Blood of Dracula (1957)

Fresh and Exciting

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Another of AIP's teenage horror movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. This one's about a teenage girl who smokes so you know she's a rebel. Her father is remarrying just six weeks after her mom died, so she's got a lot to rebel against. Anyway the dad and stepmom send the girl to boarding school, where she meets a lady chemistry teacher who's also a bit of a mad scientist. She is pretty peeved that men are going to destroy the world and won't let her save it, so she uses an amulet to hypnotize the girl into a becoming a vampire, because why not? Obviously, as with most of these types of movies, it's got its share of flaws. The vampire makeup is pretty silly and that corny music number is unintentionally hilarious. The ending is abrupt like they decided they had better things to do one day and just called it quits. Still, it's not all bad. The script has some bite (no pun intended) and some of the characters are fun. There's also some subtext that, laughable though it may be, keeps things interesting. Sandra Harrison is good as the smart-mouthed lead. Louise Lewis is appropriately melodramatic as the scientist. The rest of the cast ranges in quality and includes babes Gail Ganley and Heather Ames. No one stinks up the joint. Even the lesser actors are worth watching for how much they ham it up. As a horror movie, it wouldn't scare an infant. But it does have value for fans of cheesy B movies from the '50s.

One thing I will say about Blood Of Dracula. It revives the tradition that was reserved for B westerns in that the title has nothing to do with the famous Transylvanian Vampire Count. Other than to say that the murders committed in this film are said to be Dracula like, Dracula has nothing to do with the film. I guess American International Pictures thought that the count's name would bring in some box office.Well if you're expecting Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee pass this right on by. This concerns some chilling murders that occur in and around Mary Adams's school for girls. In this case we have a woman mad scientist in Louise Lewis and she's conducting experiments involving an impressionable young teen played by Sandra Harrison. A little hypnosis and Harrison reverts to the primitive which includes turning into a girl werewolf replete with fangs and sucking the blood dry out of those she kills. It's all a puzzle to the homicide cop Malcolm Atterbury.In the worst of science fiction films the scientist is always saying that this is all for the benefit of humankind. Even female scientists are saying that. How turning a young teen girl into a primitive homicidal maniac is beyond me.This film is one camp hoot with cheap cinematography, no production values and players delivering their lines in anticipation of their checks clearing. Let's hope they got paid for this drivel.

Herbert L. Strock directed this film, another hybrid horror and juvenile delinquency yarn that stars Sandra Harrison as Nancy Perkins, a troubled teenager who is sent to live in an all-girl boarding school by her parents. She then meets evil Miss Branding(played by Louise Lewis) a professor who uses hypnosis and a medallion(Dracula's?) to control her, which results in Nancy becoming a murderous(and ugly) vampire, terrorizing the campus, and some visiting boyfriends of the girls... Silly film with a vague plot has no originality at all, and few scares, though the makeup is striking. Part of the "Teenage" monster fad of this time.

This low budget 1957 monster movie is typical of the drive-in fare produced by AIP in the late Fifties to attract the teenage audience. It's a moody, low key story with some nice atmosphere, about a teenage girl embittered by her father re-marrying shortly after her mother's death, and dumping his daughter in a private school at the request of his new wife.The new student makes a good impression on the leader of the secret clique that runs things behind the lines, who advises her chemistry teacher mentor that they've found the ideal subject for the teacher's secret project, a girl filled with barely suppressed anger and violence.Many viewers have commented on the lesbian subtext of the teacher's relationships with Myra, the clique leader, and Nancy, the new girl. Louise Lewis gives probably the best performance of the movie as the feminist scholar determined to prove her thesis to a " world run by men for men". She strikes just the right note as the sinister scientist with a benign exterior, seeming only to want to be a helpful mentor to the girl, polite and efficient with the school dean, spouting her lunatic ideas with reasonable sounding phrases about progress and science.Some night time scenes of terror on the darkened grounds of the school are very effective, and the acting is fairly good. As usual for a Fifties AIP movie, there are lots of pretty girls to look at, some rock and roll music and dancing, and a subversive undertone in which virtually all adults are suspect in their motives.The movie isn't as dynamic as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, from which it's obviously derived, but it works pretty well on its own terms as a spooky little thriller. Definitely worth seeing for Fifties horror movie buffs.