Dracula

BBC. Dracula. I've seen the production from the seventies starring Louis Jourdan that the BBC did, and it was good, especially considering how well it aged.
So when I heard there was a new, I was excited. David Suchet (Poirot) as Van Helsing? Marc Warren as Dracula? I'd seen Warren in the adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather as the assassin Mr Teatime and I was impressed. And as the new Doctor Who as the yardstick of what the BBC could do with special effects, well... Dracula should be just awesome.
Really.

It should be.

It wasn't.

I'll try and do this quick beause it hurts to think about it. First, the focus shifts from Mina and Jonathan to Lucy and Arthur Holmwood. Lucy want's to marry Arthur, but Arthur has syphilis, passed on from his mother at birth.

Arthur doesn't want to infect Lucy, so he... he contacts a cult that brings Dracula to London to help cure the VD.

Yes, really.

Things go wrong. I'd like to say "Things go wrong from there," but really, they go wrong from the moment the dvd starts playing.

Other than as something for Poirot fans to watch between seasons, I'd say avoid this version. It's well acted and the sets and costumes are nice, but the story is as dumb as a bowl of hair.

Scream Blacula Scream

As awesome as Blacula was it was missing a couple of things... Voodoo and Pam Grier.
Thankfully, Samuel Z. Arkoff saw how well Blacula did and figuered the best way to fix that problem was to do a sequel- and cleverly addressing the Return problem.

Prince Mamuwalde was dispatched at the end of Blacula in a classic manner, but his bones are used in a Voodoo ritual at the beginning of Scream Blacula Scream by Willis, a practicioner, to take revenge on the cult that rejected his leadership.

Since leadership in the cult had to go to someone, it goes to Lisa, played by Pam Grier, who, despite that fact that Mamuwalde's reincarnated love died at the end of the last movie, is the reincarnation of his bride.

Lucky for her she's involved with Justin, a police officer with an interest in ancient African artifacts.

Again, William Marshall bring so much to the role- the tormented gentleman, revolted by what he was to do to survive. There weren't enough seventies Blaxploitation horror films, but the Blacula films are at the top of the list- even making more contemporary films like Vampire in Brooklyn pale in comparison.

Van Helsing

When I saw Van Helsing at the movie theater, I hated it.

It's good to know it's just as good on dvd.

It's a sort of tribute to the classic Universal Horror movies, directed by Stephen Sommers, the fellow who did The Mummy movies. It has Dracula, Frankenstein's Creature, The Wolfman, and the Hunchbacked assistant, like the classics House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula.

Of course, the House movies didn't have superninja Van Helsing with ubercool steampunk weapons played by Hugh Jackman.

Nor did they have Kate Beckinsdale, playing Transylvanian battle vixen Anna. (Van Helsing and Underworld seem to have made her action-chick, which is disconcerting for me since I learned to love her during multiple cinema viewings of The Last Days of Disco.)

But Richard Roxburgh has a heckuva time playing Count Dracula- playing it over the top, since he is an undead prince of darkness.

Frankenstein's Creature is probably the most sympathetic here than in many productions in recent memory- in fact the opening sequence of the birth of the Creature and the angry villagers at a burning windmill is the best part of the whole movie, filmed in black and white, the sets reminiscent of the James Whale Frankenstein movies for Universal.

There's a nice tip of the hat to serious horror fans with the town undertaker, with his top hat, scraggly and feral teeth, he's reminiscent of Lon Chaney Sr in London After Midnight.

I think my main problem with Van Helsing is that it's a summer blockbuster- lots of fight scenes and explosions and plot holes you can drive a tank through (how many nights of the full moon does this story have?). I think I'd have liked it if it were a little tighter a story that wasn't so caught up on the special effects.

That said, Perry's glad I've finally found something that isn't totally annoying- he's actaully enjoying it.

Nosferatu the Vampyre

I've seen a lot of movies, but Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre practically left me speechless.

Herzog remade the Muranu movie in the late seventies and it still holds up wonderfully.

