The Brides of Dracula

A horror film set in nineteenth-century Bavaria. Marianne is travelling to take up a teaching post at a girls' school. Her coach stops at an inn and the driver leaves without her. Nobody at the inn will speak. A woman comes from the castle nearby and invites her to the house. In the castle are an old baroness and a man in chains: her son, Baron Meinster. The mother has kept him there for years and will not say why. Marianne pities him and undoes the chain. After that deaths begin in the district. Young women are found dead and the graves turn up empty. Van Helsing arrives. He has worked at this for years; his method is settled and he works by observation, not superstition. Although Dracula is in the title, the Count is not in the film. The narrative is built on another vampire following in his line. The most remembered passage takes place at a windmill, and the solution comes not from a weapon but from a shadow. Peter Cushing plays Van Helsing, Martita Hunt the baroness, Yvonne Monlaur plays Marianne and David Peel the baron. Terence Fisher directed. It is the second film in the studio's Dracula series and keeps to the style of gothic horror in colour. A solid choice for anyone who likes classic horror and the Hammer tradition. For a viewer expecting fast horror, the film builds slowly and takes its tension from its sets.