Villain(s)  Vampire

Actor(s):  Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley, Andrew Keir, Philip Latham

Brief Description  Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966) is a landmark British gothic horror film produced by Hammer Film Productions and directed by the genre master Terence Fisher. Serving as the direct sequel to the 1958 classic Horror of Dracula, it marks the iconic return of Christopher Lee as the titular vampire after an eight-year hiatus from the role. The film is particularly famous for a unique creative choice: Christopher Lee has absolutely zero lines of dialogue, portraying the Count with purely silent, animalistic menace.

Plot:
The film opens with a flashback to the climax of the 1958 film, showing Van Helsing destroying Dracula with sunlight. Ten years later, four English tourists—Charles, Diana, Alan, and Helen Kent—are vacationing in the Carpathian Mountains. The fiercely eccentric Father Sandor warns them to avoid Carlsbad and its nearby castle. Ignoring the advice, the travelers are abandoned by their terrified coach driver. A mysterious, driverless carriage arrives and transports them straight to Dracula's seemingly empty stronghold. They are welcomed by Klove, Dracula's sinister, loyal servant, who claims his deceased master requested hospitality always be extended to travelers. That night, Klove murders Alan, suspending his body over Dracula's ashes so his blood can revive the Count. Dracula rises from the ash. He immediately targets Helen, biting her and turning her into his first vampire bride of the film. Charles and Diana attempt to flee, eventually finding refuge with Father Sandor at his monastery.

Dracula and a now-vampiric Helen track the survivors down. Helen is staked through the heart by the monks to save her soul. In the final confrontation on the frozen moat outside the castle, Charles cracks the ice. Because running water is lethal to vampires, Dracula slips into the freezing current and drowns beneath the ice. The film was a major financial and critical success for Hammer, originally distributed in the U.S. by 20th Century Fox as a popular double feature alongside The Plague of the Zombies. It is highly regarded by horror historians for standardizing many modern vampire tropes. It pushed the boundaries of 1960s cinema by introducing highly graphic gore, vivid crimson blood contrasts, and overt eroticism. While Christopher Lee later claimed he refused to speak the dialogue because the lines written for him were "unhearable," screenwriter Jimmy Sangster maintained that he simply never wrote any lines for the character to make him a more imposing, primal force of nature.