First, it's a beautiful film. Composition, lighting, sets, costumes, it's just a joy to look at. It's like the Merchant/Ivory horror film- seriously, even a die hard horror hater that lives to re-watch Room With a View could watch this movie and love it.

Secondly, the acting is superb. Klaus Kinski brings enough melancholy to the role that even with the make up you almost feel sorry for him. It is a little distracting... that sometimes... he sounds... like Peter Lorrie.

Bruno Ganz plays Harker. Watching this made me realize, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed a portrayal of Harker in the movies. He's just... there. He gets the plot moving then it's on to the back burner with him.

Isabelle Adjani, however, I think is probably one of the best Mina's I've seen- even if she's called Lucy in this production. Despite being fragile in the first part of the movie- to the degree that she faints when her husband returns home and doesn't recognize her- she finds her strength in defending her husband and city against Dracula. There's a clip here that just blew me away- Lucy confronting Dracula.

And they do call him Dracula, officially, in this version, filmed long enough after Dracula had become public domain that Herzog avoided the problems of the earlier version.

What I don't understand is why I took so long to watch this. It's always been on my radar- my favorite reference is from John Skipp and Craig Spector's novel The Light at the End, where a vampire is preying upon New York City and a couple of movie fans realize what's happening during a showing of Nosferatu at a Times Square movie house.

Normally, I try not to include clips in my posts- it just seems like padding to me, but I want to share with you the movie gold that this thing is, so here's a clip- the ship bringing Dracula to Wismar, silently coming into port, piloted by a dead man:

Dracula (1931 Spanish)

Universal was very, very clever back in the day. They would save money by filming foreign language versions of their movies using the same sets and scripts. Probably the most famous of these is Dracula, starring Carlos Villarias as the Count.

I wasn't sure what to think the first time I saw this movie.

I'd seen the Lugosi version several times, so I was familiar with the sets and script, but this movie stands pretty well on its own merits.

Pablo Alvarez Rubio doesn't bring the same degree of pathos to Renfield as much as Dwight Frye does, but he's certainly crazier.

Lupita Tovar is Eva, the "Mina" for this production, is much sexier than Helen Chandler.

And Carlos Villarias. He reminds me slightly of Steve Carrell. Which makes him all the more menacing. He's kind of dashing as well. At least for me, he lacks the sense of otherness Lugosi as Dracula, speaking accented English, surrounded by native speakers, has, since Villarias is speaking Spanish to Spanish speakers.

Director George Melford was lucky enough to watch the daily footage of Tod Browning's Dracula and was able to use what suited him while changing things as well. He's got a much more dynamic use of camera than Browning.

Of course, my favorite thing about the movie is how the film faded into obscurity until David Skal's 1990 book Hollywood Gothic brought it back on to the cultural radar, Skal travelling to Cuba in 1989 to see the best print available. 1992 saw the movie show in revival in Hollywood.

In fact, when Skal revised Hollywood Gothic for a later edition, the chapter on the Spanish Dracula is considerably longer.

Dracula vs Frankenstein

So- two of the cast members of Universal's House of Frankenstein- J. Carrol Naish and Lon Chaney, Jr- plus Forrest J. Ackerman doing a bit part. How can it go wrong?
Fairly well, actually.
Dracula vs Frankenstein is pretty bad, but bad in a grindhouse good kind of way.
Naish plays the descendant of Frankenstein, still playing his ancestor's games of life and death in Venice, California, with the assistance of Groton, Chaney in his last role. Dracula has possession of the original Frankenstein's Monster and has need of the Doctor. Groton's out chopping people up for the Doctor's latest project.

Meanwhile, a happening chick who's a headliner in Vegas has come to town to find her sister- one of Groton's victims. She runs afoul of Rico, a gang leader played by Russ Tamblyn.
This subplot seems almost like something out of another movie, but the director/writer Al Adamson handle it well, even though he's someone I think of more for his murder than his movies. He even got a E! True Hollywood Story: Al Adamson- Murder of a B Movie King.

