Alluring, beautiful and with deft delivery, she conveyed controlled fear like no other, in a succession of hit movies. Christopher Lee sank his fangs into her in the 1968 classic Dracula Has Risen From The Grave but she survived to star alongside Peter Cushing in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed the following year.
A hat-trick of horror was completed in 1970 when she appeared in The Horror Of Frankenstein, with Ralph Bates playing the dreaded baron.
She learned a lot about fake blood in those roles. “There were two kinds of stage blood – Max Factor, which looked very real and stained permanently, and ICI, which was a slightly less authentic colour but could be washed out,” she said.
In her fourth and final horror, 1975’s The Ghoul, she played 1920s flapper girl Daphne who, along with and her boyfriend, gets stranded in fog when they run out of petrol. She wanders off and ends up at a moody mansion where the weird Dr Lawrence, played by Peter Cushing, resides.
Born Veronica Mary Glazier in Emley, West Yorkshire, her father William was an officer in the RAF and her mother was a housemaid.
She was on the brink of Hollywood stardom through the horror films, but because of her strict upbringing she was not keen to appear nude. “I wouldn’t think of taking my clothes off but it seemed at the time that was going to be the only option,” she said.
Carlson married businessman Sydney Love and moved to South Carolina in the US.
She died of natural causes and is survived by her sons Marcus and Adam and daughter Carly.
Veronica Carlson born September 18, 1944 died February 27, 2022
