Keywords

Introduction

Hammer Film Productions Ltd. was founded in London, England, in 1934 by William Hinds (1887–1957), stage name William Hammer, early in the period that Universal Studios in the United States was dominating the horror film market with their monster movies. Hammer’s film production arm went into bankruptcy just a few years later, with its sister company, the distributor Exclusive Films, surviving through World War II. After the war, Exclusive Films resumed film production under the Hammer name, and in 1949, Hammer Film Productions again became a stand-alone company with offices in a building renamed Hammer House and filming taking place in country houses near London and along the Thames rather than in film studios. In 1951, the company first leased and then purchased a rundown country house, Down Place, which they refurbished, renamed Bray Studios, and used for filming until the mid-1960s, when a deal moved Hammer to Elstree Studios. Through collaboration with American distributors, Hammer was able to enter the American film market with their assertively British offerings.

In 1954, Hammer made their first color film, Men of Sherwood Forest , using the Eastmancolor process, a simpler and less expensive alternative to Technicolor that did not require special cameras or processing. Their use of color, whether technicolor or a less costly variation, became a hallmark of Hammer films. In 1955, Hammer began to make horror films, and in 1957, they made their first color Gothic film starring Peter Cushing (1913–1994) and Christopher Lee (1922–2015), directed by Terence Fisher (1904–1980), (re) written by Jimmy Sangster (1927–2011), and with music by James Bernard (1925–2001): The Curse of Frankenstein .

Given that American horror had moved toward contemporarily set science fiction horror shaped by American puritanical conservatism, the decidedly more Gothic Hammer horror films – comparatively inexpensive but not cheap – with historical settings, heaving bosoms, sexy monsters, and buckets of bright red blood brought something new to horror cinema, and the combination of Cushing, Lee, Fisher, Sangster, and Bernard making color films about Baron Frankenstein and the Creature or Dracula and Van Helsing at Bray Studios became the foundation of the Hammer horror film. Hammer actively sought to have their horror films given an X certificate, a relatively recent designation (a replacement for the H – “horrific” – certificate) that prohibited the film from being shown to audiences under the age of 16.

Having entered into an agreement with Universal Studios after The Curse of Frankenstein to use Universal monsters in their films without fear of copyright issues, Hammer released their first vampire movie, Dracula (Horror of Dracula in the United States) in 1958. Ten highly successful years later, during filming and on the set of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), the studio was presented with the Queen’s Award for Industry as recognition of their significant contributions to the British economy. Hammer made a total of 16 vampire films between 1958 and 1974.

The studio went into liquidation in 1979; in 2007, the rights to Hammer’s catalog was purchased by a Dutch media mogul who planned to resurrect the filmmaking side of Hammer as well. In a reverse Van Helsing, the Dutch-led team brought Hammer back with two vampire films, Beyond the Rave in 2008 (a web series/compilation film) and Let Me In, a remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In (2008), in 2010.

Of the 16 original Hammer vampire films, 9 make up the Hammer Dracula franchise (with some debate about whether Hammer’s final vampire film is a part of the Dracula series or a stand-alone). Hammer also made the [Carmilla] Karnstein Trilogy in the 1970s, and four (or five) standalone films.

Hammer Dracula, 1958–1974

Often, an adaptation of Dracula will announce itself as a return to the source text, but the eight Hammer Dracula films that followed the 1958 origin story increasingly drifted away from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Hamilton Deane’s Florence Stoker-approved stage play (1924, around the period that Florence was having copies of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 unauthorized adaptation, Nosferatu, destroyed), and Universal Studios/Tod Browning’s 1931 film based on Deane’s play.

Although Dracula, regularly killed and then regenerated, and Van Helsing (whether a figure aligning with Stoker’s Abraham Van Helsing or a descendant) do not both appear in every film in the sequence, one or the other is in each film and the characters were consistently played by Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, respectively, with one exception. Director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster left the franchise within its first decade, with other Hammer regulars, including Hammer founder William Hinds’ son Anthony screenwriting as John Elder, taking over their roles in subsequent productions. Although Hammer was using Eastmancolor regularly, most of the Dracula films used the more expensive Technicolor process, with bright red blood against rich Gothic backgrounds giving way to bright red blood against rich contemporary backgrounds over the course of the series.

The films that make up Hammer’s Dracula series are Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1965), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (also 1970), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974). Fans and critics, as well as people involved in making the films, generally agree that the quality deteriorated with later entries, the last of which were made while Hammer was attempting to develop other vampire series around Le Fanu’s Carmilla and the entirely original character, an all-action Van Helsing character called Captain Kronos. Cushing and Lee remain consistently watchable, even when they have little to work with, and the films never stop looking like Hammer Gothic horror, regardless of their setting.

