Expert: Mel - 9/25/2004

Question
....Which Hammer Horror Film is it where the vampire is killed by the protagonist (Vanhelsing/Peter Cushing?) jumping out a window onto the blades of a windmill and manages with his body weight to position the 4 bladed windmill into the shape of a cross so that the moonlight shines through it and makes a shadow of a cross on the escaping vampire in the courtyard and kills him.
    A very unique way a Vampire to be killed in a movie, don't you think?

    I'm not even sure it was a Hammer film, but I remember Peter Cushing being it it.

    Was it Brides of Dracula?  I remember it in color.
    thanks
Earlie Work

Answer
Hello Earlie,

Yes, it was indeed "Brides Of Dracula" from Hammer in 1960.
Here's a brief outline of the story:

Marianne Danielle, a young schoolteacher on her way to take up a position in Transylvania, is abandoned in a village by her coach driver. She ignores the warnings of the locals and accepts the offer of the Baroness Meinster to spend the night at her castle. But at the castle she meets The Baroness's handsome son whom the Baroness keeps chained up. He tells Marianne how the Baroness has usurped his rightful lands and pleads with her to free him and she does so unaware that he is really a vampire. Meinster proceeds to vampirize his mother and then comes after Marianne as she arrives at her school. Luckily for her, Dr Van Helsing is in the area, hunting down the disciples of Dracula.

The film is filled with a number of classic sequences. There's an extraordinarily brutal scene where Van Helsing is infected with a vampire bite and is forced to cauterize his hand with a branding iron and then pour holy water into the wound to stop himself becoming a vampire. In another we see an old woman encouraging a new vampire to dig its way up out of the grave. And the climax, wherein Van Helsing jumps out of the window of a windmill, landing on the vane and turning it to trap Baron Meinster in the shadow of a giant cross.

Peter Cushing (Professor Van Helsing), Yvonne Monlaur (Marianne Danielle), David Peel (Baron Meinster), Martita Hunt (Baroness Meinster), Freda Jackson (Greta), Andree Melly (Gina), Mona Washbourne (Frau Lang), Miles Malleson (Dr Tobler)

Glad to be of help. Cheers......Mel.