One of Tim Burton’s favorite movies makes him the best candidate to breathe life into horror’s most famous monster. A quick look at Tim Burton’s favorite horror movies reveals a broad diet of influences, but few that would be regarded as critically acclaimed masterpieces; instead, he loves old-fashioned B-movies like The War of the Gargantuas or Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man. The director is also an admirer of classic British horror, including The Wicker Man or the works of Hammer.
From about the late ’50s until the mid-70s, British production company Hammer Horror was famous for its output of gothic chillers and creature features filled with blood and vivid colors. These films would be considered tame by modern standards, but their takes on classic monsters like Frankenstein or The Mummy and movies such as Quatermass and the Pit saw Hammer become a brand not unlike modern equivalents like Blumhouse. Changing audience tastes eventually saw the popularity of Hammer Horror wane, with 1976’s To the Devil a Daughter being their final genre outing.
Tim Burton’s Favorite Dracula Movie Makes Him The Perfect Hammer Director
Tim Burton’s favorite Dracula movie is Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972
Since the early 2000s, there have been several attempts to revive Hammer for new audiences. However, outside of the Daniel Radcliffe-fronted The Woman in Black, few of the modern Hammer films have made an impact. Their most recent project Doctor Jekyll, starring Eddie Izzard, was also met with a muted response. Considering Burton is such a fan of this particular period, it’s almost bizarre there have been no attempts by Hammer to lure him into the fold. In fact, one of Tim Burton’s favorite horror movies is Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972, which brought Christopher Lee’s titular bloodsucker to groovy London.
A.D. 1972 was the seventh entry in Hammer’s Dracula movie franchise, and a blatant attempt to make the monster more hip to younger viewers. The sequel is badly dated now, with the dialogue of its young protagonists painfully out of touch. Even so, there’s fun to be had with it, and Burton (via Rotten Tomatoes) has said of Dracula A.D. 1972 “Seeing that movie is one of the reasons I wanted to move to London, because it’s quite swinging — it’s like this weird mixture of a Hammer horror film and swinging London.
Despite its obvious faults, the filmmaker still has a love for the sequel. This makes Tim Burton the ideal choice to bring back the Hammer Dracula series, as he knows what made those older films work, but could also bring a modern sensibility to them. Dracula films haven’t been faring well recently, with 2023 alone seeing the box office failure of Renfield and Last Voyage of the Demeter. A reboot of Hammer Dracula needs some star power, and there’s something about a Burton-helmed Dracula that has a nice ring to it.
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Despite the success of 1958’s Dracula, it took many years for Hammer to recognize it had franchise potential. Lee’s Dracula is absent from the first follow-up Brides of Dracula, but between 1966 and 1973, he went on to play The Count six more times for Hammer. Lee’s Dracula is arguably the most iconic screen portrayal, but he later admitted to being pressed into making most of the sequels. Whenever the star tried to back out of them over subpar scripts, the heads of Hammer would claim the productions would be canceled without him, and thus put film crews out of work.
Still, the Dracula saga is one of Hammer Horror’s best known, and nothing would signal their comeback better than a successful revival. It could also be used as a launchpad for other movies, and might even set up potential crossovers like Universal tried – and failed – to achieve with their planned Dark Universe. There hasn’t been a blockbuster success with the bloodsucker since 2014’s Dracula Untold, and pairing Burton with a name actor (Michael Fassbender, Tom Hiddleston, etc) and a fresh approach could be the relaunch both the character and Hammer needs.
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Burton has already kind of made some Hammer Horrors of his own. 1999’s Sleepy Horror has the gothic tone, theatrical overacting and lashings of blood that defined the best Hammer films, with a line-up of thespians such as Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee himself offering hammy support. The movie has become regarded as one of Burton’s most underrated, but his last attempt at a vampire project, Dark Shadows, didn’t go over as well.
This 2012 comic horror adapted the cult TV series of the same name, with Johnny Depp playing the lead role of vampire Barnabas Collins, who awakens after 200 years in (what’s unlikely to be a coincidence) 1972. Dark Shadows is one of Burton’s worst movies, being an unfunny soap opera pastiche that wastes an incredible supporting cast. Tim Burton is a filmmaker who feels custom-built to direct a great gothic vampire movie, and a hit Hammer Dracula reboot could wipe away lingering memories of Dark Shadows.
