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 location.
Because it was near to Bray Studios, the exterior of Oakley Court was used in the filming of a number of films including several 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).
Other horror 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), 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)
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.
Buy Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
Vampyres trailer:
Addition info thanks: Kultguy’s Keep
MOVIES and MANIA provides an aggregated range of film reviews from a wide variety of credited sources, plus our own reviews and ratings, in one handy web location. We are a genuinely independent website and rely solely on the minor income generated by internet ads to stay online and expand. Please support us by not blocking ads. If you do block ads please consider making a small donation to our running costs instead. We'd really appreciate it. Thank you. As an Amazon Associate, the owner occasionally earns a small amount from qualifying linked purchases.
