Dracula: cinematic scrapbook

A diverse collection of rare film trailers and film trivia on Count Dracula, the world’s most illustrious vampire. This documentary charts the legend of Dracula from its origins in Hungarian folklore to Bram Stoker’s famous novel “Dracula”, F. W Murnau’s unauthorised film version of this novel, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), as well as Tod Browning’s famous Hollywood treatment of the subject, which brought Hungarian stage actor Bela Lugosi to prominence. Discusses how the popularity of monster films in the 1950’s saw the myth of Dracula being exploited in films such as Mother Riley meets the Vampire (1952), and Billy the Kid versus Dracula (1966). The resurrection of the genre came when the Hammer Studios in England revamped the story of Dracula in colour with a new leading man, Christopher Lee, in Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula (1958). This effectively spawned a barrage of films with vampire content, some of which actively sought to cash in on the popularity of the blaxploitation and kung-fu genres, resulting in films such as Blacula (1972) and Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974). The leading men who portrayed Dracula on-screen, most notably, Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, are also discussed in detail.