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Klove is shot and Dracula’s coffin comes to rest on the icy terrain of the castle moat. As Charles moves in to drive the stake home, Dracula rises and begins to strangle his adversary. Diana takes Sandor‘s rifle and fires breaking the ice. The cleric fires more shots and the vampire is submerged below the freezing water at the fade out.
    Review
A fine pre-credits sequence opens Dracula, Prince of Darkness as the last few minutes of Dracula/The Horror of Dracula are replayed against James Bernard’s thunderous background score. Christopher Lee’s Count is caught under the glare of Peter Cushing’s crossed candlesticks as a voice over narrative is given like a final declaration:
    “After a reign of hideous terror spanning more than a century, the King of the undead was finally traced to his lair high in the Carpathian mountains. Through the decades many had sought to destroy him. All had failed. Here at last was an adversary armed with sufficient knowledge of the ways of the vampire to bring about the final and absolute destruction. This then was his fate. Thousands had been enslaved by the obscene cult of vampirism. Now the fountainhead himself, perished. Only the memory remained. The memory of the most evil and terrible creature who ever set his seal on civilization”.  

The credits fill the screen and we realize we are comfortable in the company of familiar friends who have held our hands and guided us through some of the best fantasy movies of the decade so far. However, there are a couple of differences inherent that would make Dracula, Prince of Darkness stand out as one of the best, and worst, treatments of the tale..

There are many plus factors on show. Terence Fisher’s direction is as tight as ever, and the frenetic action sequences belie the senses, as in the previous movie. Bernard Robinson’s lush set designs and Jack Asher’s cinematography are even more pleasing to the eye than before and Christopher Lee as a more saturnine Count would cement his reputation as the definitive screen Dracula of the modern cinema. This movie also had the input of Anthony Hinds and Jimmy Sangster battling gamely to avoid censorship and to be able to out-do the previous film. Peter Cushing was unavailable and Van Helsing was replaced by the granite persona of Andrew Kier as Father Sandor. The victims on offer are very likeable consisting of two delectable ladies in Barbara Shelley and Suzan Farmer and their sibling husbands Charles Tingwell and Francis Matthews.
    Cushing’s Van Helsing had reduced the vampire to nothing more than ash floating across the floor on the air of the morning breeze in Dracula. This created two problems for the company. How does one go about resuscitating the demon? And, once awakened, what do we do with him?
Many sources state that Terence Fisher had planned a full-blown satanic ritual that would involve an inverted crucifix complete with shackled maiden, but budget restriction and censorship warnings made this impossible. In the movie it is the corpse of Alan Kent who is cut down and strung up by a faithful servant who never appeared in the original film. The captive’s throat is slit and blood pours onto the ashes reviving the naked vampire in all his glory, without questioning the logistics of the ashes landing in just the right spot in the sarcophagus. It takes forty-five minutes to bring Dracula to life in an eighty-six minute movie and we spend the first half of the film concentrating on four rather bland Victorian sightseers.
    The Kents are travelling across Europe and consist of very blatant stereotypes. Alan (Charles Tingwell) is the quiet studious type who is constantly embarrassed by the narrow minded ramblings of his wife Helen (Barbara Shelley), whilst his rambunctious younger brother Charles (Francis Matthews) spends his days being the life and soul of the party with his demure and pretty young wife Diana (Suzan Farmer) at his side. At the inn, Helen complains constantly of