Hooptober Neun (2022) - Film #18
8 decades (1960s); 2 Christopher Lee films

Let’s do a little quiz.

Question 1: You’re travelling, and you end up at a local inn. A cleric joins you for a drink and warns you to avoid your next destination. He particularly tells you to avoid the castle, which strangely doesn’t appear on the map. Do you:

a) Listen to him and visit his recommended destination.
b) Ignore him.

Question 2: Your coachman stops before it gets dark and tells you he can take you no further. He refuses to look at the castle that isn’t on the map, that the cleric warned you about.

a) Pay attention to him and get out of there.
b) Ignore him.

Question 3: A peculiarly convenient coach with two horses shows up when you are stranded. Do you:

a) Ignore the horses.
b) Assume that all is well and commandeer the coach.

Question 4: The horses go rogue and drive you directly to the castle that the cleric warned you about, the map-makers refused to include and the coachman refused to look at. The horses then run away. Do you:

a) Run away.
b) Test the door and walk right into the castle that you’ve been warned about.

If you answered entirely ‘b’, then congratulations, you’re a ludicrously foolish English person from a mid-60’s Hammer horror film! Seriously, how did these guys ignore every single warning sign? Francis Matthews’ character would be absolutely unbearable in real life; a man who believes he knows everything, but is in fact the most ignorant of them all.

This is not the film to watch if you’re hoping for wall to wall Christopher Lee. When he does finally show up, his physicality is excellent, which is good news as he has no dialogue. As many have said, Lee is Dracula, embodying the character completely. I’m looking forward to seeing more of these movies, hopefully ones where he’s more heavily involved.

This has that wonderful Hammer feel, complete with that unbelievably vivid blood. This is the second Hammer film I’ve watched in a row, and the accents and gothic atmosphere are again winners. The pace of the movie is relatively sedentary, particularly at the start, as it was in The Curse of Frankenstein. However, that film was largely from the perspective of Frankenstein himself, and therefore there wasn’t a lot that the audience didn’t know as the film progressed. Dracula: Prince of Darkness has far more in the way of mystery and dramatic set pieces, and therefore holds the attention more effectively.

The plot is fairly straightforward, but the dialogue is solid in that campy, dramatic way that these films have.

Similarly to The Curse of Frankenstein, I loved the mood and aesthetic here. Again, I found it fairly slow going, perhaps a trait of these Hammer films, but this time I found the content more engaging, so I rate this movie slightly higher. Does anyone have any recommendations for a more uptempo Hammer horror?