Hammer Dracula: Scars of Dracula (1970, dir. Roy Ward Baker, UK) by Kymm Zuckert
“Before the castle was destroyed, strangers were always welcome. Please be seated. While your room is being prepared, you will take some wine?”
The sixth Hammer Dracula film, and I’m an old pro by now, thinking, “Dracula will be resurrected about 40 minutes in, I wonder how they’ll manage it this time? And will Chris have fewer than twenty lines or fewer than ten?”
Well, immediately, I couldn’t have been more wrong, as the film starts out with Dracula’s cape and Kool-Aid powder blood on a slab, with a cheap bat puppet DROOLING BLOOD ONTO IT, and then the Kool-Aid turns into tomato soup turns into red bones turns into Christopher Lee in full evening dress, because that was also in the Kool-Aid, powdered men’s formalwear.
But the biggest surprise is Hammer doing this first thing, and not after meeting The Innocent Girl Who Is Mesmerized and Goes All Sexy But Lives, The Sometimes Already Sexy Girl Who is Bitten and Dies, The Young Hero Who Loves the Girl Who Lives, Various Peasants, and The Why Aren’t You Peter Cushing Van Helsing Stand-In. I mean, we are still getting all these people, but with a glimpse of Dracula at the beginning? Be still my beating heart!
Opening titles, Christopher Lee still isn’t above the title. I’m almost giving up.
A dead girl (possibly only for now) with neck wounds is being carried through the woods into the tavern, where she is placed on the table. I guess they don’t have a hospital, but really. People have to eat on that.
The men say they must free themselves of this evil, even though it will soon be dark, though it is visibly about 10 o’clock in the morning. They have extremely short days in these Dracula films.
The wonderfully pompadoured priest (Michael Gwynn) tries to stop them, since violence only leads to further violence, which is an unusual way of looking at the situation. I think even Gandhi and Martin Luther King would agree that pacifism and passive resistance isn’t much use against vampires. Read the room, Father.
They tromp meaningfully through the woods with wagons full of God only knows what, and when they get to Dracula’s castle, the tavern keeper (Michael Ripper, seen previously in Taste the Blood of Dracula)…RINGS THE DOORBELL. I mean. There is a time for politeness and this is clearly not it.
Okay, I get it, he’s trying to Trojan Horse his way in past the giant gates, getting Dracula’s servant (Patrick Troughton, aka the Second Doctor) to open up, pretending that he is alone and not with half the village.
They burn down the castle while the the cheap bat puppet tries to wake Dracula, who slumbers on, completely in the open, near a window, streaming in sunlight.
The castle is in flames, the men walk away, happy in the knowledge of a job well done, and the movie is over after only ten minutes. On the short side, to be sure, but satisfying.
But wait! The cheap bat puppet swoops out of the church, where every woman in the village has been sheltering, and they are all bloody and dead. This is one busy, busy cheap bat puppet! Did not one of these women have a broom or a pillowcase? Did they all sit still, waiting to be ripped to shreds by a cheap bat puppet? Who is hardly a jaguar?
So, I guess it’s a tie? All of the women in town are dead, but so is Dracula? I’m guessing he might return…around the 40 minute mark.
But first, there are many joyful young people and it’s Sarah’s (Jenny Hanley) birthday party and there’s champagne, so my guess is that it’s not the very next day. Or possibly it is and they are elsewhere, because this doesn’t seem like the same village. They look for Paul (Christopher Matthews), who isn’t there.
This is because Paul is in the bed of a Loose Woman in a giant wig. He says he has to go, the Loose Woman is agitated that he might be going to see an Even Looser Woman, but he claims to be going to night school. This is the comedy portion of the film, it seems.
Paul tries to leave, runs into her father the Burgomaster, who is unaware of his daughter’s Loose Nature, she claims he tries to interfere with her, the father is outraged and sends his men out to arrest him for tape, which is hilarious, due to previously mentioned Looseness.
Back at the party, Paul’s brother Simon (Dennis Waterman) gives Sarah a ring, she puts it not on her engagement finger, to his dismay. Then Paul shows up and gives Sarah a picture of…Sarah? Is that a thing? To give someone a framed giant closeup of their own face? Sarah says, “It’s beautiful!” is she referring to her own looks or of Paul’s talent as a photographer? The glass on the frame is cracked, so Paul takes it back to fix it.
The Burgomaster’s men arrive at the party and Paul climbs out the window and into a carriage that gallops away in the bright post 9p sunlight.
Paul falls off the coach, goes to a tavern, where the young woman at the window says she can’t take him in, they are closed , the next village is 10 miles away, there is no place around here but the castle, which he mustn’t go into, especially at night, but she doesn’t know by because she is new here. My guess is that happy-go-lucky Paul is a goner.
She lets him in after all, they start macking, and the tavern keeper who lead the charge against Dracula comes in and throws him out. He finds an empty coach and four, and goes inside to sleep, as one does. Dracula’s servant comes out to the woods and drives the coach to the castle.
Paul wakes, gets out of the coach, is attacked by the cheap bat puppet, and then there is a beautiful lady in a flowing gown, and by golly, you can’t trust them in these movies, Paul, you goop!
She goes off to prepare a room for him, and then there is Dracula! Who is chatty as the day is long about how these things are all that is left from the fire, so I was wrong about entirely everything.
Paul FINALLY twigs that things are a trifle weird and tries to beg off and leave, but they will not hear of it. I’ve said before about there being a time and a place for politeness, but nobody listens to me.
Paul takes off his shirt, and the girl, Tania (Anouska Hempel), comes in and begs for him to hold her and to love her. He needs no encouragement, of course.
In the afterglow, she decides to have a lil snacky snack on his jugular, but then Dracula appears! And he…stabs her? With a visibly rubber knife? I…what? I have no idea what the hell is happening in this movie, except that whatever it is, there’s another 57 minutes of it.
The cock crows, so we can tell that it’s morning, there being no difference in the quality of the light. Drac and Tania are gone, and Paul can’t get out of his room, so he ties the bed curtains together to climb out the window, being that he is approximately 1,000 stories up in the air over a matte painting. Just die already, Paul.
He climbs in another window, into a room suspiciously filled with coffins, because remember, Dracula likes to make sure that his coffins are are near sunlight as possible.
Back at the tavern, the Burgomaster’s soldiers come to find Paul to arrest him. The girl tells them he went to the castle, the soldiers instantly agree that that is too far out of their jurisdiction and trundle off home.
Simon and Sarah are looking for Paul, they go to the tavern, the girl cheerfully gives them directions to the castle, blah blah blah. For someone new in town who knows nothing about the castle, she sure can’t stop telling people to go there.
Simon tells Sarah to stay, she won’t leave him, they have that same exchange about twelve times, the sunlight is dappled and early morning bright, but it’s about to be nighttime, as per usual. The cheap bat puppet hovers over them menacingly.
They go to the castle, Dracula welcomes them, says no-one has been there, and starts chatting about the fire again. He’s finally talking in one of these films again, but only has one topic of conversation. He gives Sarah the eye, what with the fact that he just got rid of Tania (with a knife? I still can’t get over that) and he is in the market.
In an interesting twist, for once it isn’t that Drac saw the picture of Sarah and became obsessed, this time it was the creepy servant! And when he realizes that she is in the castle and that she will be a light snack for the master, well! There may be some disobedience happening in this here establishment!
What will happen with Simon and Sarah? Is Paul still alive? Who knows? Well, you will, if you watch this movie!
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog