Scars of Dracula (Roy Ward Baker, 1970)

That's it.  Dracula has defeated me.  I've nothing to say.  It's not a great movie by Hammer (or any) standard, it's not terrible (as grade B horror goes).  It just...is.

 Christopher Lee makes his fifth appearance as Hammer's Count Dracula, 6th film in the series, a rush job debuting a mere half a year after Taste the Blood of Dracula in 1970.  Seems longer, many years longer, in human years, long enough for  Christopher Lee to have lost his vitality.  His Dracula is now a dough-faced stay-at-home who sends his manservant Klove for take-out.  He doesn't scowl, he doesn't lust or smirk.  Worse, he doesn't engage.  In order for the movie to serve up any victims people have to oblige the script by wandering into his ruined abbey through contrivance, and even for them he can't muster any enthusiasm.  He reads his lines at them, not to them.  Watching the movie makes me feel the same way. 

How did this happen?  The last film was bright in image, color, and idea with lively characters in an engaging premise.  Hammer must have spent it's vampire budget for that year, because the production values for Scars are immediately revealed to be low.  The first life onscreen is a rubber bat vomiting red paint in one of the Count's less memorable resurrections.  That's followed by a string of threadbare interior sets, some obvious painted backdrops, a model castle, and no establishing shots to lend a sense of locality.  Not that the photography is terrible, just severely curtailed.  We still get a few beautiful shots of English forest, and splashes of vivid reds and purples.  And warm cleavage, of course, Hammer has not forgotten itself.

Scars is not a loss, entirely...I suppose...if one were to look at it as an example of Saturday night horror schlock then it does hit the obligatory notes.  It's certainly better than many B-grade genre offerings.  By Hammer standards it is horror on auto-pilot.  When I first bought the DVD I was happily surprised that it wasn't as awful as I'd been led to believe.  On the contrary, it passes the time well in spite of it's limitations.  Ah...but this is now my third or fourth go-round for the movie, and like the Count it no longer engages.  The Satanic Rites of Dracula earns disparagement as well, I've not been kind to it myself, but at least it has a fascinating idea behind it (we'll get to that review eventually).   Scars tries to get on by ramping up the graphic bloodshed.  It makes for a shock but not for a story. 

For that you've got your standard protagonists-who've-wandered-afield plot.  It works well enough, it always does. 

One of our heroes is Paul, a charming young rogue and scoundrel who every woman he meets wants to bed.   See, that's supposed to be Dracula's provenance.  No wonder the Count looks so demoralized.  His own film series has robbed him of his identity. 

Paul has blundered into a film contrivance that takes him from a burgomaster's manse (more specifically, the bedroom of the burgomaster's daughter) to a birthday party to the border of the nation and beyond. It doesn't get any clearer than that, really, the slashed budget means being pointedly vague as to cities, towns, hamlets, and borders.  Paul's transport was a carriage yoked to a pair of spooked horses.  Must've been pretty spooked to have hauled Paul across two countries, or maybe the mansions were already out in the boonies.  Dunno.  The horses ditch Paul near a small village (which we also  don't see), and he is quickly run off by townsfolk who've had it with wandering strangers rousing the damn vampires.  Paul makes it to a small studio set that hints that the ruins of a castle must be nearby.  You won't see the castle either, although a scale model of a castle helps you imagine what it might look like if there were one.  Paul's brother Simon and the woman he loves, Sara, will come looking for him and meet the same welcome. 

They will meet the town's priest, a dispirited man who lost his courage when a previous attempt to rid the town of Dracula led to a mass slaughter of the raiding party's loved ones.  That could have been interesting to explore but the priest isn't a good hook for the target youth audience so we get Sara and Simon instead.  Then there's Klove (Patrick Troughton), Dracula's hapless slave, who takes a liking to Sara.  Dracula likes Sara.  Simon likes Sara.  Sara pines for Paul.  No, seriously, it's not a sex farce.  Really.  There's no subtext, no theme, nothing of depth transpires. The story moves at a pace, and Hammer asks nothing more of it.  If you're happy with horror that checks all the ingredients  then Scars will be enough for you.  It leads to a fittingly uninspired finale in which Evil is felled by his bad judgement in exposing himself to the weather. 

