The Brides of Dracula (1960) .....An Over Analysis.

The Brides of Dracula is the best of the eight sequels to the 1958 Hammer film, Horror of Dracula, even though the legendary Count is nowhere in sight. Instead of a blood shot eyed Christopher Lee with blood dripping from his fangs, we are given a rather foppish villain in David Peel as he attempts to seduce French beauty, Yvonne Monlaur. It was rather a bold move by Hammer to make a sequel to Horror of  Dracula without Dracula, but it works surprisingly well.  This is largely due to the performance of Peter Cushing, reprising his role as Dr. Van Helsing from the previous film. Cushing's specialty was obsessive authority figures; during this time period he also played Baron Frankenstein.  Yet, despite their superficial similarities, his Frankenstein and Van Helsing are worlds apart.

Cushing's Frankenstein is an extremely cold and distant man, who believes that the end justifies the means (even if it involves murder). He is so detached from mankind that, in Frankenstein Created Woman, when an acquaintance of his is beheaded for a murder (that he didn't commit), the Baron is ecstatic that he finally has a corpse to test his latest hypothesis, the transference of the soul, on. He feels no remorse over the death of a friend, but rather just views it as an opportunity.  On the other hand, Cushing's Van Helsing, despite his obsessive behavior, is capable of warmth and compassion; in Horror of Dracula, he comforts a little girl (who was nearly a vampire victim) by wrapping his coat around her, putting a crucifix around her neck, and telling her that the sun will be be a couple of minutes. In Brides of Dracula, when it schoolmaster Herr Lang starts to berate Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) for being late on the job, Van Helsing explains her predicament and, simultaneously, puts Herr Lang in his place.  It is also interesting to note that The Brides of Dracula may be the only film in which Peter Cushing gets the woman in the end (well, kind of), but more on that later.

It is important to stress just how vital Peter Cushing is to this film's success; he gives a sincere performance and delivers his lines with such conviction that the audience readily believes the dangers they are being told about. Cushing has never been given the recognition he deserves, largely because of his association with the horror genre. He probably would be considered one of the all time greats had he appeared in more "respectable" films.

What's interesting about The Brides of Dracula, especially for a Hammer film, is that it's central character is a woman, Marianne, a young school teacher traveling to her place of employment. Hammer films tended to a be a bit male centric and women tended be either relegated to supporting roles or attractive scenery (like Valerie Gaunt in Horror of Dracula). Therefore, it is interesting that the first half hour of The Brides of Dracula is told through Marianne's point of view; she is the one that sets the story in motion by releasing the Baron Meinster from his chains, unaware of the evil that she has just unleashed upon the earth. She serves as the audience surrogate as she is a rather ordinary person (albeit one with supermodel looks) that finds herself in an extraordinary situation.

 The Brides of Dracula slavishly copies the structure of Horror of Dracula; the first half hour of that film follows Jonathan Harker as he runs afoul the sinister Count. In both films, Van Helsing doesn't make his first appearance until nearly one third of the way in. Yet, the audience clearly identifies more with Marianne than they do with Harker, largely because he is student of Van Helsing and, therefore, is knowledgeable in the ways of the vampire. He is aware of the risks, therefore it's not too surprising when he comes to an untimely end. Marianne, on the other hand, just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time; her main concern is getting to her school on time and is fairly ignorant when it comes to vampires. When the Baroness Meinster offers Marianne a place to say for the night, we as the audience are naturally shouting at her to stay put. We know this can only lead to bad things, therefore we slap our foreheads in disbelief when the sweet Marianne accepts the Baroness' hospitality. It's not necessarily a complex part, but Yvonne Monlaur gives a rather affecting performance as the beleaguered Marianne.

If there is a main flaw in The Brides of Dracula it is David Peel's Baron Meinster; he's not necessarily bad in the role, but he completely lacks the physicality and menace that Christopher Lee brought to the role of Dracula. In fact, the duel between Van Helsing and the Baron for Marianne's soul  is a complete mismatch in Van Helsing's favor, Cushing gives such a dynamic performance that he leaves David Peel standing in the dust. In the Dracula films that followed Christopher Lee was given very limited screen time, yet still managed to be intimidating despite having nothing to do (there are endless shots of him just standing in a corner, completely disconnected from the rest of the action).

