Dracula, Prince of Darkness

Dir. Terence Fisher

90 Minutes

UK

1966

Starring: Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley, Andrew Kerr, Francis Matthews, Suzan Farmer, Charles 'Bud' Tingwell

***/*****

After sitting out the second installment in the Hammer Dracula series (The Brides of Dracula), Christopher returns to the forefront as the classic vampire (though this time Peter Cushing's vampire hunter Van Helsing sits out, beginning a precedent that would last all the way until Dracula A.D. 1972). The basic premise involves two couples who are brought by a mysterious carriage to Dracula's castle where the vampires loyal servant works to resurrect his master using the couples as bait. 

Following the initial two films in the series, the Hammer Dracula film highly vary in quality, opting more for a repetitive narrative template (Dracula sets his sights on a specific group of individual who all slowly meet their ends until he is undone) as opposed to the more unique experiments of Cushing's Frankenstein series (which has perhaps the best of their horror films Frankenstein Created Woman). As a result, the pictures have their individual entertainment values but none of them particularly stand out from the crowd with a few superficial observations (or the very obvious final two which take place in their contemporary times). As it stands, Dracula: Prince of Darkness is the best of the post-Cushing films (with some side credit to Taste the Blood of Dracula for its inventive storyline), most likely as a result of being the last of Terrence Fisher's contributions to the series. Fisher has a nice sense of the space of the castle, the careful consideration of the build up leading to the eventual manhunt, and Lee still has a cool menace to the part that would eventually feel like it became a chore to him. But perhaps it is a symptom of the Dracula narrative, an inevitable exhaustion within the franchise that mimics the obvious exhaustion that must be had by a character who can never simply die or rest the final rest.

October 23rd, 2019