Blood of Dracula (

1957

) ½

This movie is basically a re-run of I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), only with a teenage girl being transformed into a vampire instead of a teenage boy being transformed into a werewolf. The manner of the transformation doesn’t even change all that much, though Blood of Dracula adds in a touch of magic to the hypnotic regression. The teen in question even has the same case of anti-social behavior (but tending more towards hair-pulling than fist-fighting as one would expect from the gender flip), and the same blind trust in what should be the helpful guidance of an older mentor but is in fact a sadistic and reckless experiment. Seriously, they even copy the name of the mad scientist, with Miss Branding standing in for Dr. Brandon. It’s as if screenwriter Aben Kandel wasn’t sure why his work in I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) had been so successful and decided to copy everything from the earlier film just to be on the safe side. Likely the head honchos at AIP, upon seeing the box office returns for I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), gave the poor writer a weekend to produce a script for the spiritual successor. Bafflingly, this film doesn’t didn’t borrow the naming convention from its precursor. “I was a Teenage Vampire” would be a whole lot catchier and more descriptive than the film’s actual title. It would also make more sense, as Dracula is nowhere to be seen (though to be fair, the script does amusingly use the term Draculas as a synonym for vampires).

Just like Tony from I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Nancy’s mother has recently passed away, but unlike her predecessor, her father has remarried. In classic Hamlet fashion, Nancy is pissed off about this. To be fair though, it’s a bit creepy of a match, as Nancy’s new stepmother looks to be maybe 5-10 years older than her (blame the usual casting decision to have women in their late-twenties play teenagers for this unfortunate implication). Nancy’s new step-mom can’t stand the girl, and to be fair, Nancy isn’t exactly meeting the woman half way. She’s constantly starting fights and always seems to be on the cusp of shouting out “You’re not my real mom!” before storming out of the room in a huff. Case in point, when Nancy’s dad and step-mom are driving her to boarding school (they have to do something with her while they go on their honeymoon) she grabs the steering wheel and tries to run the car off the road. On the whole, it’s safe to say that our protagonist has a bit of trouble with impulse control.

This fiery temperament is exactly what makes her attractive to the school’s chemistry teacher, Miss Branding. Miss Branding is searching for a very particular type of young girl, one with an irrepressible rage and an impressionable, almost naïve, personality. She needs a girl like this to complete her experiment, one which she assures her chief pupil, will produce a power source to rival the atomic bomb. You see, in the world of The Blood of Dracula, each human being is full to bursting with unstable elements, and each individual is sitting on enough untapped potential to level a city block. Somehow, Miss Branding thinks that by harnessing this untapped power, she will be able to bring about world peace. It’s a move straight out of the Alfred Bester playbook, give everyone the power to eradicate mankind and nobody will be willing to start shit. I’m not going to waste time pointing out why this plan is nonsense, as it should be self evident; even the most stringent supporter of the 2nd amendment usually draws the line well before atomic weapons. Miss Branding complains about not being taken seriously by her peers because of her gender, but I suspect it might have more to do with the fact that she uses a magical Transylvanian amulet to psychically dominate her test subjects. That’s the kind of shit that’s not going to pass peer review.

Nancy is remarkably pliant and easy to manipulate. Despite the fact that she puts on a show of being tough and cynical, she’s desperately lonely and looking for some kind of validation. In the past few weeks her home life has imploded and she’s been whisked off, three hundred miles from her friends, relations, and boyfriend Glenn. In short order Branding has wormed her way into Nancy’s trust and is using her magic amulet to reinforce her control over the girl. From there it’s on to phase two: forcing the girl to transform into a vampire (or Dracula if you must use the film’s absurd naming convention) and have her feast on the blood of her classmates. Somehow, Branding is using the process to extract a powerful and unstable element from Nancy (pro tip: in real-life cannibalism does not synthesize uranium).

The only real difference between today’s film and its more famous precursor is a matter of tone. I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) was a squeaky clean film despite the occasional grisly murder. The teens got together at their clubhouse to sing songs, dance and drink soda pop. Despite the fact that nearly every teen was paired off with someone, these relationships were devoid of anything even remotely resembling carnal desire much less sensuality. Indeed, I don’t think I saw Tony do anything more intimate with his girlfriend Arlene, than hold her hand. Blood of Dracula, by comparison, is filthy. Not only do the girls of the Sherwood School for Girls crave male attention, they go so far as to use the groundskeeper, Eddie, as a stud, with each girl dating him each in rotation. When they get together for a party, these girls drink “40 proof ginger ale” that they identify with a knowing smile. Their dialogue is riddled with salty implications and double-entendres. Take for instance Nancy’s instance that if Eddie is the only canteen in the desert then she “doesn’t want a swallow.” An oblique reference to oral sex, in a film from 1957? How the hell did they slip that one past the censors?

Then there’s Miss Branding, whose fixation on her student is rather less than appropriate. Now Sapphic overtones have been a characteristic of vampire stories since Carmilla was written in 1871, and have been a part of both vampire cinema and boarding school cinema since Daughter of Dracula (1936) and Madchen in Uniform (1931) respectively. So despite the prudish sentiments of 1957, it’s presence here is hardly surprising. Yet generally these films tend to play up the doomed romance of between mortal and vampire (or between teacher and student as the case may be) into something sweet, if inescapably tragic. Unlike her predecessors though, Miss Branding is no star-crossed lover; instead she’s depicted as a predator. What she feels for Nancy is not love, but rather a desire to control, use and then throw away once Nancy has outlived her purpose. Now obviously, even a filthy movie from 1957 isn’t going to be able to show us any of this directly, but it sure as hell encourages the conclusion. Take for instance the scene where Miss Branding overhears the girls having a party and quietly turns off the light before taking up a peeper’s position at the window. Just look at the way she casually toys with the amulet and tell me there’s no some sort of sexual subtext here. Maybe it would be possible, in a different film to see this scene in a more innocent light, but all the covert references to sex and sexuality have already primed the audience to look at this in a certain light.