Part One: The Early Films
If death and sex are the horror film's two most vibrant themes then religion must come a very close third. The content and iconography of Christianity - which does not see death as the final end and which has traditionally tended to treat sex with suspicion - provides many of Hammer's classic vampire films with a good deal of metaphysical power.
It isn't hard to see why. Film critics and social historians have often attributed 18th century Europe's almost obsessional interest in the vampire to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Perjurers, magicians, excommunicants, suicides - anyone buried without the sanctification of the church - were said to be in grave danger of returning to life as a vampire. Just as 'good folk' drank the blood of Christ in Mass to appropriate the virtues of Christ, so sinners might have their blood drained by vampires and be filled with the power of the Devil.
A rigidly dualistic world view such as this is right at the heart of Terence Fisher's Hammer films, with a strict division between good and evil, light and dark, flesh and spirit. Hammer critic David Pirie has stated that Fisher's The Hound of the Baskervilles places Holmes, representing the rational world of Victorian thought, in sharp contrast to the shadowy myths of the Baskerville family. Pam Cook has commented on the opposition set up in The Mummy between British imperialism and 'primitive' Egyptian culture. Vampire films gave Fisher even more scope to explore such themes.
It is very noticeable that a film such as The Brides of Dracula does not portray vampirism as a random, arbitrary disease. Rather, one becomes a vampire as a direct result of leading a sinful life. "You used to sit and drink with him, didn't you? Yes, and you laughed at their wicked games - 'til in the end, one of 'em took him, and made him what he is..."
Vampirism is the ultimate social disease, the Baroness having to hide her pointed teeth behind a veil or her fingers as she talks to Van Helsing. In Don Sharp's The Kiss of the Vampire a similarity to sexually-transmitted disease is implied when Zimmer says that his daughter became ill when she lived with the vampire Ravna. He also states that "When the Devil attacks a man, or woman, with this foul disease of the vampire, the unfortunate human can do one of two things. Either he can seek God... and pray for absolution; or he can persuade himself that his filthy perversion is some kind of new and wonderful experience to be shared by the favoured few, and then he tries to persuade others to join his new cult."
Similarly, Dracula reminds us that the victim of the vampire cannot easily find release and peace in death. Van Helsing states that "...death results from loss of blood, but unlike normal death, no peace manifests itself, for they enter into the fearful state of the undead." It is not that the vampire's sins follow the person into the afterlife, but that they are effectively stopped from ever getting there. When the vampire is impaled with a stake, however, "the demented soul is released to return to the peace of death" and will be "in God's hands again" (The Brides of Dracula). (Small wonder that Van Helsing's tomb in Dracula AD 1972 bears the inscription "Rest in final peace".)
Van Helsing describes vampirism as being a "survival of one of the ancient pagan religions, [struggling] against Christianity." In both Dracula and The Brides of Dracula it is said to be a "cult" that affects the world, and the latter film states that the human servants of the vampire are "lost souls". Colonies of vampires form the world's "bondage" to hell. Dracula is the "monarch of all vampires", and vampirism is his seal. Vampirism also involves being 'born again': in one scene Greta urges a vampire girl to push up through the soil and release herself from her coffin, sounding to all the world like a midwife.
It is clear from Terence Fisher's early films that evil-doers are 'punished' by becoming a vampire, and that the ensuing process is like some grotesque religious conversion. Vampirism and Satanism amount to much the same thing. (Some years later Scars of Dracula stated this idea explicitly: Dracula is the "embodiment of all that is evil. He is the very Devil himself!")
Despite the attentions of the censors, Dracula Prince of Darkness clearly portrays the Lord of the Undead being 'resurrected' via an inverted crucifixion. True to the vampire's original ethos, Dracula embodies all that is not 'Christian', being often motivated by thoughts of revenge, the antithesis of forgiveness. In Fisher's original Dracula the Count sets out to destroy Harker's entire family ("You read my note in his diary about the woman he found at Klausenberg. This is Dracula's revenge. Lucy is to replace that woman."), and in Dracula Prince of Darkness he is angered by having his 'bride' stolen from him ("Last night, Dracula was robbed of his prey, your wife. He has seen her and touched her - he considers that she belongs to him already.").
