Oakley Court – British film location

  

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Oakley Court is a Victorian Gothic country house overlooking the River Thames at Water Oakley in Bray in the English county of Berkshire. It was built in 1859 and is currently a luxury hotel. In the past, it has been often used as a film and TV location.

Because it was near Bray Studios, the exterior of Oakley Court was used in the filming of Hammer horror films, such as The Man in Black (1949), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960, the main entrance was used as the entrance to Castle Meinster), Nightmare (1963, a girl’s school), The Old Dark House (1963), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Witchcraft (1964), Die, Monster, Die! (1965), The Reptile (1965) and The Plague of the Zombies (1965, Hamilton Manor).

Oakley Court is perhaps best known as Doctor Frank N. Furter’s castle (called The Frankenstein Place) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and as the hotel in José Larraz’s Vampyres (1974).

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Other horror and thriller films that have used Oakley Court as a location are Witchcraft (1964), Die, Monster, Die! (1965), The Projected Man (1966), Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly, (1969), The Night Digger (1971), Spanish-Italian Giallo thriller The Fourth Victim (1971), the Frankie Howerd comedy vehicle The House in Nightmare Park (1973), the Amicus film And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973), The Mutations (1973), Theatre of Blood (1973) and Dan Curtis’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1973).

The 1963 espionage thriller The Man Who Finally Died and the 1976 mystery farce Murder by Death used the house for its setting. Its unique architecture and decor also features in the 1978 Peter Cook and Dudley Moore film, The Hound of the Baskervilles and another Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder By Decree (also 1978)

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Frankie Howerd approaches Oakley Court

In 2010, British film critic Mark Gatiss paid a visit to Oakley Court for the ‘Home Counties Horror’ episode of the documentary series A History of Horror as well as nearby Black Park, another location for Hammer horror.

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Oakley Court in 2015 (photo by Adrian J Smith)

Vampyres trailer:

Addition info thanks: Kultguy’s Keep

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