Dracula, released as Horror of Dracula in the USA to distinguish it from Browning’s 1931 film, was directed by Fisher, written by Sangster, and scored by James Bernard, whose theme music famously repeats a three-chord motif that musically “say” “DRA-cu-la.” It was released in May 1958 in the USA and June 1958 in the UK.

This first of Hammer’s Dracula films at first seems to be following Stoker’s novel, with Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) arriving in Transylvania in 1885 to do business with Count Dracula (Lee). While some characters are eliminated entirely (Renfield and Quincey Morris, most notably), others remain with changes to their characters and their relationships to others contributing to a similar but not faithful adaptation of the novel: Mina (Melissa Stribling) is married to Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough), whose sister Lucy (Carol Marsh) is engaged to Jonathan, who is working with Van Helsing (Cushing ) at the start of the film, knowing exactly what Dracula is and only pretending to be a librarian (rather than a solicitor).

Using the existing convention of not creating any new names but playing fast and loose with Stoker’s characterizations, Hammer’s Dracula is different from its predecessors in that Lee’s Dracula, is sexy; while Stoker’s and Deane/Browning’s Count (played, of course, by Bela Lugosi) is able to seduce his victims, there is no suggestion with Lee’s Dracula that hypnosis or other vampiric mind control is necessary: he’s just attractive, and from the first, Hammer Dracula leaned in to the erotic aspects of the vampire’s penetration of the body and exchange of fluids.

Hammer’s Jonathan is less naive than Stoker’s, although just as easily distracted and seduced by Dracula’s bride, and Dracula is less brooding, elderly, and Eastern European: Lee’s Dracula notably enters by walking down a flight of stairs and briskly saying, “I am Dracula, and I welcome you to my house” in clipped tones and Lee’s own English accent, albeit wearing a floor-length cape and, eventually, fangs. As with Stoker’s novel, Dracula leaves his home, but he only goes as far as (a very English version of) Karlstadt in Bavarian Germany, leaving a vampire-Jonathan behind for Van Helsing to regretfully stake while he hunts down Jonathan’s fiancée.

In a nod to the novel’s use of “found footage” style documents and recordings, exposition detailing what is known in this filmic world about vampires, and Dracula specifically, is provided by phonograph recordings and journals that Van Helsing and, eventually, Holmwood review. The efficacy of sunlight, garlic, and crucifixes is quickly established, with abilities such as shapeshifting being dismissed as “a common fallacy.” As Van Helsing already knows that Dracula is a vampire spreading “a vile contagion” that mimics “addiction to drugs” and how to defeat him, and other characters are willing to accept Van Helsing’s information (although “many biologists will not believe that [vampires] exist”), the film lacks the uncertainty of the novel but creates its own suspense as Dracula kills Lucy, stalks Mina, and torments his pursuers. Van Helsing forces Dracula to return to his castle and uses the non-Stoker, Nosferatu-generated and phonograph spool-confirmed means of destroying the vampire, sunlight, to which, this film tells us, vampires are fatally “allergic.” Dracula’s corpse disintegrates and blows away in a brisk breeze as the film ends.

While there were audiences who were outraged by the explicitness of both the sexuality and the violence, Dracula was wildly successful and broke box office records around the world. It has continued to be held in high regard since its release, and Lee’s Dracula and Cushing’s Van Helsing remain iconic representations of their characters, even though Van Helsing does not appear until nearly halfway through the film and Dracula is on screen for less than 10 minutes.

The Brides of Dracula, with working titles including Dracula 2 and Disciple of Dracula, was presented as a sequel to Dracula, although only Cushing’s Van Helsing returns. Again directed by Fisher, with Sangster’s script reworked to shift emphasis from Dracula to Van Helsing by Hammer writer Peter Bryan and (perhaps incongruously) Conservative former MP and playwright Edward Percy Smith, was released in August 1960 in the UK and September 1960 in the USA.

The Brides of Dracula did not attempt to reconcile Dracula’s destruction at the end of the first film with the need for a vampire for the sequel, and he is only mentioned twice in the film, set an indeterminate period of time after Dracula. A voice over clarifies that this film is again set in nineteenth-century Transylvania, a Transylvania in which Dracula has been killed but his vampiric offspring live on and carry on his work of tormenting villagers, providing a degree of rationalization that becomes increasingly less common as the series progresses. Van Helsing is the only real link between the two films.

One of Dracula’s acolytes is Baron Meinster (David Peel, a stage actor in his only major film role), whose mother, the Baroness (Martita Hunt), both enables and imprisons him: she keeps him chained up but brings him women to feed on, including Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur), a teacher who is new to the community and whom the Baroness persuades, against the advice of the villagers (another motif in Hammer films is that no one ever listens to the villagers until Van Helsing does), to come stay at the castle.

