Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

Directors: Roy Ward Baker, Chang Cheh (uncredited)

Draculas: John Forbes-Robertson, Sheng Chan (possessed)

In 1973, both Hammer Films and the Hong Kong action studio Shaw Brothers were desperate. Enter the Dragon, released that year by rival studio Golden Harvest, had made kung-fu fighting a global filmic fad. Meanwhile, American distributors ignored Hammer’s outing that year, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (which we, unlike Warner Brothers, will take up). But Hammer had always done well in British colony Hong Kong and its cinematic hinterlands, as its visual style translated even when its scripts didn’t (and perhaps shouldn’t). And so the notion of a team-up was born. Hammer contributed Peter Cushing (and, under protest, Dracula) and the script; Shaw Brothers contributed their own star David Chiang (in an attempt to make him “the next Bruce Lee”) and the production facilities, such as they were, in Hong Kong.

The story, such as it is, seems made for seeing accidentally late at night and trying to explain that this thing really existed: Dracula (John Forbes-Robertson, heavily dubbed and bright green but game for camp) possesses the evil Chinese monk Kah (Sheng Chan) in 1804, in order to re-energize the Seven Golden Vampires and rule the land around the town of Ping Kwei. (In real history, that town, assuming it’s the one in Guangxi province, was one of the centers of the extraordinarily bloodthirsty Taiping Rebellion.) In 1904, Van Helsing delivers a lecture on vampires at Chungking University, seeking aid in tracking Chinese vampires and destroying them. Only one student, Hsi Ching (David Chiang) believes him, because he is a native of Ping Kwei. A rich Russian countess (Julie Ege) provides the funds and eye candy, and Van Helsing and Hsi Ching set out. Fortunately, Hsi has six brothers and a sister, all masters of the martial arts, to pit against the rotting golden vampires and an army of zombies, some of whom can be seen hopping just a bit, and I imagine Baker uselessly shouting “Stop hopping, you’re vampires!” during filming, which was a nightmare by all accounts. The last act swerves into homaging The Magnificent Seven (!) as Van Helsing and the remaining warriors make one final stand to defend Ping Kwei; the result is one of the few Hammer films to actually convey the danger and damage of vampire hunting. But Van Helsing survives to beard Kah in his lurid den, taunt him into transforming into Dracula proper, and then stake him with a spear. We are left with the nagging questions: was it worth the cost? and hey hold on if Dracula was inside a Chinese monk from 1804 to 1904, who was that Christopher Lee-looking guy Van Helsing hunted through the latter half of the 19th century?

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Reinforced by its weapon-wielding brother paragraphs (and with your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order the mortal coil and hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

Director: Lambert Hillyer

Daughter: Gloria Holden

This weird, weird movie begins in the cellars of Carfax Abbey as a direct sequel to the 1931 Browning/Lugosi Dracula. Well, actually, it began as a bit of dirty pool by MGM mogul David O. Selznick, who bought the rights to the short story “Dracula’s Guest” and the title Dracula’s Daughter (among others) from Florence Stoker solely to gum up Universal’s attempt to make a sequel to its film. While he squatted on the property, Selznick hired John Balderston (the co-author of the Dracula stage play) to write a script never intended to be shot: Balderston obliged with a paean to sado-masochism. When Universal finally bought Selznick’s interest in the sequel (at a tidy profit for him) they tried to get James Whale, auteur of Bride of Frankenstein, to direct it. More interested in making Show Boat than another horror film, but not wanting to bite Universal’s hand directly, Whale turned in a series of script drafts, each less filmable than the last, mostly to troll the Production Code Administration.

Finally, Universal once more cheaped out on a Dracula production, obliging the axing of a whole 15th-century subplot and all the original cast except Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing (much better with good direction, but given a second-banana part). Instead, they got the image rights from Lugosi to make a wax dummy of him for the first scene, in which London bobbies arrest Van Helsing for murder in the aforementioned basement. But Dracula’s daughter Countess Zaleska (Gloria Holden) shows up, steals the body of Dracula, and burns it (while holding a cross at arm’s length!) in an attempt to free herself from the vampiric curse she is somehow under. How did she know Dracula was dead? Is she his blood daughter, his vampiric get, or some other thing? Nothing is ever made clear in this movie — from Zaleska’s powers (she never shows any except mesmerism, which she does by means of a ring, not her eyes) to her sexuality. The movie has two of the greatest sublimated lesbian scenes in early film, but Zaleska also dines on a male toff and wants to share eternity (for reasons opaque to the viewer) with heroic psychiatrist Dr. Garth (Otto Kruger, bland and unworthy of both the Countess and his human love interest, the captivating Marguerite Churchill). These ambiguities, George Robinson’s deep, intent cinematography, and Gloria Holden’s imperious, self-hating performance (she didn’t want to see her career ruined like Lugosi’s) give the film its uncanny strength. Not only the first lesbian vampire film, it’s also — maybe — the first vampire psychosis film, paving the way for Martin and Vampire’s Kiss.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Its fatal curse encouraged by the leering Sandor (and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order hypnotically compelling hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

