A look at Hammer’s Dracula series, Part 3…
When
an element of popular culture attains a certain amount of fame and recognition,
and it keeps going in spite of itself, it’s only a matter of time before it
dissolves into self-parody. Such is the case with the Hammer Horror brand: a
series of films that redefined what horror was when they burst on the scene in
the late fifties, but soon after fell prey to falling back on the same tropes
again and again to milk out whatever success was left within their films. By
the time 1966’s Dracula: Prince of
Darkness came out, Hammer wasn’t quite at the self-parody stage, but
watching the actors bare their cheap fangs amongst the Bray Studios sets
dressed with the same fog and atmosphere as before, and you can certainly begin
to feel parody creeping in at the edges of the frame.
The
story concerns a pair of brothers who are traveling across Transylvania with
their wives, who through a series of unfortunate events, find themselves the
unwilling guests at Castle Dracula. The mad servant Klove utilizes them in an
arcane ritual to bring the Count back to life, who then proceeds to wreak
untold havoc in his wake. Once again the film utilizes the rather wonky
structure of many of Hammer’s offerings to great effect - almost as if the
filmmakers had several short films they stringed together into a feature. The
story itself offers not much in the way of originality, but there are nice
touches throughout, such as the gruesome way the Count is resurrected or
bizarre side characters like Ludwig, the closest the series got to having a
proper representation of Renfield.
Christopher
Lee makes his return to his most iconic role, and famously utters not a single
line of dialogue for the entire runtime (Lee always said it was because he
thought the dialogue as written was too atrocious to be spoken aloud, but
others have since claimed there never was any dialogue for Dracula). As a
result, Dracula in the film is little more than a mindless, hissing monster -
not terribly different from Lee’s original portrayal, but missing the sort of
gentlemen mystique he carried previously. The film is also hurt somewhat by
losing Peter Cushing as the ever-reliable Dr. Van Helsing, although the film
does provide an adequate vampire slayer in Father Sandor, played with relish by
Andrew Keir. Out of the four main characters, the only one to make an
impression is Barbara Shelley as Helen, who herself becomes a vampire by
Dracula’s hand. Watching the uptight Helen finally let loose and run wild as a
vampire is possibly the film’s greatest delight, and Shelley plays each moment
for all they’re worth.
In
the end, there’s nothing terribly wrong with the film - all the touches of
Hammer Horror are in full effect and rarely utilized better. But by the same
token, things were starting to feel a little stale, and it’s not hard to see
how Roman Polanski was able to perfectly satirize the genre like he did not one
year later with the release of his The
Fearless Vampire Killers: Hammer had
already done most of the job for him.
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