characteristic of speech back in the 1950s, inflections in the dialogues seemed awkward and forced. For example, when Doctor Van Helsing is examining Lucy on her bed, even though we find out later that he was checking for vampire marks, his pushing of Lucy’s head to the side seemed forced, and he told Lucy that she would be fine in a very flat tone. Furthermore, Lucy’s screams at other points were very unrealistic, and her heavy breathing seemed purposely pitched to emphasize the fact that she was breathing, which would have spoken for itself.

I was disappointed by some of the visual effects of this film. Particularly, the cross burn scar disappearing from Mina’s hand after Dracula’s death looked like it could have been made using PowerPoint effects. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the scene where Dracula’s body was decaying because his hand was in the process of turning into ash, an effect which i would not have thought possible to create back in that time period.