The Return of Dracula (1958)

Director: Paul Landres

Dracula: Francis Lederer

The other 1958 Dracula movie begins with a team of Romanian (or Hungarian) vampire hunters closing in on Dracula’s tomb — only to discover he has escaped! Taking the identity papers (and life) of artist Bellac (or Belak, if his name is supposed to be Slovenian instead of French) Gordal, Dracula (Francis Lederer) travels from Communist Hungary (or Romania) to Carleton, California to live with Gordal’s relatives. Screenwriter Pat Fielder, in addition to riffing on Stoker and Val Lewton, borrows the plot of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt — a murderous stranger presumes on family identity to continue his predation in a small California town. She even uses the “covert photograph” bit from that film, which brings the chief Romanian (or Hungarian) vampire hunter Meiermann (John Wengraf) back on stage to use his “European Police Authority” credentials to recruit a willing American sheriff, pastor, and doctor into an ad hoc slayer squad at the white-bread mortuary.

But the real action, of course, is in the abandoned mine outside town, where Dracula has lured his “cousin” Rachel (winsome Norma Eberhardt) to “survive this dying world” — a rare note of atomic-age paranoia in a film that neatly re-vamps anti-Communist paranoia. There is indeed a wicked foreigner among us, but he fled Communism for “freedom to live” in soft, welcoming America. All the acting is at least good 1950s TV level, and the score is by Star Trek composer Gerald Fried. Lederer’s Czech accent (and disgust at playing a vampire of all things) infuse his foreign, disdainful Dracula, who just barely holds on to Old World civility while yearning to kill these simpering dolts around him. His slouch hat and overcoat update the opera cloak effectively, too. The special effects wisely don’t reach beyond their grasp: good mist and optical matte shots (and better camera work in long shots) and a bat we only hear convey menace about as well as the budget allows. Lots more to say on this underrated, almost forgotten effort in Thrill of Dracula — for now, I advise checking it out on YouTube.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Freed from Communist surveillance (and having stolen your comments and responses before hurling you from a train), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order the artistically designed hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula (1979)

Director: John Badham

Dracula: Frank Langella

Now this is how to get Dracula wrong. John Badham’s feminist (well, feminist-for-1979) deconstruction of the stage play and Stoker’s novel creates a gothic fantasy in which “Lucy Seward” (Kate Nelligan, actually playing Mina) yearns for the liberating touch of Frank Langella’s catlike, genteel Dracula. And if you were due to marry Trevor Eve’s adenoidal, blustery Jonathan Harker, you too might seek the pleasures of the night even if it means going alone to the most over-the-top cobweb-and-chandelier dinner date outside Anne Rice’s fever dreams. (Peter Murton’s grotesque Carfax is the best Dracula lair since 1931’s Castle.) Never mind that Dracula murdered a zillion Russian sailors in the best Demeter wreck scene ever filmed, or that he also murdered “Mina Van Helsing” (a duly consumptive Jan Francis). Frank Langella makes his Dracula so confident, so comfortable in his own shapeshifting skin, that you almost don’t mind those details any more than Lucy does. The incompetent Dr. Seward (Donald Pleasence as a distractible, absent father) and superstitious Dr. Van Helsing (a tired, broken Laurence Olivier) offer an unappetizing (especially so, given Pleasence’s constant chewing of both food and scenery in every shot) alternative in patriarchal science. Religion comes in for its own hits: Dracula hisses “Sacrilege!” as Van Helsing holds him off with a Host, and Van Helsing nearly dies on his reanimated daughter’s fangs while scrabbling in the mud for his dropped crucifix. No, this is the church of “You go for it, girl” with a vengeance.

In addition to its own fabulist virtues as a film — among which should count John Williams’ brassy score and Albert Whitlock’s phantasmic matte paintings — it also offers plenty to the discerning GM. Langella’s Dracula uses his powers cleverly throughout, from storms to mind control to climbing down (and smashing through) walls. The notion of a hole in Mina’s coffin leading down into mines and tunnels under “Whitby” (actually a wonderfully alien-looking Cornwall) has more scope than the film could use, we get the use of a white horse to find a vampire grave that even Stoker doesn’t include, and the horribly authentic Victorian asylum architecture gives Trail of Cthulhu Keepers a reason to watch. And if things get too sexyweird for you, just drink … wine … whenever Dracula says “Good evening” and you’ll come out toasty and ahead regardless.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. With its shirt open in the fog machine (to invite your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order richly coiffed hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Scars of Dracula (1970)

