(1957)
1.5
Bruce Eder
The distaff answer (and double-feature companion) to Herbert L. Strock's I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula was the more interesting of the two movies, and closer in spirit and content to their shared predecessor, Gene Fowler, Jr. I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Sandra Harrison is extremely attractive and surprisingly affecting as the tormented teenage Nancy Perkins, most of whose problems seem to derive from her difficult relationship with her formerly widowered father (Thomas B. Henry), who has just remarried, less than two months after her mother's death. She becomes the victim of science teacher Louise Lewis, whose mix of intensity and single-minded ambition cuts across several genre and a few gender lines with her portrayal. Lewis had previously given an excellent performance as the school principal who witnesses lycanthropy-afflicted Michael Landon murder a student in I Was A Teenage Werewolf, but here she gets to flex all of her acting muscles at once, and at length, and helps make the movie all that more memorable, and she and Harrison, along with co-star Gail Ganley, helped make Blood of Dracula one of American International Pictures' better and more enduring teen-horror outings of the era. Coupled with a lot of atmosphere and period appeal that was never anticipated by the makers back in 1957, the movie has grown in reputation since its original bottom-of-the-bill release -- it might not be in a league with, say Lambert Hillyer's Dracula's Daughter (1936) (a movie on which the costumes and sets were more expensive than this whole production), or even I Was A Teenage Werewolf, but Blood of Dracula is a minor jewel of a genre movie.
cast-crew for Blood of Dracula on AllMovie
Blood of Dracula (1957)
