Peter Cushing’s Best Hammer Horror Movie Let Him Be the Romantic Hero

When it comes to which classic Hammer Horror film was Cushing's best, it's easy to nominate an obvious choice. Surely it's The Curse of Frankenstein, right? With no shade intended toward the opulent masterpiece that is Curse, the correct answer is The Brides of Dracula. The 1960 sequel to Hammer Film Productions' smash hit Horror of Dracula might have been a cash cow in lesser hands. Instead, it epitomizes and distills all of Hammer's hallmarks into a product that’s so damn good, it’s hard to find fault. The studio's creative reinvention of the Dracula novel continues with a unique vampire story that could've stalked its way out of any epochal Gothic book. Most notably, Brides marks the one time Cushing returned to the Van Helsing role and the only Hammer Dracula to which Christopher Lee's vampiric maelstrom didn't return. Brides of Dracula had to sell itself on the strength of its returning hero rather than the appeal of its titular villain. Spoiler: it does. Just because it's “the sequel without Dracula” doesn’t mean Hammer spared expense. Brides even goes further than Horror of Dracula by employing Cushing's unfairly underutilized versatility. In short, Brides walked so Crimson Peak and The Invitation could run, but Brides ran an Olympic Gold Medal marathon.