{"id":604935,"date":"2026-05-26T15:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T15:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/604935\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:01:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T15:01:15","slug":"hammers-horror-of-dracula-censored-scenes-restored-for-halloween-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/604935\/","title":{"rendered":"Hammer\u2019s \u2018Horror Of Dracula\u2019 Censored Scenes Restored For Halloween Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
A fully restored 4K version of 1958s\u00a0Horror of Dracula<\/a>\u00a0starring Christopher Lee<\/a> as Bram Stoker\u2019s nightmarish creation will be released into cinemas, in time for Halloween, John Gore owner of the Hammer Horror Films label, tells Deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tHammer is now a part of recently formed John Gore Studios.<\/p>\n

\n\tHorror of Dracula\u00a0will also be available on home entertainment, dates TBC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGore explains that footage cut by censors and distributors at the time of its original release was discovered in a Warner Bros. warehouse.<\/p>\n

\n\tNewspaper items of the period report that women, and a few men apparently, were fainting during screenings when Lee\u2019s vampire character lunged rather vigorously at the necks of his victims, the creature\u2019s fangs dripping with blood. Such scenes were deemed too gory. It was also the first full color production of a\u00a0Dracula\u00a0film, and that blood sure looks gruesome.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnly those who saw the film on its release in Japan would have seen the uncut version.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was the fangs that scared them,\u201d Gore suggests. \u201cPeople were screaming, which was the point,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0Horror of Dracula\u2019s\u00a0director Terence Fisher, using a script by Jimmy Sangster, wanted\u00a0gory spectacle and\u00a0\u00a0that\u2019s when\u00a0Hammer decided to introduce\u00a0Dracula\u2019s\u00a0fangs. \u201cThink of every Halloween, and you see all those fangs, that\u2019s a Hammer and Christopher Lee invention,\u201d Gore contends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHORROR OF DRACULA, Christopher Lee on poster art, 1958<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, it\u2019s only fair to point out that the fearsome cuspids in question were actually created by Hammer\u2019s makeup guru Philip Leakey in consultation with Lee. \u201cIt all started when Christopher Lee said, \u2018I want more teeth with this,\u2019 so they came up with something that had some bite.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBela Legusi , Gore continues, bore no fangs when he played the fiendish titular role in Tod Browning\u2019s 1931 landmark\u00a0Dracula, beautifully shot by Karl Freund (Key Largo, I Love Lucy) and insists that the count in F.W. Murnau\u2019s 1922 classic\u00a0Nosferatu\u00a0\u201cwas like a rabbit,\u201d with no bite at all.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat thing that we just associate with vampires everywhere all came up with Lee and the makeup guy,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Gore, a Broadway and international theater powerhouse, took control of Hammer less than three years ago, he says that he wanted to find ways to honor Hammer\u2019s horror legacy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe managed to get the uncut original Christopher Lee Dracula. So we\u2019ve just been\u00a0remastering that now. So there\u2019s like three minutes missing. Hammer\u2019s business was based on the censor. Getting that X-rated certificate was crucial to marketing, but they could only go so far because the censors didn\u2019t like what they saw \u2014 all that blood,\u201d and the film had just over three minutes deleted.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHORROR OF DRACULA, Christopher Lee, Melissa Stribling, 1958<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo Warner Brothers, they have this massive, massive storage near LAX where everything from the 1920s onwards is there. I mean, there\u2019s like 10 Batmobiles and God knows what. And they found the director\u2019s cut of the original 1958 Dracula. So we will be unlocking that and the world will get to see the bits they weren\u2019t seeing, which is mostly to do with how Dracula dies at the end,\u201d Gore discloses.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther reintroduced footage, Gore continues, \u201cis a bit that\u2019s so famous, it\u2019s where Christopher Lee descends on the woman and is about to bite her. It\u2019s so sexual and they had to trim that because it just looked like it was nothing to do with vampires,\u201d he says trying to describe the scene with great delicacy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo they had to trim a bit of the sexual stuff and then how he\u2019s destroyed at the end. They cut quite a lot out because they went, \u2018It\u2019s too gruesome.\u2019 And now that\u2019s back in. All the crucial points that were axed are now back in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVampire fangs used by Chrstopher Lee in \u2018Horror of Dracula.\u2019 Courtesy: National Science & Media Museum <\/p>\n

\n\tSilver Salt Restoration oversaw the upgrade of the picture which also starred Peter Cushing as vampire hunter Doctor Van Helsing. \u201cYou could go to 8K, but we go to 4K because if you go any higher it can be a bit too exacting,\u201d Gore warns.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film will re-released into cinemas in the run up to Halloween in October.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tChristopher Lee in \u2018Horror of Dracula,\u2019 Hammer<\/p>\n

\n\tGore says that he and his team are looking at the entire Hammer catalogue and exploring how the mammoth vault of movies might be further exploited.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re working on the whole lot. It\u2019s a long list. Everything that Hammer\u2019s made, we\u2019re looking at versions of vampires, werewolves, mummies, everything that was ever done, looking at new ways into it, really. So no, it\u2019s great to own it. I loved it as a kid, and now I get the chance to dig into all these things,\u201d Gore says with relish.<\/p>\n

\n\tHammer shot or co-produced 165 productions, some forty were Hammer horror pictures. Others were B crime thrillers like\u00a0River Patrol,Who Killed Van Loon, the\u00a0Dick Barton\u00a0secret agent tales and dozens of pictures involving dangerous dames up to no good.Titles such as\u00a0The House Across the Lake, Stolen Face, The Rossiter Case\u00a0and Bad Blonde. And don\u2019t think that blokes weren\u2019t up to their necks in dastardly\u00a0deeds.\u00a0There\u2019s Room to Let , The Jack of Diamonds, Five Days\u00a0to name but three.<\/p>\n

\n\tGore was at the Cannes Film Festival for the Cannes Market where he held industry screenings for\u00a0My Duchess\u00a0starring Dame Joan Collins and Isabella Rossellini, both giving their all in a movie that reveals the sad, final years of Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fully restored 4K version of 1958s\u00a0Horror of Dracula\u00a0starring Christopher Lee as Bram Stoker\u2019s nightmarish creation will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[77944,111593,96,77945,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-604935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-christopher-lee","tag-dracula","tag-entertainment","tag-hammer-films","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}