Miss Branding

Miss Branding was the main villainess from the 1957 horror film, Blood of Dracula.

She was played by the late Louise Lewis.

Miss Branding was a chemistry teacher at the Sherwood School for Girls, an all-girls boarding school. She was working on a thesis on the belief that there is a "terrible power" within humanity that is strong enough to destroy the world, and with that, Branding decided to use one of the students to unleash that power as part of a diabolical experiment.

New student Nancy Perkins was recommended by her assistant, Myra (who was unaware of Branding's evil motives), and she took in Nancy after her hand was burned by a chemical in class. During their meeting, Branding places an amulet around her neck, stating that it is from the Carpathian Mountain region and is capable of healing and destroying. She used the amulet to hypnotize Nancy's pain away, and while doing so, she ordered Nancy to always obey her. Later that night, Branding spotted Nancy in the girls' room, where an initiation party was thrown for her. Despite being in a building far from the party, Branding managed to hypnotize Nancy, resulting in Nancy turning into a vampire and killing Nola.

After Nancy wakes up, Branding wipes way her memories of the previous night, and continued her villainous control over Nancy; hypnotizing her into killing two more victims on the following night: Terry and Tab. She turned down pleas from Nancy (who realized what was happening to her) to end the experiment, with the false claim that she's contributing to saving mankind from self-destruction. Branding even kept Nancy's boyfriend, Glenn, from seeing her, but he managed to meet Nancy--who nearly reverted to her murderous persona during their embrace.

In the end of the film, Branding is again confronted by Nancy, who again begged her to be freed from the experiment. The villainous teacher instead offered Nancy a drink to erase her memories, only for Nancy to swat it from her hand. At that moment, the evil Branding grabbed Nancy and forced her to look into the amulet again, which led to another vampire transformation. Nancy attacked Branding and killed her with the amulet's necklace, but was shoved by the villainess during the struggle, causing Nancy to be impaled to death by a piece of broken furniture.