1958 ‘Dracula’ to get cinematic re-release featuring banned scenes that made audiences faint
The classic 1958 horror film Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, will return to cinemas in time for Halloween this year in a new 4K restoration that includes three minutes of gory scenes never shown to US or UK audiences.
The movie, directed by Terence Fisher, originally saw three minutes of blood-soaked horror removed from the final cut after shocking viewers to the point of outrage in Japan.
Reports from the time suggested that plenty of audience members in Japan fainted upon first watching the scenes.
The removed footage was previously presumed to be missing; it was recently discovered in a Warner Bros warehouse and will thus be added to the new 4K restoration.
As per The Independent, John Gore, the chief executive of Hammer Films, described it as “a piece of British film history that audiences believed had been lost forever”.
The pertinently named Gore went on to add: “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.”
Crucially, Dracula pulled in a whopping £2.6 million globally for Hammer Films back in the day, from a budget of just £81,412.
By 1958, the Dracula story was familiar to many, shared in FW Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu and Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula. However, the Lee picture was the first interpretation since the moving picture was upgraded to colour.
Re-instated scenes in the new restoration include a moment where Lee’s Dracula descends upon the woman he’s about to bite, which was trimmed for being too sexual. Additionally, extra cuts from Dracula’s gory death scene have been re-added.
The most recent translation of the classic story to the screen was Robert Eggers’ 2025 movie, Nosferatu, which Far Out gave four stars, writing: “It is the director’s most delicate work to date and contributes something new to the Nosferatu story. It excels on both counts.”
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