Is Scotland Dracula's second home?

Published on Saturday 8 December 2007 01:14

MENTION iconic "Scottish" films, and responses will range from Braveheart through Greyfriars Bobby to Brigadoon. But a new Caledonian film reputation is now being forged: Scotland as the backdrop to scary horror movies, putting us up there with Transylvania. Filming has begun in Edinburgh of an adaptation of the first in Clive Barker's Books of Blood series.

It is the latest in a line of major horror films to be shot in Scotland in recent years. These include Neil Marshall's 2002 cult hit Dog Soldiers, the "combat horror" set in the Highlands. And next year comes Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic horror film starring Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell, set at Blackness Castle, West Lothian.

Experts believe Scotland has huge untapped potential because of our natural landscape and atmospheric locations, ranging from the haunting, sinister wynds of Edinburgh to our dark and gloomy glens. But the problem for many will be in defining where docu-drama ends and horror fiction begins. Edinburgh's Cowgate on a dark December night can play host to scenes of hen parties that blur the line between reality TV and big-screen horror. And who has not encountered on our roads those swarms of menacing black leather-clad, helmeted bikers. Only when they remove their helmets do we discover the worst horror: middle-aged tax accountants for whom life holds too few terrors.