Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2277

Why Ben Schwartz Loves THE EARLIEST SHOW and What His STAR WARS Future Holds

Between Stephen Colbert, James Corden, Conan O’Brien, Seth Meyers, and the Jimmys, the late night talk show landscape is as crowded as ever. Yet, there’s space for each host to co-exist, because while their jobs are similar, they do them in very different ways and have their own enjoyable shticks that give each a reason to stick around. The same could be said for the teams that host all the morning shows, too, but now it’s Ben Schwartz‘s turn and he’s taking his version of late night/morning show schtickery to such an extreme that it may not even be late night.

“It follows a really happy, two co-host [format], almost like an early show,” Ben Schwartz told us about The Earliest Show, a new sketch series on Funny or Die, the first episode of which premieres Thursday, October 27th. “We’re doing this show that takes place late late at night or early early in the morning—those wee hours.”

Co-hosted by Lauren Lapkus, the two work as a bubbly, overly happy pair that’s a slight caricature of the morning talk show format, and while the beginning is cheery, Schwartz—and the first episode itself—suggests that may not be the case for long.

“The very first episode, what’s going to happen is that my girlfriend comes on the air, I propose to her, and she says no, and then I’m absolutely crushed,” Schwartz said. “Then every episode after it is a stage of grief. The second episode is me in denial, then anger, then bargaining, then me depressed, then me accepting it. For me, it’s so exciting because I get to play all these different emotions; I kind of play five or six characters through the whole thing.”

The guest on the first episode is former NBA all-star and current NBA on-air commentator Reggie Miller, and while he wasn’t able to reveal much about who’s coming on the show next, we should be expecting greatness: “We have Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Brad Pitt… no no no, we don’t have any of those. We have incredible guests. I don’t know which ones I’m allowed to talk about, but there are actors I’m enormous fans of, athletes I’m enormous fans of. It was kind of exciting for me as a human being.”

The series is, surprisingly enough, co-produced by Funny Or Die and Cap’n Crunch. (Yes, the cereal.) And it was that pairing, Schwartz explained, that gave him the creative freedom to do something so off-the-wall on the show.

“What was very unusual for brands of this or any nature is they were totally game for this idea of me going through these stages and me improvising and me getting a bunch of comedians in the room and trying to make the funniest thing possible,” he said. “It’s been incredible.”

We couldn’t stop ourselves from asking about Schwartz’s involvement in the next Star Wars film, though,given that he helped voice BB-8 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and he said that while “they’ve probably figured out an app to do what I did,” he says he, “lucked out with J.J. [Abrams] bringing me in for that one.” He did tell us he’ll have a different and probably more significant role in the next movie, though, although we’re skeptical: “I’m going to play Yoda in the next Star Wars. I’m going to live-action it, I’m going to green myself up. I think it’ll be pretty cool. I’m going to talk normal, and then I’m going make it feel like I just fixed my speech and all that stuff.”

Since that claim is dubious at best, he did give us one real(ish) wish: “A goal of mine would be to be in one of those movies as me… not as Ben Schwartz, but as me playing a character there. You know what? I’d like to play myself.” When we said that might not make sense in the Star Wars universe, he reminded us of the merchandising possibilities: “I mean, I feel like we can make an action figure out of me. My parents would be so excited.”

Featured Image: Funny Or Die

Audio Rewind: The Ongoing Legacy of “The Times They Are A-Changin”

Bob Dylan, in addition to many other things, is revered for the timelessness of his songs. For half a century he’s lassoed the zeitgeist, rendered it in swathes of artful imagery, and then watched it stand the test of time. And that’s the goal of folk music, really, to capture the spirit of the folk in such a way that it transcends era. Dylan just happens to do it better than pretty much everyone else—well enough, in fact, to nab this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Nobel, though received contentiously by the literary community, also affirms our trust in the lyricist’s abiding rhetoric. But while we still relate to the times that Dylan paints, it is also unassailably true that times do change. In the title track of his album, The Times They Are A-Changin’ (recorded this week back in 1963), the folk bard spins a tale of progress, urging us not to stall and hinder the changes that occur naturally in our culture. This message has been borrowed and recycled many times since Dylan first wrote it, and today we can reflect on its permeation throughout both era and industry.

“The Times They Are a-Changin’” was inspired by English and Scottish ballads. Its name, even, includes the archaic ‘a’ intensifier as an immediate allusion to the folk songs of old. In 1985, Dylan described the creative process to a young Cameron Crowe, then fresh off of the film adaptation to his book, Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, and ripe to begin his eminent career as a writer/director. “This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads …’Come All Ye Bold Highway Men’, ‘Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens’. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.”

