Horrorfest 2020: Hammerfest - Dracula: Prince of Darkness

Starring Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley and Andrew Keir

Written by John Sansom and directed by Terence Fisher

Finally, we get to our first DRACULA film of Horrorfest 2020! This is the third Hammer DRACULA movie, but first sequel that has Christopher Lee returning in the role as the vampire count. 

This movie's famous for the fact that Dracula, a monster more apt to hold a conversation than, say, Frankenstein's monster or the mummy, does not utter one word of dialogue in the whole run time. Lee claims this is because he refused to speak the ridiculous dialogue. Writer John Sansom claims he never wrote any dialogue for Lee in the first place. Who's right? Who knows!

This time around, a group of travelers ignore the advice of locals and end up spending the night at Dracula's castle, where his familiar has a plot to revive the Van Helsing-killed count. Thus follows a spectacular sequence in which a crazy blood ritual reanimates Dracula from a pile of dust back to Christopher Lee status, and soon Dracula's on a kill crazy rampage.

This movie benefits from having Lee back as the title character and even in a wordless performance Lee has presence for days, as previously evidenced by his performance in THE MUMMY. This time he has his face to work with, as well, since Dracula requires minimal makeup, and although Lee is not the best Dracula of all time, he is the most expressive and the one that is most convincing as a monster. Runner up for most expressive count goes to Carlos Villarias, though Bela Lugosi will always be the greatest.

But I digress.

One thing that's kind of a bummer about this movie is that it does not feature the return of Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, aside from reused footage at the beginning. However, unlike some other Hammer sequels, this movie's Cushing replacement is pretty good -- Father Sandor, played by Andrew Keir.

One cool thing about the Hammer DRACULA movies is they make sure to come up with new ways to kill Dracula each time, rather than always relying on the stake. In the first one it was sunlight, in this one they use the rarely-used method of burying him below running water. There's more than one way to kill a vampire!