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This was a key period in the history of Vampire movies, and was dominated by
the British movies produced by Hammer. The standard was set by The Horror
of Dracula in 1958, but few of the sequels matched this, though the combination
of Christopher Lee as the Count, and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing seemed to work
at the box office. These were broadly consistent with the original Dracula
story, though as sequel followed sequel, the link became more and more tenuous. There
were other Vampire movies during this period, of course, but many of them followed
the Hammer trend of sleek middle-aged aristocrat chasing (mostly) young women.
Alas, many of the US movies of this period weer still very much in the B-movie
mode. While Hammer rarely did more than suggest sexuality, this was a period
when many movies went quite a lot further. At least as far as undressing the female
lead actors ... many of these films have been called 'cult' movies, even 'art
house' movies - but that's just college boys having their first sight of blood
and sex in the same movie. Few of these movies really deserve special status;
their 'specialness' was usually a very low budget. 
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