Marianne is told that the Baron is chained up because he is insane, but when she goes to investigate, he is able to convince her that his mother is usurping his inheritance and position, and she frees him, setting in motion a string of deaths and vampings that Van Helsing, presumably having spent the time between the first and this film in pursuit of other of Dracula’s offspring, shows up to stop. Although an earlier script called upon the Baron to be ripped to bits and carried off by bats, budgetary concerns dictated an ending by which Van Helsing, having himself been bitten, is able to manipulate a shadow into the form of a cross, which destroys the Baron and saves himself and Marianne.

The movie did well, breaking records upon its release, but critics remained critical, and fans took umbrage with a movie called The Brides of Dracula featuring neither Dracula nor his brides, although the Baron starts a harem of his own before he is destroyed. Peel’s vampire Baron expanded on some of the sadism seen in Dracula’s characterization in the previous film, for example, seducing and then delaying his attack on Marianne until he can make Van Helsing watch and also biting Van Helsing himself.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness brought Lee’s Dracula back to the franchise, although Cushing’s Van Helsing appears only in archival footage. It was released in January 1966 in the UK and USA. Fisher again directs, with a script by yet another writer, John Sansom, and based on an idea by Anthony Hinds under the pseudonym of John Elder.

The film opens with the scene from the end of Dracula before jumping ahead 10 years; Dracula’s castle has become a tourist destination of sorts and is kept ready for guests by Dracula’s servant Klove (Philip Latham), who lures a guest to the castle’s crypt and uses his blood to activate Dracula’s ashes so that his master can regenerate. What follows is a plot similar to that of Stoker’s Dracula, with characters not in Stoker’s novel having similar experiences to Lucy, Mina, and Renfield before being saved by Van Helsing surrogate Father Sandor (Andrew Kier), a priest who condemns superstition but is fully prepared to fight vampires. Dracula does not speak in the film, either because Lee refused to speak what he thought was bad dialogue or because the screenwriters thought Dracula would be more menacing if he hissed and gestured, relying on Lee’s prodigious abilities as a physical actor to develop the character and the suspense.

At the film’s climax, Father Sandor shows Van Helsing-like ingenuity and lures Dracula onto ice that he then breaks, sending Dracula to a cold and watery apparent death. Requiring several resubmissions to the censor, the film was again a popular success that received middling critical reviews and was the first example of the creativity that surrounded Dracula’s demise in the first film being applied to his restoration.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave ushers in the age of the roughly annual Dracula sequels, being released in November 1968 – less than a year before the next film would begin filming – in the UK and in February of the following year in the USA. Neither Cushing nor Fisher were involved, Fisher having been in a car accident, and Hammer had recently moved filming from Bray Studios to Pinewood Studios, costing them some of their set pieces; director Freddie Francis was new to the franchise but, with Lee as Dracula and a script written by Hinds, the film maintains a sense of continuity even as it began to push the boundaries of the franchise.

In the year following the events of the previous film but also in 1905–1906, the community has turned away from the church, leading a visiting Monsignor (Rupert Davies) to perform an exorcism on Dracula’s castle. While the Monsignor performs the exorcism, hanging what can only be described as Chekov’s comically oversized gold cross on the gate, the local priest (Ewan Hooper), who refused to accompany the Monsignor to the castle itself, slips and falls, sustaining a bleeding head wound that trickles into a frozen stream and through the ice to revive Dracula once again. The local priest falls under Dracula’s power, and the vampire sets off to take revenge on the Monsignor for, apparently, desecrating his castle gate with the cross. The Monsignor dies and his niece Maria (Veronica Carlson) is bitten, and neither the enthralled priest nor the niece’s atheist boyfriend Paul (Barry Andrews) is able to successfully stake Dracula. Dracula has Maria remove the cross from his castle gate, and she throws it into a ravine where it lands between rocks that hold it upright. Although Paul’s lack of Christian faith prevents him from defeating Dracula – a new element of the lore of the series – he is able to physically fight and throws Dracula into the ravine, where he is staked by the cross. The priest is then able to pray Dracula into dust and bring Paul back into the fold as well.

Although critics’ reviews remained less than entirely positive, fans were still paying to see them, and it was during the making of this film that Hammer was awarded the Queen’s Award to Industry in acknowledgment of the money their films brought in from outside the UK.

Taste the Blood of Dracula moves Dracula to London, but also moves Dracula further into the margins of what was ostensibly his story. Again written by Hinds, who had originally intended to introduce a new vampire, Lord Courtley, and featuring Lee as Dracula, it was television director Peter Sasdy’s first film. It was released in June 1970 in the UK and in September of that year in the USA.