If anything, Freddie Francis's Dracula Has Risen from the Grave makes this theme even more explicit: the entire film details Dracula's revenge against the Monsignor who has placed a huge cross on the door of his castle. Although he has a weak priest under his influence who could have removed the cross immediately, Dracula instead brings Monsignor Muller's niece Maria to his castle to remove it and then become his bride. (There is an excellent parody of being carried over the threshold when Dracula sweeps Maria into his arms and carries her into the castle.) With Muller dead (clubbed by the priest), Dracula intones "Now my revenge is complete."
Ranged against Dracula and his evil minions are vulnerable God-fearing folk, with figures of ecclesiastical authority often being weak and prone to doubt ("You are an idiot, Father. Worse than that, you are a superstitious, frightened idiot" (Dracula Prince of Darkness)). Dracula Has Risen from the Grave begins with a drunken priest being half-dragged up the hillside by Monsignor Muller in order help with an exorcism outside Dracula's castle. The Monsignor completes the journey on his own, leaving the priest behind, who becomes frightened and stumbles, cutting his head on a rock. The blood awakens Dracula, and the man falls under the Count's influence. The priest follows Dracula's instructions, clubbing the Monsignor to death and incinerating the body of a local woman, but eventually he encourages the atheist hero Paul to plunge a stake into the heart of the vampire. We then have the following fascinating exchange:
Priest: You must pray.
Paul: I can't!
Priest: You must! You must - or he won't die.
Paul: You pray! You're a priest - you pray!
Dracula is able to pull the stake from his heart because (the film implies) faith is crucial. Later the priest's faith returns when he comes across Dracula impaled on a metal cross, and, like Muller at the beginning of the film, he prays and performs a rite of exorcism. The Count is destroyed. Perhaps sometimes people are allowed to be afraid because, according to The Brides of Dracula, only God Himself has no fear.
Of course, Father Sandor (Dracula Prince of Darkness) and Monsignor Muller are strong men of God, dedicated, unflinching and courageous. But they are very much the exceptions, and it is perhaps not surprising that ecclesiastical buildings are often shown being penetrated by the evil of the vampire. Ludwig's presence in the monastery right from the start of Dracula Prince of Darkness is a foretaste of the vampire's own brand of explosive vengeance as he seeks to destroy, from within, all that opposes him. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave begins with a body, drained of blood, being discovered in the bell of a church (one is tempted to ask how it got there as the place is positively bristling with crucifixes). Despite Muller's claim that "There is no evil in the house of God", it becomes clear that buildings can be 'spiritually' attacked and abused as easily as the people that attend the services. The church building is no more than a 'shell' encapsulating the attitudes of the populace (much use is made in later Dracula films of the desanctified church), and thus the 'un-Christian' attitudes of the populace (ignorance and superstitious fear) find an expression in the defilement of the local place of worship.
In Dracula the Count penetrates and subverts that other key Victorian unit, the family. A fascinating sequence has Van Helsing and Arthur Holmwood trying to protect Mina from the attentions of the fiend by watching the outside of the house when he is in fact resting comfortably in his coffin in the Holmwoods' cellar. Such implied liberation from repression is also found in Dracula Prince of Darkness, which sees Helen freed from prim, Victorian respectability to become a sexually-attractive and voracious vampire. However, this new-found beauty is grotesque and hollow. She only finds peace when staked in the time-honoured fashion in a scene that has been described variously as a metaphor for the subjection of the flesh (Pirie) or an obscene ecclesiastical parody of a gang-rape (Prawer). In Dracula the 'vampire bride' is impaled with a stake and crumbles into an aged hag.
Terence Fisher was by no means the first director to see the vampire as representing the repressed 'other' of Victorian society - as we shall go on to see, this Freudian theme comes to the fore in Peter Sasdy's work - but the clarity of Fisher's vision makes the contrast especially clear. In Dracula the vampire is eventually destroyed by a crucifix (which "symbolises the power of good over evil") and sunlight. Moral uprightness has flirted with the surface attraction of sin but has rejected it.