As game as most of the actors are, there is a brighter spark of life in the unlikely form of a landlord played by Hammer regular Michael Ripper.  He's a brusque, unfriendly man who reluctantly reveals to his barmaid that he is driven by fear and precaution.  He'd like to protect her and alienates her instead. 

From the Stoker novel, we finally have our shot of Dracula traversing the side of his castle bat-wise, and the mysterious window that can only be reached by bedsheets tied together.  Don't look for continuity, this production has no ties to the rest of the series.  Even Klove is a different character than appeared in Dracula, Prince of Darkness.

Scars was directed by Roy Ward Baker, who also helmed the superior Quatermass and the Pit and The Vampire Lovers., both for Hammer Studios.  Script was by Anthony Hunds (credited as John Elder).  Hinds had written many previous Hammer films including the prior Dracula sequels (uncredited on the best of them, Brides of Dracula).  I would have guessed that a less taelnted outsider to Hammer had penned Scars.

Taste the Blood of Dracula (Peter Sasdy, 1970)

*******SPOILERS Included*******

Do you remember Jaws: The Revenge?  That was the fourth in the series, in which the shark avenged itself on the Brody family in Jamaica, quietly intoning after each of its victims, "The fuhst", "The second", "The thuhd"...  Taste the Blood of Dracula is at essence a pretty good movie but it suffers a number of missteps, and one of them is making Dracula as mechanical as Bruce the shark.

Picking up where Dracula Has Risen From the Grave ends, a merchant happens upon the (un)dying Dracula as he disintegrates.  The merchant, Weller (Roy Kinnear) gathers the vestments and some of the blood, which has turned to powder.  He knows who Dracula is, and his instincts tell him it's a mistake...but the mercenary in him can't turn away from a sure sale.  Someone is going to want these. 

Cut to an unknown time later.  A trio of family men and respected elders spend one Sunday night a month in secret debauchery.  These are monied men, to be sure, the finest that polite society can offer.  One of them, Hargood (Geoffrey Keen)  treats his wife and daughter especially cruelly in his guilt.  Secker (John Carson) is a decent man, learned, traveled, experienced: in a word, jaded.  He's the closest thing to a Van Helsing character in this movie, full of useful knowledge and will voluntarily  do the right thing, but it;s not his vocation.  Paxton (Peter Sallis)  is the weakling, easily cowed into going  along with anything the alpha dogs want.  Problem is, they've grown bored withe the same old thrills. 

Enter young Lord Courtley, snotty, arrogant, and much farther along their path than they reckon.  Courtley lives for satiation and offense.  His latest quest is to meet Satan himself - or, if not Satan, then the closest thing to him.  To that end he needs the unholy treasure waiting to be purchased in Weller's shop: the blood of Dracula.  To get it, he'll need the money of the three thrillseekers.  Lucky for him they want his services in guiding them into darker pastures. 

Pretty good stuff so far, right?  The movie doesn't actually belong to them but to their children, innocent bright young things with bright untainted futures ahead of them.  They laugh and smile and talk of their pending marriages and elopements.  Paul Paxton and Alice Hargood are madly in love with each other.  Neither can comprehend why the elder Hargood hates Paul with such depth.  That Paul's offense is simply being the son of Hargood's partner in vice is lost to them.  The film has a Christian theme that is a little muddy - the sins of the fathers and all that.  Children and parents alike are going to pay.  Like the previous Hammer Dracula, this one is targeted at the older adolescent audience but this time trusting them with stronger meet and an earned adult rating (stronger material, an early glimpse of nudity for Hammer, and more bright red blood).  The darker nature of the film is leavened by the forthright sweetness of the kids, backed by a tender ballad from composer James Bernard (replacing his usual theme for Dracula) and by beautiful locales.  Taste the Blood is the series peak for cinematography,  with natural colors, almost no use of gels, and baroque art design. Every frame is full of details and textures to keep your eyes busy. 

