Blood of Dracula
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''Blood of Dracula'' (U.K. title: ''Blood Is My Heritage'') is a 1957 American black-and-white
horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
directed by
Herbert L. Strock Herbert L. Strock (January 13, 1918 – November 30, 2005) was an American television producer and director, and a B-movie director of titles such as '' I Was a Teenage Frankenstein'' (1957), '' How to Make a Monster'' (1958), and ''The Crawlin ...
and starring Sandra Harrison, Louise Lewis and Gail Ganley. It was co-written by Aben Kandel and Herman Cohen (collectively credited as "Ralph Thornton"). Released by
American International Pictures American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing fi ...
(AIP) in November 1957, it is one of two follow-up films to AIP's box office hit ''
I Was a Teenage Werewolf ''I Was a Teenage Werewolf'' is a 1957 horror film starring Michael Landon as a troubled teenager, Yvonne Lime and Whit Bissell. It was co-written and produced by cult film producer Herman Cohen and was one of the most successful films released ...
''. The film was released theatrically in 1957 as a
double feature The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown. Opera use Opera ho ...
with ''
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein ''I Was a Teenage Frankenstein'' (U.K. title: ''Teenage Frankenstein'') is a film starring Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates and Gary Conway, released by American International Pictures (AIP) in November 1957 as a double feature with '' Blood of Dra ...
.''Gary A. Smith, ''The American International Pictures Video Guide'', McFarland 2009, p. 29


Plot

Six weeks after the death of her mother, Nancy Perkins' father marries Doris and decides to enroll the 16-year-old smoker Nancy into a
boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...
, the Sherwood School for Girls. After arriving in their 1957 Mercury they are greeted by the principal, Mrs. Thorndyke, who emphasizes to Nancy that the school is not a corrective institution but a private preparatory school with an outstanding reputation. Nancy is immediately harassed by her dormmates that night. After Thorndyke officially introduces Nancy to the girls at breakfast the next morning, Myra, their leader, tells Nancy that it was good that she did not mention anything about how they acted the previous night. Myra also tells Nancy about their secret club, "The Birds of Paradise", and introduces her to Eddie, a young groundsman whom the “Birds” take turns dating. Myra is the assistant for Miss Branding, the school’s chemistry teacher, who is writing a thesis about her belief that there is a “terrible power,” “strong enough to destroy the world – buried within each of us.” If she can prove this is the case, she hopes that the scientific community will abandon their experiments with nuclear power and other weapons of mass destruction. When Branding tells Myra that she is looking for a special girl to experiment with, Myra suggests Nancy. Myra and her friend Nola deliberately switch a chemical to burn Nancy during chemistry class, causing her to react violently. Intrigued, Branding later talks with Nancy and gains her confidence. She then asks Nancy if she may hypnotize her, and Nancy agrees. Branding places an
amulet An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word amuletum, which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protects ...
from antiquity around her neck, telling Nancy that it came from the Carpathian Mountains region and is capable of healing and destroying– and has the ability to release frightening powers. As Nancy gazes at the amulet, Branding hypnotizes her and instructs her to always obey her. Later, Eddie and two local boys, Tab and Joe, climb up into the girls' room as they are having Nancy’s initiation party. In a nearby building, Branding hears the noise and, despite the distance, is able to re-hypnotize Nancy, turning her into a
vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mi ...
. The party is broken up by the disciplinarian Miss Rivers, who then sends Nola to the basement to fetch supplies. While in the basement, Nola is attacked by something subhuman and killed. The next morning, as policeman Detective-Sergeant Stewart investigates the killing, Nancy cannot wake up until Branding orders her. When she relates a nightmare she had, Branding orders her to forget it. At police headquarters, the
coroner A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into Manner of death, the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...
informs Lt. Dunlap that he found two puncture wounds in Nola's
jugular vein The jugular veins are veins that take deoxygenated blood from the head back to the heart via the superior vena cava. The internal jugular vein descends next to the internal carotid artery and continues posteriorly to the sternocleidomastoid ...
and that the body was drained of blood. A young assistant to the coroner, Mike, who shared a room in med school with “an exchange student from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains," remembers his friend's stories about vampires. Dunlap is unimpressed in the theory. The girls later organize a Halloween
scavenger hunt ''Scavenger Hunt'' is a 1979 American comedy film with a large ensemble cast which includes Richard Benjamin, James Coco, Scatman Crothers, Ruth Gordon, Cloris Leachman, Cleavon Little, Roddy McDowall, Robert Morley, Richard Mulligan, Tony Randa ...
in the local cemetery, and Nancy is again transformed into a vampire and kills Terry, one of the girls, as well as Tab. The police subject all the girls in the scavenger hunt to a lie-detector test. However, Branding is able to alter Nancy's responses to the questions by remote hypnosis. Back at the school, Nancy, confused and frightened by her transformations, begs for Branding's help. But Branding assures her that the experiment will soon be over and that she will be proud of her part in saving humanity from self-destruction. The state threatens to close the school over the unsolved murders, and consequently, Thorndyke asks Branding to take over some of her duties while she attempts to calm concerned parents. Nancy’s boyfriend from back home, Glenn, arrives at the school, being alarmed at the news stories of the slaughters, but Nancy now acts coldly towards Glenn; but only because she is concerned that she might suddenly have an urge to kill Glenn. After leaving Glenn, Nancy enters Miss Branding's laboratory, begging to be released from the experiment, but the obsessed Branding refuses and hypnotizes Nancy, who again becomes a brutal vampiress; this time she attacks Miss Branding, succeeding to strangle her to death with the amulet’s chain. But during the struggle, Branding pushes Nancy away. Nancy falls, is impaled and killed on a broken piece of furniture. At that moment, Glenn, Mrs.Thorndyke, and Myra break through a locked door to gain entrance into the laboratory and see that Branding's written thesis has been destroyed after being soaked with an acid.


Cast

*Sandra Harrison as Nancy Perkins *Louise Lewis as Miss Branding, chemistry teacher *Gail Ganley as Myra *Jerry Blaine as Tab *Heather Ames as Nola * Mary Adams as Mrs. Thorndyke *
Edna Holland Edna Milton Holland (September 20, 1895 – May 4, 1982) was an American actress. Her stage, screen and television lasted from the beginning of the 20th century to 1965. Holland was the daughter of comedian Edmund Milton Holland and actress ...
as Miss Rivers, art teacher * Thomas B. Henry as Mr. Paul Perkins *Jeanne Dean as Mrs. Doris Perkins *Don Devlin as Eddie *
Malcolm Atterbury Malcolm MacLeod Atterbury (February 20, 1907 – August 16, 1992) was an American stage, film, and television actor, and vaudevillian. Early years A native of Philadelphia, Atterbury was the son of Malcolm MacLeod, Sr. and Arminia Clara (Rosenga ...
as Lt. Dunlap *
Richard Devon Richard Devon (born Richard Gibson Ferraiole, December 11, 1926 – February 26, 2010) was an American character actor and voice actor who between the late 1940s and 1991 performed in hundreds of roles on stage, radio, television, and in f ...
as Det. Sgt. Stewart *Craig Duncan as police officer *Carlyle Mitchell as Stanley Mayther *Voltaire Perkins as Dr. Lawson *
Paul Maxwell Paul Maxwell (born Maxim Popovich; November 12, 1921December 19, 1991) was a Canadian actor who worked mostly in British cinema and television, in which he was usually cast as American characters. In terms of audience, his most notable role w ...
as Mike, the young doctor *Shirley De Lancey as Terry * Michael Hall as Glenn *Barbara Wilson as Ann *Jimmy Hayes as Joe *Lynn Alden as Linda


Production notes

The film bears a striking resemblance to AIP’s earlier summer box office hit, ''I Was a Teenage Werewolf.''Arkoff, pp. 61–75 With a story and screenplay credit by ''I Was a Teenage Werewolf'' writer Ralph Thornton (a pseudonym for AIP producer
Herman Cohen Herman Cohen (August 27, 1925 – June 2, 2002) was an American producer of B-movies during the 1950s, and helped to popularize the teen horror movie genre with films like the cult classic ''I Was a Teenage Werewolf''. Career Born in Detroit, ...
and
Aben Kandel Aben Kandel (15 August 1897 – 28 January 1993) was an American screenwriter, novelist, and (earlier in life) boxer. He was screenwriter on such classic B movies as ''I Was A Teenage Werewolf'', Joan Crawford's final movie ''Trog'', and one of Le ...
), ''Blood of Dracula'' features many other similarities to ''Werewolf''.


Reception

Upon its theatrical release, the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is the episcopal conference of the Catholic Church in the United States. Founded in 1966 as the joint National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and United States Catholic Conference (US ...
described the film as a “Low-budget chiller...in which a new student at a girl's prep school turns into a murderous vampire after falling under the hypnotic spell of the school's feminist science teacher ... Stylized violence, hokey menace and sexual innuendo" and gave the film an “Adults Only” rating. For its DVD release, ''
DVD Verdict DVD Verdict was a judicial-themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. The editor-in-chief was Michael Stailey, who owned the website between 2004 and 2016, and the site employed a large editorial staff of critics, whose reviews ...
'' wrote: "''Blood of Dracula'' has nothing to do with
Dracula ''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking ...
, but rather taints the vampire legend into the fate of a cranky teenage girl. The film basically takes the same route as ''I Was a Teenage Werewolf'', but never lives up to that effort, especially with Harrison’s monster turns kept to a bare minimum. But her wild bat make-up is memorable, looking closer to '
Nosferatu ''Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror'' (German: ''Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens'') is a 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife ...
' with big hair than anything else, and an impromptu musical number, 'Puppy Love' is a hoot."DVD Drive-In.com Reviews: SAMUEL Z. ARKOFF COLLECTION: HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958)/BLOOD OF DRACULA (1957) EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (1958)/WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (1958

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References

;Notes ;Bibliography * *


External links

* * * {{Dracula 1957 films 1957 horror films 1950s teen films American black-and-white films American supernatural horror films American International Pictures films Films directed by Herbert L. Strock Films about hypnosis Films set in schools American vampire films Films scored by Paul Dunlap 1950s English-language films 1950s American films