Before there was Silver Pictures, before there was Blumhouse, and before there were any of these other specialty horror production companies – A24, Lionsgate, Neon, MUBI – there was Hammer Films. Hammer was one of the earliest horror specialty labels, and while Universal had its own Universal Monsters – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and the rest – Hammer Films carved out its own lane by directly reimagining those same monster properties, with a string of gothic horror films highlighted by Christopher Lee as Dracula.
While some of our younger readers might not know much about this company, this was a massive deal throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Hammer released a string of incredible films, including The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), which made 70 times its production budget, The Mummy (1959), and the forever iconic Horror of Dracula (1958).
Interestingly, for us gore hounds who constantly talk about horror films being butchered by the MPAA in the eighties, one of the most famous cases actually goes back much further: Horror of Dracula, the Hammer production that lost over 3 minutes of footage deemed too violent, too bloody, and too sexual. It was quite literally scaring audiences and causing them to pass out. The only place it was ever seen was Japan, during the film’s original 1958 theatrical release, and it’s been considered missing ever since.
In a new article today over at Deadline, Hammer Films’ new owner, John Gore of John Gore Studios, made a massive announcement: not only have they recovered that missing footage, but they’ve restored the film in 4K and plan to re-release it in theaters this Halloween season!
In the interview, Gore reveals exactly what was cut from the film starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. A little bit of horror history that most fans have been waiting decades for.
From the Deadline article:
- Over 3 minutes of cut footage from the original 1958 release has been recovered from a Warner Bros. storage facility near LAX. Gore describes the warehouse as massive, housing “everything from the 1920s onwards,” including, as he put it, “like 10 Batmobiles and God knows what.”
- The footage was only ever screened during Horror of Dracula‘s original Japanese theatrical run – never released in the UK, US, or on any home entertainment format in any territory
- Gore confirms the restored cut is primarily about Dracula’s fate: “The world will get to see the bits they weren’t seeing, which is mostly to do with how Dracula dies at the end. All the crucial points that were axed are now back in.”
- Also restored: an extended scene of Dracula descending on a woman before biting her, cut for being too sexual. As Gore describes it, “It’s so sexual and they had to trim that because it just looked like it was nothing to do with vampires.”
- Gore credits Hammer and Christopher Lee with inventing the modern vampire image entirely: “Think of every Halloween, and you see all those fangs, that’s a Hammer and Christopher Lee invention.”
- The 4K restoration was handled by Silver Salt Restoration, also part of John Gore Studios
- The restored film will be released theatrically ahead of Halloween and on home entertainment (dates TBC)
- Gore confirmed Hammer is now reviewing its entire catalogue: “We’re working on the whole lot. It’s a long list. Everything that Hammer’s made, we’re looking at versions of vampires, werewolves, mummies, everything that was ever done, looking at new ways into it.”
For those unfamiliar, Horror of Dracula follows Jonathan Harker, who infiltrates Count Dracula’s castle under the guise of a librarian with the secret intention of destroying him. When Harker falls victim to the Count, his friend and fellow vampire hunter, Dr. Van Helsing (Cushing), takes up the chase. It’s a lean, gothic, and viscerally effective 82 minutes, and the version the world has been watching for 68 years has never been the complete one. That changes this October. As Gore told the site, “We will be unlocking that and the world will get to see the bits they weren’t seeing,” most significantly, how Dracula meets his end. “All the crucial points that were axed are now back in.”
I simply cannot wait!
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