Blood of Dracula

Plot synopsis:
Six weeks after the death of her mother, Nancy Perkins' father (Thomas B. Henry) marries Doris (Jeanne Dean), and decides to enroll the eighteen-year-old Nancy (Sandra Harrison) into a boarding school, the Sherwood School for Girls. They are greeted by the principal, Mrs. Thorndyke (Mary Adams), who emphasizes to Nancy that the school is not a corrective institution but a private preparatory school with a very good reputation.
Nancy is immediately harassed by her dormmates that night, and at breakfast the next morning, after Thorndyke officially introduces Nancy to the girls, Myra (Gail Ganley), their leader, tells Nancy that it was good thing that she did not mention anything about the way they acted the previous night.
Myra also tells Nancy about their secret club, "The Birds of Paradise," and introduces her to Eddie (Don Devlin), a young groundsman whom the “Birds” take turns dating. Myra is the assistant for Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), the school’s chemistry teacher, who is writing a thesis about her belief that there is a “terrible power,” “strong enough to destroy the world – buried within each of us.” If she can prove this is the case, she hopes that the scientific community will abandon their experiments with nuclear power and other weapons mass destruction. When Branding tells Myra that she is looking for a special girl on whom to experiment, Myra suggests Nancy.
During chemistry class, Myra and her friend Nola (Heather Ames) deliberately switch a chemical in order to burn Nancy, causing her to react violently. Intrigued, Branding later talks with Nancy and gains her confidence. She then asks Nancy if she may hypnotize her and Nancy agrees. Branding places an amulet from antiquity around her neck, telling Nancy that it came from the Carpathian Mountain region and is capable of healing, as well as destroying – and has the ability to release frightening powers. As Nancy gazes at the amulet, Branding hypnotizes her and instructs her to always obey her.
Later, Eddie and two local boys, Tab (Jerry Blaine) and Joe (Jimmy Hayes), climb up into the girls' room as they are having Nancy’s initiation party. In a nearby building, Branding hears the noise and, despite the distance, is able to re-hypnotize Nancy, turning her into a vampire. The party is broken up by the disciplinarian Miss Rivers (Edna Holland), who then sends Nola to the basement to fetch supplies. While in the basement, Nola is attacked by something subhuman and killed.
The next morning, as police detective sergeant Stewart investigates the killing, Nancy is unable to wake up until Branding orders her and, when she relates a nightmare she had, Branding orders her to forget it.
At police headquarters, the coroner informs Lt. Dunlap (Malcolm Atterbury) that he found two puncture wounds in Nola's jugular vein and that the body was drained of blood. A young assistant to the coroner, Mike (Paul Maxwell) who shared a room in med school with “an exchange student from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains,” remembers his friend's stories about vampires. Dunlap is unimpressed in the theory.
The girls later organize a Halloween scavenger hunt in the local cemetery, and Nancy is again transformed into a vampire and kills another girl, as well as Tab. The police subject all the girls in the scavenger hunt to a lie-detector test, however, Branding is able to alter Nancy's responses to the questions by remote hypnosis.
Back at the school, Nancy, confused and frightened by her transformations, begs for Branding's help, but Branding assures her that the experiment will soon be over and that she will be proud of her part in saving mankind from self-destruction. The state threatens to close the school over the unsolved murders, and consequently, Thorndyke asks Branding to take over some of her duties while she attempts to calm concerned parents. Nancy’s boyfriend from back home, Glenn, suddenly arrives at the school, alarmed at the news stories of the slaughters but Nancy acts cold toward him – afraid that she might turn and kill him.
Nancy then goes to Branding's laboratory and begs Branding to release her from the experiment and from her power, but the obsessed Branding refuses and hypnotizes her again. Nancy once more becomes a vampire, nevertheless this time she attacks Branding, strangling her to death with the amulet’s necklace. As they struggle, Branding pushes Nancy away, impaling her on a broken piece of furniture, as Glenn, Thorndyke and Myra break into the laboratory. After they discover that Branding's written thesis has been destroyed by acid, Thorndyke declares that “those who twist and pervert knowledge for evil only work out their own destruction.”

Tags: murder

Review:
It's very similar to "I Was A Teenage Werewolf."  The real differences are that the protagonist is a female and of course the monster is a vampire instead of a werewolf.
