Spikeopath
A teenage girl, bit of a rebel, is sent away to a girls school. Her fiery nature brings her to the attention of the science teacher, who, using a Carpathian amulet, uses the girl for nefarious deeds.OK! You understand why plenty of folk love the cruddy schlockers of the 50s (I love me plenty as well), the films that were the bottom half of a bottom of the barrel drive-in double bill. Quite often there's a charm to be found, even some that genuinely have craft, guile and surprise enough to warrant love and affection. Blood of Dracula (AKA: Blood Is My Heritage) is devoid of charm and doesn't work hard to earn support.As has been pointed out by the horror faithful over the years, there is no blood and no Dracula in this film - though Dracula as plural does get a mention during one of the many many long and dull passages of chatter within. The narrative plods along until angry girl meets angry science teacher and it's hypnotism time! Yay. Enter a creature that looks like Eddie Munster with bad teeth. All violent damage is done off screen, an interim pop tune and dance sequence is just bizarre, and the plot's motives really don't make any sense.Herman Cohen (producer) was not dumb. I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, the two other films in this schlocky trilogy, are good fun. He was capable of overseeing some good movies pitched at a teen audience - even having something to say about the youth/adult divide. Sadly his vampire excursion is not only lazy, it's also very dull. 2/10
GL84
After arriving at a women's boarding school, a college student finds a powerful amulet turns her into a ravenous vampiric beast, and her rampage across the town leaves her boyfriend and his friends to race to stop her.This was a pretty decent and overall enjoyable vampire entry. One of the more enjoyable aspects here is the pretty innovative and unique methods of unleashing the vampire. By utilizing the vampirization as more of a hypnotic state than a physical being, it adds a special dimension to the creature by bypassing many of the different shortcomings associated with that story being presented here, which really hurts the film a lot but offers pretty intriguing change-up from the usual origin that happens in these stories. The fact that this one does switch around the vampire origins is quite confusing altogether because the focus of making her a vampire is overall useless because it doesn't affect the story one way or another, which is the most puzzling part. That, when combined with the utterly irritating teen antics that include a show-stopping song number that's utterly atrocious, these are really the most detrimental parts to this. It's got a rousing finale and some nice atmosphere when it counts for several of the initial attack scenes so it does have some decent points about it.Today's Rating-PG: Mild Violence.
HpyCmpr155
Let's see...a mad female science teacher spouting her twisted ideas in a secluded girls' boarding school? She "seduces" her innocent young students with her pseudo-scientific rants, waves her amulet and turns them into a blood-sucking vampires. They are doing her bidding, murdering fellow students and following her directions with total devotion? You are practically beaten over the head with the subtext in this movie and if you don't see it, you must be blind. It is great fun (if you can sit through the transformation scenes). A B-movie? For sure? But with the subtext, it was treading on interesting ground for 1957. It is a classic and if you take the subtext into consideration it is one of the best and most entertaining of the 50's B horror genre.
Michael_Elliott
Blood of Dracula (1957) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A troubled teen (Sandra Harrison) goes to a boarding school where a teacher starts doing experiments on her. The teacher puts Nancy under hypnosis and soon murders begin to occur. Too bad this film wasn't called I Was a Teenage Vampire to fit in with the others but other than that this movie isn't too bad. This film tries to fill the need of teen juvenile films as well as the horror genre and in that respect the film manages to be entertaining. The look of the vampire is quite good and there's some funny dialogue throughout the movie. The film's pacing is a tad bit all over the place and this here keeps it from being better. The movie certainly doesn't try to be anything special but it does manage to be an effective drive-in flick.
AD
