With the, rather definitive ending to Hammers ‘Horror of Dracula’ I was MORE than curious going into this sequel to find out how they restored Christopher Lee from raggedy pile of dust and jewellery to the great count once more…Then I realised Christopher Lee wasnt in the titles OR credits of this movie…and im pretty sure they didnt do that to hide him somewhere in the film…So…yeh! This is a ‘dracula’ movie called ‘The Brides of Dracula’ that DOESNT actually feature Count Dracula.

Instead we focus on young European ‘Student Teacher to be’ Marieanne. Who’s making her way to a dance academy when a series of unfortunate events leads her stranded in a local village the night before she’s supposed to begin teaching at a prestigious academy. All seems lost when in walks her ticket out of the village in the form of Baroness Meinster. A crimson woman of ill repute within the village who demands a drink at the local inn, quickly associates with MarieAnne, before offering to put her up in her spacious castle mere miles away from the Academy, where she can spend the night and then leave early in the morning, still making it to her first session on time. An offer MarieAnne quickly accepts.

However; at the castle, things start to unravel, when she witnesses a young man, hovering around the ledge of one of the lower bedrooms in the castle, the Baroness informs her that its her son, who is hidden away due to madness, with most of the village believing him to be dead.

Curiosity gets the better of MarieAnne, and after sneaking down to the Barons bedroom, its revealed that he’s in fact trapped in his room, clearly ISNT showing any signs of madness, and needs a key from the Baronesses room to escape, something Marieanne agrees to support on.

But once released, the Baron and Baroness reveal that this was a most unwelcome revelation, and carnage begins to reign from the castle down to the dance academy and local village, leaving MarieAnne at a loss as to what to do next. Mercifully for her, she has ANOTHER chance encounter with one of the leading experts in all things Vampiric and supernatural. Dr. Van Hellsing. Who ends up accompanying Marie Anne to her dance school, at which he learns of a terrible curse within the castle grounds. and the murders that have started to reap in…

And. On paper? this sounds great. in practice however…not so much. It would have been no easy feat in surpassing the greatness of the original Hammer classic. Lee and Cushing together are a tour de force. and I personally found that, while this film had some REALLY fun, interesting and thrilling moments. It couldnt quite find its thread and found itself regularly trying to figure out what it ACTUALLY wanted to be…

The script for a starters is very uneven in my opinion. The opening act is a game of two halves, starting off drearily slow and predictable, right up until the point where we get back to the Baronesses castle, at which point things take a turn for the genuinely unsettling and sinister. It really manages to pull the audience in with its twists and turns and opressive and intimidating atmosphere. Aaaaaaaand then Marieanne flees the castle at the end of the first act, going into the second act. And the whole film kind of hard resets in tone.

Act 2 runs at an absolute crawl for the most part, as we basically are reintroduced to Van Hellsing, and then have to spend an UNGODLY amount of time retracing the steps of the movie that we’ve already JUST sat through in the first act…with a tiny bit of additional backstory about the village, and the baron to try and sweeten the deal (it didnt for me…) This then leads into a pretty decent setup for the 3rd act with the Baron discovering the Dance academy and beginning the process of assembling his titular ‘Brides’ and once again the tension starts ramping up with some genuinely out of left turn plot twists I didnt see coming for a moment!

But!, it’s all for naught, because the film undoes any of the big plot twists that set up the 3rd act in the final 15 minutes or so, and then does a VERY underwhelming final fight before dumping us out to end credits without much in the way of resolution or closure. it just kind of ends, and we’re expected to be okay with that…Which I wasnt.

Like I say, I thought this film had some genuinely interesting and surrealist moments scattered throughout, with quite a few moments clearly being the inspiration for the BBC’s ‘League of Gentlemen’ series. But it really struggles to muster much in the way of enthusiasm from me when they keep setting up interesting plot twists and shocking revelations, only to then not do much with them, or undo them entirely before the end credits.

Tone is all over the place, the film cant decide if it wants the terror and suspense of the original film, a hearty dose of comedy, more of a thriller vibe, or to be a mystery film. So it samples elements of all of the above with mixed to poor results in my opinion.

The characters are kind of dull, the Baron doesnt really command much authority, and coming after Lee’s interpretation of the count, left me positively tepid. Van Hellsing gets very little growth here over his place in the first film. non of the other characters really leave a lasting impression either…When I can say confidently, that the most detailed and lasting character in this film is the mad housekeeper who has ABSOLUTELY no pacing to her characrers emotions, she just wrecking balls through like…8 completely different emotions in 10 seconds. and comes out with some amazing lines…thats not a good thing, thats a problem…Because your film has Peter Cushing fighting and army of the undead…and I’d rather watch an old housekeeper pound the floor cackle crying about the nasty baron…

I would suggest that the direction and cine at least hold up to the lower to middle ends of the first films style and distinctness. we have lavish location work, rich and sumptuous sets, riddled with intricate detail. decent sequence work and rich use of midnight blues and plush reds to help offset the browns and earthier tones. It looks pretty decent. BUT! it doesnt quite hit the dizzy highs of the more iconic moments of the original, and never quite finds its own visual identity. I wanted to come away from this film feeling like I could differentiate it from any of the other vampire films from this era. But it just isnt that inventive. its fine…good even! but just not distinct or great enough to really fully win me over…

That AND for some reason the amount of ‘Hammer Blood’ is heavily reduced in this film over the previous one. you get a couple of ‘Staking’ scenes that show that sweet sweet paint red blood…but not a whole lot else…in fact, the gore and more graphic violent scenes are all toned quite a bit back in this one compared to the original, possibly due to the controversy the previous entry caused between Universal and the BBFC…

Direction of the cast is serviceable, everyone seems to really put themselves into the roles and theres some decent set choreography and prop work here. The fight sequences though again, seem a bit paired back over the original and come across as less intense as a result…which is a shame.

As for the performances? Peter Cushing rarely if ever dissapoints, and here is no exception, probably 30% of this films saving graces fall solely at his feet, and while I think pound for pound I prefer his Victor Frankenstein, his Van Hellsing here is still equally fun to watch. Freda Jackson as the demented housekeeper Greta makes up about another 30-40% of why I love this film, she’s manic, high energy and genuinely demented at times. I had a real soft spot for her and enjoyed her performance immensely here. Unfortunately David Peel as the Baron/lead Vampire did very little for me. He just doesnt have the presence, energy or range I want in a Vampire. he’s unsuspecting, yes, i’ll give him that. But when he flicks into Vampire mode I just kind of sigh…he wasnt for me…

Martita hunt however as the Baroness is a STORM and im genuinely upset we didnt get to see even more of her performance. she has a very unsettling presence and her deliveries are a mixture of unnervingly calm and pointed, in just the right balance that made me effortlessly watch her. I really wish she’d had more screen time as shes splended from start to finish.

throw in a fairly generic Hammer horror score of oomps and womps from the orchestral section that just about do the job, but again, seldome bring anything new to the table and I just found myself kind of wishing that this had been more than just a half hearted rush job…

Its by no means a bad movie at all, visually its very impressive and there is absolutely fun to be had here, but its nothing we didnt really see before in the previous film, only now everything looks quite considerbly cheaper, is much more toned down on gore and violence and feels incredibly padded just to hit the base runtime.

I do think this may be one that I warm to on rewatches, but in this instance? it was a significant drop in quality. Probably still worth your time if you like Vampire movies, but I wouldnt call this a Hammer ‘Essential’

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-brides-of-dracula/