We kind of figured that a 4K release of Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (1958) would be coming out at some point, after the huge release of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), not to mention several other titles. But what most fans didn’t expect was that it would contain footage never seen before, thought to lost for over six decades! I know when the Blu-ray came out a few years ago, which had a few seconds of long thought lost footage, of the Count’s demise, everyone was pretty excited about that. Those were some extra seconds, but now they are talking about 3 minutes of footage that is being restored into the film.

We’re not really sure exactly how much footage in the different scenes they are talking about, but honestly, I know I’ll be pre-ordering it. Right up there with those Quatermass titles, their first Frankenstein film, Horror of Dracula did help give Hammer the continued boost they needed to keep that momentum going. After the huge success of their version of Shelley’s novel, Hammer was known throughout the world, and bringing Stoker’s Count to life, in color, with bright red blood, and making him a scary and powerful figure, it made audiences and other studios take notice of this little British studio.

According to John Gore, Warner Bros. has a huge storage facility in California, where they found the director’s cut of the film. Besides the death scene, there is more footage of “where Christopher Lee descends on the woman and is about to bite her. It’s so sexual and they had to trim that because it just looked like it was nothing to do with vampires.” Gore went on to say, “So they had to trim a bit of the sexual stuff and then how he’s destroyed at the end. They cut quite a lot out because they went, ‘It’s too gruesome.’ And now that’s back in. All the crucial points that were axed are now back in.”

They did state that they were planning on re-releasing the film in October to tie in with the 4k release but didn’t say if that was just in the UK or if would be here in the states. One can only hope. And one can also hope that it is packed full of extras and special features like their Curse disc was. But I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that, just looking at what they’ve given us so far.