Scars of Dracula
A vampire bat enters a sealed room inside Castle Dracula with a coffin containing ashes: it regurgitates blood onto the ashes and reanimates them. Later a village girl is found dead and brought to the local tavern, and the landlord [Michael Ripper] realizes that Dracula [Christopher Lee] is back. He sends all the village women to the church so the men can storm the castle and torch it. The villagers and priest encounter the servant Klove {Patrick Troughton}, who tells them the fire won't reach his master. On returning to the church, the men open the door and vampire bats fly out. Inside they find the women dead, horribly mutilated.Meanwhile, Sarah Framsen [Jenny Hanley] is celebrating her birthday. All of her friends are there, except for one empty place at the table for playboy Paul Carlson [Christopher Matthews]. His brother Simon [Dennis Waterman] is competing with Paul for Sarah's hand. Simon gives Sarah a ring but realizes she is still torn between the brothers.Paul is in bed with Alice, who lies about how late in the evening it is: he tries to make a hasty exit but drops a wrapped present for Sarah and infuriates Alice. She wraps herself in the bed sheets and gives chase when her father--the burgomaster--arrives, and she takes the opportunity to get back at Paul by suggesting he took advantage of her: Paul escapes as the burgomaster's men go after him.Paul arrives at the party and gives Sarah his present: a framed photo of her. Sarah and Simon try gallantly to hide the fact that the glass over the picture is cracked (from having been dropped earlier), but when Paul sees the damage he takes back the gift and promises to have it fixed the next day. He then has to flee the burgomaster's men by jumping out a window into a coach. The runaway vehicle drops him at the tavern and, after a disagreeable argument with the landlord, he leaves on foot and winds up at Castle Dracula looking for overnight lodging. Instead, he is seduced by the mysterious Tanya [Anouska Hempel], who is a victim of the count but not fully a vampire. Before dawn, she bares her fangs and prepares to claim Paul as a victim, but Dracula interferes, knocking Paul unconscious and viciously stabbing Tanya to death. Paul regains consciousness at the cock's crow and covers the carnage with a bed sheet and fashions a makeshift rope to scale the castle wall and gain access to the floor below. The sheets are pulled back up by Klove, leaving Paul trapped in Dracula's crypt to await dusk.In the bedroom, Klove finds Sarah's picture among Paul's belongings. He sets it on the bed table to amuse himself as he dismembers and disposes of Tanya's body.Simon and Sarah arrive at the castle looking for Paul, but Klove helps them escape as he is smitten with Sarah, whom he recognizes from the portrait. The servant is punished by Dracula, who burns him with a sword heated to glowing red in the fireplace. Simon and Sarah escape to the nearby village where they seek help. Sarah stays with the priest while Simon returns to the castle and bribes the servant to help him. Unfortunately, he gets helped into Dracula's crypt where he finds his brother Paul dead, impaled on a hook. Meanwhile, the vampire bat has mauled the priest to death and Sarah flees, seeking Simon back at the castle. The bat rips off her cross, and Dracula draws near. Simon escapes the crypt and confronts Dracula on a rampart with an iron spike, but his aim is poor and Dracula retrieves it to use against Simon. A raging storm produces a lightning bolt that strikes Dracula, and the lord of the undead is electrocuted and incinerated by the intense heat and falls to his destruction from the battlement.
good versus evil, violence, gothic