GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
Breakinger
A Brilliant Conflict
Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Scotty Burke
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
utgard14
Another of AIP's teenage horror movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. This one's about a teenage girl who smokes so you know she's a rebel. Her father is remarrying just six weeks after her mom died, so she's got a lot to rebel against. Anyway the dad and stepmom send the girl to boarding school, where she meets a lady chemistry teacher who's also a bit of a mad scientist. She is pretty peeved that men are going to destroy the world and won't let her save it, so she uses an amulet to hypnotize the girl into a becoming a vampire, because why not? Obviously, as with most of these types of movies, it's got its share of flaws. The vampire makeup is pretty silly and that corny music number is unintentionally hilarious. The ending is abrupt like they decided they had better things to do one day and just called it quits. Still, it's not all bad. The script has some bite (no pun intended) and some of the characters are fun. There's also some subtext that, laughable though it may be, keeps things interesting. Sandra Harrison is good as the smart-mouthed lead. Louise Lewis is appropriately melodramatic as the scientist. The rest of the cast ranges in quality and includes babes Gail Ganley and Heather Ames. No one stinks up the joint. Even the lesser actors are worth watching for how much they ham it up. As a horror movie, it wouldn't scare an infant. But it does have value for fans of cheesy B movies from the '50s.
Leofwine_draca
BLOOD OF Dracula is one of the schlocky high school monster flicks churned out by producer Herman Cohen in the late 1950s. The best known of these is I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF but BLOOD OF Dracula is a deservedly forgotten film purely because it isn't very good. There's no Dracula present in the story, just a high school reject who becomes a vampire after trying on a mysterious amulet.This is very much a bare bones production and it feels rather silly when watched today. The characters are a bunch of clichés with barely one-dimensional personalities, ranging from jocks to popular girls and some down-at-heel cops. The most interesting of the bunch is Miss Branding, the science teacher who's the catalyst for all the chaos, but in comparison Sandra Harrison's lead is rather dull.The vampire attacks are tame and the film as a whole feels like a rushed cash-in. The vampire make-up is particularly poor and looks like some novelty Halloween costume. The low, low budget precludes the use of any kind of special effects and the ending is abrupt and hastily written. I struggled with this one, despite being a fan of the genre.
MartinHafer
Despite the title and the image IMDb is currently posting along with this movie, this is really not a Dracula film and Christopher Lee is not in it. Instead, it's a very, very low-budget and dopey movie about a girls school where a rather bizarre relationship develops between a crazy teacher and an impressionable student. It turns out that this teacher has some bizarre masters thesis involving,...well, I really have no idea what it was about and her turning this female student into a part-time vampire made absolutely no sense. The teacher said something about doing this will "save mankind" and other crap like that, but how could turning a girl into something that looks like the love child of Lily Munster and Nosferatu help mankind--especially when it starts sucking the blood out of people??!! Oddly, although the film was made in the more conservative 1950s, there is a very strong and noticeable undercurrent of Lesbianism. There is a strong sexual chemistry between the female teacher and her female student. This makes the film a real curio, but unfortunately the plot, acting and direction are all very amateurish and it is not a film I would recommend to anyone but bad movie fans. Strictly grade-Z all the way and a not particularly good variation on I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF.
preppy-3
Nancy (Sandra Harrison) is an angry young girl who's sent, against her will, to a private boarding school. There she falls under the eye of the science teacher (Louise Lewis) who needs her anger to show how anger can control the world, not weapons. (No, I don't understand it either) She hypnotizes Nancy and, somehow, can turn her into a vampire who attacks and kills...As you can see this is pretty silly stuff. The plot makes no sense with plot holes left and right. The acting is OK (Lewis come off best) and, like other AIP pictures, the film comes to a screeching halt when some guy named Tab (Jerry Blaine) sings some dumb song called "Puppy Love". The "dancing" in this one has to be seen to be believed. The only somewhat interesting thing in this is an(implied) lesbian link between Harrison and Lewis.This gets a 2 only because of the makeup job done on Harrison when she becomes a vampire. Pointed ears and eyes, hysterically long fangs and claws and a white streak running through her hair! Supposedly Harrison begged producer Herman Cohen for this role--he said, after she got it, she acted like Joan Crawford! Also, many years later, this was shown at the NY Museum of Modern Art--Harrison actually called them and asked them to please not show it. That should tell you something. B-movie fans and kids might like this but others beware!