The count with the sharp teeth

Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)

Third film from the Hammer Collection is also the third movie in the series of Dracula films from Hammer. To me Dracula is not Bela Lugosi or Gary Oldman or Frank Langella, it is and always has been Christopher Lee. The very first Dracula movie I saw was a Hammer Dracula, don't know which one it was as I was so little that I can't remember. But Christopher Lee with his red eyes burned down into my memory so deep that he is the one that first comes to my mind when ever someone mentions Dracula. So this was a nostalgia trip for me. The story of this one is that two English couples end up into Dracula's castle, no matter how many times they were warned not to go there. The creepy servant called Klove uses the blood of one of them to resurrect the count and there we go again. The movie looks quite brilliant as most Hammer horror movies and the mood is spot on perfect. Christopher Lee has said that the lines given to him were so bad that he decided not to speak at all in the movie. So the Dracula only hisses and screams. Not a bad thing actually, gave it a bit more weirdness and made it more menacing. What I love about the Hammer Dracula is that it's not as finesse as the usual ones. It's quite straight forward, this dracula doesn't walk through doors, he kicks them in. The rest of the cast is quite ok and the story even though it's a bit cheesy at parts works well enough to keep the interest up. Can't say this is a masterpiece, but it's quite a great movie none the less. The DVD had no subtitles but there was a very good documentary on the disk called The Many Faces of Christopher Lee.
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