Friday night at the home drive-in: Blood of Dracula (1957)

Poster for Blood of Dracula (1957)Blood of Dracula (1957) by #HerbertLStrock

An angry teenager at an all girls boarding school becomes the subject of a monstrous experiment.

“In her eyes … desire! In her veins … the blood of a monster!”
“Who am I? What am I doing, I – I’m living a nightmare!”
“I know what you are, and I know what you’ve done to me!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

Blood of Dracula (1957) goes deep for me. I saw it way back when – I’m not even sure how old I was the first time. I probably saw it on TV (although I’m not 100% sure about that). I eventually bought a copy on VHS – and I watched it several times over the years. It surprised me to learn that it didn’t really rate very well in review books, etc. I always found it irresistible…

Looking at it now,with older, jaded eyes, it seems like it was made to be a follow up, or companion piece, to the much more famous I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957). It was apparently even called I Was A Teenage Vampire at one point – and that’s a fairly apt title for it. I Was A Teenage Werewolf was released in June of 1957 and Blood of Dracula followed in November. So perhaps it was a quickly made attempt to recapture the magic and success of I Was A Teenage Werewolf. I’m not sure. The funny thing is, I actually like Blood of Dracula more.

Maybe it’s because I saw Blood of Dracula first. There’s something to be said about first times being special…

Or maybe it’s the fact that Blood of Dracula feels somewhat related to the women in prison genre – a genre that’s very dear to my heart. I say this because Blood of Dracula takes place in an all girls boarding school. There’s something similar about the social hierarchies of a prison and an all girls boarding school. There are the inmates/students who seem to run the place and have extra privileges  – and there is the “new fish”. And everyone is mean to the new fish. 

I also love the fact that – like The Vampire (1957), which I talked about a couple of weeks agoBlood of Dracula feels more like a werewolf movie than a vampire movie. Nancy Perkins, the new fish played by Sandra Harrison, looks and acts like a perfectly normal teenager during the day. But late at night she transforms into a hideous, bloodthirsty monster. This is due to the experiments of one of her teachers (!), Miss Branding, played by Louise Lewis. Miss Branding believes that she is going to stop the creation of nuclear bombs and other deadly weapons of mass destruction by proving to the world that the beast lurking inside of us is more powerful (or some perfectly sane idea like that). So, she uses hypnosis and an ancient artifact from the Carpathian mountains to turn her innocent student Nancy into a killer.

I grew up on Carpathia Road, by the way, so this fact always resonated loudly for me…

What more do I need to say? Blood of Dracula (1957) is #NotQuiteClassicCinema gold from beginning to end. I’ve watched it many times over the years – and I intend to watch it again, perhaps on another nostalgic #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn.

One thought on “Friday night at the home drive-in: Blood of Dracula (1957)

  1. Pingback: Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957) | 100% Certified Angus Kohm

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *