Having been vanquished by Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing in HORROR OF DRACULA, Christopher Lee’s count rises from the ashes (literally) in DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

Warned away from visiting the village of Carlsbad (actually Black Park) by monk Father Sandor (Andrew Kier, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT), four young English travelers – the Kent brothers Alan (Charles Tingwell, SUMMERFIELD) and Charles (Francis Matthews, THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN) and their respective wives Helen (Barbara Shelley, GHOST STORY) and Diana (Suzan Farmer, DIE MONSTER, DIE!) – end up stranded there by their superstitious coachman two kilometers from their destination as night falls. A driverless coach comes along and, of its own volition (cue rollicking James Bernard music), takes them up to a lonely old castle (a Les Bowie matte painting and Bernard Robinson set) where creepy housekeeper Klove (Philip Latham, THE DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES) comes along to inform them that it was the wish of his late master Count Dracula that the castle always be ready to receive visitors and sets them up for the night. Alan makes the horror movie error of investigating strange goings on in the night and his blood is used by Klove to resurrect Dracula (another Les Bowie effect) who makes Helen his first victim. Charles and Helen manage to escape the castle and are given shelter by Father Sandor, but Renfield-esque inmate-turned-book binder Ludwig (Thorley Walters, VAMPIRE CIRCUS) may provide a means for Dracula and Helen to infiltrate the monastery.

Although there was a lull between the first and second Lee/Dracula entries (Cushing only figured in the first and the last two entries), Hammer did attempt to shake things up with BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960) and KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1962). For the longest time DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS was one of the most difficult titles in the Hammer Dracula series to see for American viewers since distributor Fox seemed to have no interest in exploiting it on tape, disc, or television before the rights reverted to Hammer. Long before the tape and later disc releases, the Dracula titles held by Warner – along with THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (only recently re-acquired by Warner) – were late night TV staples while HORROR OF DRACULA had been out on tape and disc from the beginning of the format. After years of reading about DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS in horror movie and vampire cinema tomes and seeing stills (particularly the one of Barbara Shelley about to be staked, which does turn out to be an intense sequence), one cannot help but be somewhat underwhelmed when the film finally became available on tape and laserdisc in the late 1990s. Although it has certainly improved with subsequent viewings, the first half of the film still feels more atmospheric than the busier second half of the film. Shelley’s formerly repressed wife turned fanged seductress is more interesting than Lee’s snarling count, but Fisher’s recreation of a scene from Stoker’s novel with Lee opening a vein in his chest for Farmer to feed on is more daring than anything in Hammer’s later Karnstein trilogy (even if Christopher Lee looks like he’s “thinking of England”).

When Elite Entertainment wanted to release DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS on laserdisc, they found the elements in a sad state of decay. The Fox interpositive was unusable by 1990s restoration technology standards and William Lustig (who had acquired fourteen Hammer titles and sublicensed DRACULA to Elite) found that the original Techniscope 2-perf negative had faded to different degrees on the same frames requiring a telecine adjusted to make different corrections on the same frame. The resulting 2.35:1 transfer garnered some criticism for not being particularly vibrant for a Technicolor movie and being a little dark (a compromise for the film’s mix of day-for-night and night-for-night shots in single sequences) but it was uncut unlike the UK letterboxed tape release which had a BBFC-mandated cut during the scene in which Lee slits his chest to feed Farmer. While other films in the Hammer package were remastered and anamorphically-enhanced for Anchor Bay’s DVD issues a couple years later, the company must have decided that redoing all of the color correction for a new anamorphic transfer of DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS would be cost-prohibitive and utilized the non-anamorphic laserdisc master for their DVD (later reissued in the same transfer in a double bill with RASPUTIN, THE MAD MONK which also featured Lee, Shelley, Farmer, and Matthews) although an anamorphic transfer did pop up in European territories. Studio Canal’s HD restoration – released on Blu-ray in the UK – was undertaken at Pinewood Studios from a 2K scan of the negative and has already received bad reviews for its application of DVNR, and the same master was used when Millennium licensed the titles for an aborted series and released it on a double-disc DVD triple feature HAMMER HORROR COLLECTION with an anamorphic transfer of FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMEN that looked different from Anchor Bay's anamorphic transfer along with the older PAL anamorphic master of LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES that not only looked less colorful than Elite's laserdisc master ported over to Anchor Bay's non-anamorphic release but also suffered from a faulty framerate conversion (Millennium also put out a Blu-ray edition that at least provided a Region A alternative to the import).

