Line #46 Film/DraculaPrinceOfDarkness


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3	->''"There'll be no morning for us."''
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5	''Dracula: Prince of Darkness'' is a 1966 Film/HammerHorror film directed by Terence Fisher. The second entry to star Creator/ChristopherLee as the eponymous vampire, it serves as a more-or-less direct sequel to ''Film/HorrorOfDracula'', entirely ignoring the events of the previous ''Film/TheBridesOfDracula''.
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7	The film takes place ten years after the end of ''Horror''. Even though Dracula has been destroyed, the land is still in fear of his presence, especially since his castle continues to loom on the horizon. Meanwhile, four English tourists -- Charles Kent (Francis Matthews), his wife Diana (Suzan Farmer), his brother Alan (Charles Tingwell), and Alan's wife Helen (Barbara Shelley) -- are navigating the country. Despite being warned by local priest Father Shandor (Andrew Keir) to steer clear of the castle, the Kents naturally don't listen and wind up stranded near the castle after their fearful coach driver abandons them.
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9	At the castle, the group is met by a caretaker named Klove (Philip Latham) who takes them in for the night, explaining that his late master stipulated that the castle should always be prepared to receive visitors. During the night, however, Alan is killed by Klove while investigating a noise. Klove then trusses up his body, hangs it over Dracula's crypt, and slits the throat so the blood drips onto the Count's ashes. Dracula revives and proceeds to resume his reign of terror, first by turning Helen into a vampire then going after Diana. It soon falls on Charles and Father Shandor to stop him.
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11	The film was followed by ''Film/DraculaHasRisenFromTheGrave''.
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13	----
14	!!''Dracula Prince of Darkness'' has the following tropes:
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16	* BackFromTheDead: Guess who?
17	* BadBoss: Judging how he treats Helen, Dracula comes off that way here.
18	* BloodMagic: The first of many times Dracula is resurrected in these movies.
19	* BookCasePassage: Dracula's coffin is in a room at the end of a corridor hidden by a tapestry.
20	* CannotCrossRunningWater: [[spoiler:As Dracula is crossing a frozen river, one of the heroes shoots the ice, shattering it and dumping him into the running water beneath it, which kills him.]]
21	* TheCassandra: Helen, who keeps insisting that no good will come of going to the castle.
22	* TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong: {{Averted}}; Helen initially comes across as an annoying stick-in-the-mud, disapproving of virtually everything anyone says or does and preferring to stay in an old shack rather than going anywhere near Dracula's castle. But as we later see, she was completely right to be fearful.
23	* ContrastingSequelMainCharacter: Father Shandor to Dr. Van Helsing in the previous films. Where Van Helsing was a cultured scientist, Shandor is a monk with an earthy streak. Van Helsing respects the peasants' traditional beliefs, while Shandor dismisses them as superstition. And Van Helsing grapples with Dracula and forces him into the sun while Shandor sends him into the water by shooting the ice.
24	* CrustyCaretaker: Klove. Charles describes him as being rather like the castle itself, "a bit dusty."
25	* DamselInDistress: Diana.
26	** HiddenDepths: When Charles is being menaced by Dracula, Diana grabs Shandor's rifle and shoots at the Count. [[spoiler: While of course bullets are useless against Dracula and she misses anyway, it does show Shandor how they can kill Dracula. Besides, Diana doesn't know the rifle alone won't kill Dracula and her act shows she isn't prepared to stand aside and do nothing while her husband is in danger]].
27	*** She's also the first person in the movie to recognize the power of the cross and use it to defend herself.
28	* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: Dracula doesn't show up until nearly halfway through the movie, except in a brief opening flashback to the first film.
29	* {{Dracula}}: He's in this movie. This sounds obvious, but he wasn't in the previous film, ''Film/TheBridesOfDracula''.
30	* DramaticThunder: Heard while Dracula is resurrected.
31	* DueToTheDead: Father Shandor shows up just in time to stop an abuse of this by superstitious local authorities, saving a young woman's body from being staked and possibly burnt by looking for vampire bite marks, discovering none, and threatening to go over the presiding priest's head if he proceeds.
32	* EmergingFromTheShadows: Klove is introduced this way, creating a CatScare that causes Helen to scream and brings Charles and Alan running.
33	* EvilCostumeSwitch: Helen switches to a flowing night robe upon turning into a vampire.
34	* EvilRedhead: Helen again, post turning.
35	* GoodScarsEvilScars: If you look closely during her close up after she turns, you can still see the puncture marks on Helen's throat.
