Film Review - The Scars of Dracula

The last of Hammer's period Dracula films before the ill-advised switch to the present day, Scars of Dracula makes some notable attempts to revitalise the series. Christopher Lee has his largest role to date and Dracula has a few 'new' abilities - the ability to scale walls like a spider being the best; this was in Bram Stoker's original novel but then largely ignored until suddenly appearing in two films in the same year - the other being Jesus Franco's straight adaptation of the book, also starring Lee in the title role.


Scars of Dracula opens with a smashing sequence where the villagers get fed up of the Count's virgin-snaffling ways and the menfolk set off to burn down his castle. Job done, but they get back to find the village's women and children dead in the local church.

Fast-forward and Dennis Waterman turns up as the young hero, arriving on a search for his rakish brother (last seen on the run to the castle) with fiance Sarah in tow. There then follows the usual rota of fearful villagers, Dracula getting infatuated with Sarah, discovered corpses and so on, with only the return of Dracula's manservant Klove to really mix things up. Waterman's actually not bad, if a bit inseparable from his famous roles in The Sweeney and Minder, while Michael Gwynn does well as the principled local priest, one of the few proactive villagers. Patrick Troughton however is wasted as the subhuman Klove.

Despite the promising start being followed by the same old stuff it's entertaining and well-shot, and certainly a lot better than what was to come afterwards.