It's got pretty much the same ingredients:  Teens, bad rock songs ( I personally think the songs are great ),hypnotism, monsters.
Maybe it just needed to be called "I Was a Teenage Vampire."  I think the atmosphere is pretty solid and I enjoy this picture enough to rate it an 8...yes an 8.
For the life of me I can't figure out why the title of this movie wasn't "I was a Teenage Dracula".
It was made by the same studio, American International Pictures, that created the wonderful teen 50's horror movies "I was a Teenage Werewolf" and "I was a Teenage Frankenstein".
Sandra Harrison plays Nancy Perkins, a young woman who is dumped off at a boarding school for girls by her inattentive father who has remarried a young blonde gold digger just six weeks after his first wife's death.
Needless to say, Nancy is not happy about this situation at all and she has a lot of anger about having to leave her previous school and her boyfriend, Glen.Louise Lewis portrays the controlling science teacher who under hypnosis turns the vulnerable Nancy into a vampire for reasons that I couldn't understand, some bizarre theory about proving how the evil in the human race is stronger than the atom bomb...I didn't get it, but the movie is still a lot of fun.
This movie is typical of it's time in the fact that it has to have a really corny "rock and roll" number and this one, "Puppy Love" has to be heard to be believed.
There is creepy vampire make up, two killings in a spooky old cemetery and the corny "Puppy Love" song and dance number.
Yes, it does resemble another great cult classic film, I was a Teen-Age Werewolf' a silly title,for what is a very good movie, given Micheal Landon at the start of his career.
"Blood of Dracula" has some good horror vets, Malcolm Atterbury, Louise Lewis and Richard Devon.
First she hypnotizes the girl with a big brooch that she always wears and then somehow turns her into a blood sucking vampire!
After seeing it again years later on television from the perspective of a middle-aged man rather than a ten-year-old boy, it seemed less scary than before but I still thought Sandra Harrison looked pretty cool as the vampire.
In this case we have a woman mad scientist in Louise Lewis and she's conducting experiments involving an impressionable young teen played by Sandra Harrison.
A little hypnosis and Harrison reverts to the primitive which includes turning into a girl werewolf replete with fangs and sucking the blood dry out of those she kills.
Should have really been called Teenage Vampire or something of the sort, but wow it's pretty dull.Concept is fun but the "terror" is so far from center stage.
Twilight Zone length would have helped, though those episodes probably had the same budget as this feature.If you like 50's American horror stuff, and I do, then you'll sit through it and be amused mostly by the dancing and the hypnotic and vampire ideas that aren't really worked out or shown much at all.
Nancy (Sandra Harrison) is an angry young girl who's sent, against her will, to a private boarding school.
(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 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".
Blood of Dracula was one of my most memorable horror movies mostly because it centers on a female monster for a change.Louise Lewis is great as the mad teacher who tries to prove her theory.The makeup on the monster is a riot.It is the usual teenage horror movie with a few songs thrown in for fun.This film is typical 1950,s.Check out the ending when student-monster finally turns against teacher.It is one of the funniest,most entertaining scenes in the movie..
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.
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??!!
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.
Another of AIP's teenage horror movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.
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?
Strock directed this film, another hybrid horror and juvenile delinquency yarn that stars Sandra Harrison as Nancy Perkins, a troubled teenager who is sent to live in an all-girl boarding school by her parents.
She then meets evil Miss Branding(played by Louise Lewis) a professor who uses hypnosis and a medallion(Dracula's?) to control her, which results in Nancy becoming a murderous(and ugly) vampire, terrorizing the campus, and some visiting boyfriends of the girls...
There were flashes, albeit brief, of good acting in this drive-in special.Sandra Harrison played a troubled teen dumped in a boarding school by her father.
MORD39 RATING:  **  out of  ****I agree that this movie should have been called either I WAS A TEENAGE DRACULA or I WAS A TEENAGE VAMPIRE, as it goes in a trilogy with AIP's TEEN FRANKENSTEIN and TEEN WEREWOLF.
Blood of Dracula (1957) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A troubled teen (Sandra Harrison) goes to a boarding school where a teacher starts doing experiments on her.
Too bad this film wasn't called I Was a Teenage Vampire to fit in with the others but other than that this movie isn't too bad.
The look of the vampire is quite good and there's some funny dialogue throughout the movie.