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Dracula: Christopher Lee

Let us resolutely ignore the dead pacing (probably from Anthony Hinds’ screenplay), the insane overlighting that washes out Christopher Lee’s makeup unforgivably, and the damp-even-for-a-Hammer-romantic-male-lead dampness of the “romantic male lead” Simon (Dennis Waterman). Let us ignore the comically ineffective “set fire to the castle” bit up front and the ineffectively comic cod-Benny Hill skit that sets up the action, such as it is. Let us ignore the fact that the “somewhat good fake bat” apparently broke down or went missing and Hammer pushed on with the “not at all good fake bat” in this most bat-centric of the Hammer Draculas. Let us ignore the undignified ending, in which Dracula is set on fire by lightning. (Yes, you read that right.) Let us, in short, ignore all the reasons people say this is the worst of the Hammer Draculas and concentrate on the reasons to watch and take note of it.

First and foremost: Christopher Lee gets more lines and screen time in this one than in all the others combined. Even with this terrible material, he just plain owns, and the script does show us a properly sadistic side of Dracula missing in most versions. Also, the notion of re-doing Psycho as a Dracula period picture has a sort of bizarre charm: rogue vanishes in weird lodging, rogue’s sibling follows up with similarly dangerous results. Dracula really uses the bats well in this picture, as scouts and guardians and (best of all) as a death squad when people he wants to kill inconsiderately hide in a church. Patrick Troughton brings real pathos to the role of Klove, Dracula’s manservant and remover-of-crucifixes-from-sleeping-bosoms who falls in love with a picture of Sarah (Jenny Hanley), as well he might. She is indeed delightful, although sadly washed out next to saucy tavern wench/clue dispenser Julie (Wendy Hamilton) and Dracula’s disobedient Bride, Tania (Anouska Hempel). Finally, Dracula does his best Hammer wall climb in this one, up to his clever tower crypt with only one window and no doors.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Surrounded by many plastic bats (and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order hard copies, miraculously unscathed by fire, of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Buffy vs. Dracula (2000)

Director: David Solomon

Dracula: Rudolf Martin

Television being a writer’s medium, it’s probably best if writer Marti Noxon takes the credit and the blame for this, the premiere episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s fifth season. Following series creator Joss Whedon’s idea to use the actual Dracula instead of “some cool vampire on a horse” (Langella alert!) Noxon had to cram the entire Dracula plot, plus jokes, plus Giles’ (Anthony Stewart Head, alternating Van Helsing and Harker moments) return-to-Watcher arc, plus the debut of Dawn, into 42 minutes. Something had to give, and it’s essentially the story balance; the episode see-saws tonally even more than the normal Buffy run. That said, it winds up pretty economical, if not elegant: Dracula is worked into the Buffyverse mythology and she is worked into his via a celebrity crush that slowly becomes scary mesmerism … and an insight into Buffy’s darkness that would pay off for the rest of the season and series. How the cast all react to Dracula allows moments of personality to emerge and crystallize (spy shows usually do this in the usually tiresome polygraph episode) even if, like Xander (Nicholas Brendon, giggly Renfield butt-monkey), they reject what they find. Consider this revelatory “clarity through stress” story beat when Dracula guest-stars (or suddenly appears for the first time …) in your campaign.

This episode is another strong confirmation that the casting of Dracula makes or breaks the piece, be it movie or TV episode. German actor Rudolf Martin had played a romantic lead (and later enemy) opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar on All My Children, and played Vlad the Impaler in a cable movie, so he would seem to be the perfect choice. Let the record show that I did not find him so, although plenty of Buffy fans, like Anya and Willow, considered him dreamy. He’s too lanky (Dracula should be tall, but not skinny), and his pale makeup looks like something Buffy would normally mock. As goofy as his cape looks in modern Sunnydale, his “waistcoat and shirtsleeves” look is even worse. His final fight scene is more ferally effective than most Buffyboxing, and Gellar acts genuinely tempted by his offer of knowledge — but all ends with quips and dust and in the final analysis, he’s just a “Eurotrashed” monster of the week who “wafts in here with his music video wind.” Buffy’s words, not mine.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Molded into mythology (and gazing into your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order the excellent spookiness that is hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula (1968)

Director: Patrick Dromgoole

Dracula: Denholm Elliott

Man, if every episode of the Thames TV series Mystery and Imagination mounted this kind of creative response to low budgets and primitive facilities, I’m really bummed that three seasons are lost. But I’m glad this fourth-season episode (90 minutes, divided into three Acts) survived on YouTube. Although it shows much of the spoor of the hated Deane-Balderston play, writer Charles Graham seems to have been solving the same problems — limited ability to change scenes, small cast, short running time — with some originality. Shooting Harker’s visit to Castle Dracula in almost silent-movieola flashback must have saved money and it definitely pumps up the atmosphere while recalling Nosferatu (and moreso Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr). He keeps as much of the book as he can: Swales’ discursus on the suicide’s grave (more important in this version) and Dracula’s monologue on Transylvanian history, for example. And in some places, his changes — Dracula tele-operates Renfield to threaten Van Helsing! Lucy bites Mina! — rock you back on your heels with their implications.

