Studio Canal leap in before Hammer to be the first to release a 4K transfer of one of the studio's Dracula movies. Admittedly it's the one at which some Hammer fans turn their nose up, but this edition, with its very appealing new cover art, is going to look very nice on the shelf along with all the others when they finally come out.
SCARS OF DRACULA was the fifth film to star Christopher Lee as Dracula and it's understandable that by that time the series was getting a bit tired. Usually at pains to maintain continuity, the use of a script possibly intended to follow the third film (DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE) throws any sense of this being a direct series follow on by having a bat dribble blood on the Count's ashes to bring him back.
Once he's up and about we take a break to meet the usual Bright Young Things, including hero Dennis Waterman, heroine Jenny Hanley and soon to be impaled on a spike Christopher Matthews, whose midnight dash from the bed of the burgomaster's daughter causes him to end up at Castle Dracula.
SCARS is, arguably, the low point of the series but that doesn't mean there's nothing to enjoy here. The little cardboard castle is quite charming and the set for Castle Dracula isn's bad either. John Elder / Anthony Hinds' script ransacks bits of Stoker but it's better to have a bit of Stoker in these things than none at all, and the concept of the Count's resting place being a room all-but inaccessible to anyone but him is nicely creepy. Composer James Bernard probably emerges the best from this, providing a score that deservedly received a dedicated CD release some years later.
Studio Canal's transfer looks splendid. SCARS always looked very crisp on their previous Blu-ray release but this is even better. Whoever thought we'd get to see Bob Todd in 4K? Archival extras include the Christopher Lee / Roy Ward Baker commentary track, a short making of (Blood Rites - 18 minutes) and a Christopher Matthews interview rom 2006 (11 minutes).
New is an interview with author (and relative of Bram) Dacre Stoker (17 minutes) who covers the material taken from the novel that was used in SCARS OF DRACULA, and a discussion between critic Clarisse Loughrey and actor/writer Isaura Barbé-Brown (31 minutes) which is very listenable and (surprisingly) finds some nice things to say about a film that has received quite the critical drubbing over the years. There's also a still gallery and trailer, and the set comes with a 64 page book containing new essays and the original press kit, as well as two posters.
Hammer's SCARS OF DRACULA is out on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Studio Canal on Monday 24th November 2025
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