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Dracula: Prince of Darkness Review
Dracula is brought back to life by his faithful butler after he tricks some ignorant English tourists to stay at the castle before killing them and offering their blood as a sacrifice. Once resurrected, Dracula wreaks havoc on the townspeople.
Original Title:Dracula: Prince of Darkness
Christopher Lee's Dracula returns, hissing but without dialogue, in this sequel to the 1958 classic. Much of the film is concerned with the resurrection of the Count, which requires some snotty English tourists to be lured to the Castle for a gruesome blood ritual.
Once Dracula is up and about, the script can't find much for him to do, but there are spirited performances from Shelley, as an uptight bourgeois who becomes a sensual vampire hoyden, and Kier, as a gun-toting monk who fills in for Van Helsing. The Dracula-destroying finale makes unusual use of the frozen moat of the castle.
With Lee once again reprising his most famous role, until The Lord of the Rings at least, this hammer Horror tries to recreate the magic of his first attempts at the role. Although Lee is not the problem, the film is let down by a narrative without direction or motivation.
