Joseph Chang
In 1951, when Bela Lugosi reprised his iconic role on stage as Count Dracula, which had frightened worldwide audiences just two decades earlier, he was sadly met with giggles from theater-goers everywhere the play toured. To the then-aging Lugosi’s disappointment, the audience was more amused than afraid (Gatiss 54:38-56:35). It was the atomic age, and the emerging Sci-Fi genre was quickly ushering the archaic British Gothic stories to their graves. Dracula, Frankenstein, and their fellow Victorian monsters might have finally met their ends if it wasn’t for a British film studio, Hammer Film Productions (known more widely as Hammer Studios), which resurrected these creatures of the past and breathed new life into them. Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula, with their reimagined storylines and bold visuals, galvanized a new wave of interest in the British Gothic horror genre and kickstarted the second golden age of British Gothic. Ever since this timely revival, Dracula’s afterlife in films and popular culture has continued to thrive and to this day shows no sign of slowing down.
Hammer’s refreshing rendition of Dracula captivated not only public attention but also considerable scholarly interest. Thinking through the numerous film adaptations of Dracula throughout the twentieth century, Stacey Abbott notices that while the majority of these films (together with the original novel) emphasize the theme of the decaying past (the ancient Count Dracula) invading the modern world (Victorian London), Hammer’s Count Dracula is surprisingly urbane and “modern,” “eschew[ing] the threat to the modern world that so defined the novel and subtly underscores the Universal Dracula films” (70). Paying more attention to the conflict between classes, John Potts argues that Hammer’s Dracula is shown to be representative of a “malignant aristocracy,” terrorizing the local lower class and eventually upended by the rise of “middle-class values and practices” (represented by Van Helsing and his vampire hunters).
Interestingly, while most critics can agree on the uniqueness of Hammer’s rendition, little attention is paid to the British studio’s treatment of one of the most vital themes of Dracula lore—that is, what Stephen Arata influentially termed “reverse-colonization.” In this study, I will take a closer look at the changes Hammer made to the tale, especially the details concerning colonization and empire expansion, and how these reimaginations complicate Dracula’s legacy. I will propose that, by examining the reworked portrayal of two of the most vital characters in the story–Count Dracula and Dr. Van Helsing–it becomes clear that Hammer Studios aspires to revive not only interest in British horror stories but also the pride of the once glorious British Empire.
Dracula’s “comforting Englishness”
While, in the novel and early film adaptations, Dracula is portrayed as an exotic foreigner coming from faraway British colonies and threatening to invade the heart of the empire–London–the Count in Hammer’s film is a more ambiguous hybrid, with his disconcerting foreignness highly diluted by familiar English qualities. Under this cloak of a comforting Englishness, Dracula poses dramatically less threat to the integrity of the British Empire.
This erasure of Dracula’s unsettling foreignness in the 1958 adaptation is first apparent in his castle at the very beginning of the film. The location of Castle Dracula is originally near the Borgo Pass, a small passageway deep within the colossal Romanian mountains. In the novel, Jonathan feels an uneasy sense of entering a foreign territory when his carriage arrives at the Borgo Pass, noticing how the “mountains seem[] to come nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us” (Stoker 19). This wild and foreign landscape surrounding Castle Dracula is replaced in Hammer’s version with a tranquil and commonplace forest. Instead of looming in the darkness, the castle is seen by Jonathan in broad daylight, which evaporates any traces of threat. In Jonathan’s eyes, Castle Dracula seems “innocuous” “under the “warm afternoon sun.” Indeed, Dracula’s dwelling here seems less like the “crumbling castles of a bygone age” (Browning) than a rustic manor house of an English gentleman.
While Universal’s Dracula (1931) faithfully visualizes the novel’s descriptions of the unnerving Romanian landscape and Castle Dracula (left), Hammer’s rendition significantly tones down the menace (right)
The comfortable and domestic interior of Castle Dracula is also a drastic departure from previous renditions of the vampire’s lair. Faithfully visualizing the novel’s Gothic descriptions, Universal’s film frightens the audience with a long shot of the decaying, bleak, and colossal interior of the castle. The grotesquely gigantic entrance hall renders the awe-struck Renfield (an English gentleman) small and insignificant, arousing the fear of being devoured by a sublime foreign landscape (not unlike the anxiety incited by the rugged Romanian mountains). In sharp contrast, Hammer’s Castle Dracula is more modern and domestic. In place of the frighteningly gigantic spaces are confined and amiable rooms. The interior is no longer steeped in slanting shadows but bursting with various bright colors of ruby-red, sapphire-blue, and emerald-green. The cold medieval stone walls are replaced with smooth modern concrete walls painted in white. The ancient, foreign, and threatening castle is no longer in sight, succeeded by a modern, domestic, and welcoming household.