In The Brides of Dracula this religious symbolism is expanded slightly, so Meinster is destroyed by having holy water thrown into his face in the pattern of a cross, and then falling into the cross-forming shadow of a windmill's blades. Although Van Helsing again speaks of the power of "good" rather than of "God", the meaning is clear enough. The words spoken on his arrival - "Thank God you've come" - might seem like casual semi-blasphemy, but later dialogue precisely analyses the literalism of such phrases. When Marianne says "God bless you" to Baroness Meinster the woman responds with "If only He could..." (In Don Sharp's The Kiss of the Vampire, lead vampire Ravna explains to Gerald that his wife will soon be initiated into the vampiric circle. The man exclaims "Oh my God!", to which Ravna icily responds "God is hardly involved, Mr Harcourt.") In Dracula, Harker writes "...with God's help... I will forever end this man's reign of terror": later, Van Helsing says "...with God's help... We'll succeed."
Perhaps most telling of all, in The Brides of Dracula Van Helsing says at one point "I pray that it may be so", but this is no idle phrase: later, he asks a priest to pray for him. Harker was always doomed to failure because, the original script of Dracula informs us, he was "mad and blasphemous". However, according to R.H.W. Dillard, Van Helsing "prevails over the personifications of evil, not because he is superior to [them] ... but rather because he is human, weak, and fallen but continually striving to better himself and his world, to earn some of the love which is his by God's grace." Van Helsing shows what David Pirie has called "puritanical strength" when, in The Brides of Dracula, he purges himself of a vampire bite with a red-hot iron bar.
Despite human weakness, evil is always overcome. In Dracula Has Risen from the Grave the atheist hero and the doubting priest are reminded that faith can indeed kill monsters (the final shot is a beautifully-composed image of the huge golden cross, prominent and victorious against a dark background, glowing in the light, Dracula's crumpled cape at its base). In Fisher's films in particular evil can have a surface attraction, but the superficiality of this is always revealed in the end.
Terence Fisher once said that "If my films reflect on my personal view of the world in any way, it is in their showing of the ultimate victory of good over evil, in which I do believe. It may take human beings a long time to achieve this, but I do believe that this is how events work out in the end." He was always keen to remind interviewers that Hammer's horror films were basically morality plays, dealing with age-old themes to the delight of a modern audience. Christopher Lee has stated that the ultimate destruction of evil in Hammer films explains "why the Church doesn't object to these films, and why they are so popular in Ireland, Spain and Italy."
Terence Fisher's vampire films for Hammer portrayed a coherent fantasy world where beautiful evil monsters battled in vain against flawed humanity. Subsequent films - including Taste the Blood of Dracula and Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter - owed a vast debt of influence to Fisher, Don Sharp and Freddie Francis. Attitudes to matters of faith and death are at the heart of the vampire film's appeal and on-going power.
Part Two: Later Variations
In the first part of this article we examined certain religious aspects of the 'world view' of the early Hammer vampire film. Terence Fisher's films in particular had 'fallen' mankind battling against the surface attraction of evil and ultimately rejecting it in favour of goodness and/or God. Freddie Francis' Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, with its atheist hero, ultimately endorsed these values as Paul's unbelief comes face-to-face with the fact that a faith in God seems to kill the vampire.
Those familiar with film theory will have recognised some of the hallmarks of auteur theory. This basically sees (some) directors as 'authors', shaping a range of work to conform to a personal vision. To be sure, the script is the vital spark that ignites any film, but movies are primarily visual and it is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the director in fanning that flame. Both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee acclaimed Terence Fisher's willingness to listen to the actors, and it is now well-known that the final sequence of Dracula is far removed from the brief battle in the original script (see Hammer Horror issue 1 and Bob Sheridan's article quoted in the bibliography). Ronald V. Borst has shown that Fisher made many other changes to the script, making dialogue and action changes here and there and cutting entire lengthy scenes. Thus we would be justified in calling Dracula Fisher's film, for he was happy to make changes to the script in order to bring to it his own sense of the Gothic - and at the core of that is a vigorous attitude to matters of faith and spirit. As David Pirie put it, "once one begins to look at Fisher's films closely, it becomes clear that, unlike almost any other director working in the British commercial cinema, they appear to embody a recognisable and coherent weltanschauung. The universe in which they are set is strictly dualistic, divided rigidly between ultimate Good and ultimate Evil, Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter... In Fisher's work evil is usually highly attractive on the surface and is never reflected in human deformity which rather reflects suffering and goodness (Christina in Frankenstein Created Woman, Hans in The Revenge of Frankenstein, etc.)."