A year before that, a young corporate emissary had also adopted the song’s cultural clout. Steve Jobs, in his now iconic unveiling of the Macintosh computer at the 1984 Apple shareholders meeting, recited the song’s second verse, invoking its core value of moving forward to bigger and better things.

The song has, somewhat ironically, been adopted by the business world several times, perhaps in an attempt to temper corporate image with hipper countercultural undertones. In 1994, for instance, “The Times They Are a-Changin'” was licensed for use for television advertisements by the auditing and accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand. (These included the Richie Havens cover, not the Dylan original.) Two year later, a children’s choir sang the song in an advert for Canada’s Bank of Montreal. And then in 2005, the insurance company Kaiser Permanente used the song yet again in another TV ad.

“The Times” has been affiliated with film outside the Crowe interview, too. In 2009 it played during the opening sequence of Watchmen to illustrate 20th century history, serving as the embodiment of an entire 100 years of culture.

Most notably, of course, the “The Times They Are a-Changin’” has been a tour de force in the world of music. According to the “Dylan Covers Database” (yes that’s a thing), there are 436 recordings—including bootlegs—of Dylan’s coveted track. Perhaps most famously, The Byrds covered it, including it on their 1965 record, Turn! Turn! Turn!. As the story goes, George Harrison and Paul McCartney were in the control booth during its recording and, according to The Byrds, this prevented them from finishing the session and the track effectively.

Dozens of other seminal artists have covered Dylan’s track: The Beach Boys, Tracy Chapman, Herbie Hancock, Bruce Springsteen, Nina Simone…the list goes on and on. Its presence in our culture is nearly universal, and Rolling Stone‘s 2004 edition of the 5oo Greatest Songs of All Time lists “The Times They Are a-Changin'” as number 59.

The song’s importance to our culture, though, is not limited to the progressives and the marginalized for which it was written. Prolific music critic Michael Gray did name it “the archetypal protest song”—a sentiment undoubtedly shared by most when presented with the song—but, in its transcendence of era and industry, the song has also been ascribed with status and significant monetary worth. In 2010, Dylan’s original hand-written lyrics were sold at the Sotheby’s auction house in New York, purchased for $422,500 by a hedge fund manager. Given the intention behind the song, it’s worth noting the irony, but, more importantly, it’s also worth noting that the song’s message is felt not just by the marginalized and their sympathizers, but also by those that have the means to affect change.

So, with that in mind, come gather round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown. “The Times They Are a-Changin'” is a political statement, at heart, but it’s also an acceptance of life. Everything is impermanent, always changing. And so we must learn to accept this so that we can relate and grow with each other as the times change. From those that dwell in corporate realms to those that spend their energy fighting social inequality, we are all the folk, and we are best when we change with the times together.

Image: Columbia Records

Penguin with Feather-Loss Named “Wonder Twin” Gets Adorable Wetsuit

Unlike most other birds, a penguin’s feathers aren’t for flight. Packed in ultra-dense rows rather than stacked like a toucan’s or parrot’s, penguin feathers are essential for heat-retention in cold weather. That’s why when Wonder Twin, a female Adelie penguin at SeaWorld Orlando, started losing her feathers, the wardrobe department had to step in and stitch the cutest wetsuit ever.

In the video above, the costume department of SeaWorld Orlando explains how they made Wonder Twin’s new outfit. Why they made it is obvious. Take a microscope to a penguin’s skin and you’d count up to 100 feathers per square inch. This incredible density traps air — a great insulator — that helps prevent heat loss through the frigid air and water of penguin habitats. And while penguins in the wild do experience feather loss naturally, in an enclosure the inability to regulate body temperature effectively could have been a real problem for Wonder Twin’s well-being, hence the adorable swimwear.

It really does look like Wonder Twin is a happier penguin with the wetsuit on. Now, we don’t want other animals shivering in the cold, but let’s all imagine a bald polar bear in a giant wetsuit. How about a baby seal in insulating water wings? An otter in a life jacket? The cuteness, it burns.

What do you think of Wonder Twins’s new wetsuit. Shouldn’t it be purple and yellow like the superheroes it’s named after? We think so. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images: SeaWorld Cares

MinutePhysics and Cosmologist Sean Carroll Propose a Purpose for Life

Neither cosmologist Sean Carroll nor the man behind YouTube Channel MinutePhysics, Henry Reich, is Deep Thought from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But if you want to ask some profound questions and get some reasonable answers (that aren’t 42), those two brains are a pretty good bet. They recently collaborated on a video titled “What is the Purpose of Life?” and we have to tune in and at least lend them four minutes of our time.