The film starts with a prologue in which Dracula’s death-by-impalement at the end of the previous film is witnessed by an English antiques dealer (Roy Kinnear), who takes several blood-stained artifacts back to London, where Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates), a disinherited peer, and a trio of hypocritical thrill-seeking gentlemen (John Carson, Geoffrey Keen, and Peter Sallis) who use charity work as the cover for depravity secure the artifacts for a Black Mass during which Courtley consumes Dracula’s dried blood and falls to the ground, where he is kicked and beaten to death by the others. Presumably, this is the point of divergence from Hinds’ original plan, as Courtley’s dead body transforms into a Dracula vowing to avenge Courtley’s death rather than simply reanimating as himself.

The revenge plan includes turning the men’s young adult children into vampires who then kill their fathers; one of the children is unturned and is able to figure out what has happened and bring about Dracula’s demise by restoring the site of the Black Mass to a Christian chapel, wherein Dracula is defeated by the power of Christianity and falls to his death.

Taste the Blood of Dracula marks an end to one of the cycles within the films, as its successor ignores the events of the past few films and those that follow take place in the present day. Additionally, this film marks a turning point for Hammer’s Dracula series, with fans becoming rapidly disenchanted as later films distanced themselves from the films of the first decade of Hammer Dracula.

Scars of Dracula disrupted continuity, despite featuring Lee as Dracula, and was intended at one point to be a reboot for the series. Again written by Hinds and returning to both Stoker’s novel and his short story “Dracula’s Guest” (published in 1914 but originally written as the first chapter of the novel) for inspiration and characterization, the film was directed by Roy Ward Baker, who had experience working with small budgets and big stories. It was released in November 1970 in the UK and December 1970 in the USA.

The film opens with Dracula’s remains being reanimated by blood vomited by a (presumably vampire) bat; he immediately begins killing again and the local populace set fire to his castle. Dracula is not only saved but the assault avenged by a colony of vampire bats who kill all of the women before the men return from committing arson.

The main story begins with an accused rapist being welcomed, a la Jonathan Harker, to Dracula’s castle by Dracula, his servant Klove (Patrick Troughton), and Dracula’s mistress Tania (Anouska Hempel). After the guest seduces Tania, she is killed and he is imprisoned in the castle; when he attempts to escape, using the Harker-approved method of going out a window, he is unsuccessful. When his brother Simon (Dennis Waterman) and Simon’s fiancée Sarah (Jenny Hanley) come looking for him, a lovestruck Klove allies himself with them and is tortured; Simon tries to bring a priest back to the castle, but the priest is killed by a bat and Simon ends up locked up with Dracula’s sleeping body, which he is unable to attack, and his brother’s exsanguinated corpse. Klove again tries to help Simon and Sarah but is killed before Simon can spear Dracula with an ersatz lightning rod. Although Dracula is not killed by the metal spike, he is struck by lightning, catches on fire, and then falls from the top of his castle, still on fire and presumably dead.

As the tentatively planned reboot went no further, it is not known how Dracula would have been resurrected, although surely he would have been, even if (Troughton Time Lord-style) he were to be played by a different actor if Lee could not be brought back. This film was both the last period piece in the Hammer Dracula cycle and the first to earn the relatively recently introduced R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (the rating system was introduced in 1968; Dracula Has Risen from the Grave earned a G, general audiences, and Taste the Blood of Dracula earned a GP, later PG, parental guidance suggested, despite the blasphemy, satanism, blood, and bosoms).

Dracula AD 1972 was, at the request of collaborators Warner Bros., the first contemporarily set of the Hammer Dracula films, but more significantly, it was the first time Cushing – as both a nineteenth and a twentieth century Van Helsing – and Lee were both back since the first film. With both a new director, Alan Gibson, and a new scriptwriter, Don Houghton, the film is the first of the Dracula films to be made in Eastmancolor, which Hammer used extensively outside of the franchise, and also features a more modern, less soundtrack-y score, using existing electronic and rock music and original music meant to evoke the swingin’ early 70 s. The film was released in September 1972 in the UK and November 1972 in the USA.

To provide (some) continuity but also allow for a reboot of sorts, and to address the series’ shift from a Victorian to a contemporary setting, the film begins in 1872, with a fight between Dracula and “Lawrence” Van Helsing that ends with both of their deaths. Dracula’s remains are gathered by an acolyte. One hundred years later, the film begins with a group of young people led by Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neale; Alucard is a name first used in Universal Studios’ 1943 Son of Dracula that has become a popular name in vampire media) and including Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), who lives with her grandfather Lorimer, who has continued their ancestor’s work. Following the previous film’s example and the era’s preoccupation with the occult, the group plans a dark ritual (in the London church from Taste the Blood of Dracula a few years earlier) that brings Dracula back. Alucard and Jessica’s boyfriend (Philip Miller) become vampires, Jessica is threatened, and Van Helsing eventually defeats Dracula and saves his granddaughter.

