Hammer Dracula: Dracula, Prince of Darkness + Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1966/68, dir. Terence Fisher/Freddie Francis, UK) by Kymm Zuckert

“What’s that place?”

“What place?”

“The castle.”

“I don’t see no castle.”

“That’s because you’re not looking, idiot!”

So, the first Hammer Dracula movie had Christopher Lee as Dracula, and a top-billed Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. At the end of the film, Dracula dies, and he doesn’t come back for the second Hammer Dracula film, in which top-billed Peter Cushing faces off against a non-Dracula vampire. 

This third Hammer Dracula, which starts with the last several minutes of the first film – the battle to the death between Dracula and Van Helsing – gives Christopher Lee top billing! But Peter Cushing isn’t in it, so it’s not really a contest. Also, it’s not above the title or a single card, he shares the card with Barbara Shelley and Andrew Keir, so he is clearly still not on Cushing’s fame level even eight years later than the first film. 

The film proper starts with a very young, very beautiful, very dead woman being carried on a bier through the forest, while a distraught woman looks on. One of the men with the bier had a stake and a mallet, so I guess we know we are watching the right movie. 

Before the stake can be wielded, a large man with a gun stops this superstitious nonsense, and demands that the girl be buried in the churchyard. When the priest refuses, the man says he’ll bury her himself. So I am guessing that we’ll be seeing this young woman again, and perhaps in a more vivid and antic manner. 

We see the large man enter a tavern, and it turns out that he too is a priest (Andrew Keir), so I guess that’s why he could order the other priest about. He tears down the garlic and yells at everyone that it’s been over for ten years. 

An English family, two brothers and their respective wives, converse with the priest, who tells them NOT to go to Carlsbad on any account. And if they do go, stay away from the castle. What castle? There’s no castle on the map!

The next day, a terrified driver refuses to take them any farther to Carlsbad, since it’ll be dark soon, but there’s that castle right there, so…

Fortunately, a driverless coach comes right up to them! Isn’t that handy? I’m sure that isn’t suspicious one single bit, they can just use this handy coach to go to Carlsbad! Except that nope, the horses go straight up to that castle that the priest told them not to go to, that wasn’t on the map, and that the driver that abandoned them refused to even look at. It was kind of inevitable. 

They get out at the castle, the door is open, but no-one is there to greet them, the horses and coach run away, the gate locks behind them, and look here! There’s a table set for four! The only one who is properly weirded out by the whole situation, is Helen, who seemed like a real snooty bitch in the first scene, but now is clearly the only one who will survive this movie. She is also played by second-billed Barbara Shelley, so I’ll bet I guessed right. 

The men go upstairs to try to find anyone, and find their suitcases unpacked in guest rooms. Then a supremely creepy butler shows up and says that his dead master, Count Dracula, left orders to always be hospitable to strangers, so these idiots just say, “Righty-oh!” and tuck in. Everyone but Helen basically are too dumb to live. 

We are about 40 minutes into the film, no sign of Dracula. He’s like the shark in Jaws. 

But then! Stuff happens! Un-named spoilery Helen was right all along stuff happens!

In an aside, apropos of nothing: did you know that how you bring a vampire back from the dead is to fill their coffin with tomato soup? It’s true! How there has been no tomato soup on offer in the last ten years I don’t know, but it is so, and there’s our Chris at last! These ninnies are so much toast. Excellent with tomato soup. 

According to Wikipedia, Dracula doesn’t speak in this film, just hisses. Christopher Lee said the dialogue was so bad he refused to say it, the screenwriter said that vampires don’t chat, so he didn’t write him any lines. Who can say who is a lying liar who lies? We’ll never know. 

And it doesn’t matter. Wordless Dracula is extremely scary and effective. 

Warrior Priest returns to explain vampires to whomever survived the night, and we finally have a Renfield character, here in film the third. 