Many studies of Hammer turn to the later vampire films and see only travesties that lack the precision and insight of Fisher's work. This may or may not be subjectively true, but it rarely seems that Fisher's influence was entirely negated when younger directors like Peter Sasdy began working with the Dracula concept. Taste the Blood of Dracula deals with many of the religious and spiritual themes at the heart of Fisher's world view, even down to an examination of the casual use of God's name and the dwindling faith of the main characters:
Martha: What have we ever done?
Paul: God knows, Mrs Hargood.
Martha: Does He, Paul..?
The Freudian 'return of the repressed' theme is explored right at the heart of the Victorian society, the family, with religious belief so blatantly false that the audience is invited to sympathise with the now 'liberated' children as they kill their fathers.
Sasdy manipulates these elements with great skill - arguably making them more explicit than Fisher would have dared - and the ending is perhaps the most religiously-affirmative of any Hammer film. Paul reverentially lights the candles in the de-sanctified church where Dracula is ensconced, and confronts Alice and the Count, warding off the latter with a cross. Dracula is eventually trapped by a crucifix on the door and another thrown down by the now freed Alice. As Dracula breaks a cross in the stained-glass window behind him, it seems that the church 'comes back to life', and the vampire is assaulted by images of the church as it once was. The church is clean, full of candles, and ringing with praise of God (a contrast is established between what sound like Gregorian chants and the Anglican service seen towards the beginning of the film). As Kim Newman put it, Dracula's death "occurs almost through divine intervention", although it is important to note the active roles played by Paul and Alice. This is no forced closure in which the leading characters are impotent: rather, the film has toyed with destroying the old father figure, but has succeeded only in replacing him with an even more savage one. Paul and Alice consciously chose safe familiarity over the exotic appeal of evil.
Things could hardly be more different in Roy Ward Baker's Scars of Dracula, the film that most profoundly disturbs the world view established by the early Hammer vampire films. Scars of Dracula seems to thrive on the assumption that God is dead. At the beginning of the film the townsfolk set out to burn down Castle Dracula, leaving the women and children safely in the church. When the job is completed the priest says "We must give thanks... to our saviour for his protection... Let us go to the church, and tell our loved ones they are safe." Entry into the building reveals not the villagers' delighted families, but total desecration and carnage: everyone there has been butchered by Dracula's bats, and the priest's God has offered no protection at all. "The Devil has won!" - and the introductory scene ends symbolically with dripping blood extinguishing the altar candles.
This is very different from the body-in-the-bell scene in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, and the film only goes on to strengthen this impression. When Sarah exclaims "A church. Thank God!", the priest mutters "Not any more...", a phrase that could as easily refer to his lack of belief in God as to the function of the building. Strangely, the crucifix ("the symbol of our saviour") still has an effect on Dracula (the heroine Sarah is only saved by the cross she wears), but it does not have any part to play in the destruction of Dracula at the end. With the priest killed in his own church by a bat, Dracula seems invulnerable - but is suddenly struck by a chance bolt of lightning. No cross, no stake - not even running water, with all of its Christian connotations. Dracula seems to have been killed because the genre demands such an ending, and it's a 'fluke' rather than the intervention of a protecting God.
No other Hammer vampire film comes close to matching Scars of Dracula in terms of throwing out the Fisher world and portraying existential, godless terror. Even The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires - which shows the creatures being burnt by Chinese symbols and repulsed by the image of Buddha - does no more than take a side-step from a uniquely Christian universe into a polytheistic one.
The final pair of Christopher Lee Dracula films - Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula - might disrupt the mythos with their modern setting, but God very much remains on the agenda as the ultimate force for good. In the former, Van Helsing hurls holy water at Dracula "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost"; in the latter, he discovers a whole new way of despatching the fiend. Dracula is ensnared in a "hawthorn tree, which provided Christ with his crown of thorns", the brambles penetrating his palms and (finally) ensnaring his head. The symbols of good are once more used to destroy the anti-Christ.
The Carmilla films and Vampire Circus sit reasonably comfortably within the 'standard' Hammer vampire milieu, leaving Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter as perhaps the most interesting of the later Hammer vampire films, at least in terms of its religious content. It is by no means as 'radical' as Scars of Dracula, but it does attempt some clever subversions. One particular scene deserves to be described in detail. A girl stands at a graveside, a huge wooden cross behind her. As she she moves away, we suddenly notice that there is a bat hanging down from it. She goes to the church - we see her framed by the white structure that houses the church bell. Crosses are visible behind her. She enters the building - there is a crucifix on the altar, and the huge shadow of a cross behind her. The camera tracks slowly and foregrounds another cross - it almost looks as if this is the source of the huge shadow. Suddenly, the 'arms' of the shadow move, and it adopts a roughly human shape. The girl is drawn towards the real cause of the shadow - an unseen vampire. A chalice containing communion wine suddenly spills over a white sheet (covered with cross motifs) on the altar. The girl screams, blood on her face, and falls to the ground.