In contrast to the dark, vast, and ancient Castle Dracula in Universal’s version (left), the Count’s dwelling in Hammer’s film seems intimate, domestic, and much more approachable (right)
Injected with Englishness, Count Dracula in Hammer’s version is no longer the repellent foreigner with an aggressive plan to invade (reverse-colonize) the British Empire; instead, he is transformed into a (somewhat) Romantic hero/villain whose entrance into London in search of a partner is mostly a reaction to the murder of his bride (and not an active scheme of invasion). This absence of a colonial scheme could be seen in his less-invasive interactions with the people in the metropolis. The original Count Dracula executes his colonial plan of dominating the “teeming millions” in London by forcefully gaining control of the minds and bodies of his victims. This fearful power of a foreign force is further heightened in Universal’s narrative, where Dracula extends his mastery to all the Londoners (especially women) that cross his path. Numerous female characters are seen to be hypnotized by Dracula to execute his orders. From the girl selling flowers in the street, to the girl working in the theater, to the maid in the Seward household, all are hypnotized and fall under the commands of Dracula.
This forceful and domineering approach, prevalent everywhere in the novel and the Universal’s version, is dramatically less pronounced in Hammer’s version. Hammer’s Dracula is never seen taking control of female characters outside of the Holmwood household, curiously employing a young man to deliver his message to Mina. Different from the hypnotized and glassy-eyed women controlled by Dracula, the young man seems conscious (with a jaded, cynical, and world-weary attitude) and hastily delivers Dracula’s message like a bored clerk hoping to get his responsibilities out of the way as soon as possible. This suggests that, instead of hypnotizing the young man, Dracula might have employed him to run the errand with financial compensation. That is to say, instead of being the “master” of hypnotized and enslaved Londoners, Dracula is engaging them on an equal footing through a business contract. This erasure of the foreign control of British women, who were at times seen as the property of British men, alleviates the anxiety of foreign encroachment on British integrity, significantly lowering the colonial threat of Dracula.
Despite Hammer’s utilization of shocking visuals, such as bright-red blood and sharp vampire fangs, Count Dracula in this version seems decidedly less unnerving. His unsettling air of foreignness is largely diluted by a familiar sense of Englishness, such as his perfect British accent and westernized castle—and his colonial plan of invasion is nonexistent. The aggressive, atavistic, and repellent foreigner threatening to invade the empire is replaced by an “easterner” with English qualities and no intention of meddling with the affairs of the empire. This downplaying of Dracula’s colonial threat is most interesting in light of the new version of Van Helsing, for whom Hammer had a quite different plan.
Van Helsing
Van Helsing, the foreign physician from the Netherlands dedicated to protecting the British Empire from Dracula’s invasion, also receives a total makeover in Hammer’s version. Played by Peter Cushing, Hammer’s Van Helsing is without a shadow of a doubt a quintessential British gentleman—whether in speech, appearance, or thoughts—with all traces of foreignness eradicated (perhaps except the name itself). Shedding the foreignness, this hyper-British Van Helsing is no longer satisfied with passively policing the borders of Britain against invasion; instead, he is obsessed with the colonial plan of expanding the British Empire, actively plotting and executing a scheme to invade foreign territories and annihilate alien threats.
In the novel, Van Helsing and his crew only enter Transylvania at the very end of the narrative, intending to eliminate Dracula to prevent future invasions (this invasion of the foreign territory is completely scratched in the Universal version); in sharp contrast, Hammer’s Van Helsing, together with his dedicated vampire hunters, actively invade Dracula’s land at least three times. Jonathan Harker is no longer passively summoned by Dracula to his castle to help the Count with the acquisition of London real estate (that is, to aid the Count with his colonial plan), as he directly states in his diary that his entrance into Castle Dracula is a planned infiltration to annihilate Dracula. Following Jonathan’s semi-successful invasion, during which the vampire hunter kills Dracula’s bride, Van Helsing is seen breaking into Castle Dracula two times, with the first time staking the turned Jonathan and the second time annihilating the vampire king himself. This imperialist aggression is best summed up in Van Helsing’s declaration that Dracula’s “unholy cult must be wiped out” (Fisher). Here, Van Helsing’s adoption of the genocidal rhetoric resonates with the British man’s colonial gaze at the other inferior races and his imperialist ambitions to dominate them.
The orthodox justification for the British Empire’s expansion in the Victorian age—“The White Man’s Burden” (that is, the white man’s responsibility to spread civilization to other savage cultures around the world)—is also clearly visible in Van Helsing’s colonization plans. During Van Helsing’s inquiry into the missing Jonathan’s whereabouts at a small pub in Dracula’s native land, the vampire hunter is met with vehement urgings from the locals to stop meddling with Dracula and stay away, yet the intruding foreigner brushes away the warnings with an obvious air of haughtiness. Disregarding the bartender’s (and the locals’) incited uneasiness, Van Helsing lectures the folks in the pub about how “not only [them] but the whole world will benefit” from the British vampire hunters’ successful invasions. Van Helsing’s disrespect for local needs, his pompous sense of self-importance, together with a narcissistic savior complex, are exactly in tune with the spirit of “The White Man’s Burden,” which fueled both the expansion of the British Empire and the vampire hunters’ invasions of foreign lands.