Although the film is set in modern London, Dracula remains in a Victorian setting, in the abandoned church, with his fledglings going out into the world on his behalf. Given that the film is pretty ridiculous, and clearly made by people with no real sense of youth culture, one can only imagine what sort of scenes would have come out of Lee’s Dracula leaving his headquarters. The film was not successful, although it has somewhat of a cult following.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula, originally Dracula is Dead … and Well and Living in London and eventually released in the USA as Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride, was planned before the disappointment of Dracula AD 1972. The film was released in January 1974 in the UK, but Warner Bros., the American collaborators, were skeptical and did not release the film in the USA until November 1978. The film features many characters who survived the events of the previous film, and while Lee and Cushing both returned, this was Lee’s final appearance as Count Dracula.

The film involves, besides satanic rites, MI5, a plot to release a modified, incurable bubonic plague biological weapon, and Dracula’s evolving Thanatos. He plans to first punish his enemies, particularly Van Helsing, and then to end human life on earth and subsequently his own. Both Jessica (Joanna Lumley) and her grandfather are kidnapped at various points, and numerous government officials are found to be under Dracula’s control. Dracula is ultimately defeated, and both Van Helsings survive.

Hammer Studios was less healthy; it is widely acknowledged that the demise of Hammer horror was in part due to the new wave of horror, from Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to The Exorcist (1973), changing the face of the genre. Hammer was not able to keep up, although they were ambitious, planning over a dozen films around the time of the release of The Satanic Rites of Dracula, none of which were made.

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is not always classified as one of the films in the Dracula sequence, in part because Lee is not playing Dracula, although the Count – played by John Forbes-Robinson and, when in possession of another body, by Chan Shen – is a character whereas he was not present in the incontestably included The Brides of Dracula. Thus, it should be considered a part of the franchise, albeit perhaps the stake in its heart. As with the previous two films, this film tries to engage with popular trends of the day, specifically Hong Kong martial arts, under direction from Roy Ward Baker and Hong Kong wuxia and kung fu filmmaker Chang Cheh; it goes about as well as one might expect. The original film/Hong Kong release was cut by over 20 min for its UK release in October of 1974, and it was further cut to just 75 min for its eventual American release as The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula in 1979.

In the early nineteenth century, Dracula is asked to help a Chinese vampire cult hold on to their power, betrays the emissary who made the request, and joins the group in rural China. In the early twentieth century, Van Helsing is lecturing in China and is asked to join a family of martial artists (seven brothers and their sister) in hunting down and defeating the Seven Golden Vampires to free the village that they control. Six golden-masked vampires are defeated before Dracula, the seventh, resumes his true form for a final showdown with Van Helsing.

No one associated with the film was particularly confident about the finished product, and it is more a novelty than an actual success, but more recent reviews acknowledge that, despite its flaws, the film is entertaining and has its appeal as a representation of just how bonkers Hammer horror, Hammer vampires, and Hammer Dracula had become by the mid-1970s.

While there are plot holes in every movie and discrepancies in vampire lore, there is a consistency created by each film placing itself in relation to the previous: after defeating Dracula in the first film, Van Helsing leaves to participate in the events of The Brides of Dracula and, presumably, similar stories featuring Dracula’s other offspring. Meanwhile, Dracula’s home has in the meantime become the tourist destination of Prince of Darkness, which begins with the ending of the first film and ends with the events that have turned the town against religion in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Dracula’s death at the end of that film provides the prologue for Taste the Blood of Dracula. Scars of Dracula retcons things a bit, returning to the Dracula’s castle of Prince of Darkness and an entirely new regeneration, and provides a possibly better explanation for the community’s rejection of religion than the deaths of a group of tourists. AD 1972 and Satanic Rites are a mini cycle of their own and represent an alternate timeline altogether, with a prologue to the first setting an initial conflict between Dracula and Van Helsing over a decade previous to the date provided by the first Hammer Dracula and the church from the first film becoming the center of Dracula’s property-and-plague empire in the second. The final film could conceivably fit into an existing chronology unless one presumes that Dracula spent a century disguised as a Chinese vampire warlord.

The Karnstein Trilogy, 1970–1971

The Karnstein trilogy is three films, all written by Tudor Gates, about the continuing adventures of Sheridan Le Fanu’s (1814–1873) lesbian icon Carmilla (from the eponymous novella published in 1872). As the Dracula series was in its decline, this series, three films released within a year, leaned into the early 1970s trend of lesbian vampires that can be traced back to Le Fanu’s novella and Universal’s 1936 Dracula’s Daughter but kicked off in earnest with these three films and others, including Hammer’s Countess Dracula (1971, see below); France’s Le viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire, 1967), La vampire nue (The Nude Vampire, 1970), and Daughters of Darkness (French/Belgian, 1971); and and Spain’s Las Vampiras (Vampyros Lesbos, 1971) and La novia ensangrentada (The Blood-Spattered Bride, 1972).