The video above, which is the last in a series of videos based off of Carroll’s book “The Big Picture,” delves into a short, clear lecture on entropy. Entropy, as Carroll points out in the video, is “the measurement of disorder” in a system. Carroll also points out that “organisms ultimately depend on and facilitate the universe’s tendency to increase entropy.”

As the video shows, this essentially means that every time a source of energy is used, some of it becomes lost as “noise and heat.” So not only are perpetual motion machines impossible to build—because you could never use 100% of an energy source—but organisms like humans are constantly taking energy and “losing” some of it as heat waste.

Ultimately, Carroll claims in the video that life arose to take advantage of low-entropy energy sources (like warm vents on the ocean floor). That is to say, life arose as a simple chemical reaction that takes low-entropy energy and converts it to higher-entropy energy. So, according to Carroll, we’re here to use up energy and make it less useful, to do our part in increasing entropy. This doesn’t really seem like a “purpose” so much as a “thing that happens in this universe” but the science is still fascinating!

What do you think about Carroll’s theory for the purpose of life? Does it satisfy your deepest philosophical concerns, or do you still want somebody *cough* Google *cough* to build a Deep Thought type machine? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: MinutePhysics

LEGO DIMENSIONS Introduces Gizmo and the GREMLINS To the LEGOverse!

One of the things that we admire the most about LEGO Dimensions is the way that it has brought back a lot of dormant characters into its wild multiverse crossover. Where else can we get to play a game with characters from Knight Rider, the Goonies, the A-Team, and Back to the Future? Now, another ’80s franchise is set to make its LEGO debut, as the Gremlins head to LEGO Dimensions next month!

Gremlins fans may be well acquainted with Gizmo and Stripe, but the LEGO Dimensions team has come up with a clever way to introduce them to a new generation of gamers. In this clip, Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time hosts a video intro for the Gremlins as she shares the three rules of their existance: keep them away from bright lights or sunlight, never get them wet, and don’t feed them after midnight! Naturally, Marceline responded by immediately trying to get Gizmo to break the third rule and transform into a more sinister form; which actually happens in some of the footage from the game.

Marceline also revealed her admiration for Stripe’s reign of terror and Gizmo’s Rambo moment, which is briefly glimpsed in the video when “they pushed him too far.” Even Gizmo’s ability to create a soothing melody came into play, as he and Marceline were joined by Marty McFly for an impromptu jam. Only in LEGO, folks! That’s why we love this game!

The LEGO Dimensions: Gremlins Team Pack with Gizmo and Stripe will be released on November 18.

Will you take the mogwai home next month? Let us know in the comment section below!

Don’t Miss This Long Lost Gremlins 3 Trailer
[brightcove video_id=”5183713968001″ brightcove_account_id=”3653334524001″ brightcove_player_id=”2bfa565b-5412-4cfd-9211-6269880b8a5e”]

Image: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

The 7 Silliest ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? Episodes

At the beginning of the month, I wrote about the eight scariest episodes of Nickelodeon’s horror anthology series, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Canadian-produced show about kids telling scary stories to each other around the campfire. It was surprisingly dark and often quite frightening, which is why it was aired during the final half-hour of SNICK, the Saturday night programming block (shout out to big orange couches!). But, like all shows, not every episode was scary, or even very good. Some of them were boring, or lacking in some department, and some were just silly. Outwardly ridiculous, even.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the episodes as such, or were turned off by the show at large because of the lesser episodes; they’re just part of the patchwork quilt of a show many of us grew up watching. Look, not every episode of Tales from the Crypt or The Twilight Zone was great, either. We like to celebrate everything here on Nerdist, even stuff that doesn’t hold up as well, and so in the gallery below, you’ll find a list of what we have humbly deemed the seven silliest episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? As always, your mileage will vary, so please share your favorites (or silliest) in the comments below!

How bout some scary kids movies?

Images: Nickelodeon/CTV

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist and lover of all ’90 Nickelodeon ephemera. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

Take Carl Sagan’s Classes with His Personal Lecture Notes

When you hear the name Carl Sagan, you may think of his revolutionary television series, Cosmos, NASA’s Viking missions, or maybe just that silky voice as smooth as melted butter floating in Zero-G. But the late scientist, engineer, writer, and televised educator also spent a significant part of his career teaching science courses at universities including Harvard and Cornell. Now, thanks to the Library of Congress, you can access digitized versions of his personal course materials, allowing the celestial godfather himself to be your personal professor.

