Scars of Dracula (1970) - film review

To escape an outraged Burgomeister, whose daughter he has spent the night with, a young libertine named Paul Carlson leaps into a horse-driven carriage and finds himself being driven at a frantic pace across the countryside.  He eventually arrives at an ancient castle whose host, the charming but icily reserved Count Dracula, offers him a room for the night.  Meanwhile, Paul’s brother Simon is concerned over his disappearance.  Accompanied by his girlfriend, Sarah, Simon trails Paul to the village where he was last seen, but the locals seem strangely unwilling to help him.  It isn’t long before Paul and Sarah are also on the receiving end of Dracula’s idea of hospitality...

With its abundance of clichés, dodgy special effects, camp performances and Carry On-style humour, Scars of Dracula is far from being the most successful entry in Hammer’s series of vampire films and feels like a cheap and somewhat uninspired parody.  In place of the subtle menace of the previous films in the series, the film revels in its graphic depiction of gory violence, and Dracula isn’t so much the tragic Gothic anti-hero that we know and love but a sadistic brute.   Director Roy Ward Baker lacks the finesse of Terence Fisher, who directed Hammer’s first two Dracula films, and seems to belong to the school that reckons the more theatrical blood you throw over a set, the scarier the film is.  

Christopher Lee returns to play Hammer’s blood-hungry Count for a fifth time, on this occasion with considerably more dialogue than in his previous Hammer outings as the vampiric prince of darkness.  Lee had repeatedly complained that the Dracula he was asked to play bore little relation to the character that Bram Stoker created, but on this occasion screenwriter Anthony Hinds (under his pseudonym John Elder) took care to insert some elements from Stoker’s original novel – that is, "care" in the crowbar sense of the word.  Devotees of Stoker’s Dracula will cheer when the Lee’s Count climbs up the wall of his castle, but will no doubt cringe when he has one of his vile attacks of sadism and starts doing his Norman Bates impression.

The film is scarcely redeemed by its top-notch supporting cast.  Dennis Waterman – the star of such shows as The Sweeney and Minder in the 1970s and ’80s - makes an unconvincing hero.  It is hard not to laugh at his awfully proper diction (one of the dictates of Hammer films is that gentry talk like they spent their entire childhood at Rodean whilst ordinary folk talk like barrow boys of mixed Cockney-Somerset parentage).   Patrick Troughton had only recently completed his stint as Doctor Who and, whilst he brings both charm and a sinister edge to his portrayal of Dracula’s servant Clove, he still hasn’t shaken off his Time Lord persona and you constantly expect him to shout "Run!", just as he did (about ten times an episode) in the famous BBC television series.   Anouska Hempel is probably the best thing about this film – she is the only person who seems to be taking it seriously.  Unfortunately, even the glorious Miss Hempel cannot make up for those awful bat puppets, which look like something the Blue Peter team knocked together in a coffee break during a particularly frugal period.

Scars of Dracula is certainly not Hammer’s finest hour and, a clumsy piece of cod Grand Guignol horror excess, it presages the studio’s slow decline into mediocrity and oblivion.  Director Roy Ward Baker has defended the film’s explicit gore content by stating this is what distributors and audiences were expecting of Hammer at this period.  When directors and producers end up being driven by perceived market expectations, the writing is invariably on the wall.  And so it was for Hammer.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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