The Prince Rises to Rule Once More.

By the mid-60s, there was no turning back for Hammer. In 1965, they talked Christopher Lee into reprising his role as Count Dracula and the result was Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

Trailer: http://adf.ly/1nvK1i

Picking up where Horror of Dracula left off, Dracula's mortal servant Klove keeps the castle open, hoping to snare an unsuspecting victim to revive his master. The ruse works, and the master vampire is resurrected. And the fun begins!

The Good: Lee is back! You don't really need more than that, but you get more. Andrew Keir plays the vampire hunter, a badass priest named Father Szandor who wields a rifle to feed his flock, literally. Keir plays the holy man as a much different kind of man than Van Helsing, in that his knowledge of vampires and their weaknesses is based on experience. He's not a Victorian superman like Van Helsing. He just has his brains and his guts. Also, Barbara Shelley plays a victim-turned-vamp who takes to undeath with aplomb. Her destruction is quite graphic for the time, as she's held down and staked.

Moreover, this film established an important part of modern vampire mythology. Up to this, it had been established that withdrawing the stake from a vampire's pierced heart would revive them, but burning to ashes in the sun was pretty much it. In Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Klove pours the blood from a victim onto the gathered ashes and quite literally reconstitutes Dracula from his base elements. Hammer would use this several times, and ever since it's become standard to regard vampires as not truly mortal and unable to be permanently destroyed.

The Bad: Lee speaks no words in the film. He growls, roars and screams, but no discernable dialogue is to be had from him. This has been the subject of much debate. Lee always claimed that he took one look at the lines written for him and said, "If you think I'm going to say this, you're very much mistaken." But the screenwriter always said he never wrote any lines for Lee, which is believable, since Hammer was trying to keep Lee's cost down.

The Ugly: This film gives us a character in Father Szandor's care who is Renfield in everything but name. But he has no real screen time and seems to exist only to let Dracula into the hostel where Dracula's next would-be victims are. Still, you have to start some place. Plus, they already have a servant who lives at the castle.

The only way to watch this is on special Blu-ray. I say that because it's the only one with all the features, including a cast commentary with Lee himself.