Materials for two of his courses, including a 1965 Planetary Science Course and a 1986 course in Critical Thinking in Science and Non-Science Context, have been digitized and are now available for review. The course materials, which were donated by The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, allow users to look over Sagan’s personal lecture notes, and even take exams. (Fair warning: the problem sets are no joke.)

The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress.

Sagan’s courses don’t only apply to the movement of celestial bodies however. He also encouraged people to think critically—scientifically—about everyday matters like sports, television, tobacco usage, and even automotive advertising practices.

The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress.

If you’ve looked over the course notes, exams, and problem sets—more of which can be found in the image gallery below—and are feeling a bit daunted, don’t be discouraged. There are other, less quantitative, ways to enjoy the ultimate space sherpa, including this video of Sagan discussing extraterrestrials, and this one of Sagan discussing space exploration.

What do you think about these digitized course notes? Are you thrilled with the idea of taking a class designed by Sagan himself, or are you going to stick to the Cosmos television series and maybe some of his less brain-busting books? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: wikimedia / JPL

ARROW Recap: Team Arrow Gains One Recruit and Loses Another in “Penance”

Warning: this recap contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Arrow, “Penance.” This is, after all, a recap! Don’t say we didn’t warn you …

It’s always one step forward and two steps back on Arrow, and Oliver and Felicity learned that lesson once again in this week’s episode. “Penance” was all about making Team Arrow whole again, whether that meant getting Diggle his freedom back, or convincing Ragman to rejoin the team. And while Team Arrow was successful on both of those fronts, they ended up losing another recruit in the process. See, like I said: one step forward and two steps back. Let’s get to recapping, shall we?

After a week of waiting, the hour began with finally letting us know how Rory Regan a.k.a. Ragman reacted to Felicity’s confession—he just straight up quit Team Arrow. But not out of anger, surprisingly. Instead of blaming Felicity for what he understood was an impossible choice for her to make when it came to diverting the nuclear missile from Monument Point to Havenrock, he maturely and calmly came to the decision that he just couldn’t look at Felicity without seeing the faces of his family and remembering how she is the reason why they’re not with him anymore. And so he gave Oliver his notice in person, leaving the new recruits down one essential team member.

But more importantly, it’s time to break Dig out of prison! Oliver and Lyla were going full-force into figuring out the logistics of their jailbreak, but Felicity was more than a little shocked to hear what they were planning, especially when they confessed that Dig wasn’t interested in being a fugitive for the rest of his and so he wasn’t going to cooperate with them. That’s kind of a crucial aspect to their plan of breaking him out, don’t you think?! So when Felicity made her feelings known, Oliver decided to keep her out of the loop, and that just pissed her off even more. He seemed to think helping Dig not make a bad choice about staying in prison was the same kind of situation as her and Rory, and he thought she shouldn’t let Rory off the hook so easily with quitting the team. But the circumstances are just a bit different if we’re being totally honest here.

And you know who else agreed with Felicity about the notion that what Oliver was planning was wrong? The rest of Team Arrow, as the new recruits intercepted Oliver on his way to break Dig out and told him they weren’t going to “let him” do it. Oliver just laughed at that and immediately laid them all out in the middle of the road without even breaking a sweat before speeding away to carry out his plan. It’s cute that the recruits thought they could stop him, though!

With Lyla’s help, Oliver, dressed in all black, made it safely inside the prison with only 25 minutes until he’d be stuck inside and left to face the legal consequences. But there was a huge hiccup in their plan. Dig had been moved to gen-pop in the prison and out of his solitary cell and he wouldn’t be moved back until after their deadline ended. So Oliver caused a lockdown by knocking out one of the guards, and Dig was returned to his cell in the nick of time. After a few minutes trying to argue with Oliver, his protests ended with Oliver blackmailing Dig into cooperating since, otherwise, Oliver would get caught in his cell and arrested. So Dig finally agreed to go with him. Operation Break Dig Out of Jail officially moved on to the next phase!