Dracula, Prince of Darkness is reasonably good, but I don’t think it’s as good as the other two, and really felt the lack of Peter Cushing, whom we won’t see back in quite a while. The IMDb reviewers all seem to feel that this is one of the best, so your mileage may vary. 

“You’re not a Protestant, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank heaven for that!”

“I’m an atheist, sir.”

In the fourth Hammer Dracula joint, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Christopher Lee still isn’t above the title, but at least he has his own card and is top billed. Respect!

This is the first of the Hammer Draculas not to be directed by Terence Fisher, who was in a car accident, so it was instead directed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Freddie Francis. He won for Sons and Lovers, directed a bunch of low budget horror, then went back to cinematography and won another Oscar for Glory. Very fancy talent for a Hammer director! I’m expecting some pretty shots. 

The film begins with a happy young man, cycling through a village, and everything is bright and fine, you know, for now. He enters a church and starts setting up for mass, then notices blood running down the bell rope. The priest enters just as the boy is running, screaming, away. He climbs into the belfry and finds a young woman, dead, with marks on her neck. So, I’m gathering that Dracula has indeed, risen from the grave. 

Ah no, this apparently took place before the end of the last film, even though Dracula had only come back to life for a day or so and seemed pretty busy to be stowing women in bells. 

A year later, the priest performs mass in an empty church. He is very depressed about this. After the girl died, nobody ever came back. The Monseigneur comes to inspect the church and is livid that nobody is attending church, what with Dracula being dead and gone. The people explain that it is because the shadow of his castle touches the church, and they would frankly prefer to be safe than sorry, Dracula-wise. 

The Monseigneur and the priest go to the castle the next morning to check out the whole evil situation. The priest utterly freaks out partway up the mountain, so the Monseigneur instructs him to stay put, then exorcises the castle. The lightning flashes angrily, the priest freaks out more, starts to run down the mountain, gets struck by lightning, falls, hits his head, bleeds…RIGHT ONTO THE PRONE BODY OF DRACULA ENCASED IN ICE! The ice cracks with the lightning, and priest blood does the trick. 

The priest comes to, gets a drink from the stream, and then, well, someone hasn’t been paying attention to the lore, because he sees a reflection of Dracula in the water, and really? That is just so lazy, everyone knows that they can’t cast a reflection. They certainly couldn’t in The Brides of Dracula! Though they changed their minds about bats, I suppose they could change their minds about the reflection as well. 

The priest, not being a particularly good priest, gets himself hypnotized by Dracula’s flashing bloodshot peepers. That wouldn’t have happened to the Monseigneur, I promise you that. Or the Warrior Priest in the previous installment, above. This priest is a damp squib. 

The Monseigneur limps, exhausted, back to town, claiming that the evil is dead and gone and there is nothing more to fear. The Monseigneur thinks a good deal of his exorcism powers, because the castle might well be sealed, but the vampire has awakened and there’s a whole movie about him ahead!

Dracula has Father Weak Sauce doing a little light grave robbing to get him a coffin, while the Monseigneur goes back home to his sister-in-law housekeeper, and his young and lovely niece, so I guess we know that Dracula is going to be in that coffin, in a coach, driven by the priest, to have a nibble on that girl’s neck. 

Actually, since it is night, Dracula is doing the driving himself, though the scene was plainly shot in bright sunlight, so between the reflection and the very poor day for night, this movie is tromping all over settled Dracula lore! Next he’ll be eating broccoli instead of drinking blood, mark my words. 

The young niece has an atheist boyfriend, which doesn’t go over well with the Monseigneur, and there is also a sex pot barmaid in a low cut top walking home at night (not high noon, which is what it looks like), so Dracula has a lot of babes to gnaw on, and the Monseigneur and the boyfriend need to make peace in order to save the niece, which obviously they will do, because in their different ways, they are Men of Honour, and they both love her. 

And when it comes right down to it, as there are no atheists in foxholes, there aren’t that many atheists around vampires, either. Or at any rate, not for long.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog