EDITOR’S NOTE: Dracula: Prince of Darkness was on the CBS Late Movie on March 12, 1973 and July 12, 1974.

Made six years after The Brides of Dracula — which has Baron Meinster (David Peel) as the antagonist instead of Dracula — and is the third of nine Hammer Dracula movies, this was shot at the same time as Rasputin, the Mad Monk and played double features with The Plague of the Zombies. If you went, you got plastic vampire fangs and zombie eyeglasses.

It begins by reminding us how 1958’s Dracula ended with Doctor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) finally ending the reign of Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) with sunlight. Ten years later, Father Sandor (Andrew Keir) has already tired of burying bodies as if they were vampires. After all, Dracula is gone.

That said, he still tells four English tourists — Diana (Suzan Farmer), Charles (Francis Matthews), Helen (Barbara Shelley) and Alan (Charles Tingwell) — not to visit Karlsbad. But no, the Kent family are dumb and go anyway, even as their carriage driver refuses to take them any closer. They decide to go look at a castle where the servant, Klove (Philip Latham), tells them that his master Count Dracula always wanted to give a place for visitors to stay. He says that and soon kills Alan, mixing his blood with Dracula’s ashes to bring the king of the vampires back, then luring Helen into his crypt where he can feast on her. Charles and Diana barely make it out alive and are saved by Father Sandor.

Dracula has followers everywhere, even amongst the church, but as always, the protagonists survive. Dracula dies in an interesting way here, drowning under ice, which I was not aware was a way to kill him. This scene almost really did kill stuntman Eddie Powell, who became trapped underwater.

Lee wasn’t too pleased with this film, saying, “I didn’t speak in that picture. The reason was very simple. I read the script and saw the dialogue! I said to Hammer, “If you think I’m going to say any of these lines, you’re very much mistaken.”” Writer Jimmy Sangster denied this, claiming,”…vampires don’t chat. So I didn’t write him any dialogue. Christopher Lee has claimed that he refused to speak the lines he was given…So you can take your pick as to why Christopher Lee didn’t have any dialogue in the picture. Or you can take my word for it. I didn’t write any.”

Regardless of this, he, Sangster and director Terence Fisher would keep on making Hammer movies.