“My master is dead but instructions were left that the castle should always be ready to receive guests. I am merely carrying out his wishes.”

A lot of people might be surprised by the huge gap Hammer left between Christopher Lee’s first and second Dracula films.

What is even more surprising is the way Hammer have taken the original source material, and turned in something perhaps even better than the first film. There's no Van Helsing, no relocation to England - in fact, very little of the Dracula cliches you might associate with Hammer. 

Instead of Van Helsing, those clever chaps at Hammer invented Father Shandor, a monk with a mission (and a big gun). Andrew Kier excels in this role as a big, bearded bully, shouting at backward peasants for their superstitions, before going right ahead and staking vampires left, right and centre. It's still the same tale of sceptical Northern Europeans failing to take heed of the warnings plainly spelled out to them about Castle Dracula, but this time the deaths come thick and fast, Dracula's lifestyle sticks very closely to that detailed by Stoker, and the whole thing is a class act from beginning to end. 

The only small niggle I'd have is that in giving him another "Achilles heel" in pure running water, the script writers did rather pave the way for the future "anything goes" methods of dispatching vampires, which reached a nadir in the otherwise superb Satanic Rites, when not only do hawthorn branches cause the Count no end of problems, but a bunch of water sprinklers despatch a whole army of semi clad toothy totty. 

Having watched all the Draculas recently for this website, I have to say that none of them are as bad as I once thought - and each has its own merits. Dracula - Prince Of Darkness has to rank as one of the best, though. Barbara Shelley is gorgeous (as usual), some of the deaths are extremely unpleasant, and Shandor is a great character. What a shame he never had a sequel of his own.