The Karnstein Trilogy is sensational rather than actually erotic, adding more nudity, more lurid gore, and a bit of girl-on-girl kissing and cuddling to the traditional Hammer Gothic formula. All set in the same region of Styria, now Austria, the films are The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971), and Twins of Evil (1971); Peter Cushing appears in wildly divergent roles in two of the three films and had planned to star in Lust for a Vampire but stepped down to care for his dying wife. Carmilla/Mircalla/Marcilla is the only character to appear in every film (albeit played by three different actors and appearing only briefly in Twins of Evil, just long enough to turn Carmilla’s descendant into a vampire). A fourth film in the series, the Vampire Virgins or The Vampire Hunters, was planned but never made. Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1974, see below), includes a vampire named Karnstein as well, and could perhaps be considered to be part of the series.

The Karnstein vampires operate under different rules from Hammer’s Dracula, able to move about freely in the daytime, impervious to fire, and possessed of a disembodied vampire consciousness that can withstand bodily destruction and either create or possess a different body when needed. Although it is suggested that they can be destroyed by a stake to the heart or decapitation, even these deaths do not seem permanent within the series.

The Vampire Lovers was directed by Roy Ward Baker and, in addition to Peter Cushing as General von Spielsdorf, a wealthy man who cannot save his niece from a vampire but eventually avenges her death, stars Ingrid Pitt as Marcilla, née Mircalla and later Carmilla, Karnstein, originally born in 1522 and died/turned in 1546 or 1547. Released in the UK in October 1970, it was released in slightly shorter form at the same time in the USA.

The Vampire Lovers opens with Baron von Hartog (Douglas Wilmer), the film’s Van Helsing, killing a vampire and member of the Karnstein family in Styria at the close of the eighteenth century. Then, it essentially runs through the plot of Le Fanu’s Carmilla, with von Spielsdorf’s niece Laura (Pippa Steele) both seduced and killed by Marcilla, who flees, changes her name to Carmilla, and runs through the events of the novella again, with her next victim Emma (Madeline Smith) resisting her advances but still falling ill while her governess (Kate O’Mara) is seduced, turned, and eventually killed instead. While Marcilla/Carmilla does kill men, she does so out of necessity and quickly, whereas she seduces her female victims.

Von Hartog reveals that the Karnsteins have been vampires since the sixteenth century, and the group of men avenging Laura’s death and striving to save Emma realize that their foe is the decades- or even centuries-old Mircalla Karnstein, who has a documented history of seducing young girls away from their families. She is killed – staked and decapitated – at the film’s end, but it is revealed that someone seemingly aligned with the Karnsteins has been watching events unfold.

The film was reasonably well received by critics while still being dismissed as merely entertaining, and a sequel followed very quickly.

Lust for a Vampire was released just months after The Vampire Lovers, in January 1971, in the UK and in September as To Love a Vampire in the USA. Despite the two films being made in close proximity to one another, in addition to Cushing stepping down, Pitt declined to return, preferring to play “Elizabeth Bathory” in Countess Dracula that year instead; Terence Fisher had signed on to direct but was in a car accident, so Jimmy Sangster, Hammer screenwriter and, at this point, occasional director, stepped in.

Despite being classified as one of the lesbian vampire films of the era, there is very little that would qualify as queer in the movie beyond the earliest victims being schoolgirls exercising together in various states of undress. Instead, Mircalla Herritzen (Yutte Stensgaard), actually the resurrected Carmilla, becomes the object of obsession at her elite finishing school, with two schoolmasters falling deeply and competitively in love with her very abruptly; the first, Giles Barton (Ralph Bates) becomes aware of what she is, begs to become her vampire slave, and is instead killed, while Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson) bribes an incoming teacher to go away, takes the job, and more successfully woos Mircalla in a sex scene long enough to have a theme song. The Karnstein family attempts to cover up various deaths in the area but their castle is set on fire and Mircalla seemingly killed. Her parents, who resurrected her at the start of the film, seem unconcerned about the fire, creating the space for possible resurrections of Carmilla in future films.

The movie was not as well-received as either its predecessor or the final film in the trilogy but has a cult following; the script is seen as solid, and speculation exists that a stronger film would have come out of the planned casting and direction.

Twins of Evil, at points known as Twins of Dracula and The Gemini Twins (the first a misnomer and the second redundant), preempted the planned third film when a producer saw Playboy magazine’s first twin “Playmates,” Madeleine and Mary Collinson. Neither the twins nor Cushing play members of the Karnstein family, but Cushing’s seventeenth century witchfinder is both brilliantly executed and his least sympathetic role by far in a Hammer vampire film. Pitt again declined the invitation to play Carmilla, who in this film is a minor character. The film was released just a year after the first of the Karnstein films, in October 1971, in the UK, and in June 1972 in the USA.

