Brides Of Dracula (1960)

Dracula is dead, but his cult lives on in late 19th Century Transylvania.

Young Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) is heading to the Lady's Academy at Bachstadt, where she is to be a student-teacher, but she gets diverted to the home of Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt), little realising that the kindly old eccentric wants to feed her to her imprisoned vampiric son, the Baron (David Peel).

The naïve Marianne frees the Baron from his bondage, then flees the castle only to be found unconscious in the woods by Dr Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) who has been called to the village by the local priest.

Marianne eventually makes it to the girls school, but then the Baron shows up and proposes marriage - before turning turning one of her co-workers into a vampire.

Brides Of Dracula is fun but forgettable. Cushing is, naturally, the star but Freda Jackson as the Baron's insane nanny - in a Renfield role - is the most striking character, while Peel's Baron has an effete streak about him that makes Edward Cullen look positively macho.

A jolly romp from the Hammer production line, this 85-minute piece of frippery adds nothing to the vampire mythos, ends with the inevitable giant conflagration (as seems de rigeur in Hammer horrors) and includes possibly the most ridiculous use of an object to form a vampire-destroying crucifix: the shadow of the sails of a windmill... the very windmill the vampire was using at its nest!