Dracula unseen: The death and afterlife of Hammer’s Vlad the Impaler

Few production companies have been as synonymous with one genre as Hammer Films and its horror output. However, for every ‘Hammer Horror’ successfully produced, several potential projects failed to make it into production. This article will utilize five separate drafts of the unmade Hammer project Vlad the Impaler, an adaptation of a BBC Radio 4 Drama produced in 1974. Utilizing Vlad the Impaler as a case study will allow for a further contextualization of Hammer’s production methods between 1975 and 1979, a period in which Hammer only produced two theatrical films. The project was also developed further throughout the 1980s/1990s, at a time when Hammer did not produce a single film. More broadly, this article will use Vlad the Impaler as a methodological case study, and examine how we can expand on existing works within the field on unmade adaptations.