In what seems to be the seventeenth century, Count Karnstein, played brilliantly by Damien Thomas – the only actor this author could imagine doing well in any of Christopher Lee’s vampire roles – resurrects his vampire ancestor Carmilla (Katya Wyeth), who facilitates his move from dissipated, possibly satanic libertine to dissipated, definitely satanic vampire libertine. In the meantime, witchfinder Gustav Weil has taken in his beautiful orphaned nieces, the pure and good Maria (Mary Collinson) and the rebellious, “evil” Frieda (Madeleine Collinson), both of whom resent their uncle’s abusive, controlling puritanism. Frieda is drawn to Count Karnstein’s reputation and quickly persuaded to become a vampire. She bullies her sister into covering for her and, after being found out, forces Maria to take her place in prison and nearly in being burned at the stake (which would not have killed her, if rules for the narrative world remain consistent). Ultimately, both Frieda and Count Karnstein, as well as Weil and many members of his witch hunting Brotherhood, are killed.

The film is well-regarded, with many identifying it as Hammer’s best late-stage vampire film. Although plans existed for a fourth film, that fell victim to Hammer’s slow but definitive decline through the mid-1970s.

Other Vampires, 1962–1974

It is perhaps worth noting that some surveys of Hammer’s vampire films classify some of the films differently: as mentioned, The 7 Golden Vampires is not consistently identified as a Dracula film, and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter could be included with the Karnstein films. Dracula the character does not appear in The Brides of Dracula, which is widely considered to be part of the Dracula series, or in Countess Dracula, which is not; none of the titular women are, in fact, his brides either. Lord Courtley in Taste the Blood of Dracula anticipates Count Karnstein in Twins of Evil, both unique characters representing aristocratic decadence rather than knock-off Draculas. Kiss of the Vampire ends with a scene that was originally planned for the Brides of Dracula, and while numerous earlier films were made in and around Bray Studios, meaning that some sets and locations might reappear, Vampire Circus and Twins of Evil were filmed on the same sets (and much of the vampire lore remains the same as well).

Kiss of the Vampire (censored and adapted as Kiss of Evil for US television) was Hammer’s first non-Dracula vampire film, made between the Brides of Dracula and Dracula: Prince of Darkness. It was written by Anthony Hinds as John Elder and was director Don Sharp’s first film for Hammer. Completed in fall of 1962, it was not released until September 1963 in the UK and January 1964 in the USA.

In a set-up reminiscent of White Zombie (1932) and anticipating Daughters of Darkness (1971), the film begins in the early twentieth century with Gerald and Marianne (Edward de Souza and Jennifer Daniel), a honeymooning couple ignoring weird events and people, in this case when they are temporarily stranded in the mountains of Bavaria. They accept the invitation of Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman) to stay with his family in their luxurious home, where they meet his children Carl (Barry Warren) and Sabena (Jacquie Wallis), are strangely affected by Carl’s piano playing, and attend a masquerade ball. As the Ravnas are revealed to be part of a vampire cult, entranced by Marianne’s beauty, she is abducted and her husband thrown out as they attempt to convince him that his wife never existed. The local police are hesitant to cross the Ravnas, but Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans), introduced in a prologue staking his vampire daughter and appearing to be drunk or crazy, helps Gerald, first by trapping the cult in the castle and then by preparing a dark ritual that will compel evil forces to attack their own: he summons a colony of bats that destroys the cult and Marianne is saved.

Despite the sensationalism of that final sentence/the film’s climax, the film is distinct from the Hammer Dracula films of the time, with the vampires’ defining characteristic being their membership in the cult rather than actual vampirism. Sharp had never directed a horror film before and was unfamiliar with the genre; despite a crash course on Hammer horror, he took an often subtle approach to his characters’ interiority.

Countess Dracula is a film not about Dracula or one of his more powerful brides, despite the title; rather, it is a horror film based on the legends about Erzsébet Báthory, the sixteenth-century Hungarian noblewoman and mass murderer more commonly known as Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who famously bathed in, rather than consumed, blood to keep her youthful in appearance. Directed by Hungarian Peter Sasdy, it was his second film after Taste the Blood of Dracula; the screenplay was written by Jeremy Paul but based on story ideas from Sasdy and his fellow Hungarian emigres, the film’s producer Alexander Paal and author and historian/researcher Gabriel (Gabor) Ronay. Employing elements of historical/period drama as well as horror, the film was released in February 1971 in the UK and October of the same year in the USA.

