Christopher Lee (Count Dracula) has no lines in this film.

Christopher Lee found the lines given to this character so awful that he chose to play it silent.

Barbara Shelley's own scream, though dubbed by high-pitched Suzan Farmer in the final version, can be distinctly heard in the original German trailer of the film, released under the title "Blut für Dracula".

According to the DVD commentary by Barbara Shelley and Suzan Farmer, all of Shelley's screams were dubbed over by Farmer.

Filmed back-to-back with Rasputin: The Mad Monk, using many of the same cast members and sets.



In the scene where Dracula finally wakes up (his "resurrection" in his coffin), to the crash of thunder and a flash of lightning, he originally took, as probably anyone would, a full FOUR frames (one sixth of a second) to completely open his eyes. In the final cutting stages, an assistant editor had the idea of removing those four frames - effectively a "jump cut" - to have Dracula's eyes open in an even more shocking ONE frame. However, the editor, Chris Barnes, had already finalized the edit for that reel - so the clever cut was never incorporated!

In the scene where Dracula is being "resurrected" from a coffin into which his ashes have been spread, from blood dripping down from a poor victim (provided by Klove) Dracula is made to "manifest himself" over a period of about a minute. This was achieved by overlapping "dissolves" of a series of twelve locked-down camera shots, involving first the ashes, then a skeleton, then some body-fat on the skeleton, etc., along with swirling mist, till we finally perceive the full form of Dracula. He doesn't appear fully dressed as is usually the case - the shot moves to outside the coffin and a bare arm reaches out. The vampire's clothes were seen in earlier scenes awaiting his return.

In the scene where the vampire woman is being killed by the monks, the shot of the stake being driven into her heart is systematically shortened by a visible rough cut. To this day, no copy with the complete shot has been available.

Many speculations were made around the absence of dialog for Dracula: contrary to Christopher Lee's claiming about his refusal to deliver stupid lines, none of these were said to be found in the original scripts. It had been more largely admitted that Hammer productions, fearing for increase of his salary, had limited Lee's appearance on screen to minimum and dialogs to none. However the following adventures of Dracula played by Lee, though not particularly talkative, tend to deny this last hypothesis.

Originally shown (in London) in a double billing with The Plague of the Zombies.


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