Review of Dracula: Prince of Darkness

This is a highly entertaining film in the Hammer Dracula series, which showcases many of the Hammer hallmarks: clever script, great sets, good actors who bring life to their roles, excellent cinematography and editing, great music and much more. It takes one of the oldest horror movie clichés,possibly dramatized for the first time in James Whale's The Old Dark House ( 1932), of the stranded travelers who must take shelter for the night in a spooky old house/castle and are subjected to strange and terrifying experiences, and makes it seem fresh and exciting. The two English brothers are delightfully played by Charles Tingwell as Alan, with a sort of endearing stuffiness, and Francis Matthews as Charles, who in both appearance and voice is reminiscent of the young Cary Grant, with a gentlemanly demeanor and a hint of boyish mischievousness. The lovely Suzan Farmer is the wife of Charles, while Barbara Shelley virtually steals the show as the repressed Helen, who is rigid and controlling and who undergoes an astonishing transformation. SPOILERS AHEAD: the four English travelers have been warned by a gruff but fatherly monk not to go anywhere near a castle, which oddly enough is not shown or mentioned on their map. When their coachman refuses to take them any farther, they are surprised to find themselves suddenly taken to the castle by a mysterious coach with horses but no driver, that suddenly arrives out of nowhere. The tension builds nicely, mixed with a low key humor, as the four travelers find the table set for four people, and their suitcases laid out in luxurious bedrooms upstairs. This puzzling state of affairs is brought to a startling climax when a very polite, but quietly menacing butler appears to welcome them to dinner, on the hospitality of his former master...the late Count Dracula. Things proceed to get more interesting from this point on, and I don't want to reveal too much for anyone who hasn't seen this very fun movie. Let's just say that when the proper and joyless Helen meets her host, the very much alive Count Dracula, she changes from a straitlaced Victorian wife to a sensuous vampire so completely as to be all but unrecognizable as her former self. If Barbara Shelley had done nothing else, she would be remembered for this great role. The movie has action, humor, suspense and enough atmosphere for a dozen films. Christopher Lee is oddly silent as the Count, but comes to suggest a powerful figure of evil who doesn't have to rely on speech. His fight with Francis Matthews, in which he grabs Matthews' sword and snaps it like a pencil, is the best scene of its kind since the first Fisher Horror of Dracula in 1958. This is a movie that should be seen by any Hammer fans and lovers of vampire stories in general.