Dracula: A British Film Guide

British Film Guides

by Peter Hutchings

Peter Hutchings' many faceted account of Hammer's 1958 gothic horror classic explores the ways in which the history of the Dracula story, as well as the Hammer company's own fortunes affected the nature of the film, and looks closely at the film itself and the distinctive performance styles of its stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Genres: Film

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 4, 2003

Reviews

[Muhammed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent critical evaluation of the first colour vampire film, Hammer’s 1958 Dracula. Offers an overview of the Dracula story from the Bram Stoker original to its cinematic adaptations up until 1958. The Hammer film itself is analyzed in detail, with almost every scene being pored over for its use of camera, sound and mise en scene. The book also offers interesting critical readings from Marxist, feminist and psychoanalytic lenses.

[G. Salter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hutchings gives a very good overview of this film's production, covering all the conventional info while bringing up some interesting points about the film stands in the history of vampire cinema. As I found when reading his earlier book on Terence Fisher, I didn't always agree with his conclusions but always found he left me with something to chew on.
Definitely worth reading if you're a Hammer scholar.

[Danny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was rather annoyed by the tone of the book. Now, there's no obligation for these BFI guides to be 100% technical and looking intrinsically at the film in question, but Peter Hutchings diverges too much from making useful readings to make this book worthwhile for me.

He makes some good observations and there are parts that are very good. He's particularly good at describing the attitude and atmosphere at the time. However, where the book fails to satisfy to me is the way in which half of this book is Hutching's attempt to convince the reader that this is a fantastic film. It is a response to previous criticisms rather than a work that stands as the "guide" it ought to be. Indeed, it gets quite tiresome when he begins to shoot down, even ridicule arguments against this film's artistic merit and resorts to generalized statements such as "everyone has an opinion" in the end to cover himself against any counter-arguments.

It evidently doesn't help that I wasn't a great fan of the film, either, but when Hutchings talks about a plot hole (which is what's being discussed is, indisputably) with vague generalizations such as this: "What the sequence lacks in narrative logic, however, it more than makes up for with a dynamism and energy. In fact, one might go further and suggest that the absence of logic helps the scene by freeing it from the need to explain methodically what is happening here and enabling it instead to proceed at speed", then I'm sorry that I'm not convinced.

[Joel Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief (90 pages) examination of Hammer's first Dracula film and its thematic/technical/genre-specific legacies. A quick and interesting read for horror fans.