SCARS OF DRACULA (1970) - Is this the goriest Hammer Horror ?

September 02, 2023

SCARS OF DRACULA (1970) - Is this the goriest Hammer Horror ?

DIRECTED by Roy Ward Baker.

SCREENPLAY by Anthony Hinds based on "Dracula" by Bram Stoker.

STARRING - Christopher Lee as Dracula, Dennis Waterman as Simon Carlson, Jenny Hanley as Sarah Framsen, Christopher Matthews as Paul Carlson, Patrick Troughton as Klove, Anouska Hempel as Tania, Michael Ripper as Landlord, Michael Gwynn as Preist.

PLOT - Count Dracula has been resurected once more and has resumed his reign of terror over the frightened inhabitants of a nearby village. The villagers stage an uprising and try to burn his castle down and kill Dracula but fail in the attempt. Dracula's revenge is swift and bloody, he savagely kills most of the women in the village by sending a horde of vampire bats to tear them to shreds.

Several months later in the nearby city of Kleinenberg, a young man, Paul Carlson is falsely accused of raping the Burgomeister's daughter. Fleeing the authorities and the city, Paul finds himself lost in the wilderness and eventually ends up at Castle Dracula. Paul is initially welcomed by the Count, his mistress Tania and thier servant Klove. However, Paul beds Tania and the vampire woman tries to bite him. Dracula walks in and flys into a rage, killing Tania and imprisoning Paul.

Back in Kleinenberg, Paul's older and more sensible brother, Simon and his fiancee Sarah, become worried about Paul and resolve to search for him. It is a search that will take them to the very heart of Castle Dracula and lead them into confrontation with the sadistic vampire Count...

DIALOUGE - Preist - "What we shall be facing in a few hours time is not a man. He is evil. He is the embodiment of all that is evil. He is the very Devil himself..."

PERFORMANCES - I'm about to commit an act of blasphemy but here goes...Bela Lugosi is NOT the best actor to have played Dracula. There...I said it. Lugosi was good, brilliant even, without him our entire conception of Dracula wouldn't even exist. But there was one actor who was even better in the role... that actor was Christopher Lee.

The Scars of Dracula is the sixth entry in Hammer's Dracula series and is one of Lee's best performances in the role. Lee had at this point become frustrated with playing the Dracula character, he felt that Dracula wasn't being given enough to do and was becoming an afterthought in his own series. Lee also felt that the film series was straying too far from Stoker's novel and in some previous entries flatly refused to speak any of his dialogue.

This movie feels like Hammer's attempt to placate thier biggest star, several scenes from the novel have been added and Dracula's character more closely matches what's in the book, we even get to see Dracula in "host" mode when he puts Paul up for the night - of course, this all goes horribly wrong and Paul ends up as Dracula's prisoner - mirroring Johnathan Harker's plight in the original book.

Lee's Dracula switches from suave gentleman to savage feral beast at the drop of a hat and as always he's great. Lee IS the king of the vampires.

Dracula's main opponent in this film is Simon Carlson played by Dennis Waterman. Waterman was best known for playing cockney tough guys in TV shows like "The Sweeney" and "Minder" and it's quite jarring at first seeing him in this. Instead of his usual eastend London drawl, Waterman adopts an upper class English accent. It's bizzare seeing him play against type like this.

At first Simon seems like a bit of a boring hero (his bed hopping, ladies man brother Paul is a lot more of a fun character) but as the film progresses you actually realise that Simon is quite a funny character. He's so ANGRY all the time - when he's looking for his missing brother he just spends most of the film shouting at peasants in his clipped glass accent. It's great - he's this angry shouting ginger man - he's like a red headed volcano that's about to explode.

Also - don't you think that Dennis Waterman is the spitting image of Mary Queen of Scots ? Just take a look...

Did he go back in time, start wearing dresses and take over the English throne ? I think we should be told...

Jenny Hanley plays Simon's (presumably long suffering) girlfriend - Sarah. As is usually the way Dracula seeks to assert his power over Jenny and make her his new consort. She gets further unwelcome attention from Dracula's servant Klove (ex-Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton) who becomes obsessed with her. She also gets to wear some revealing gowns (this was the stage when Hammer where heavily "sexing up" thier movies). She does a good job but her character is a bit two dimensional to be fair.

Another quick mention of Troughton as Klove. He's a great character. He's shifty and untrustworthy. He's constantly switching his loyalties throughout the film - one minute he's helping Simon to rescue Sarah, the next he's selling him out to Dracula. He even betrays Dracula at one point and then quickly snaps back into loyal servant mode again after recieving a beating (Dracula tortures him with a red hot poker). You hate him and feel sorry for him at the same time. Troughton pulls this off masterfully.

Another great character is Paul (Christopher Matthews). He's by far the more likeable of the two Carlson brothers. He's a cocky, bed hopping, party animal Casanova. He'll sleep with anything with a pulse, he even shags a vampire woman at one point (which technically makes him a necrophiliac, I suppose, aw well...). Needless to say it doesn't end well for him. I wanted him to be the main hero at first, but if that would have happened then we wouldn't have got the angry boiled egg of a man that is Simon as our hero, so it all worked out well in the end.

SFX - Lots (and I mean LOTS) of bright red technicolour blood. See below...

SEX & VIOLENCE - By this point Hammer studios where severely ramping up both the sex and the violence in thier movies. This was an attempt to compete with the new wave of American horror films like Night Of The Living Dead and The Exorcist that were getting bums on seats around the world.

As a result of this Scars of Dracula is probably the most violent and gory entry in the series.

One of the most shockingly graphic moments is when we see the aftermath of the vampire bat attack on the village. There are multiple close ups of the gory remains of the village's womenfolk. Thier faces ripped and torn open, blood everywhere. It's like looking at crime scene photos...

Then we get the infamous knife murder scene where Dracula stabs Tania to death for sleeping with Paul. He just completely loses it - it's like Dracula becomes Michael Myers for a brief moment. It also goes on for an uncomfortably long time...

There's a great scene where a preist gets literally gored to death by an obviously rubber bat...

On top of that you get Klove being beaten, whipped and burnt with a red hot poker...

And you get the sad fate of Paul. That'll teach him to go around messing with Dracula's woman...

The best is saved for last however. At the end of this movie Dracula is struck by lightning and sets on fire. And he takes a long time to die...about two minutes. We see his skin bubbling as he staggers around desparately trying to put out the fire, but he goes up like a dry haystack thats had paraffin thrown on it and ends up falling off the roof of Castle Dracula to his doom. He gives a blood curdling scream as he falls to earth like a blazing meteorite...

Great stuff.

RATING - Scars of Dracula is by far the most violent, sleazy and gory film in Hammer's Dracula series and it's absolutely great. Its about as subtle as a bullhammer to the testicles but a lot more fun.

Overall - 4 and a half angry gingers out of 5.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART -

That's probably how many women Paul slept with last night. That's why Simon's in such a foul mood all the time - his brother gets more women than he does...