From The Blood Is the Life, published 2024

There’s a whole subgenre of great horror movies with stupid titles. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) is a first-rate psychological thriller with a paranormal twist. I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is the greatest zombie tale of the pre-Romero era. And 1970’s Taste the Blood of Dracula is the second-best film featuring Christopher Lee as the inimitable bloodsucker.

From The Blood Is the Life, published 2024

By 1968, Hammer Films had become a respectable company. It was still known (and sometimes derided) for cranking out mid-budget horror fare, but its financial success could not be ignored. Even Queen Elizabeth took notice.

Her Majesty was not a fan of boundary-pushing Gothic adventures (that we know of), but Hammer became the first movie studio to receive The Queen’s Award for Industry, thanks to the millions in overseas earnings it brought into the British economy. The award was presented on the set of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave by the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, who likely never imagined his job would include watching Christopher Lee being impaled on a cross, screaming while bright red “blood” oozed from his chest and eyes. According to Lee’s autobiography, the Lord Lieutenant deadpanned to his wife, “Do you know, my dear, that man’s a member of my club!”

From The Blood Is the Life, published 2024

Can a film be both behind the times and ahead of them? Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr is an acknowledged masterpiece now, but its release in May of 1932 was a disaster. Panned by critics and booed by audiences, Vampyr could not escape the expectations set by Universal Studios’ Dracula and Frankenstein, which had been massive hits the year before. Dreyer’s style was just too weird for mainstream crowds.

To find a true stylistic peer, you have to go back to Luis Buñuel’s avant-garde Un Chien Andalou (1929) or forward to Maya Deren’s dream-logic short films of the 1940s. Technically, Vampyr has a linear story, but it feels like an afterthought, something Dreyer attached out of necessity but had little interest in.