Fairly amusing film about a girl in a reform school who's hypnotically turned into a vampire and sets out to kill a few classmates.
Interestingly, this film reverses many horror movie cliches by making the young attractive heroine the monster herself.
Not as good as the more famous "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" or the much better "How to Make a Monster", but well worth watching for fans of drive in fun..
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 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.
It could not fail that after having taken the myths of the Werewolf and Frankenstein into the rock'n'roll era, producer Herman Cohen would eventually turn his attentions to another horror icon – the Vampire.
Still, not only does Dracula have nothing to do with the film, but the bloodsucker here (a rebellious teen at an exclusive girls' school) is hypnotized into becoming one and even undergoes a hideous transformation (an image of which in an old genre-related reference book is how I first learned of this low-budget title) in the process!; besides, the script takes its feminist angle all the way by making the 'mad scientist' a woman too!
Blood Of Dracula is a typical of the drive-ins that Americain International came out with in the 1950's, aimed at teenagers.
I quite liked this one.After her mum dies and dad remarries, a girl is sent to a boarding school where she is hypnotised by one of her teachers as part of an ongoing experiment connected to the supernatural.
Includes somebody singing Puppy Love.Blood of Dracula has some creepy music and creepy locations as well, especially the night scenes.
The vampire make-up looks pretty good for a low budget movie.The cast is mostly made up of unknowns, lead by Sandra Harrison, her only movie according to IMDb.Blood Of Dracula is a must for B-movie followers out there.Rating: 3 stars out of 5..
After arriving at a women's boarding school, a college student finds a powerful amulet turns her into a ravenous vampiric beast, and her rampage across the town leaves her boyfriend and his friends to race to stop her.This was a pretty decent and overall enjoyable vampire entry.
"Blood of Dracula" isn't the best American International Pictures films but is OK.
The formula that produced cult hits as "I was a Teenage Werewolf", "I was a Teenage Frankenstein" and "How to make a Monster" is the same: take a troubled youth, add some horror elements and serve it up at the Drive-In. A girl is brought to a boarding school and falls under the spell of crazed science instructor.
The attacks aren't that frightening and the acting only passable.These movies are fun to watch though and the low-budget does add to the cheesy factor.
This low budget 1957 monster movie is typical of the drive-in fare produced by AIP in the late Fifties to attract the teenage audience.
It's a moody, low key story with some nice atmosphere, about a teenage girl embittered by her father re-marrying shortly after her mother's death, and dumping his daughter in a private school at the request of his new wife.The new student makes a good impression on the leader of the secret clique that runs things behind the lines, who advises her chemistry teacher mentor that they've found the ideal subject for the teacher's secret project, a girl filled with barely suppressed anger and violence.Many viewers have commented on the lesbian subtext of the teacher's relationships with Myra, the clique leader, and Nancy, the new girl.
She strikes just the right note as the sinister scientist with a benign exterior, seeming only to want to be a helpful mentor to the girl, polite and efficient with the school dean, spouting her lunatic ideas with reasonable sounding phrases about progress and science.Some night time scenes of terror on the darkened grounds of the school are very effective, and the acting is fairly good.
As usual for a Fifties AIP movie, there are lots of pretty girls to look at, some rock and roll music and dancing, and a subversive undertone in which virtually all adults are suspect in their motives.The movie isn't as dynamic as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, from which it's obviously derived, but it works pretty well on its own terms as a spooky little thriller.
This is a vampire film, but it's probably not a good idea to check it out for that reason alone, as the vampire material takes up relatively little screen time, it's probably some of the weakest material in the film, it's relatively passionless, bloodless and free of violence, and it often verges on the ridiculous, partially due to Phillip Sheer's "Halloween kit"-styled make-up, which is surprising, given that Sheer did the make-up for I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and How to Make a Monster, which are all far more impressive.But this Herbert L.
Stock vehicle (Stock also directed I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and How to Make a Monster) isn't at all a bad film.
As an amusingly and darkly caricatured study of interpersonal and social dynamics, the unfortunately titled Blood of Dracula is almost a hidden gem.Nancy Perkins' (Sandra Harrison) mom has just passed away, and a mere six weeks later her father has remarried presumably a younger wife, and they're sending Nancy off to a boarding school to get rid of her for a while.