However, The Brides of Dracula has not one, but two aces up its sleeve: Martita Hunt as the Baroness Meinster and Freda Jackson as her crazed servant, Greta. Hunt manages to make the Baroness actually sympathetic, despite her deplorable acts against humankind. The Baroness has lived a life of pure decadence, indulging in all sorts of carnal pleasures, including (heavily implied) incest with her son. She used to host parties on a frequent basis and Dracula just happened to show up at one of them; which eventually lead to her son being turned into a vampire. The Baroness had her son chained up in a hidden room and brought young women to castle for him to feast upon. Marianne was to be the Baron's next victim, but she unwittingly turned the tables on the Baroness. The Baroness is a terrible person, but it's amazing how Martita Hunt is able to make her sympathetic by allowing the guilt to come out in her performance. The Baroness is consumed by guilt; she knows she is largely at fault for the monster that her son has turned in to.  Freda Jackson's Greta is another memorable villain in the Hammer universe, with her crazed eyes and old crone laugh, she would give anyone the chills. There's a wonderfully chilling moment in which Greta, kneeling over a freshly filled cemetery plot, calmly starts giving birthing instructions to a vampire trying to claw out of her grave.

I mentioned earlier that Van Helsing (kind of) gets the girl in the end, and I stand by my statement, for in actuality The Brides of Dracula is really a love story between Van Helsing and Marianne Danielle. So let the over analysis begin.....

Van Helsing is an expert when it comes to the occult, but is completely clueless when it comes to worldly pleasures like love and sex. Therefore, when he first encounters Marianne, unconscious, in the woods, he is naturally taken aback by her great beauty, but is at a complete loss what to say. He is extremely inexperienced when it comes to romance, hence he doesn't  know where to begin. Also, his priorities are on ridding the world of pesky vampires, therefore he's not interested in being tied down to a long term relationship. He is so singled minded in his thinking that he is completely oblivious to the fact that Marianne fancies him. The signs are all there, she constantly smiles and flashes her eye lashes at him, but he can not take a hint. She misinterprets his timidness for indifference and therefore moves on to the next man that comes available to her: Baron Meinster.

I never bought that Marianne would so willingly consent to be the  Baron's wife, given the very little time she has known him and the extremely creepy circumstances that brought him together; him being chained up in a castle. Now, there are three possibilities as to why she would accept his proposal:

1) He has hypnotized her. In most movies and books, vampires possess hypnotic powers that can turn even the most strong willed individual into a complete putty. There are very few people that can resist their hypnotic stare; Van Helsing being one of them. However, since Marianne is oblivious to the ways of the vampire, she makes for easy pickings.

2) She figures, "Why the hell not?" Marianne is stuck at an all girls school, in the middle of nowhere, therefore her prospects at finding a husband are fairly slim. Now, if she were a lesbian, this wouldn't be a problem as her roommate Gina is fairly attractive, but Marianne does not swing that way; though is implied that Gina wants to be more than just friends with Marianne. Enter Baron Meinster, an extremely handsome and rich man who not only fancies Marianne, but wants her hand in marriage as well. How could she possibly refuse such a proposal? Sure, it makes her sound completely superficial, but remember The Brides of Dracula takes place in a time (1890s) when women were expected to get married and raise children. Marianne is in her twenties, hence, by the standards of that era, it is her obligation to find a husband and starting having children.

3) The Baron is a rebound relationship. Marianne is really smitten with Van Helsing, but since he doesn't show any interest, she hooks up with the first man who comes in her sights, which just happens to be the Baron Meinster. Yet, despite his youthful looks and extreme wealth, there relationship is very passion less. This is surprising, especially in a Hammer, given how sexually charged the scenes between Christopher Lee and Melissa Stribling were in Horror of Dracula. There's definitely more sexual tension between Marianne and Van Helsing than there is with her and the Baron. If Van Helsing would have asked Marianne to drop her teaching career and come away with him, you get the impression that she would done so without any hesitation. Marianne evens seems to regret her decisions, especially when Gina is prattling on about how she wishes she could find true love. Marianne smiles and nods her head, but doesn't really have anything of substance to say, largely because she knows it's all a ruse. Hell, when Van Helsing finally spills the beans about the Baron's true identity, Marianne is only too willing to believe him; she is a complete disbelief for like TEN SECONDS!!!! She gets over it rather quickly!

