Any 4K Hammer release gets special attention; this one has Christopher Lee as Dracula so will spike the radar of collector completists. Its reputation is not high, but it does predate the company’s woeful attempts to update the franchise in a contemporary setting. Kino & StudioCanal’s presentation can’t be faulted — the 4K remaster flatters the film’s cinematography, and the main new extra is a Tim Lucas commentary. Jenny Hanley, Patrick Troughton, Anouska Hempel, Michael Gwynn and Michael Ripper co-star.
Scars of Dracula — 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1970 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date December 16, 2025 / available through Kino Lorber / 44.95
Starring: Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Christopher Matthews, Patrick Troughton, Michael Gwynn, Michael Ripper, Wendy Hamilton, Anouska Hempel, Delia Lindsay, Bob Todd, Toke Townley.
Cinematography: Moray Grant
Art Director: Scott Macgregor
Special Effects: Roger Dicken
Wardrobe Mistress: Laura Nightingale
Film Editor: James Needs
Music Composer: James Bernard
Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds) from the character by Bram Stoker
Produced by Aida Young
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
What can be said about Scars of Dracula? The finished product is less interesting on its own merit than as a signal for the beginning of the end for Hammer Films. The little studio became a phenomenal success for the British film industry, bringing in money from all corners of the globe. They had tried to branch out to genres other than horror, and their fantasies with Ursula Andress and Raquel Welch were conspicuous successes. By the end of the 1960s the brand had dimmed. The medium-budget horrors felt repetitive. The only franchise with legs were the Dracula pictures, and then only if they starred Christopher Lee.
Hammer’s decline was tied to big changes in the industry. When Hollywood investment backed away from London, Hammer’s co-production deals were allowed to expire, leaving Sir James Carreras to scramble for money where it could be found. Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) had just been purchaed by EMI; the deal they made for Horror of Frankenstein and Scars of Dracula was not generous. For those two films, the initial American distributor was the very minor label American Continental. Photo layouts appeared in early issues of Cinefantastique, but we didn’t see the movies themselves until the VHS home video era.
Was EMI told that Hammer would re-invent their horror classics for a new era? There seems to have been little commitment to the final product. The budget was slashed, which affected the casting. Some reports say that Christopher Lee was talked into accepting a lower salary with the plea that a refusal would put people out of work. Other reports say that Lee liked the Scars of screenplay, which gave him more dialogue than all three of his previous Dracula pix.
Was anybody guiding the two pictures? Hammer’s Jimmy Sangster re-wrote and directed the Frankenstein film as a comedy, but the advertising didn’t let the audience in on the joke. Writing as John Elder, producer Anthony Hinds had been responsible for some of Hammer’s most creative screenplays, starting ten years before with The Brides of Dracula. The Scars screenplay replays the same vampire scenario with few new ideas. The two Dracula films previous also had a been-there-done-that quality, but they were handsome productions with occasional impressive, impactful scenes.
Scars of Dracula has no connection to the earlier Chris Lee entries in the franchise, with the only continuity being that he is resurrected from the pile of dust that he became at the end of Taste the Blood of Dracula. A vampire bat kills the daughter of a landlord/saloon keeper (Michael Ripper). He leads a mob to set Dracula’s castle aflame, but they make no attempt to locate and destroy The Count. On the same night, the town women are all killed by more of Dracula’s vampire bats, an outrage that reduces the survivors into a state of fearful subservience. The sad priest (Michael Gwynn) feels he has lost his flock.
Fleeing a false charge of rape leveled by the Burgomaster’s daughter Alice (Delia Lindsay), young Paul Carlson (Christopher Matthews) runs to the hills, where vampire enabler Klove (Patrick Troughton of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger) continues to tend to the Count. Paul briefly meets the landlord’s new maid Julie (Wendy Hamilton), and at the castle is enticed further by the exotic Tania (Anouska Hempel). He is seduced by her, without knowing that she’s Dracula’s vampire bride.
Dracula takes his revenge on Tania for sleeping with Paul, who becomes Dracula’s prisoner. The very next day, Paul’s brother Simon (Dennis Waterman) and his official girlfriend Sarah (Jenny Hanley) come to the castle to rescue him. Klove denies that Paul was ever there, and Dracula quickly puts Sarah under his hypnotic spell. Having already fallen in love with a photo carried by Paul, Klove is shocked to meet Sarah in person. Will Paul, Simon and Sarah escape? Will Dracula transform the virginal Sarah into his next vampire bride?
Let’s not waste time moaning over things in Scars that don’t appeal. The basic complaint is that it looks like a minimal effort to get a vampire picture in the can, for as little money as possible. In most scenes, the capable director Roy Ward Baker just covers the action. Dracula gets an okay special-effect entrance, but later on is given no special visual or directorial attention. The scenes are simply efficient coverage; the story lumbers along, as if marking time.
Hammer was already trying to force ‘youth angles’ into its films, even the period pictures. The teenagers’ story in … Has Risen from the Grave was a time-wasting drag, and the oversexed young adults in Scars are equally uninteresting. Paul and Simon sport mod haircuts; wherever Paul goes, he just happens to meet yet another nubile sex-hungry babe. The actresess appear to be talented, but are mostly asked to deliver come-on gestures, and to display cleavage. Jenny Hanley and Anoushka Hempel were plucked from the Piz Gloria harem in the latest Bond film. Both seem capable, but only Ms. Hanley has enough screen time to make an impact.
