Ernst, a Catholic Monsignor, travels to a small village to assess the town's church and its priest. The village sits literally in the shadow of the castle of the evil vampire, Count Dracula, and despite his being killed a year ago, the village has continued to feel the evil and oppression coming from the castle. When Ernst travels to Dracula's castle to bless it, hoping to dispel the lingering evil, the town priest can only bring himself to go partway, cowering in fear on the rocky mountainside. The Monsignor carries on and reads the rite of exorcism at the castle door, then bars the door with a large cross.
In the meantime, the priest has an accident, falling down the rocks and into an icy river. Unbeknownst to him, his fall cracked the ice covering the body of Count Dracula himself - who had been buried under moving water as is one of the traditional ways to kill a vampire (despite that not being remotely how he met his demise at the end of the previous movie, Horror of Dracula). (EDIT: I totally forgot about Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which comes between "Horror" and "Risen," and makes Dracula's condition at the beginning of this movie perfectly fine. My bad.) The blood from the priest's wounds trickles into Dracula's mouth, restoring him to life.
When the newly risen Dracula finds his castle is inaccessible to him, he vows revenge on the Monsignor who made it so. He travels to Ernst's hometown to kill him and to turn his niece into one of Dracula's brides. The only people standing in Dracula's evil way are the dumpy old Monsignor and his niece's boyfriend. They must stop Dracula before he can kill the Monsignor's niece... or worse.
As is almost always the case with Dracula movies, the star of the show is the Count himself. Here he is played by the amazing Christopher Lee, reprising his role from the first of many Hammer Pictures' Dracula movies, 1958's Horror of Dracula. He is a dangerous, intimidating villain, which is refreshing in these days of the watered-down, brooding anti-hero vampire. His bloodshot eyes stare into his victims and the audience hypnotically, his fangs glisten, and his tall, monstrous form comes out of the shadows like a predator. From the way he lashes at the horses that pull his carriage to the way he slaps his underlings down for disobeying or questioning his commands, everything about this Dracula speaks of cruelty and evil. There is no doubt who the bad guy is here.
The Dracula story has been told countless times over the years, and the character has appeared in every possible form of media. Though Bela Lugosi's portrayal in the original Universal Dracula movies is the most iconic, I'm strongly leaning towards Christopher Lee's Dracula in the Hammer productions being the best. I like my vampires dark, violent, and unflinchingly evil, and Lee's Dracula is all of that and then some. I'm a latecomer to the Hammer horror experience, but I'm very glad to be catching up on them. I would suggest that anyone who is tired of what vampires have become these days should check out what vampires are supposed to be in these old Christopher Lee movies.
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