After not playing Count Dracula for a lengthy period, Christopher Lee stuck in his fangs and blood-shot contact eye lenses a second time for this direct sequel to "Horror of Dracula," which had been released a whopping eight years prior. In the interim, Hammer Studios had gone ahead without Lee for their "Brides of Dracula" sequel, which I'd say was arguably their finest vampire film of all. But that movie didn't feature the undisputed King of Vampires, and so Dracula properly returns here with Lee right where he belongs, in his most enduring horror role.
Some rather likable actors (Francis Matthews, Barbara Shelley, and Suzan Farmer) play the latest group of innocents who somehow manage once more to stumble onto the grounds of an old castle (Dracula's this time) and they're met by a somber-looking servant who informs them that his master is dead. It soon pans out that these unwilling pawns are being marked to participate in the reviving and subsequent sustenance of the decomposed Count himself. It takes half the film's running time for Lee to emerge as Dracula, but once he does it's edge of the seat entertainment and worth waiting up for. The Count doesn't speak a word of dialogue in the film, but Lee the proud actor has always claimed that he would rather go the silent route than utter some of the words he had been instructed to say.
As happens throughout the Hammer Dracula series, some elements of Bram Stoker's original novel crop up here. Thorley Walters appears as a fly-loving, Renfield-like loyalist to the master vampire, and there's also an inspired scene where Dracula cuts his own chest with his fingernail to entice a pretty victim to drink his blood. These tributes are welcome. And I can't leave out the intense Andrew Keir, who is excellent in the part of a strong-willed monk who scoffs at his superstitious parishioners but later must be the one to instruct the young hero on how to do battle with the Undead. *** out of ****
