Lorain Drive-in Reopens March 1963

Although you wouldn't normally think of going to a drive-in movie in late March, the Lorain Drive-in reopened for the 1963 season with a Dracula triple-feature as advertised in this ad, which ran in the Lorain Journal on Saturday, March 23 – 50 years ago this week.

As you can see, it's not your father's Dracula – Bela Lugosi – featured in these late 1950s/early 60s horror movies. In fact, despite the movie titles, Dracula's not even in two of the three movies!

The Drac 3-pack consisted of Blood of Dracula (1957), Brides of Dracula (1960) and Horror of Dracula (1958).

Blood of Dracula features a woman who turns into a vampire under hypnosis as the villain. She also sprouts some major league eyebrows along with her fangs.

Here's the trailer for it (below).

Brides of Dracula, a British Hammer Film, doesn't have Dracula in it either. It stars Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing and Yvonne Monlaur as a schoolteacher terrorized by a vampire named Baron Meinster. (It's actually the sequel to the third movie, Horror of Dracula.)

Here's the trailer for Brides of Dracula (below).

The third feature – Horror of Dracula (titled just Dracula in England) features Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. The film was so popular that a sequel – Brides of Dracula, as mentioned above – was produced.

Here's the trailer for Horror of Dracula!

At least now you have a pretty good idea of what the people shivering in their cars at the Lorain Drive-in fifty years ago were, uh, enjoying on the big screen.

Hey, I almost forgot my fave-o-rite drive-in movie intermission ad (below). They were still showing it at the Aut-O-Rama out in North Ridgeville the last few years.