It isn't until Marianne announces her engagement to the Baron that Van Helsing  realizes the true extent of his feelings towards her. He is absolutely shocked by Marianne's announcement. Sure, it probably worries him that she just got engaged to a vampire, but the expression in his face indicates his feelings for her run deeper than must mere friendship. His reaction reminds me of the time I was in high school and I found out that the girl I fancied was dating a guy that (I believed) to be a complete douche bag. I kept asking myself, "Are you serious? Is she really dating that asshole?" The same thought process seems to be going through the good ol' Professor's mind. In the case of Van Helsing, it is justified, because he's a far more interesting person than the handsome Meinster. Take away the Baron's vampirism and he's an extremely dull personality who over compensates by dressing in a flashy manner. It should be noted that, despite being considerable older than Yvonne Monlaur, Peter Cushing looks fairy youthful in this film, especially when compared to his other Hammer roles  at the time. Therefore, a romance between Van Helsing and Marianne isn't entirely unbelievable. The Baron even openly mocks Van Helsing's feeling when he proclaims, while hissing like a snake,"Beautiful, isn't she? What a pity such beauty must fade, unless we preserve it."

There is an interesting moment at very end of the film; after Van Helsing has successfully slewed the diabolical Baron, Marianne runs towards and they embrace. However, before they embrace there is a slight pause between the two of them and it almost looks as if they are going to kiss. However, even though Van Helsing has essentially won the fair Marianne's hand, he is still at loss as to what to do next, so Marianne has to settle for an embrace...for now. The three Dracula films that followed (Dracula - Prince of Darkness, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, and Taste the Blood of Dracula) are all Van Helsing free; which indicates that after the events in Brides, Van Helsing settled down with Marianne and raised a family.
The next time Peter Cushing would appear in the series was Dracula A.D. 1972, in which he played a descendant of Van Helsing, Lorrimer. What more proof do you need?

Cast: Peter Cushing (Van Helsing), Yvonne Monlaur (Marianne Danielle), Martita Hunt (Baroness Meinster), Freda Jackson (Greta), David Peel (Baron Meinster), Miles Malleson (Dr.Tobler), Andree Melly (Gina), Henry Oscar (Herr Lang), Mona Washbourne (Frau Lang), Fred Johnson (Father Stepnik), Marie Devereux (Village Girl), Norman Pierce (Landlord), Vera Cook (Landlord's Wife), Michael Ripper (Coachman), Victor Brooks (Hans).

Director: Terence Fisher.
Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan, Edward Percy.
Running Time: 85 min.

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Mesa of Lost Women is regarded as one of the worst movies ever made and with a good reason; it's an extremely incompetent piece of cinema. It is so inept that the "Lost Women" of the title are fairly incidental to the actual plot of the movie. This is the IMDB synopsis of movie:

A mad scientist named Aranya is creating giant spiders and dwarfs in his lab on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico. He wants to create a master race of superwomen by injecting his female subjects with spider venom.

This isn't entirely incorrect, except that Aranya has probably less than ten minutes of actual screen time, despite Jackie Coogan's top billing.  When we first meet Aranya, he is showing off his experiment to fellow scientist, Leland Masterson. He hopes to make a race of superwomen by injecting them with a venom taken from a giant spider. This venom has made these women almost indestructible, yet unfortunately, it has transformed Aranya's male test subjects into dwarves.  Dr. Aranya hopes that Masterson will join him in his quest to make a species of super women, but Masterson denounces him. Disappointed, Aranya has his mute, sexy assistant Tarantella inject Masterson with a serum that transforms him into a raving lunatic. After this brief scene, Aranya completely vanishes and doesn't reappear until the film's climax.

The film is told in the flashback from the point of view of pilot Grant Philips...or is it? Just as soon as Grant begins tell his story, an omniscient narrator (Lyle Talbot) hijacks his account and begins to fill the audience in on how it all really began. The narrator is extremely condescending towards the characters in the movie, often mocking their bravery and intelligence. Other times, the film will cut to a close up of a character and the narrator will tells us their thoughts. When Grant starts talking about the Spider Women, there is a close up of the character of Pepe (who is has heard tales of such monstrosities), and the narrator starts chiding him for keeping his mouth shut.

The movie opens on a medium close up of man, just then a pair of hands (with claw like finger tips) crawl into frame and grab the guy's face. The camera pans over to reveal an attractive brunette. She pulls the man in for a kiss and he (understandably) doesn't offer up any sort of resistance. However, his immense joy is short lived as her kiss proves to be lethal and he falls down dead. Just then an off screen voice asks,"Have you ever been kissed by a girl like this?" Then the opening credits roll. Initially, I thought that this was a flash forward into the story, considering that man being kissed reappears a few minuter later. I was wrong.

