This is another French ‘grande’ poster, this time for the direct sequel to Hammer’s original Dracula.    

I remember liking this film a lot when I first saw it on one of the late night horror double bills that the BBC used to run (typically a genteel black and white Universal monster movie followed for the night owls by a Hammer horror or other more recent/gory genre piece in colour).

The two most memorable scenes for me were the Count’s demise (by running water – the hero shoots through the ice on the moat surrounding Dracula’s castle and the vampire takes an early bath), and this – the staking of a vampire bride by a priest.  It was quite explicit for its time and the scene still packs a punch today.  

It was only later that I realised that Christopher Lee as Dracula doesn’t actually speak a single line of dialogue during the entire film, making do with a few hisses. I saw him in person interviewed at the British Film Institute in London in his later years and he told the story that he hated the script so much that he simply refused to say the lines proposed!  

I do not have any room to display this poster, but I bought it anyway on a visit to a nearby annual movie memorabilia fair. I have since learned that with French posters of this era it is important to check on the margins as to which printing house was responsible. This can tell you both whether it was a first run or re-release printing, and there can also be a significant difference in image quality between different printers. This one is I believe from a first release, but a second best print quality…which is still pretty good!

I much prefer this poster to the UK quad, which is much more valuable but IMHO a bit of a dog’s dinner design-wise! I also had a slightly battered copy of the US one-sheet for this movie (above), which again personally I think is an inferior design to the French grande. This one I sold last year to a collector in the US.

I also have recently acquired another French poster, this time a ‘moyenne’ for a 1970s re-release. Its a nice image of Lee hissing. This one is for sale here.

This is another classic Hammer film which also became a memorable comic strip in The House of Hammer magazine back in the late 70s. The magazine later featured the gun-toting priest Father Shandor (featured in the poster) as the hero in a series of original comic strip short stories.