[John Hodson]

Go to this link and scroll down the page to 'Dracula - The True Story' and you'll find:

...However, on May 15th, a press release was posted on the BFI website, headed “Dracula in Cannes”.... In it, Andrea Kalas, Senior Preservation Manager, BFI National Archive, in her Notes on the restoration of Dracula, said the following: “The restoration of what many fans call the best Hammer horror film required extensive research into reported censored scenes. Rumour and fact, not unlike the Dracula story itself, are intermingled. Our research into missing scenes led us to every conceivable resource from the vaults of Warner Bros to an archive in Japan. Scenes censored by the BBFC for the release of the UK version, but included in the US version, have been recovered. In addition, the US title, “Horror of Dracula”, had been attached to most theatrical and video releases.”

We all know that Dracula is a fantasy but surely no-one ever expected the British Film Institute to dream up such a fantastical press release. There is not a shred of truth in these assertions. The BFI did not restore the 1958 Hammer Dracula. This was done by Warner Bros. (the copyright owners) about six years ago, and was, by all accounts a very straightforward procedure, requiring no research, as the negative they worked from (of the American release version) was complete and in good condition. All the “BFI National Archive” did, in reality, was to have a laboratory in California add the British main titles to the American release picture, thus producing a hybrid that was never, ever in distribution. So much for the BFI’s policy of enhanced curatorial control. Such a decision – to create, in effect, a new work without clearly documenting the modification – would be anathema to any right-thinking archivist elsewhere in the world. In the BFI’s new fantasy land, though, it seems that anything goes...