Scars of Dracula (1970)

Plot

After being caught in bed with the burgomaster's daughter, Paul Carlson jumps into a nearby coach and makes a hasty escape. He winds up at Castle Dracula where he becomes Dracula's latest victim. His brother, Simon, and girlfriend find out that he's missing and set about trying to track down his last whereabouts. This leads to an eventual confrontation with Dracula.

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Yeah, it's pretty thin on the ground for story but I guess it beats Dracula setting out for revenge again. The sixth of the Hammer Dracula films, Scars of Dracula is often heralded as the 'point of no return' for the series in which the films got really bad after this. That's being a bit harsh on The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a hugely enjoyable kung-fu horror romp not to be taken too seriously. But the next two sequels, in which the story was transported into the then-current time period, are misguided attempts to modernise the franchise. Scars of Dracula is perhaps the most forgettable of the period Dracula films, simply because it doesn't do anything that the other previous five films haven't already done. I can remember specific scenes, set pieces or even characters from the first three films but after that, they all start to blur into one.

In my opinion, the series really lost its way after Dracula, Prince of Darkness and the following sequels simply rehashed the same sort of story with lesser results and ever-diminishing budgets. This is clear with Scars of Dracula, a film in which its lack of budget works to destroy any sort of suspense or dread better than any shocking script could do. I bleated in my reviews for the previous couple of sequels that the first half of them were all about building up to a pivotal resurrection scene halfway through when Dracula would burst back onto the screen. Then the last half of the film would involve characters trying to kill him again. But you won't get that here, at least with the resurrection bit. Dracula is revived within the first few minutes here and there's no point in trying to make any sense of it as it involves a cheap bat-on-a-string and a few drops of blood. Like Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees many years later, it's best not to try and think about the ridiculousness of the situation and just focus on the fact that the main villain is alive and kicking again. Compared to the amazing resurrection sequence in Dracula, Prince of Darkness, this one looks downright feeble.

So with Dracula all ready to within the opening act, the stage is set for us to finally see more Christopher Lee. He gets more screen time here than the previous few sequels combined and is a lot more like the character he was portrayed as in the original - coming off as a well-mannered distinguished gentleman when he needs to and then turning into a snarling, ravenous beast when he gets the urge. The irony now is that we perhaps see too much of him and any sense of mystery or aurora of the supernatural just evaporates. The more you see of him, the less you think of him as Dracula, the ultimate vampire, and the more you just see him as a run-of-the-mill bloodsucker.

Scars of Dracula is probably the bloodiest of all of the Dracula films and the gore quota has been upped dramatically. Like any horror series, you know the creativity is decline when there's more blood on show and this is evident here. Dracula doesn't care how he gets the blood from his victims this time around, even going so far as to stab a woman in the stomach just to be able to drink her blood. A massacre inside a church and a torture scene makes this one of Hammer's most violent and graphic films. But when everything else is as routine as it is, the only thing you could really change is the amount of blood you pump into the camera.

Like the majority of their output, there's no such thing as a 'bad' Hammer horror film. Scars of Dracula does its job adequately in almost every department. It's just that the series never really tried to do anything new (until the next couple of sequels!) so the vampiric shenanigans all seems forced. There's decent support from the likes of Patrick Troughton, Michael Gwynn, Hammer regular Michael Ripper and the attractive Jenny Hanley but they can only inject so much energy into proceedings before they are engulfed by the film's stagnant appearance. The script could really have done with a Van Helsing type character because without the famous vampire hunter, Dracula always seemed to be one step higher on the food chain than the rest of the characters. Having a human equal always gave Dracula that air of vulnerability, something missing from this one as Dracula lords over the entire film with almost unstoppable menace.

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Final Verdict

Scars of Dracula is the weakest of the period Dracula films. It is derivative of its predecessors, fails to inject any new life into the tired story and simply goes through the motions very awkwardly. It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, it's just perfectly demonstrative of Hammer's later output when they tried and failed to keep interest in their big franchises.

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Scars of Dracula Director(s): Roy Ward Baker Writer(s): Anthony Hinds (screenplay), Bram Stoker (based on the character created by) Actor(s): Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Christopher Matthews, Patrick Troughton, Michael Gwynn, Michael Ripper Duration: 95 mins