This opening scene is disconnected from the rest of the story; it only serves to set up how dangerous the Spider Women really are. It leads you to believe that the plot will revolve around Spider Women luring unsuspecting (and extreme dense) men to their dooms. However, the Spider Women prove to a complete non-threat to our protagonists; their role consists mainly of close ups as they stare on, from afar, at our hapless heroes. Even Tarantella, the main Spider Woman, turns out to be a rather inadequate villain. She shows up long enough to do a "seductive" dance at a complete dive of a bar, only to be shot for her effort.  Earlier in the film, Dr. Aranya says that Tarantella is virtually indestructible and could live for hundreds of years, yet the film never properly explores this idea; we get a brief glimpse of it when Tarantella literally walks off her bullet wound. After her apparent "resurrection," she disappears from the proceedings (she briefly reappears at the movie's climax). This is rather a wasted opportunity as Tandra Quinn actually has great screen presence and could have made for one memorable vamp, instead she is absolutely wasted in relatively small role (even though she graces all the movie posters).

Tarantella's dance reminds me greatly of Salma Hayek's seductive snake dance in Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Til Dawn. Tandra Quinn and Hayek play fairly similar characters; there's an aura of mystery surrounding both women due to their silent nature (though Hayek has a few lines in From Dusk Til Dawn), and both of them strut their stuff at a sleazy bar while the male protagonists leer on, much to the disgust of the sole female in the group. Of course, Hayek is much more scantily clad than Quinn and her character has an actual function to the story, while Tarantella vanishes from sight. Tarantella's dance is the highlight of the film and, once seen, is extremely hard to forget.

The real "heart" of the film are the characters Grant Phillips and Doreen Culbertson, who develop a budding romance as the film progresses. Grant is a handsome, individualistic pilot, while Doreen is an insecure, gold digger. She is set to marry the nebbish (and significantly older) businessman Jan van Croft, however, fate, taking the form of insane scientist Dr. Leland Masterson and a downed airplane, intervenes. Masterson, after having shot Tarantella, abducts Jan and his soon to be trophy wife and forces Phillips to fly him to safety. However, the plane crash lands on the very same mesa where Aranya is performing his experiments. It turns out that this crash landing is no accident as it is revealed that Jan's servant, Wu, is really Dr. Aranya's lackey. His sole mission was to bring Masterson back to Aranya. How Wu was able to track Masterson's whereabouts is never revealed; he just happened to be at right place at the right time. Character development is fairly slim in this movie and even that doesn't occur until that last fifteen minutes of the movie; Grant and Doreen have a heart to heart while everyone else is asleep. The two share a passionate kiss, but Grant pulls away and apologizes to Doreen for taking advantage of the moment. Then the film jump cuts to a long shot of the two star crossed lovers as Doreen tries to persuade Grant that she has heard a noise coming from the woods. This is an extremely jarring edit; the audience never hear the noise Doreen is shouting about and it happens in mid sentence. I don't if it's just a poor print of the movie or complete incompetence on the part of the filmmaker, though I suspect the latter. The brief interlude between Grant and Doreen was probably shot later on in production (as a pick up) and the editor haphazardly spliced it into the film, hoping the audience wouldn't notice the jarring edit.

Other than Tandra Quinn, the most memorable thing about Mesa of Lost Women is its extremely repetitive score by Hoyt S. Curtin; which consists mainly of a flamenco guitar and a piano. Legendary schlockmeister, Edward D. Wood Jr., like it so much that he later recycled it in his crime film Jail Bait. However, this is not the Mesa's  only ties to Wood, it is narrated by his frequent collaborator, Lyle Talbot, and his (then) girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, can be briefly glimpsed as one of the Spider Women. Great minds think a like!

It's often hard to explain the appeal of bad movies like Mesa of Lost Women, after all, they are the absolute nadir when it comes to the cinema, but their disjointed nature often gives them a surreal quality that is often lacking in movies that are intentionally campy. Mesa of Lost Women often plays like a nightmare; the juxtaposition of beautiful women and dwarves (not to mention a giant spider) gazing directly at the camera is very unnerving at times.

Credits

Cast: Jackie Coogan (Dr. Aranya), Tandra Quinn (Tarantella), Harmon Stevens (Dr. Leland Materson), Robert Knapp (Grant Phillips), Paula (Mary) Hill (Doreen Culbertson), Nico Lek (Jan van Croft), George Burrows (George), Chris-Pin Martin (Pepe), John Martin (Frank), Allan Nixon (Doc Tucker), Richard Travis (Dan Mulcahey), Samuel Wu (Wu), Dolores Fuller (Blonde Watcher In Woods), Katherine Victor (Car Driver Spider Woman).
Narrated by Lyle Talbot.

Director: Ron Ormond, Herbert Tevos.
Screenplay: Herbert Tevos, Orville H. Hampton.
Running Time: 70 min.