Another element that's a bit unusual for 1957 is the fact that the entire girl "gang" of Nancy's dorm is taking turns dating the school groundskeeper/maintenance-man, with one of them even secretly engaged to him, and okay with him sleeping around, as long as he cuts his dates short to make it back to her.The chemistry teacher, Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), who is the pivot of much of the lesbianism subtext, is an amusingly absurdly twisted megalomaniac--there are some wonderful "did she actually say that?" speeches--and something like a witch; she's the fuel for the vampirism that occurs.
Even more interesting and very subtle and surprising, the headmistress of the school seems to be aware of most of these facts at the end of the film.This is unashamedly a B movie from the 1950s, and there's even an obligatory party scene with a character singing a swingin' song called "Puppy Love".
Well to start off Dracula doesn't have a thing to do with this movie.However Teenage Dracula would have been a cool title.The producer, Herman Cohen was 27 when he did this one.He also did Teenage Frankenstein and I Was A Teenage Werewolf.
Stepmom has the kid sent off to a school for girls.She doesn't really fit in.As usual there is a teacher that hypnotizes her for some ludicrous theory of supernatural power for the benefit of mankind.Well the girl turns into a vampire.
Somebody rip his throat out now!Please!This has to be one of the worst rock and roll numbers done in a 50's horror film.(John Ashley comes close in "How To Make A Monster").There is a lesbian undertone in the relationship between the science teacher and one of her other students.
This movie has nothing to do with the Dracula character in whatever incarnation, despite some semi-vampiric presence in the plot.
A better title would have been 'I was a Teenage Dracula', considering this was produced by the same company behind I was a Teenage Werewolf, also released in 1957, to which it bears more than just a coincidental resemblance story wise as it tells of a troubled teenage girl (Sandra Harrison) dumped at a boarding school by her father, who finds herself subjected to hypnotic experiments by the evil headmistress (Louise Lewis), that turn her into a vampire at her behest.
This movie was released as a double bill for drive-ins with I was a Teenage Frankenstein.
Production company American International Pictures (AIP) was responsible for many a lousy B-movie in the latter half of the fifties (many of them with overly grandiose, incorrect and thus irresponsible titles): though this flick is far from good, it's by no means the worst of this extensive bunch..
First of all, the title is misleading, because this movie has nothing to do with Dracula or his blood.
the blood of a monster!" This has nothing to do with this movie either.
One of her teachers uses ancient amulet from the Carpathians to hypnotize her into the vampire.
The troubled Nancy Perkins (Sandra Harrison) is shuffled off to a girls school by her father (Thomas Browne Henry) and stepmother (Jean Dean).
Here Nancy falls under the influence of her science teacher Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), who believes that her crackpot ideas are being discounted by male colleagues because she's a woman.
A.I.P. do populate the movie with attractive young performers, one of whom (Jerry Blaine as Tab) pads the running time a little bit with a ditty called "Puppy Love".At the very least, it's nice to see a couple of reliable character actors in supporting roles: Malcolm Atterbury as Lieutenant Dunlap, Richard Devon as Detective Sergeant Stewart, Paul Maxwell as Dr. Mike, Carlyle Mitchell as Stanley Mayther, and Voltaire Perkins as Dr. Lawson.Although "Blood of Dracula" kills 70 minutes fairly painlessly, it's dull when compared to the likes of "I Was a Teenage Werewolf".Five out of 10..
You might as well call this "I Was a Teenage Vampire"; "Blood of Dracula" seems especially made for the teenage drive-in crowd of the 50s.
The plot is weird and the ending so abrupt, not to mention, there isn't technically any "blood of Dracula" in the whole movie, strange that this was given such a title.
The film follows a new student at an all-girls boarding school who becomes the victim of a devious science teacher using an ancient amulet from the Carpathian Mountains that can "inflict vampirism"(?), resulting in murders on campus.
Sandra Harrison is Nancy, a disgruntled teen girl angered at her father for marrying after her mother had been dead only six weeks(!), hitching up with a money-grubbing woman who wanted all his attention.
I do like the idea of a female vampire, controlled by a mad female scientist, so at least "Blood of Dracula" has that going for it—it is just too bad Dracula, despite being named in the title, has nothing to do with this movie at all.
Let's see...a mad female science teacher spouting her twisted ideas in a secluded girls' boarding school?
She "seduces" her innocent young students with her pseudo-scientific rants, waves her amulet and turns them into a blood-sucking vampires.