We’ll just touch on the film’s overall cheapness. The flat, high-key lighting of most interiors kills the illusion that we’re anywhere but in a cheap movie set. The mediocre painted backdrops aren’t good enough for a TV sitcom. Matte shots and miniatures representing Dracula’s castle are so poor, we at first think they might be artwork on the cover of a book that someone’s hand will open. We see some busy action of horses pulling a carriage at a lope pace, but in one studio interior of Paul trying to escape in this carriage, the angle tries to hide the fact that no horses are attached. We won’t get into petty continuity issues. For what the editor has to work with, the movie is very well cut.
The most distracting non-effect are Dracula’s bats, which serve as messengers and surveillance drones when not committing mass murders down in the village. They are all stiff string puppets, even less convincing than those in old Universal pix. Hammer’s early movies said that Dracula couldn’t change into other animals; but the landlord says that he can control them. The otherwise excellent Kiss of the Vampire feature animated bats that really don’t work, even if they make for an exciting finale. American distributors evaluating Scars could easily have given it a thumbs-down on the basis of its laughably unconvincing bat puppets. Poor Michael Gwynne departs the movie in a ‘bat attack’ that is more comical than horrific.
Chris Lee strikes some dynamic Dracula poses, but he chooses to affect a detached, sometimes zombie-ish attitude. It’s as if Lee were working on his own interpretation without sharing it with director Baker. It’s a curious thing — we like having so much on-screen Lee, but his dialogue adds little. We can imagine some executive saying, ‘next time bring everything up to date … we’ll distract the audience with miniskirts and rock music.’
Dracula performs some Human Fly action, scampering up a tower wall. That explains who nobody can find his crypt — there’s no interior door. It doesn’t explain why Drac has a window open to the sunshine just a couple of paces from his coffin. Jenny Hanley, Patrick Troughton and Chris Lee do well on the finale on castle rampart, but Dennis Waterman is lifeless as the true-blue boyfriend. Waterman went forward to a prolific TV career, but here we don’t believe his Simon has the strength to bully Klove or the nerve to face Dracula.
One visual effect at the finale is very good. Dracula had earlier used a knife to slay his own bride; here he threatens Simon with a sword pulled from a charcoal fire. The glowing red blade is so good, we don’t think it’s an optical or an electric sword. We’re guessing that it’s a front projection trick, with the new 3-M front projection screen material sprayed directly on the sword’s blade.
Diehard Hammer fans will worship every film frame featuring Christopher Lee. After a solid two decades chasing every possible screen acting opportunity, Lee had to feel that Hammer had become a career cul-de-sac. Hope had already arrived in the form of a good role in a big production by Billy Wilder, and Lee was quoted as saying, ‘Billy Wilder rescued me from the living dead.’ The Wilder film did no business but Lee did begin to appear in more non-horror pictures. The happy payoff came decades later, with career timing and good health that made him available for George Lucas and Peter Jackson. Instead of slipping into geriatric retirement, Lee finished up a bigger star than ever.
Scars of Dracula is no gem, but it does explain ‘where Hammer Was At’ just as the studio imploded. And if we don’t see how The Count is ‘killed’ in this episode, how will we understand his resurrection in Dracula A.D 1972?
The KL Studio Classics 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Scars of Dracula is a fine-quality remaster. It’s billed as a new HDR/Dolby Vision encoding from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, presumable performed by rights holder StudioCanal. The image is precise and the color timing well-judged. Skin tones are warm and rich throughout. The movie precedes Hammer’s all-in commitment to girlie nudity, but it does parade a bare bottom once or twice. The exteriors tend to look better than the high-key day interiors; more than one commentator remarks on continuity issues between day and night for skies, etc.
The exacting 4K image also lays bare the artificiality of the paintings and model work, and some fairly woeful effects, such as the flames on the tiny castle miniature. These things may not have stood out so strongly on a 16mm print or an old DVD.
Very much on the plus side is James Bernard’s music score, with an expressive romantic theme to go with the expected ‘terror’ clues. Along with Lee’s presence, the music makes us feel we’re back in familiar Hammer territory.
Kino retains some capable extras we believe were produced by Anchor Bay 25 years ago. Director Roy Ward Baker and Christopher Lee are both on task for a commentary track, paying close attention to the film to pull up old memories. Lee talks about wishing that Hammer had done more with the original Dracula character as conceived by Bram Stoker. From the same vintage comes a 19-minute docu featurette that places experts Kevin Lyons, Jonathan Rigby, Alan Barnes and John J. Johnston with actress Jenny Hanley to give an in-depth description of Hammer Films in 1970.
Apparently not new to this disc but new to us is a commentary by Tim Lucas. He does what some of the earlier experts do, approaching some of the film’s grievous flaws as if they were grace notes. But he adds plenty of expert observations on the film’s structure, reaching into the context of other Hammer films. Simon and Sarah’s mission to rescue Paul is compared to a similar setup in Psycho.
All in all, Scars of Dracula is not the utter disaster we feared, but it is woefully undistinguished. The title always bugged us — it just feels like a way to get the word ‘scars’ in the title. When I hear it I always think “Cigars of Dracula” and imagine Christopher Lee doing a commercial for a tobacco company.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Scars of Dracula
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Fair ++
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
New audio commentary by Tim Lucas
Vintage audio commentary with Roy Ward Baker, Christopher Lee and Hammer Films Historian Marcus Hearn
Vintage documentary featurette Blood Rites – Inside Scars of Dracula
Trailer and Double-bill Trailer with Horror of Frankenstein.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: December 31, 2025
(7446scar)
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