Belated "true sequel" (ignore 1960's tangential and misleadingly titled The Brides of Dracula) to the 1958 Hammer Studio release Horror of Dracula. Set 10 years after the events of the first film (that would place this movie some time in the 1890's), Van Helsing has moved on, and while paranoia about vampires continues throughout Transylvania, things have been pretty safe on that front for the last decade. In fact a local, Grizzly Adams type monk named Father Sandor (Andrew Keir) has a bit of a hard time keeping the locals from needlessly impaling there recently deceased through the heart, you know just to make sure. Anyway Father Sandor comes across two English brothers and their wives traveling through the country on vacation, he invites them to come and visit him at his monastery and cryptically warns them away from the Karlsbad area they are thinking of visiting (home to Castle Dracula).
The English of course ignore the good Father and journey to Karlsbad anyway, their carriage driver freaks out and leaves them alone in the woods so the four stranded tourists make way to the nearby castle. There they are greeted by and fed by the castle keeper Klove (Philip Latham) who informs them that it was his late masters desire that the castle be kept open as a sanctuary for any stranded visitors that may come across it. Three of the four seem more then happy with their luck by one (Barbara Shelley) is terribly freighted by the place remembering Father Sandor's warning. Well its not long before Barbara is turned into a vampire after Klove brings his master back from the dead- dead by spilling the blood of Barbara's husband (Charles "Bud" Tingwell) on Dracula's ashes laid out in a coffin (kind of ingenious way for the writers to bring back Christopher Lee).
Lee's Dracula doesn't say much, well anything except hisses in this film because apparently the dialogue written for him to say was so awful he just refused to say it. The morning after Dracula's resurrection the castles two remaining guests (Francis Matthews and Suzan Farmer) can't find the others and leave the castle, but then come back, but then get away again, and then end up in Father Sandor's monastery, but Dracula comes after Suzan and ect ect. The movie ends with Dracula plunged under some ice into freezing water that will no doubt preserve him to come back to life in the half dozen or so remaining sequels in this Hammer Franchise. All in all a satisfactory Dracula outing that paves the way for the doubtless increasingly campy sequels to come. **1/2
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