Her body is soon discovered, and she has aged hideously. The final shot is of the bell again - now it is chiming, and blood is dripping from it.
Taken out of context this almost sounds like the ultimate mocking of the symbols of Christianity, and yet another example of evil penetrating the 'House of God'. Certainly the film foregrounds the cross: it begins with a close-up of a cross around a girl's neck, and one of the first times we see Kronos he is next to a graveyard (appropriately, it is 'populated' entirely by crosses, with the exception of the statue of Lord Durward, who turns out to be the main vampire). There's even a very prominent cross in the local tavern. One particularly well-composed shot establishes a trinity of Kronos, Professor Grost and Christ (as a crucifix on the wall): a trinity of good to combat the forces of evil.
With all this use made of the symbol of Christ, why did the girl die in the church? Why did the cross worn by the girl at the beginning offer no protection from the vampire?
Marcus: But these girls were invulnerable. Each one wore a crucifix.
Grost: The cross can only protect those who firmly believe.
We have returned to theme of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Indeed, the majority of the deaths are quite explicitly linked with sin, the vampire cast as the punisher of sinful behaviour, destroying vanity by delivering the 'gift' of old age. Thus, the first girl discusses her vanity and whether or not it is sinful shortly before being visited by the vampire (blood spills onto the mirror which a few moments previously she had used to admire her own face); the second is attacked for wanting to show her birthday present of a new bracelet to a friend ("She'll be so envious"). Later, another girl seems to 'punished' for kissing her boyfriend in the woods. Only the death of the girl in the church remains - according to this reading - a mystery.
The film directly tackles the issue of belief in God ("What could be more improbable than God? But I believe in Him."), and contains a wealth of biblical allusions. Kronos says "There is a time to think, a time to plan, and a time to act", echoing Ecclesiastes chapter 3. The disgruntled villagers remark that "We'll make it a life for a life", a direct reference to Exodus 21:23 and Deuteronomy 19:21. Bearing in mind Pirie's comment on Fisher's approach to disability, it is especially interesting to examine the treatment of the hunchback Grost. Just after he has been abused by some hired assassins we have the following exchange:
Grost: Am I so terribly ugly to provoke such mockery? Am I..?
Carla: 'Beauty fades eventually, but a kind soul remains for ever.' My mother taught me that.
Kronos: She was a gifted woman... And you, my friend - my very dear friend - your body was given to you by God. Just remember that.
Grost: He also gave me a good friend to protect me.
One cannot help but be reminded of Jesus' response when asked why a man was born blind: "...this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life" (John 9:3).
The vampire is eventually defeated by a sword forged from a cross, Kronos himself being well-prepared for the evil he will face: garlic flowers are placed around his elbows, a crucifix around his neck, and crosses are painted on his nape to protect him from the bite of a vampire.
Given that the later Hammer vampire films tended to use the same iconography and symbolism to despatch the monsters it is not surprising that the overall tone of the films remained much the same as that of the films of Fisher, Francis and Sharp. Indeed, perhaps it is only in the exact portrayal of evil that there is any consistent change of emphasis. Evil has little beauty about it in the later films: Dracula is no longer the polite host or the exciting extra-marital lover, but a sadist (Scars of Dracula) who wants to destroy the world (The Satanic Rites of Dracula). Vampirism is no longer a vastly liberating experience: in Taste the Blood of Dracula, liberation comes only in the form of the brutal murder of parents, and in Captain Kronos the bite of the vampire brings only sudden old age and death. If anything the monochrome nature of such films - flawed people seeking God's help in a battle against ultimate evil - is even sharper than before.
The triumph of good over evil, given a suitably gothic injection of sin and religion, perhaps begins to explain the ongoing popularity of Hammer's vampire films. It forces us to look deep into the beautiful eyes of evil, but seems to offer us hope and salvation despite our frailty.