Ingrid Pitt chose to play the Countess rather than Carmilla in the second and third Karnstein films, and Countess Dracula called upon her to play the character as both a middle-aged widow and a young woman, rejuvenated by virgin blood and having assumed the identity of her daughter. The consensus seems to be that, despite the brutality, murder, and gore in the film, basing it on folklore and legend results in a toned-down version of the historical Báthori’s acts of violence against women and girls (although there are scholars who argue that the charges against her were a power grab).

The film follows the character’s discovery, made through a random act of violence against a servant, that blood rejuvenates her, her decision to impersonate her daughter Ilona, the lovers that she took as both herself and Ilona, the realization that the blood of non-virgins has no effect – a critique of female promiscuity duplicated in Blood for Dracula (a.k.a. Andy Warhol’s Dracula) in 1974 – and her eventual downfall, after which she is given the name of Countess Dracula.

Film critics responded more positively than audiences on the whole, with Pitt’s performance being particularly noted.

Vampire Circus drew upon the dual flexibility of both vampire films and circus films to push boundaries and explore the desires that people keep hidden. Unfortunately, new director Robert Young didn’t meet the deadline for filming and the team ended up working around missing footage to create the finished film after production was halted. The film was released in April 1972 in the UK and October 1972 in the USA.

The film begins with a community being cursed by a nineteenth century Serbian vampire, Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman) as he is killed by the villagers; the curse is successful but ongoing, and the village is put under extended quarantine due to plague. As there is a blockade around the town, the arrival of a circus, the “Circus of the Night,” is tremendously appealing to the residents. Members of the troupe are vampires and shapeshifters, and they begin to kill, both to continue the work of the curse and, eventually, to bring back Mitterhaus, to whom some (or maybe all) members of the circus are connected; this action all unfolds against a backdrop of the circus going about its business. Although many in the community die, the vampires, including the resurrected Mitterhaus, are ultimately destroyed.

The film often plays more like a European art film than Hammer horror and was met mostly with confusion upon its release.

Kronos, more popularly known by its American title, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, was intended to be the start of a new series. Brian Clemens directed, produced, and wrote the screenplay, seeking to reinvent, or at least reinvigorate, the genre. The film was made in 1972 but faced limited distribution in both the UK and the USA in 1973–1974.

As a reimagining, the film played with vampire lore in that its vampires drain youth rather than blood, with the lead character explaining that vampires come in many forms but all drain the life from their victims to sustain their own; within the film, the vampires are draining youth rather than blood from young women, and the tools to detect and destroy vampires vary as well. Captain Kronos (Horst Janson), an established vampire hunter and action hero, and his colleague Professor Grost (John Cater) are summoned to Durward village, where they eventually learn that Lady Durward was born a Karnstein and that she and her supposedly dead husband are vampires. The two are defeated and Kronos and Grost head off into the franchise future in pursuit of more vampires to destroy.

While Kronos could have taken Hammer vampires in a new direction, it was not very well regarded by the studio itself and thus the series was dead in the water even before Hammer collapsed later that decade.

Conclusion

By the mid-1970s, Hammer was simply too out of touch with the new directions of horror and what audiences wanted. Their bosoms and blood formula was no longer unique, and their low-budget films began to look cheap. Many films that had been planned never went into production, and their few successes – including their final horror film, To the Devil a Daughter (1976) – were not enough to save the studio, which went into liquidation in 1979, meaning that it ceased doing business or employing staff and all assets were used to settle debts. Hammer worked in television in the UK through the 1980s, and while the film studio “brand” still existed, they were not producing new content.

Before the 2007 purchase of their catalog and their still-recognizable name, Hammer and Hammer horror were the subject of documentaries decades after their heyday, notably Hammer: The Studio That Dripped Blood in 1987, the 13-part series The World of Hammer (1990, aired in 1994), and Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), which is regarded as Peter Cushing’s last project and last collaboration with Lee before his death. Documentaries about and including Hammer horror continue to be made.

After 2007, Hammer began making films again, some of which have met with success. The first project was, fittingly, a vampire film, Beyond the Rave (2008), which – like Dracula 110 years previously – engaged with communications technology of the day to keep it “up-to-date with a vengeance,” being released on the early social media website MySpace in short increments. That same year, they secured the rights to and began developing the English-language remake of Let the Right One In , the widely acclaimed Swedish vampire movie. As this period was peak Twilight (Stephenie Meyer; books 2005–2008, films 2008–2012) time, as well as the first season of True Blood (2008–2014), it is somewhat surprising that none of the subsequent film releases have been vampire films (although Hammer, having control over the rights, was one of several producers of both the proposed and abandoned and the eventually produced television series Let the Right One In [Showtime 2022], which has little to do with its source material). But given the vast history of Hammer horror vampires, I don’t think anyone could say they haven’t done enough.

Cross-References