Scars of Dracula (1970)

Scars of Dracula (UK, 1970) 95 min color DIR: Roy Ward Baker. SCR: Anthony Hinds. PROD: Aida Young. DOP: Moray Grant. MUSIC: James Bernard. CAST: Christopher Lee, Patrick Troughton, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Michael Gwynn, Michael Ripper. (Hammer Film Productions)

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Scars of Dracula has been an in-joke for decades, dating all the way back to VHS rental days, before I finally watched the movie.

When VHS titles still cost $100 a pop, it was a huge investment for mom and pop corner stores to stock video rentals, especially in small towns or in the country, where movies would soon get played out by the smaller clientele. As a result, they would have the services of a distributor with a large inventory, who would rotate the stock with fresh new titles every few weeks. I knew two of the guys who used to do this around my hometown. You’ve already met one of them in these pages (if not, here is the link to read about Ronnie). I eventually worked for the other, Steph, who owned two convenience stores, plus he stocked other county corner stores with videos. My mother worked for Steph at the store up the street from her house, after her longtime employment ended at Loblaws, and remained on full-time weekdays for the rest of her working life. Several years later, I worked at the store on weekends, while I had another job on weekdays, to save up money before moving to Toronto.

In this business model, even though the movies would rotate every few weeks, a title would likely re-appear at one store the stock had turned over a few times. That was handy in case you missed it, or wanted to see it again. One title that kept re-appearing on the racks was the Thorn EMI VHS of Scars of Dracula. Each time I’d make a note to rent it, but the movie would be gone again before I got around to it. So whenever my mother said that Steph brought in a new pile of movies, I’d reply something to the effect of: “Is Scars of Dracula there?”. On and on this went.

Before I moved away, Steph expanded the video section in our store. He knocked down a wall, gutted the stockroom, and turned it into a mini video store, with a thousand titles; a vast improvement on the two crummy shelves that we previously had. If Scars of Dracula was among the racks then, I still didn’t get around to it!

Eight years later, I popped into the store when I was down for Christmas holidays. Somebody up there liked me, because that night I discovered that Steph was selling most of his VHS inventory for $2.50 each. For old times sake, I picked up maybe half a dozen titles, including Scars of Dracula. 

And guess what? That VHS sat unwatched in my closet for 20 years. I even bought the out-of-print Anchor Bay DVD from some guy on Facebook. Christopher Lee’s red eyes on the cover stared at me to no avail. And now, upon hearing that Kino Lorber is soon to release a Blu-ray of it, I figured “enough is enough”, in case I triple-dipped on a movie I still haven’t seen, as a in-joke now only known to me.

A cursory glance in the “inter web” will tell you that this, the sixth entry Hammer’s Dracula series, is “underrated”, which means that it didn’t have a good reputation at first. It may be argued that by 1970, the studio had resurrected Dracula and Frankenstein once too often. Scars of Dracula is known as the most violent of the series, perhaps to entice modern audiences or to breathe some life into the same routine. The Good Count is marvellously loathsome in this chapter, as played by the stalwart Christopher Lee. However, as with the previous film, Taste the Blood of Dracula, it often feels that Lee is a guest star in his own movie. 

We see him in the opening, when he is resurrected by a bat drooling blood onto his cape. Savour that moment, because he will only reappear after a lot of exposition with the skirt-chasing Paul Carlson (Christopher Matthews). After Paul has coitus with his girlfriend, her father walks in on them. She then falsely accuses Paul of rape. He flees the establishment, and leads the father plus the authorities on a merry chase through the night. But along the way, he makes a pit stop to the 21st birthday of Sarah (Jenny Hanley), thrown by her boyfriend, Paul’s brother Simon (Dennis Waterman, later a star in TV’s The Sweeney). He stays long enough to present Sarah a photograph of her that he had taken (photography was a new thing in the time this film is set), but once he discovers that the glass on the photo is cracked, he takes it back, promising to fix it the next day. That is, before the authorities crash the party, and Paul jumps out a window into a carriage and storms off into the countryside. He seeks refuge at an inn but is refused by the landlord (Michael Ripper) because it is after dark, and we know why he is not let in, because this is a vampire movie! 

He eventually finds refuge at the castle of Dracula, who is actually hospitable to his unexpected guest. Dracula’s vampire slave girl Tania comes into Paul’s room, asking him to “love me”; of course he obliges. After lovemaking, she attempts to bite his neck, before Dracula enters the room and kills her for her betrayal. Paul is locked into a room, while Dracula’s servant Klove (former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton, unrecognizable with all that hair!) dismembers her body. Simon and Sarah arrive at the castle, searching for Paul. Dracula is immediately captivated by Sarah. Klove is also infatuated with her due to the photograph that Paul had left behind, and disobeys Dracula’s orders by helping the couple escape. 

On the surface, Scars of Dracula is another variation on the trope of people having to spend the night in the count’s castle. But within that well-visited plot device, there are some strong set pieces. The minister (Michael Gwynn) leads the villagers to storm the castle and set it ablaze. With that, they are confident that they have destroyed the vampire. However, when they return to the church where they kept their wives, they open the doors and bats fly out. All of the women have been killed by them. It is a very bloody scene, all the more startling because the carnage is revealed after the fact. The violence is also potent in the scene where Dracula punishes the unfaithful Klove with a red-hot sword from the fireplace.

Vampire stories are parables about Faith, as the crucifix can destroy the vampire. Yet, this entry has a more disquieting religious undertone, in the above mentioned scene where the women are slaughtered in the sanctity of the church, and in the climax that (without giving too much away) feels like it is came from the heavens: God’s vengeance upon Dracula’s castle for upsetting the sanctity of the church.

So. Was it worth the wait? Well, kinda. But, after all this time, how could anything hold up to that much scrutiny? As always, this Hammer production is very handsome, with good use of colour (and an obvious accent on the colour red). Still, I agree they’ve drank from this well once too often. With all due respect to Lee, I think the scariest things in this entry are the bats that do Dracula’s bidding. They are truly hideous: far more loathsome than the usual wind-ups with strings. Still, Hammer wasn’t done yet. They next resurrected Dracula in the modern age with Dracula A.D. 1972. (Unpopular opinion, but I liked that one much more.)