Dracula (1979)

Well, if I hadn't seen the Louis Jourdan version of Dracula, I'd declare Dracula (1979) what I'd imagine a BBC version of Dracula would be like.

It's pretty good. Since it's an actual theatrical release it had a budget for costumes, sets and most importantly, actors.

Dracula in this instance is played by Frank Langella. He's a sexyDracula though his blown-dry hair, all stylish and seventies is a little distracting.

Of course you can't have a Dracula without a Van Helsing, played here by Sir Laurence Olivier. Olivier isn't quite the classic actor he used to be but it was a good paycheck for him.

This version was an adaptation of the stage play- the same stage play that influenced the Lugosi version- that was famous for the set design by Edward Gorey.

Now in the era of CGI, I'd love to see someone do a video production of Dracula using those designs. They've been turned into a puppet theatre- this seems to be the best visuals I could find on youtube:

While someone has actually used them to make a loose, short adaptation of Dracula here.

Love At First Bite

"Children of the Night, shut up!"

George Hamilton is Dracula. Let that sink in for a minute. The tannest man in the world is playing an undead creature of the night.

It's Love at First Bite, a vampire comedy from 1979.

Unlike Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It, it's actually funny. A large chunk of the humor is Hamilton's deadpan portrayal of the Count, a fish out of water in New York City. He's been evicted by the Romania government so he goes to America in search of Cindy Sondheim, the fashion model who's captured his heart.

She's played by Susan Saint James, who will always be Mrs McMillan to me no matter how many episodes of Kate & Allie I see. "Oh, that's so kinky, are you biting me?". In the Count's way is Jeffrey, Cindy's ex-boyfriend and the grandson of Van Helsing, played by Richard Benjamin, who always struck me as the Jeff Goldblum of the seventies.

Since you can't have a Dracula without a Renfield, Arte Johnson steals the show with his manic re-interpetation of Dwight Frye's classic Renfield, down to the heh-heh-heh.

I'd put off watching Love at First Bite because I was worried it was going to be annoying like the Brook but it was cute- there was enough silliness to entertain someone who was watching it as a comedy, there were enough subtle references to the Lugosi version to entertain a purist.

(image snagged from Wrong Side of the Art blog)

Count Dracula

So, I'm watching a version of Dracula from the BBC- Count Dracula starring Louis Jourdan as the Count, and it's refreshing to hear a Jonathan Harker that speaks with a British accent that's not annoyingly fake (yes, Keanu, I'm looking at you.)

It's BBC from 1977, not the Doctor Who BBC from 1977 but the I, Claudius BBC in terms of production values, even with the occasional special effect.

As a miniseries, it's a little longer than a feature, clocking in at two and a half hours. But it's time well spent.

Top notch cast, led by Jourdan who's even more sauve than Duncan Regehr, but manages to radiate menace every second he's on the screen. The rest of the cast is very BBC, meaning they're probably classically trained stage actors. As such, there's a stage play feel to the piece, the sets giving each scene a chamber piece feel, each room decorated in period style but awarkwardly lit so the fall of the shadows give it a slightly off feel.

One scene they did go all out for was the churchyard and cemetery overlooking the sea, like in the book it was filmed in Whitby- as was the Doctor Who episode The Curse of Fenric.

And the costumes- it was like a Merchant/Ivory movie.

Since it is so long, it moves at its own pace, slower than other productions, but they've been able to stick closer to the original novel than most productions. The BBC's Count Dracula is definitely required viewing from any vampire fan.

The Monster Squad

One fun thing about the classic Universal Horror movies was the fact that Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman crossed paths several times. These crossovers faded away to be the thing of Late-Late Shows while the Hammer Studios versions of the monsters took their place in technicolor glory, never crossing over the film series.

In 1987, The Monster Squad got the band back together.

The title refers to a group of kids, horror movie fans living in Anytown, USA. They're a band of misfits, oddballs obsessed with the macabre.

