With the death of Christopher Lee earlier this year I finally was drawn to watching him along with Peter Cushing in Hammer Films Horror films’ versions of some of classic monsters. I’d been hearing about some of these for year about how the Hammer versions of Frankenstein and Dracula were darker and sexier (though I confess after seeing Curse of the Werewolf last year I was going in with some skepticism.
The first of the films, Curse of Frankenstein starts as a reimagining of Mary Shelly’s classic story though it deviates fairly quickly. Probably thanks to the Boris Karloff’s unforgettable performance (along with Jack Peirce’s makeup) Frankenstein is almost always mistaken for his creation. In the Hammer version there is no such misunderstanding. Here’ it is all about Frankenstein with the creature being a side detail. Peter Cushing plays the doctor as an amoral psychopath driven to create not letting anything or anyone get in his way. When the monster escapes to wreak havoc he regards it mostly as an inconvenience (a far cry from Colin Clive’s portrayal who I alway imagined needing a good slap.)
Lee’s monster has little to do in comparison, though Lee manages to give it interesting physical performance.
Horror of Dracula of the two was the film I had gone in with the highest hopes. I had heard many good things about Lee’s portrayal of the count as being far more physical than the Universal version. I ended up being disappointed. Lee’s screen presence as Dracula is amazing but he only has dialogue in his first scene and for the rest of the film he’s little more than a feral predetor.
Cushing does a good job as Van Helsing. But after Curse of Frankenstein it was a bit of a let down based on what I’d heard about it I’d expected something similar to Anthony Hopkins’ performance in Brahm Stoker’s Dracula a driven hunter of the most dangerous game who would do what it took to take Dracula on. Instead he came almost like a version of Sherlock Holmes trying to predict Dracula’s next move.
