![]() By the time of Dracula AD 1972, however, Hammer had gone – in this case extremely – off-piste with their continuing chronicles of the Transylvanian villain. ![]() For many cinemagoers, Christopher Lee's red-eyed Count Dracula became the archetypal big-screen incarnation, beginning with 1958's Dracula, a more-or-less straight adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. Much like its earlier US counterpart Universal Studios, Hammer assembled a stable of the classic horror monsters to bring to celluloid life – the mummy, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves –but with a British sensibility, and more gore and sex. Released in cinemas 50 years ago, the movie came at the twilight of UK film company Hammer Productions' famed horror output, which began in 1955 with The Quatermass Experiment and had its heyday from the latter part of that decade until the late 1960s. – How tainted is Buffy the Vampire Slayer The tag-line of Dracula AD 1972 pretty much says it all: "The count is back, with an eye for London's hot pants… and a taste for everything!" Normally to be found haunting the shadowy castles and alleys of 19th-Century Europe, the iconic bloodsucker in this British horror cult classic instead wreaks havoc in London in the latter half of the 20th Century – the first time, really, that Dracula had been taken out of his Victorian milieu, and placed in a contemporary setting. ![]()
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