Into Anytown comes the monsters the kids venerate- Dracula, leading the Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy and The Creature- seeking an amulet that can bring about the End of The World. They wish to do this because they're EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL of course.

The Monster Squad is an eighties-infused love letter to the Universal movies, the best example of this is Frankenstein's Monster; played by Tom Noonan (the Tooth Fairy killer from Manhunter), he brings a sense of pathos to the film with his interaction with the youngest of the Monster Squad, five year old Phoebe.

But this blog isn't interested in Frankenstein movies... it's Dracula's project and he totally steals the show. He's suave- rockin' that tuxedo. And classy- he's got a snazzy wolfheaded cane (the ears of the wolf detach and he hooks them to Frankenstein's Monster's electrodes to jump start the monster from a lightning bolt.) And thoroughly, thoroughly evil- he calls little Phoebe a bitch! Never mind trying to bring about the end of the world.

The fact that he's played by Duncan Regehr, who'd later play the dashing Don Diego la Vega in tv's Zorro, makes him probably one of the sexier Draculas.
The Monster Squad is one of those rare blends of horror and comedy where there's actually a sense of menace from the monsters, while the children's antics in the face of the horror are pretty funny (two of the high points: burning Dracula's face with a piece of garlic pizza and disabling the Wolfman with a kick to the groin ("Wolfman's got nards!"). And I won't even begin to try and describe the wonder and glory that is the Creature from the Black Lagoon in every sense of the concept but makeup- changed sufficently that The Creature wasn't a copyright infringement but a homage.

The Monster Squad is some of the best eighty-two minutes I've spent during this project- it was a fun film back in 1987, and it's a terrific film twenty-four years later.

To Die For

Tonights movie was To Die For aka Bram Stoker's To Die For aka Dracula: The Love Story to Die For aka Dracula: The Love Story aka Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Love Story To Die For.

Yeah. You know a movie with this many titles has to be good.

Well, good-ish. Apparently it was on cable a lot in the early nineties- since I didn't have cable back them I missed didn't see it.

Vlad Tepes has come to LA in 1988 and needs a real estate agent to find him a home; Kate's a real estate agent in a crappy relationship. Of course she falls for the mysterious foreigner, and finds him a big ol' castle looking thing.

He gets a Renfield in Kate's roommate Cici, who's hired as Vlad's secretary. Cici falls for Vlad, Vlad falls for Kate. Cici and Kate's boyfriends play the calvary.

It's SO totally eighties. Big hair and shoulder pads- for everybody. And it's not just 80's - it's SoCal eighties, like something out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel.

Almost a post script- I didn't mention any of the actors by name, because, honestly, it was SoCal girl 1,2, and 3, broody guy, and SoCal Boyfriend 1 & 2. But looking at the IMDB listing I saw a name the stood out: Duane Jones. Ben from Night of the Living Dead. He plays a policeman in this, and he's pretty good. Not as amazing as his turn in Night, but still pretty good.

Waxwork

Some movies are distinctly products of their era.

Waxwork is a quintessentially eighties movie, almost a horror version of a John Hughes film.

Six college classmates are invited to a private showing at a waxworks and are transported into the tableaus. Among the scenarios are zombies, a werewolf, and Dracula's castle.

It's a light hearted horror movie and the Dracula portion is ghoulishly hilarious.

The girl, Chyna, experiencing the Dracula scene isn't particularly nice, so she gets what's coming to her. She get's dinner with Dracula and family, where she's served raw meat.

"I haven't had steak tartar in a long time," she tells him.

It turns out the meat is the fiancee of the girl she's supposed to be within the waxwork. He's restrained in the basement, as food for the vampires, parceled out a bit at a time, his left leg sliced off under the knee.

She dispatches several vampires but eventually falls victim to Dracula, played by Miles O'Keefe, previously seen in Tarzan with Bo Derek and Ator, the Blade Master.

It's a silly little movie that's a delightful tribute to classic horror- to the degree that the Mummy sequence has Swan Lake as the soundtrack, the same piece of music that that introduced the opening credits of Boris Karloff's The Mummy.