36	* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Diana
37	* HappilyMarried: Charles and Diana. Alan and Helen slightly less so, perhaps that so it wouldn't be surprising they become two of the film's casualties (Alan having his throat slit and blood drained to revive Dracula and Helen being turned by Dracula-- which might make it a dark take on this trope since Alan, in a sense, becomes Dracula and Helen his vampire bride).
38	* HauntedCastle
39	* HeroAntagonist: Father Shandor.
40	* HolyBurnsEvil: Diana and Charles figure this out when Diana's cross necklace hits (the now vamped) Helen's arm and she cries out in pain.
41	** After which Charles drives Dracula back by fashioning an ImprovisedCross from the two parts of the sword the Count broke.
42	* InTheBack: Klove kills Alan by knifing him in this manner.
43	* InstantPeopleJustAddWater: The title character is reanimated by having his ashes mixed with blood.
44	* {{Irony}}: Helen is the most cautious of the group, heeding Father Shandor's warning about not going near the castle and expressing her unease when they wind up having to spend the night inside it anyway. So naturally she winds up being the only one in the group turned into a vampire.
45	* MinionWithAnFInEvil: The vampirized Helen. She completely fails to actually kill anyone, and is eventually caught ''off-screen'' by a bunch of monks who easily hold her down and calmly stake her. Of course not for lack of trying, she does succeed in biting Diana in the arm and only stopped due to Dracula interrupting her. Plus she is a newborn vampire and likely not very strong without any blood to power her.
46	* MustBeInvited: Father Shandor tells Charles that he and Diana should be safe in the abbey due to this, not realizing that Dracula already has one of its residents (Ludwig) under his power.
47	* MythologyGag: Ludwig is a madman who is introduced eating a fly. Unsurprisingly, he turns out to be this film's version of Renfield.
48	* NotHerself: Diana instantly knows something's wrong with Helen when she acts oddly calm and avoids Diana's questions on where Alan and Charles are before flashing her fangs (though her being in a skimpy nightgown was likewise an obvious clue, considering how conservatively Helen dressed).
49	--> '''Diana''': Where's Charles?!
50	--> '''Helen''': ''(Stepping into the light, showing the bite wounds on her neck and her newly gained fangs)'' You don't ''need'' Charles.
51	* {{Novelization}}: The film was written into a novel by John Burke as part of his 1967 book ''The Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus''.
52	* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Vampires can be killed by [[spoiler: [[CannotCrossRunningWater drowning in running water]].]]
53	* TheRenfield: Klove and Ludwig, the latter of whom could even be an {{Expy}} of him (to the extent that he eats flies and refers to Dracula as "Master").
54	* RedEyesTakeWarning: Once again Dracula's eyes turns bloody red everytime he shows emotion.
55	* ResurrectTheVillain: Ten years after his demise in the previous movie, Dracula is resurrected using BloodMagic by his loyal [[TheRenfield Renfield]] and begins seeking new brides. At the end of the film, [[spoiler:he is defeated by being cast into running water -- until blood re-awakens him in [[Film/DraculaHasRisenFromTheGrave the sequel]]]].
56	* RoleCalled
57	* SchmuckBanquet: The Kents find one of these laid out for them on their arrival at Castle Dracula.
58	* ShoutOut: The title "Prince of Darkness" does not derive from the original novel, but rather, from John Milton's ''Literature/ParadiseLost'', where it refers to Satan.
59	* SilentAntagonist: Dracula does not speak in the film, save for a few hisses. According to Creator/ChristopherLee: "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."
60	** Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster disputed that account in his memoir ''Inside Hammer'', writing that "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."
61	* StockFootage: The climax from ''Film/HorrorOfDracula'' (with Van Helsing forcing Dracula into the sunlight, where he withers away to ashes) is shown as a [[PreviouslyOn prologue]] narrated by Father Shandor.
62	* SuperDrowningSkills: [[spoiler: How Dracula is defeated, by being knocked into a frozen pond and the protagonists shooting at the ice so he falls into the water.]]
63	* TranshumanTreachery: Helen after turning, the first thing she does is quickly go after her sister. After Dracula prevents that, she settles for Charles.
64	* {{Uberwald}}
65	* VampireRefugee: Diana after Helen bites her in the arm.
66	* VillainousRescue: Dracula to Diana twice, both times to keep a vampire Helen from feeding on her, if only to make her into a vampire bride himself.
67	* TheVoiceless: Dracula has no dialogue at all in the film.
68	* WarriorMonk: Well somewhat, Father Shandor and his group aren't major fighters but they know enough on how to deal with vampirism. Heck, they [[spoiler: managed to easily catch and hold down Helen before staking her]].
69	* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Diana invokes this and Shandor notes it would be useless against Dracula. Shooting the ice beneath him, on the other hand...
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Context Film / DraculaPrinceOfDarkness