Dracula (Hammer film series) – Wikipedia

American horror/adventure film series

Dracula is the title of several horror-adventure film series centered on Count Dracula, who is accidentally resurrected, bringing with him a plague of vampirism, and the ensuing efforts of heroic Van Helsing family to stop him.

The original series of films consisted of nine installments, which starred iconic horror actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Count Dracula and Doctor Van Helsing respectively. The series of films is part of the larger Hammer Horror series.

Production of Dracula began at Bray Studios on 17 November 1957 with an investment of 81,000.[1] As Count Dracula, Lee fixed the image of the fanged vampire in popular culture.[2] Christopher Frayling writes, "Dracula introduced fangs, red contact lenses, dcolletage, ready-prepared wooden stakes and in the celebrated credits sequence blood being spattered from off-screen over the Count's coffin."[3] Lee also introduced a dark, brooding sexuality to the character, with Tim Stanley stating, "Lee's sensuality was subversive in that it hinted that women might quite like having their neck chewed on by a stud".[4]

In 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw Dracula ranked the 65th best British film ever.[5] Empire magazine ranked Lee's portrayal as Count Dracula the 7th Greatest Horror Movie Character of All Time.[6]

In addition to the Hammer Film Productions series, Christopher Lee reprises his role as Count Dracula in the Spanish-Italian-German-British Count Dracula (1970), produced by Harry Alan Towers, in the French Dracula and Son (1976), produced by Alain Poir, and in the American stop motion-animated Frankenweenie (2012), produced by Tim Burton and Allison Abbate.[18][19]

Upon publishing extracts of their screenplay for Anno Dracula in an updated version of the first book in the series, author Kim Newman revealed the film would use the likeness of Peter Cushing to represent the severed head of the deceased Van Helsing, establishing elements of the Hammer Productions Dracula film series as the backdrop for the film adaptation's events, specifically an imagined alternate ending to the 1958 Dracula film. The fourth book in the series, subtitled Johnny Alucard, follows the character of the same name originally introduced in Dracula A.D. 1972.[20]

Read the original:
Dracula (Hammer film series) - Wikipedia