The first, and finest, of Christopher Lee's numerous appearances as the Transylvanian bloodsucker for the Hammer film studio. (Let us not speak of his appearance in the unspeakable Count Dracula for Jesus Franco in Spain.) This is the movie, too, that deserves recognition for taking the single greatest stride in the sexualization of the vampire (what with his explicitly erectile canines, and the bosom-heaving thralldom in which he holds his mesmerized women). Luckily, Peter Cushing provides equally vigorous opposition in the person of Van Helsing, the vampire hunter. And an authentic strain of British decency, decorum, morality, shockability, etc., makes for some healthy creative tensions which somehow elude later explorers on this path. Directed, briskly, by Terence Fisher. (1958) — Duncan Shepherd
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