Rish's Reviews
First of all, tyranist, doesn't the title need a colon or a comma in it? [It does, so I put one in everywhere I could. - tyranist]
I used to watched the Hammer Horror movies as a kid on Thriller* Theater. They ranged from boring to fascinating, but the only thing I remember about this film from all those years ago was thinking, "If Dracula is the Prince of Darkness, who does that make the King?"
The third in the Hammer Dracula series, Prince of Darkness tells the tale of two vacationing couples who, stranded somewhere in Eastern Europe, find themselves at Count Dracula's castle. Unfortunately for them, the good Count has just returned from the dead, and it's given him quite an appetite.
Just as Christopher Lee didn't appear in the second film in the series, Peter Cushing is absent from this one. In his place, we get Andrew Keir as Father Sando, the leader of a group of Carpathian monks. The main hero and heroine, played by Francis Matthews and Suzan Farmer, are named Charles and Diana. Interesting. The female lead is quite a pretty lady. Horror fan favourite Barbara Steele also has a role in the film.
A fair movie, neither great nor terrible. I really like the countryside and the charmingly archaic way the characters in these films talk. When one priest said to another, "You are an idiot, Father. Worse than that, you are a superstitious, frightened idiot," I had to laugh.
The film is somewhat slow-moving, except in the fact that night seems to fall very early in that part of the world. It had a bizarre, unnecessary opening with a girl about to be staked but prevented by a know-it-all priest. But there is no resolution of this, nor a connection to the rest of the film. Dracula speaks not a word in the entire movie, which could work, I suppose, but makes him more animal-like and less fiendishly charming and cunning.
It had a couple of unique vampire concepts this time around. For example, Dracula is resurrected by emptying a hanging man's throat onto his ashes. On the other hand, Dracula can be destroyed by running water in this film, a rather easy way to dispatch him. Another interesting idea is that a vampire bite can be counteracted by a quick cauterization of the wound, in this case, using the heat of a lantern. I'll have to ask my vampire friends if that would work.
Quote To Remember: Alan: You'll forget all of this in the morning, you'll see.
Helen: There'll be no morning for us.
*This was, of course, before I learned to despise that word.