Hooptober X: The Devil Made Me Do It
#3: 2 Peter Cushing films (1)
Prime

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA follows 1958's DRACULA where Christopher Lee's bloodsucker has been destroyed. David Peel plays a good aristocrat but I can't take him seriously when he vamps out with that ridiculous mop on his head.

That being said, it still has Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, and it has the fantastic gothic atmosphere you'd expect from Hammer. The sets are gorgeous -- every square inch is draped with tapestries, paintings and ornate furniture.

The main vampire, Baron Meinster, is a young man whose mother keeps him chained in the castle, due to his "sickness." Extremely gothic. Of course he charms a young woman into freeing him and goes about building a harem of sexy vampire ladies. Despite the title, they"re not Dracula's brides, and Dracula is only mentioned once in the intro to explain that he's dead, but his cult lives on. I'm guessing they just wanted to keep Dracula in the title because it sold more tickets.

Cushing goes full Indiana Jones in this. He and the Baron have a solid knockdown-drag out fight in this. Cushing even grabs onto a windmill so the shadow makes a cross to stop the Baron -- and it works! I like the idea of taking things in a new direction and having Van Helsing traveling eastern Europe, hunting down vampire covens. But they must have abandoned that plan because they brought Lee back as Dracula in the next film, and I'm certainly cool with that too.

I watched this on a sleepy Monday evening while rain pelted us and flooded the yard. Hammer horror films are very comfortable to me and this did not disappoint.