Unfortunately, right when Oliver needed Lyla’s help the most, his communication device jammed and he and Dig were on their own when it came to navigating the underground tunnels out to safety. But they made it out alive just in time, and so Dig’s life as a fugitive began. Oliver and Lyla moved Dig into an abandoned warehouse to keep him off the grid for the time being, and he thanked Lyla with a lot of passionate kisses. And then he thanked Oliver with a handshake. At least he’s not mad at them for not listening to him! Side note: how good did it feel seeing Oliver and Dig sharing the same scenes again? Man I’ve missed this.

Back in Star City, ruthless gangster Tobias Church reared his head again this week, stealing a whole bunch of weapons from the SCPD evidence lockup while Oliver was “out of town,” or “dealing with his gout” … or staging a jail break. That meant that newly minted Deputy Mayor Lance was left to deal with the fallout along with D.A. Adrian Chase. So Lance recruited the new Team Arrow to help him out, and they all knew they needed Ragman with them or else they wouldn’t stand a chance. Felicity sucked up her pride and confronted him, apologizing again and explained how they both needed to move forward so they can live up their respective legacies. Rory’s was his family legacy of men wearing and using the rags to be a hero, and Felicity’s was to make up for the destruction she caused in Havenrock. But she was called back to Team Arrow before she could see if her words made any difference with Rory.

Back in the Arrow cave, Team Arrow figured out Church and his men were going to hit the Anti-Crime Unit next. But without Oliver and Ragman, Felicity didn’t think the recruits could take him on and win. Thankfully, her earlier words to Rory struck a chord with him, and he rejoined the team just in time, giving them the edge they needed to take on Church. They infiltrated the ACU, but Mister Terrific got a knife to the back, slowing them down enough for Church to face off with Wild Dog while Artemis got Mister Terrific to safety. Lance drove the getaway car, saving Artemis, Mister Terrific and Ragman, while Church knocked out and captured Wild Dog.

The next day, neither the SCPD nor Felicity could find where Church took Wild Dog. Felicity couldn’t stop beating herself up over losing a team member, but Rory gave her some words of encouragement about how they wouldn’t let each other let their guilt eat them up. And Oliver came back to the Arrow cave to let them all know they wouldn’t stop until they saved Wild Dog. But I hope they move fast, since Church had him tied up and tortured in some hideout, intending to break his spirit.

And in the flashback storyline this week, it was time for Oliver’s third trial to become a full fledged member of the Bratva. He had to get arrested to make contact with Kovar’s money launderer who was also in jail. Oliver threatened the man’s family for information on how to get to Kovar, and once he got it, Oliver snapped his neck, killing him instantly. It proved that he trusted his orders, and so the Bratva trusted him. And just like that, Oliver was officially in the Bratva. Now it’s time to see how he rose through the ranks so quickly to become a captain.

What did you think of this week’s episode of Arrow? Tweet me your thoughts at @SydneyBucksbaum!

Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.

Images: The CW

How Well Do Teens Know ’90s Horror Films?

“Do you like scary movies?” Of course you do! Since the beginning of film, every generation has seemingly embraced the movies that were designed to make them feel terror. But not all of these films have managed to withstand the test of time. Even the classic horror titles of the ’90s aren’t necessarily well known by modern teenagers.

In the latest episode of the Fine Brothers’ React: Do They Know It?, seven horror films from the ’90s were put to the test by a group of teens. Surprisingly, Stephen King’s It had the highest average of awareness and title. But Peter Jackson‘s Dead Alive came in dead last, with only one teen who claimed to have been aware of it ahead of time. That said, the revelation that the director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies had made a horror film seemed to intrigue some of these young movie fans. Although we would also suggest that they check out The Frighteners.

Leprechaun scored unusually high on title recognition, but we think that was due to several lucky guesses rather than true awareness. Most of the teens hadn’t seen the film, and only knew of it by reputation. That means that they’ve been denied the pleasures of hearing Warwick Davis scream “Me Gold!” in a ridiculous accent.

Only two films scored perfect “ten out of ten” awareness from these teens: Scream and The Sixth Sense, although The Blair Witch Project came close with a nine. And yet shockingly, only five of the teens could identify the movie poster for Scream, even though the cast list was included on the image.

This video also successfully gave us a true sensation of horror as well: it made us feel old! Thanks a lot, kids!

