"This creepy period yarn has retained much of its bite… One shouldn't be brutal about a film of such noble intent, but as ‘horror' it doesn't have the honest-to-goodness scares that modern audiences expect. Still, Christopher Lee's Dracula is a menacing and complex presence who never lets his fangs and cape dominate. There's also the canny use of vampirism as an allegory for drug abuse and sexually transmitted disease: is this the camp forerunner to Abel Ferrara's The Addiction?" - David Jenkins, Time Out