I hadn't seen this movie in over a decade, and it's just as much dumb fun now as it was back in '88, which isn't that big a surprise since the director, Anthony Hickox, was the son of Douglas Hickox, director of Vincent Price's Theatre of Blood.

The Brides of Dracula

There's always some discussion among fans about The Brides of Dracula after a viewing because there's no Dracula in it.

But the title is the Brides of Dracula, not "Dracula and His Brides," so I can give it a pass.

The vampire in this Hammer film is Baron Meinster, a follower of Dracula. He's kept captive by his mother until freed by a young woman, a school teacher coming to take a post at a girl's school nearby.

Of course, where there's vampires, there's Van Helsing. He keeps the young lady from falling prey to Meinster and dispatches the vampire in a manner not seen before nor since- by turning a windmill's shadow into a huge cross by turning the sails.

Dracula II: Ascension

I saw Dracula 2000 years ago, but I haven't seen it yet for the project. I did watch its sequel Dracula II: Ascension tonight because... well, I've gotta watch something.

I'm going to be watching a lot of somethings, I think.

A little (very little) background: at the end of Dracula 2000, Dracula is chained to a cross and left to burn in the sun.

This picks up later that morning, when Dracula's charred body is taken to the morgue. After some tests, the morgue attendants- medical students- realize that they've discovered

a vampire.

They contact their teacher and classmates who speculate what they could do with a vampire- specifically steal enough blood to fill a bathtub, then soak the vampire in it.

Their teacher suffers from a degenerative muscular disorder and sees the vampire as a chance to cure himself.

There's also a warrior priest hunting vampires.

This is from Dimension Pictures, the less artsy wing of Miramax. They used to do some quality stuff, then turned into a mill churning out direct to video sequels to movies that missed playing in theaters for one reason or another and distributing foreign genre stuff that deserved more attention that it got (like Dario Argento's Mother of Tears.)

Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned

Thank goodness I still have my vcr- I had to watch tonights movie on vhs. I picked up a graymarket copy of Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned at convention a few years ago, now someone's offering what's probably an even more graymarket dvd.

It's a Japanese animated version of Marvel Comics' The Tomb of Dracula. Which, as content for a cartoon, it pretty heavy. And the animation isn't bad, considering its from 1980.

Of course, I'm making the standard mistake of assuming cartoons are for kids, which not all Japanese cartoons are.

What are for kids however, are those book and records that were popular during the seventies. I don't understand the idea behind it but there was actually a Tomb of Dracula book and record set.

I still have a hard time reconciling "It's fun to read as you hear!" with "...Too late to stop this wooden stake from plunging into your heart!!".

Blacula

Blacula.
In a less capable hands, this movie could have been some cheap exploitation piece; despite being made during the golden age of Samual Z. Arkoff's AIP studio, it's got a smart script and a great leading man.
William Marshall brings a nobility and tragedy to the character of Prince Mamuwalde, who was turned into a vampire by Dracula in 1780 while appealing to the count to help end the slave trade. Dracula not only denies the appeal, the turns Mamuwalde into a vampire while entombing his wife, Luva, with him.

Nearly two hundred years later, Mamuwalde's coffin is taken back to America by two gay interior decorators. They free him and his rampage through early seventies Los Angeles begins.

He encounters the re-incarnation of Luva, Tina. Tina's sister Michelle is the girlfriend of the police scientist, Doctor Thomas, who's investigating the rash of strange deaths hitting the city.

The movie is surprisingly forward thinking for its time- the interior decorators are a bi-racial couple and not played for camp value. After they've been killed, their deaths are considered inconsequential by the police, a reflection of the contemporary LAPD's attitude toward minorities.

Unlike most of the vampires I've seen so far, Mamuwalde's story and demise has the depth to raise Blacula from a simple exploitation horror movie to a complex Blaxploitation tragedy.

The Return of Dracula

It's the late fifties.