What did you think about this video? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: Fine Brothers Entertainment

Schlock & Awe: DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS

And so, dear friends, we have reached the end of Schlock & Awe‘s Hammer Horror Schlocktober. I could do one of these every year (and I will, likely). If you’d like to catch up, please check out my looks at Frankenstein Created Woman, The Curse of the Werewolf, and The Plague of the Zombies. And now, without further ado, Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

By 1966, as Hammer Films forged a new distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, its decade of Gothic horror output needed a bit of a pick-me-up. While the Frankenstein movies were still going strong with Peter Cushing as the amoral baron scientist, there hadn’t been a Dracula movie since 1960’s The Brides of Dracula — and that didn’t even have Dracula in it. How do you have a Dracula movie without Dracula? To top line the first double feature with Fox against the B-feature The Plague of the Zombies, Hammer proved Dracula could come back with a vengeance in Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

Terence Fisher returned to direct (him being the studio’s A-picture stalwart, who else would they pick?) another script by Jimmy Sangster, who’d have to find out how to bring the titular Count back into the fore, and inadvertently set the stage for him to come back in five more films. Christopher Lee, now one of horror’s biggest stars, was asked to return to star, but he only appears for half the movie’s runtime and has zero lines of dialogue. There are conflicting reports as to why that is; Lee maintained he asked for his “terrible” lines to be cut and to just play it silent, but Sangster contends he never wrote any lines for Drac in the first place. Either way, Dracula is conspicuously stoic, but is still in fine red-eyed-shiny-fanged-sweeping-caped glory.

In many ways, Dracula: Prince of Darkness is the archetypal Hammer Horror film, with almost none of the particular weirdness that happened in a lot of later Dracula movies, nor the brilliant revising of original source material of the earlier films. Dracula: Prince of Darkness is straight down the line Hammer, but one that nevertheless still does what it does admirably with phenomenally visceral scenes of Kensington Gore (the general term for the bright, day-glow blood the studio spattered across the screen).

The story takes place in Transylvania ten years after Van Helsing sent Dracula to hell. Even still, villagers and townsfolk are terrified and treat every person who dies before their time as a possible vampire. The death of a young girl is met with near-staking, but is stopped by Father Sandor (Andrew Keir), a monk with a rifle and a much more progressive attitude to Earthly pleasures like food and drink. He scolds the townsfolk for their superstition and rides on. Meanwhile, four wealth tourists from England are passing through on their way to the mountains. They are Charles Kent (Francis Matthews), his wife Diane (Suzan Farmer), his older brother Alan (Charles Tingwell), and Alan’s uptight wife Helen (Barbara Shelley), and they happen to meet Father Sandor at a tavern, where he extends an invitation for them to visit his monastery, anywhere as long as they don’t head up the mountain.

But, of course, they’re dumb and frivolous, and their coach driver refuses to take them all the way at night, and kicks them out at the base of the mountain, just down from a castle. Do they go to this castle, despite the Father’s earlier warning? Of course they do, and it’s just as creepy as they feared. The late master’s manservant Klove (Philip Latham) has things prepared for them when they arrive, as though they were expected, which is pretty weird. That night, Klove lures Alan out of his room and strings him up by his heels over the coffin and ashes of Dracula, using a ritual and Alan’s arterial blood to bring back the vampire, who quickly turns the repressed Helen into his new, much more permissive bride. As you might guess, Dracula wants a second bride, and Diane would be perfect. Maybe Charles and Father Sandor can save her.

This movie has the same problems a lot of Hammer movies have. The first half of the movie is a lot more set-up than is maybe necessary and the second half trucks along way too fast. The whole middle of the movie is just the Kent foursome either arguing or being made to nearly get killed or vampirized by Klove, Vamp-Helen, or Dracula himself. It’s such a long time before we see Father Sandor again, and he is easily the best character in the movie. I’ve always loved Andrew Keir (who later went on to play Professor Quatermass in Quatermass & the Pit) and his turn as Sandor is a perfect burly-cleric stand-in for Van Helsing.

But on top of Keir’s portrayal of a really great character, the other thing the movie has going for it is some truly excellent direction from Terence Fisher. The gory scenes pop in a way that few scenes had been able in Britain up to that point. The blood is nearly neon when it pours out of Alan’s hanging corpse, which sent the censors into a tizzy. And in a movie where Dracula himself is only in it for half the time, and acts much more like a monster than a true villain, the direction needs to be something special. Fisher directs several horse-carriage chase scenes with aplomb, and the final action sequence on top of the icy moat outside of Dracula’s castle is a fabulously frenetic and surprising climax.

While not the best in Hammer’s repertoire, Dracula: Prince of Darkness is perhaps the perfect Hammer Horror film, which signaled Lee’s return to his most iconic role, had some terrific performances, and lived and died by some excellent direction. Watch it this Halloween if you dare!

Images: Hammer/20th Century Fox

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!