Contribution to vampire movie mythology - after a stake is driven through a vampire's heart, it returns to whatever human state it would've been in (old but dead, decomposed or dust)
By my count, Hammer Film Productions made sixty horror movies, although three of those are just video compilations from the only season of their TV series, Journey to the Unknown (1968; what Americans call "seasons," the British would refer to as "series"). Another ten off that list could be downgraded to psychological thrillers, and a couple are more horrific action/adventure hybrids than horror, if you're a purist about definitions. I was happy to see the new Hammer logo appear before the opening credits on Let Me In (which opened in theaters last weekend). After killing itself with kung fu experimentation and soft porn schlock starting in the late '60s, the company is now back from the dead. It's interesting to note that Hammer has waited until this current era of remakes to return, because it was remakes that really got the company going in the late '50s. You could almost consider Let Me In (2010) to be like a 50th anniversary celebration of The Brides of Dracula (1960). In my opinion, those two movies have about as much in common as Christopher Lee's Dracula (1958) does with Bela Lugosi's Dracula (1931). Lee doesn't try for a Romanian accent and neither do any of his neighbors down in the village. When we first see his castle, it's sunny and clean, no cobwebs or wolves howling. He focuses on raw physicality and shocking mood swings, much like the soundtrack focuses on drum banging and cymbal crashing. Extensive liberties are taken with the Van Helsing character. Aside from dramatic changes to Bram Stoker's plot, he's pretty much allowed to steal the show from the title character. When he kills his own friend who's become a vampire, Jonathan Harker, you know he means business (and you never see it coming). Peter Cushing plays Van Helsing as a human monster, reducing Christopher Lee's Dracula to a sympathetic animal that had to be put down. In other Hammer horror, he played a rapist Victor Frankenstein while his costar played another unfortunate monster. Look no further than the Star Wars series to determine which actor is scarier - Grand Moff Tarkin (Cushing), commander of the Death Star, or Count Dooku (Lee), who gets served by a little green muppet? And speaking of actors that later appeared in '80s and '90s movie franchises, if you want to see Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, as a young man, check out Michael Gough on The Horror of Dracula as well.
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