Courtley performs a ceremony at a lonely, abandoned cemetery  (Highgate Cemetery provides the exteriors, a highly photogenic location).  This involves flattering himself by donning the Count's cape, clasp, and ring.  Assembling his three conspirators, he fills their goblets with Dracula's powdered blood revivified into a foul brew with a few drops of his own.  If the drink looks muddy, the plot is even muddier on the mechanics of Dracula's resurrection.  Courtley doesn't know precisely what is supposed to happen, and is taken by surprise when the potable gives him intense pain.  Hargood, Paxton, and Secker had already balked at drinking, and when they see Courtley felled they proceed to kick and beat him to death in their horror and revulsion.  They go home vowing the night never happened. 

Into dead Courtley arrives Dracula, helped by a dubious fx shot.  Courtley's corpse transforms into Christopher Lee who vows revenge on the three who have destroyed his servant.  Let me stop there for a moment, because I've got a few questions.  First, drinking Dracula's blood has always been a part of every adaptation, but it already had a function - it seals the bond.  Hammer was never concerned with continuity, though, and here it seems to have a different use...and the script is unclear just what that is.  If Courtley wasn't supposed to die by the ceremony alone, then was Dracula not meant to return in person?  Else, what's the difference?  He's got a body, what's he bitching about?   A servant isn't much use if he's sharing his body with you.  And what of the other three who were supposed to imbibe?  Would this have resulted in four Christopher Lees running around London spouting wooden dialog and glaring a lot? 

In any case, Chris Lee is reduced to glowering a lot.  He's out for revenge, just like the last film only with even less flair.  There's is none of the usual lust for life, the passion, the ferocity.  When he drinks from a woman, the pleasure he takes from it is fleeting, almost perfunctory.  He's the addict whose fix no longer satisfies.  Like Hargood, Paxton, and Secker he's grown bored, his thrills are no longer strong enough.  But, no, actually, that's reading into it a more interesting film than it really is - he's just badly utilized by an otherwise engaging script, and played by an actor who really  is bored by what his script offers.  That's the biggest flaw in this Hammer entry, it's a Dracula film in which Dracula is a mere engine to get us from A to Z.  He's the least interesting thing in his own movie.  He gets by on Lee's presence alone. 

That's too bad because his revenge is an interesting idea to explore.  His choice is to use the children against their parents.  In short, he corrupts them before their parents can and aims them homeward again as killers.  The earlier theme of vampirism as sexual liberation is out the window for a more puritan take, as patricide becomes a DeSadean pleasure for the girls.

Taste the Blood comes to a close with more muddled writing, in which the grand conflict sees Dracula ineffectually throwing bits of church from as much distance as he can get inside the church.  Pretty disappointing from a led villain.  He's been using this crypt as a hangout as it's long since been desecrated by the likes of Courtely holding black masses.  We know he can't be on hallowed ground.  This makes his demise one of the more interesting, and had the potential to be satisfying were it handled better - the church is re-consecrated with him inside it, trapping and killing him.  That's the idea, anyway. but it's Paul doing the re-consecrating.  Not a priest, not anyone at all qualified...ah, that's okay, Jesus would instruct that all it takes is faith, and anyone is worthy, but the movie never builds Paul as a man of any particular faith.  In fact, all he does is light a couple of candles and that seems to redeem the whole building. 

I've identified three problems, all of them found in the writing.  A little tweaking would have helped. none of these flaws touch the core story, yet are enough to blunt the movie as a satisfying whole.  It took me time to warm to Taste the Blood.  Today I find the bulk of it to be worthy...more weighty and fully formed than Dracula: Prince of Darkness or Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.  It's just too bad that Dracula himself is upstaged by...just about everybody.

"The first!  The second!  The third, Aaaah-HA-HA-HA-HAAA!"

*     **     **     **     **     **     *
On a personal note, I'm more of a Secker than a Van Helsing (See review for Hammer's 'Horror of Dracula').

I am in the process of moving and have not had internet access for a while now, except a few minutes each week.  Also, a few of my titles are packed away.  So, I won't be putting these up in chronological order...pretty sure Jess Franco's Dracula should have been up before this.  Also, still no decent screencap capacity.  Apologies for the lack of shots.