The last Dracula film Universal put out was Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein. Now, on the theater marquee, it reads "The Return of Dracula."

But it's not a Universal movie. Instead of castles and fog, it's set in smalltown America, Carleton, California, where the Mayberry family is expecting a cousin to visit from Romania.

Of course, Dracula, on the run from vampire hunters, has taken the place of the cousin.

Now, taking into account the political atmosphere of the times, an Eastern European infiltrating Anytown, USA to menace our virginal schoolgirls makes for a subtle piece of Cold-War cinema fun.

In fact, The Return of Dracula owes more to Hitchcock's Shadow of A Doubt and Orson Welles' The Stranger, with a touch of Leave it to Beaver thrown in for good measure.

Amazingly, this gem was followed up about a month after it's release with another return of Dracula, Hammer's The Horror Of Dracula.

Horror of Dracula

It's the late 1950's.

The last serious appearance of Universal's Dracula was in House of Dracula in 1945. The last appearance all together of him was in Universal's Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

After that, Dracula was off the radar- for the most part- until Hammer Studios revived the series.

Unlike the Universal film, which was based on a stage play based on Bram Stoker's novel, Hammer went straight to the novel... and started cutting.

It's still the same basic story, Van Helsing, Mina, Harker, Dracula- this time it's in Technicolor.

Vivid, red, Technicolor.

And there's liberties- the entire story is set on the European continent; there's no voyage to England here. Relationships are different. Harker is engaged to Lucy, Lucy is Holmwood's sister, Mina is Holmwood's wife. Van Helsing is still Van Helsing and Dracula is still Dracula.

But what a Dracula this is. While Lugosi was Eurosuave, Christopher Lee's Dracula was upperclass-cruel-sexy- playing the Count ten times in his career.

It's interesting how Lee's had a comeback of sorts in the last few years- despite the fact that he never really went away. As Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings movies, in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Corpse Bride, Lee's getting a whole new generation of fans.

Slaughter of the Vampires

Slaughter of the Vampires aka Curse of the Blood Ghouls.
Nifty opening sequence involving angry villagers hunting down a pair of vampires, an interesting twist from the Hammer films where the villagers are always paralyzed with terror of the Vampire.
The Villager kill one of the vampires, a woman, while her husband escapes to his castle.
While he recovers from the attack in his coffin, time passes and newly wed couple, Wolfgang and Louise, have taken possession of the castle. The vampire awakens during a party the couple throw and he becomes obsessed with Louise.
Louise begins to waste away, so Wolfgang brings Dr Neitzsche to help cure her.

Harker, Mina, Van Helsing, same characters, different names.

Great sets, lush costumes... crappy dubbing. It's a fun little movie that's strictly by the numbers- it's Dracula with the serial numbers filed off, like an Italian Nosferatu.

Dracula (1931)

The problem writing about Dracula, the 1931 Universal movie directed by Tod Browning, is that there's so much written about it already- in fact, David Skal's Hollywood Gothic is the book on the subject.

So I'm not going to try and go over any of it again- I'll just bring to the table what I can.

I've probably seen Dracula over a dozen or so times- I've got copies of both the Legacy Collection and the seventy-fifth anniversary edition. The anniversary edition pretty much duplicates the contents of the Legacy collection- which has expert commentary by Skal as one of it's features- with the addition of commentary by Stephen Haber, scriptwriter of Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which adds nothing to the overall package.

What I like about Browning's Dracula is how quiet it is. Once you've seen it enough to appreciate it as a classic Hollywood film, it's almost hypnotic in its quiet. The absence of a score is part of it, but there are many scenes where things are communicated through a glance or a shift of posture.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about Bela Lugosi as Dracula. He's smooth.

Seductive. He sets the bar for any actor playing that character so high, even he couldn't meet it- reprising the role only one more time in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Well, playing the role of Dracula only one more time.

He played the Vampire several times, including Count Mora in Mark of the Vampire and Armand Tesla in The Return of the Vampire.

Sad, how he got trapped in his own success.