31 Days of Horror Movies - Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1965)

This is the first horror movie I ever saw.  I saw it in a double feature with The Curse of Frankenstein at the Fairborn Theater when I was 9 or 10.  This was the true sequel to The Horror of Dracula.  There was a sequel called The Brides of Dracula (1960), but Dracula was nowhere to be found in the movie.  In Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Christopher Lee reprises Dracula.  This movie starts where The Horror of Dracula left off – with the climactic death scene.  Once the viewers are caught up on the story, the movie fast forwards 10 years.  The next chapter to the Dracula saga begins with a funeral.  A dead girl is carried to a forest where a priest is about to stake her for being a vampire.  Father Sandor [Andrew Keir] appears and chastises the priest and the locals for spreading superstitious nonsense about vampirism.  He offers to bury the girl properly. 

Meanwhile, four English tourists, Alan and Charles Kent and their wives are on their way to a place called Karlsberg.  They’re at an inn where we find Charles [Francis Matthews] drinking copious amounts of beer with the locals.  His sister-in-law Helen [Barbara Shelley] disapproves.  As the Kents are arguing about how much money Charles is spending on beer, Father Sandor visits the inn to warm himself and get a meal.  He meets the Kents.  When they tell him about their destination, he warns them not to go there.  But since they’re English, they disregard his warning and proceed to Karlsberg anyway.  Their coach driver is scared shitless to go to Karlsberg at night, and he abandons the Kents outside of Karlsberg.  He says he’ll come back for them in the morning.  Then out of nowhere appears a driverless coach which stops, picks them up and takes them to a nearby castle.  When they arrive at the castle, they are greeted by a man named Klove [Philip Latham].  There’s a dining table set with four places, and their things have been taken to their rooms and unpacked.  When Alan Kent inquires about the whereabouts of Klove’s master, Klove reveals that his master [Dracula] is dead, but his will left instructions to always have the house ready to receive guests.

Whoa! Moment #1 – Helen Kent heard a noise outside the bedroom.  Scared out of her wits, she begs her husband Alan to go investigate.  Once he leaves the room, you know he’s not coming back.  He found Klove dragging a trunk to a crypt.  He followed Klove, but Klove knew Alan was there, snuck up behind and knocked him out.  Klove retrieved a box of Dracula’s ashes out of the trunk and emptied them into an empty coffin.  He ties up Alan Kent feet-first and hoists him over the empty coffin.  Klove then kills Alan, slitting his throat and allowing him to bleed out over the empty coffin.  Alan’s blood and Dracula’s ashes mix, and it gets very foggy inside the crypt.  Dracula’s body begins to reconstitute, and in a close-up of the coffin the viewer sees Dracula’s hand [fully reformed] coming out of the coffin.  That’s spooky stuff for a 10 year old.

The next morning, Charles and Diana Kent are downstairs waiting for Alan and Helen, but they are nowhere to be found.  We already know Alan is dead, and we find that Klove enticed Helen to the crypt where she meets Dracula and becomes his first victim.  Charles then found Alan’s corpse stuffed into Klove’s trunk.  At the same time Diana meets an undead Helen, who tries to bite Helen.  At that moment Dracula appears, as does Charles.  The two struggle, and Charles and Diana manage to escape.  They get away in the coach that brought them to the castle, but they crash the coach.  Diana is knocked out, so Charles has to carry her through the woods, where they are rescued by Father Sandor and taken to a monastery.  Klove brought two coffins [containing Dracula and Helen] to the monastery and asks for sanctuary, but the monks refuse.  Within the monastery there is a Renfield-like character named Ludwig.  Dracula is his master.  Meanwhile, Helen gets caught and staked.  I think she was a diversion.  Ludwig helps Dracula get to Diana, who spirits her away from the monastery to his castle.  Father Sandor and Charles follow them on horseback.  They ride cross country as Klove drives the wagon with two coffins [this time it’s Dracula and Diana inside].  This brings us to Whoa! Moment #2.

Whoa! Moment #2 – Another Dracula Death Scene.  Father Sandor and Charles Kent catch up to Dracula’s coach.  His coffin fell out of the wagon onto the ice covering Dracula’s moat.  Of course, as Charles tries to stake Dracula, the Sun goes down.  When will they learn?  But Father Sandor has a rifle.  He knows running water can kill a vampire, so he shoots holes in the ice.  For a few seconds Dracula surfs on a piece of ice before he loses his balance.  He falls off the ice, into the water and drowns.

Whoa! Moment #3 – Christopher Lee didn’t say a single word throughout the entire movie.  His story is that the dialog written for him was so bad that he refused to say the lines.  The screenwriter’s story was that no dialog was written into the movie for him.  Which story is true?  It doesn’t matter.  Christopher Lee can still be scary without uttering a single word.