68 Years Later, A Shocking Horror Classic Will Finally Be Seen As It's Meant To Be

Repertory screenings of older, hand-selected films on celluloid prints have become major audience draws at arthouse theaters during reopening. Some re-releases are generating buzz comparable to new releases. Warner Bros. has returned Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils to theaters, and Hammer Films is now preparing a Halloween theatrical re-release of its original 1958 Dracula, also known as Horror of Dracula. The film will return in its original uncut form. British censors previously required cuts to avoid an X rating after reports of fainting during intense bloodsucking scenes. Hammer’s owner says the deleted material included a famous moment of Christopher Lee descending to bite a woman, and the ending was also significantly edited.

"Repertory screenings - older films, basically, often hand-selected and shown on celluloid prints - have become major draws, performing as well (or better than) new-release movies at many theaters. Studios have started taking notice as well: Earlier this month, Warner Bros.' newly formed Clockwork sub-label announced that Ken Russell's infamous 1971 film The Devils would be returning to theaters, prompting major buzz around the film and the studio."

"This week, the studio announced that it is preparing a re-release of its original 1958 Dracula, a.k.a Horror of Dracula, for a Halloween theatrical release. Like The Devils, Dracula returns to theaters in its original uncut form: After newspaper reports claimed that moviegoers were fainting during the film's more, let's say, penetrative bloodsucking scenes, British censors insisted that Hammer cut three minutes from the movie to avoid an X rating."

"“Hammer's business was based on the censor. Getting that X-rated certificate was crucial to marketing, but they could only go so far because the censors didn't like what they saw - all that blood,” current Hammer Films owner John Gore tells Deadline. “It was the fangs that scared them,” he adds. “People were screaming, which was the point.”"

"According to Gore, the key deleted scene is “a bit that's so famous...Christopher Lee descends on the woman and is about to bite her...they had to trim that because it just looked like it was nothing to do with vampires,” he says. The film's ending was also significantly edited, and Gore says that the deleted footage - previously seen only in poor"

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