Christopher Lee portrayed Dracula in a total of ten films, and his epic run as the legendary bloodsucker began with the 1958 Hammer production Horror of Dracula, one of the best Dracula movies ever made. As that film’s 70th anniversary draws near, Deadline reports that the recently revived Hammer Horror Films has crafted an uncensored 4K restoration of Horror of Dracula that will be coming to theatres this Halloween!
This restoration of Horror of Dracula will also be available on home entertainment.
What is Horror of Dracula about?
Directed by Terence Fisher from a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster and based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, Horror of Dracula is a fun twist on a familiar story. In this one, Jonathan Harker arrives at Count Dracula’s Transylvanian castle to destroy the vampire. His mission fails when he is bitten and becomes undead. Dr. Van Helsing arrives to investigate, kills his turned friend, and travels to Karlstadt to protect Harker’s loved ones from Dracula’s revenge.
Lee was joined in the cast by Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, and John Van Eyssen.
Following Horror of Dracula, Lee reprised the role of Dracula in the Hammer productions Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (1970), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973). He also played the character in Jess Franco’s Count Dracula (1970), Jerry Lewis’s One More Time (1970), and Édouard Molinaro’s Dracula and Son (1976).
What do we know about the restoration?
Horror of Dracula was the first full color production of a Dracula film, so the first cut of the film proved to be too intense for ’58. There were reports of people fainting at screenings, and censors took issue with the bloodshed. Only moviegoers Japan had the chance to see the uncut version.
Hammer owner John Gore told Deadline, “It was the fangs that scared them. People were screaming, which was the point. Think of every Halloween, and you see all those fangs, that’s a Hammer and Christopher Lee invention. It all started when Christopher Lee said, ‘I want more teeth with this,’ so (makeup artist Philip Leakey) came up with something that had some bite. That thing that we just associate with vampires everywhere all came up with Lee and the makeup guy.“
As for the censored moments, Gore said, “We managed to get the uncut original Christopher Lee Dracula. So we’ve just been remastering that now. So there’s like three minutes missing. Hammer’s business was based on the censor. Getting that X-rated certificate was crucial to marketing, but they could only go so far because the censors didn’t like what they saw — all that blood. So Warner Brothers, they have this massive, massive storage near LAX where everything from the 1920s onwards is there. I mean, there’s like 10 Batmobiles and God knows what. And they found the director’s cut of the original 1958 Dracula. So we will be unlocking that and the world will get to see the bits they weren’t seeing, which is mostly to do with how Dracula dies at the end.“
There’s also “a bit that’s so famous, it’s where Christopher Lee descends on the woman and is about to bite her. It’s so sexual and they had to trim that because it just looked like it was nothing to do with vampires. So they had to trim a bit of the sexual stuff and then how he’s destroyed at the end. They cut quite a lot out because they went, ‘It’s too gruesome.’ And now that’s back in. All the crucial points that were axed are now back in.“
Silver Salt Restoration oversaw the upgrade of the picture. Gore added that he and his team are looking at the entire Hammer catalogue and exploring how the vault of 160+ productions might be further exploited.
Horror of Dracula is a great movie, so it’s very cool to hear that an uncensored 4K version will be in theatres this Halloween. Are you a fan of this one? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Uncensored 4K restoration of Horror of Dracula coming to theatres this Halloween appeared first on JoBlo.
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