The imperialistic and colonial nature of Van Helsing’s project of invasion and extermination is also hinted at through the omnipresent eastern objects and decorations displayed everywhere in the vampire hunters’ bases. The Second Opium War (1856-1860), for instance, saw the British and French alliance’s plunder of countless ancient Chinese artifacts, many of which are still in exhibition today in British museums (Tythacott). The oriental ornaments in the Holmwood household, in this light, seem to be pregnant with colonial connotations. What’s noteworthy is that the display of the eastern objects such as Chinese vases seem to find its counterpart in Castle Dracula, where the drawer Jonathan uses to store his diary resembles a traditional Japanese cabinet. This placement of oriental objects in Castle Dracula, which is located in “eastern” Europe, seems to align Transylvania with all the exotic eastern nations, and the oriental objects on display in the Holmwood household thus foretell Van Helsing’s colonial invasion and plunder of Dracula’s land.
Artifacts from the east serving as ornaments are omnipresent in the Holmwood household, such as the Chinese vase at the center of this scene
The colonial imagery surrounding Van Helsing’s project culminates in the final confrontation in Castle Dracula. The vampire hunter corners his opponent in the library, and, with a swift pull on the heavy curtains, Van Helsing lets in the sunlight, from which Dracula fearfully retreats. Van Helsing then forms a makeshift crucifix with two metal candlesticks to drive Dracula into the sunlight, turning the vampire into ashes.
That the final showdown happens in Dracula’s library is interesting. In Stoker’s novel, Dracula’s scheme of invasion and colonization is built with the help of his library of massive collections of “English books,” covering fields such as “history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law–all relating to England and English life and customs and manners” (Stoker 29). The library, with its invaluable storage of data, becomes the cornerstone of a colonial project. Dracula’s library in Hammer’s version is also furnished with a large number of books (so large that it requires a librarian to manage them effectively). Thus, Dracula’s library, even if its owner has no colonial intentions at the moment, is still filled with threatening potential. In Van Helsing’s eyes, this colonial threat posed by Dracula’s library is in direct conflict with his own plans of infiltration and expansion, and, therefore, to the vampire hunter, it must seem like poetic justice to annihilate the vampire in his library; that is, to exterminate foreign colonial potential with British colonization.
It is also telling that Van Helsing forces Dracula into the sunlight to destroy the vampire and accomplish the British man’s colonial plan. The expansive British Empire is sometimes referred to as “The empire on which the sun never sets,” which denotes that at any time of the day there is always one part of the British Empire where it is daytime (namely, under the sunlight). With this in mind, Van Helsing’s flooding Dracula’s library with sunlight and compelling Dracula into it takes on a new meaning: the British colonizer is forcing a foreign territory to become part of the empire where the sun never sets. Van Helsing’s final triumph over Dracula, in this light, is the British Empire’s successful conquest and colonization of a foreign land.
Van Helsing (left) pulls off the heavy drapery and floods Dracula’s (right) library with sunlight
Conclusion
After Dracula’s “reign of terror” peaked in the Universal monster films in the 1930s, the century-old nosferatu had seen a gradual decline in its popularity. His Gothic legacy, however, found new life across the Atlantic at its homeland in Britain, where Hammer Studios resurrected the Count from his grave and brought about a second golden age of British Gothic horror films. While Stoker’s novel and the Universal film show a paranoid obsession with the foreignness of Count Dracula and his threat of reverse-colonization of the more “civilized” western society, Hammer’s rendition subdues the disturbing foreignness of the Count, injects in the character a more familiar air of Britishness, and largely erases the colonial threat posed by this now “Britanized” foreigner. This radical defanging of Dracula’s foreign menace is only matched by the greatly enhanced colonial aggression of the British vampire hunters. Now a perfect British man, Van Helsing successfully raids the foreign territories of Dracula and demolishes any potential threat to the British Empire. This celebration of the Victorian pride in the British Empire seems all the more interesting when considering how Hammer Studios, a British film production company, took back the right to tell this British (Irish) narrative from the United States (the de facto successor of the British Empire). This neo-Victorian resurrection of Dracula seems to revive not only the British Gothic tale itself but also all the Victorian dreams of a powerful British Empire on which the sun never sets.
Works Cited
Abbott, Stacey. Celluloid Vampires: Life After Death in the Modern World. U of Texas P, 2007.
Arata, Stephen. “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.”
Victorian Studies, vol. 33, no. 4, 1990, pp. 621-45.
Browning, Tod, director. Dracula. Universal Pictures, 1931.
Fisher, Terence. Dracula. Hammer Films, 1958.
Gatiss, Mark, writer. A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss. BBC Bristol Factual, 2010.
Potts, John. “What I Owe to Hammer Horror.” Senses of Cinema, vol. 47, 2008.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Norton, 2022.
Tythacott, Louise. “Trophies of War: Representing ‘Summer Palace’ Loot in Military Museums in the UK.” Museum and Society, vol. 13, no. 4, 2015, pp. 469-88.
