Hammer to re-release 1958 Dracula in UK with long-lost footage added

Hammer Films’ horror masterpiece Dracula is to be rereleased in UK cinemas in October, including footage believed to have been lost for more than six decades after it was deemed too gruesome for audiences. The 1958 movie starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing has been fully restored in 4K. The restoration reinstates footage previously seen only by audiences at the film’s original Japanese theatrical release in 1958. The recovered material, which was discovered in a Warner Bros warehouse, has never been released before in the UK or US and has never appeared on home entertainment in any territory. The chief executive of Hammer Films, John Gore, called it “the recovery of a piece of British film history that audiences believed had been lost for ever”. Speaking to Deadline , he explained that censors and distributors had cut the footage after audiences fainted during screenings when Lee’s vampire lunged at the neck of his victims, his fangs dripping with blood. “It was the fangs that scared them,” he said. “People were screaming, which was the point.” The film changed the landscape of horror cinema, with a famous scene of Lee looming at the top of a dark staircase and declaring: “I am Dracula”. …