Brides of Dracula (1960)

Dracula does not make an appearance in the film "Brides of Dracula," which might seem kind of odd until you watch it and realize there aren't any brides either, much less a bride of Dracula.

A woman does get engaged, though, and it's to a vampire (though she doesn't know that important little tidbit), so I suppose that's close enough.

Luckily for us (well, I at least, as one who sat through this film) there are no weddings either. That doesn't mean we have a better film, just a different one.

Peter Cushing does return as the famed vampire hunter Van Helsing, who has vanquished Drac and is looking for other vamps to fry. He happens upon one in the castle of the Baroness (Martita Hunt), who is hiding her undead son from the world.

That is until she foolishly invites a stranded woman named Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) to stay at her place for the night, setting off a chain of events that would lead to several people dying at the hands of the vampire.

Cushing doesn't come into the film until almost half way in and when he does he gets right down to business, discovering within moments that there's a bloodsucking fiend on the loose and getting to laying the smack down on them.

"Brides," as you may have guessed, is a Hammer vampire film, and without Christopher Lee to pick up the star slack the film suffers as we have to look at the weakest looking Fang this side of Edward Cullen, named Baron Meinster (the much-too-pretty David Peel).

So it's sheer numbers, as the Baron hastily assembles quite a collection of underlings, including his own mother (who though she is vamped out, appears to be able to resist the urge to attack every living person she sees).

In true Hammer fashion, though, the mood is thick, the bats are all on strings, and the action sequences tend to move just a step or so faster than slow motion. And there's plenty of talky exposition to bog things down.

The film's conclusion involves a nifty bit of quick thinking on Van Helsing's part involving turning a windmill into a cross as the day is breaking. It's actually the most exciting and more or less only innovative sequence in what is otherwise a slow-moving, dull and wasted film.