When Scream Factory acquired the title as part of their owned planned Hammer series, they decided to give Fox's materials another try as an alternative to the UK transfer and have decided to include the choice of both masters on their Blu-ray. The U.S. version (90:13) restores the Fox logo and the Seven Arts/Hammer card (which was added to the UK version when the Elite master was prepared). The flashback looks coarse and grainy thanks to the added opticals and the reds of the titles are a little hard on the eyes first but this pays off later on when there is actual bloodshed or the hellish red gels of Castle Dracula. In spite of the more vibrant colors, the image is also darker than it should be and its sharpness is affected by jitter, a stripe of fading on one side of the frame in a couple shots late in the film during Charles and Diana's flight through the forest, and the image has a slight softness suggestive of dupe elements rather than 4K scan of a well-preserved interpositive. One gets used to the transfers defects as the film goes on, but it is sad that even 4K scanning and current color correction/restoration technologies could not do better to revitalize the element. The U.K. version (90:01) – which opens with separate Associated British Film Limited and Hammer cards – looks crisper and cleaner but also overall bright with a yellow bias that robs the interiors of Castle Dracula of mood but may be the less distracting presentation for the casual viewer. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono tracks are of similar quality, with clear dialogue and drawing attention to Bernard's reworking of themes from his fifties Hammer horror films. Optional English SDH subtitles are included for both versions.

Carried over from the Elite laser, Anchor Bay DVD, and the UK and US Blu-rays is the audio commentary by actors Lee, Shelley, Matthews, and Farmer, a busy affair that once would have seemed to have benefited from recording Lee separately from the others but now is just fortunate to have been recorded when the four principals were all still with us (Matthews having passed in 2014, Lee in 2015, and Farmer in 2017). Lee dominates the discussion with stories of the first film and the subsequent entries, his opinions on the explicitness of the film's violence, and stories of his other experiences (comparing Fisher's "I'll know it when I see it" approach as a director of actors to William Wyler's multi-take indecisiveness while telling a side anecdote about being considered for a role in THE COLLECTOR that was filmed with a different actor and then entirely cut from the final version). Matthews and Farmer manage to chime in while Shelley is a bit more assertive, but all have much to contribute since the four appeared in this film and RASPUTIN: THE MAD MONK which was shot back-to-back on the same sets. Some fun anecdotes include Lee's issues with the contact lenses (including a time during the shooting of the finale when salt go into them before they were put on his eyes) and Shelley's fangs flying out of her mouth during her staking struggle, but they also have plenty of complimentary things to say about cinematographer Michael Reed (THE GORGON), actors Kier (who Shelley niggled over his Latin pronunciation while praying over her corpse), Walters, and Latham as well as behind the scenes personalities like costume designer Rosemary Burrows (HANDS OF THE RIPPER) who was married to Lee's stunt double Eddie Powell (THE MUMMY'S SHROUD).

Once again, Scream Factory's practice of getting the cover art out as early as possible for promotional purposes means that the specifications on the back cover and slipcover are not indicative of the final product with the back mentioning only the new audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth but not the other new track by filmmaker Constantine Nasr and writer/producer Steve Haberman. The latter track gets off to a cheeky start but makes some interesting observations – Haberman states that the film's real story is Helen coming from England to broaden her mind and being liberated, and that the quartet of innocent characters are subjugated to the authority of both Dracula and Sandor representing polar opposites of spirituality – amidst a lot of interesting information like Jimmy Sangster's initial sequel script DRACULA II from which producer Anthony Hinds first pulled the opening sequence for the prologue of KISS OF THE VAMPIRE and then used it again here. The Howarth track has some overlap but is higher on factoids and figures than analysis, noting that the recap was added to the film to beef up its running time and that the necessity of buying back the footage from owner Universal meant taking away from the budget of RASPUTIN: THE MAD MONK. He does discuss the film's ties to other Hammer films, Lee's greater popularity overseas while Cushing was still better recognized domestically (suggesting that Lee was given a star push in the film by casting lesser-known Kier as his new "Van Helsing"), as well as recurring characters in the Hammer mold of the Dracula adaptations. The commentary tracks can be audited on both versions of the film.