A look at the making of Hammer’s Dracula (Horror of Dracula) in 1957 shows how Peter Cushing was constantly thinking up new ideas to embellish a script or a scene. At the conclusion of the film, in Dracula’s castle, the vampire Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) and vampire-hunter Van Helsing (Cushing) stand off like tigers. As Van Helsing makes his final move, the script dictated that Cushing should brandish a crucifix and force Dracula into a shaft of sunlight, but the actor, a fan of the Errol Flynn style, wanted a bit more for his finale. He was all for jumping off a balcony or swinging on a chandelier, but as he explained, ‘dear Terry (director Terence Fisher) wouldn’t let me, in case I was injured.’ Although a stuntman was used for the jump, it was Cushing’s own suggestion that he pelt down the table and rip down the curtains. However, he was bothered by the appearance of yet another crucifix. ‘Van Helsing was like a salesman for the things,’ he said. ‘They were practically coming out of his ears. He gives one to Mina, one to the little girl, he was throwing them in coffins, and so on. At the end he was supposed to pull out another one.’ Cushing came up with a clever solution. ‘I remembered seeing a film years ago called Berkeley Square, in which Leslie Howard was thought of as the devil by this frightened little man who grabbed two candelabra to make the sign of the cross with them. I remembered that this had impressed me enormously. Originally the candelabra we used were the type with four candles on each base. You could tell what I was doing, but it didn’t look like a cross. So they were changed to the ones I used in the film.’ As Dracula decays, Van Helsing’s haunted expression conveys a mixture of exhaustion, revulsion, sadness and relief. Cushing later explained his own feelings about the shot: ‘I was reading a book that said, at the end of Dracula, there is a look of sadness in Van Helsing’s face... He has suddenly achieved his life’s quest, and now what is he going to do? I can tell you that I didn’t have that in mind at all when we were shooting the film. I stand there and run my hand through my hair and look down out of exhaustion. But that critic was absolutely right. Something in me was communicating that to the audience, and the audience fills in the rest.’ The groundwork that Fisher and his crew did on their first Hammer horror film The Curse of Frankenstein (made the previous year), pays off a hundredfold here. Something wonderful happens, like alchemy, all the elements come together and the result is a film that is still enchanting and exciting audiences more than fifty years after it was made. It is now regarded as a bona fide British screen classic, after many years of being derided as ‘just’ a horror film and much of the film’s lasting power comes from Peter Cushing. The film’s world première was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 8th May 1958, taking $1,682 on its first day. The film opened in Britain at the Gaumont Haymarket, with a spectacular front of house display featuring Christopher Lee, on 22nd May 1958, and on Broadway a week later. Though the film was a massive success, reviews were mixed, especially at home. The Daily Telegraph forced out a few good words, but could not contain its outrage for long. ‘The new version outdoes its Bela Lugosi predecessor in bizarre horror ... There is much erudite play with vampire repellents and crosses and ... stakes; and by way of a climax, we see the Count, several centuries old, with face and hands crumbling to dust. This British film has an “X” certificate. This is too good for it. There should be a new certificate “S” for sadistic or just “D” for disgusting. But I must add that the film is
most efficiently produced and is well acted by Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee...’ The Times found Cushing ‘tight-lipped and resolved’ and the film ‘by no means an unimpressive piece of storytelling’ while Variety said Cushing was ‘impressive as the painstaking scientist-doctor who solves the mystery.’ The New York Daily News hit the nail on the head, appreciating that the film had ‘allocated time, thought and talent to an enterprise which successfully recaptures the aura and patina of yesterday’s middle Europe. Some of the photography is good enough to frame.’