But right now, you’re all tugging my sleeve and saying “But, but, but … Marcus Brody as Dracula?” Denholm Elliott is nobody’s Christopher Lee, but his Dracula — in goatee and smoked glasses at first, later in an Inverness cape of all things — has more than a little odious charm to him. It’s not Elliott’s fault that there’s no budget for effects or even a fight scene; his social menace and Orlok-style rat-fangs both work. Corin Redgrave’s Renfield is refreshingly upper-class, so it’s kind of a shame he turns out to be Jonathan Harker. (Whom Seward weirdly doesn’t recognize.) Bernard Archard’s careful, worried Van Helsing and James Maxwell’s angry, skeptical Seward play off each other superbly — if you must mount a stagy, talky Dracula, casting it with British theatricals is for the best, really. But the real standout is Susan George as the giddy, vivacious “Lucy Weston,” drinking in Dracula’s attention while alive and then drinking from Mina in Un-Death.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Saved from kinescopic destruction (perhaps by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order classy British hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

It’s time once again for another installment of Things We Left Out of The Dracula Dossier, our popular series of posts not so much cataloguing our mental lapses as offering you, our beloved gamer audience, more free content for your own Dracula Dossier games! (Available for pre-order now!)

In this particular case, I was inspired by something that keeps appearing in the (vast quantity of) Dracula movies I’m watching right now while posting 31 Nights of Dractober and writing The Thrill of Dracula: Dracula’s ring. It first makes an appearance in Son of Dracula (1943) but first plays a major role in the plot in The House of Frankenstein (1944), where John Carradine’s Dracula uses it to mesmerize the fetching Rita and connect her to him in some nebulous fashion. (Dracula’s Daughter (1936) also features a hypnotic ring very similar in appearance to Carradine’s.) Carradine wore it again in House of Dracula (1945) and it finally made its way to Bela Lugosi’s finger in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Lugosi kept the prop and later gave it to superfan Forrest Ackerman, who (of course) made and sold collectible versions of it. He sent one of those copies to Christopher Lee, who wore it in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968) and afterward. Lee’s Dracula wore a (different) signet ring in the previous two Dracula films, and the Ring has become such an icon that a whole Danish 1978 TV miniseries (sadly not available any more) called Draculas Ring focused on it.

So here it is, written up as a Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook style encounter.

Object: The Ring of Dracula

Appearance: A man’s silver finger ring with a blood-red ruby set into it, bearing the crest of Dracula (DH, p. 54) in worked silver filigree. Lengthy heraldic research (1-point History or 2-point Research spend each month for three months, or per archive in two separate major heraldic archives) can uncover Dracula’s original identity in life from the crest, or at least discover the crest’s origin. The design and workmanship are 15th-century German. Forgery or a 1-point spend of Chemistry unmasks the “silver” as paktong or “nickel silver,” a Chinese silver-like alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc.

Supposed History: This was the signet ring of Dracula in life, and imbued with its wearer’s life force — and afterward, with the force of his Un-Death. The fact that an aristocratic signet ring is not real silver is, ironically, evidence for its authenticity — surely Dracula would not seek out the touch of silver to his flesh! Vampirology reminds us that Dracula has no particular allergy to silver, but a 15th-century alchemist like Dracula might well have prized the comparatively rare paktong — or created his own similar alloy with its own properties.

Major Item: This is the ring of Dracula, alchemically created by him from earths dug from his native soil, the ruby formed from his very blood. It cannot be destroyed by any known process short of nuclear fission or throwing it into an active volcano. Its powers vary depending on its wearer.

If Dracula wears it:

• It contains a pool of 13 extra Aberrance points, which he can spend at will; they refresh at sundown.
• It increases the Difficulty of resistance to Dracula’s Mesmerism by +4 if the target is looking at it. Dracula can create and direct the visions beheld in it by the target.
• It provides Cloud Men’s Minds as a free power (Difficulty 10 Stability test to penetrate).
• It doubles the effect of a Red Room (DH, p. 187).
• It automatically places any vampire or Renfield who beholds it under Dracula’s command.

If another vampire wears it:

• As Dracula, but half: 6 extra Aberrance, +2 Difficulty to resist Mesmerism, Cloud Men’s Minds as a 2 Aberrance point power (Difficulty 6 Stability test to penetrate).
• Dracula can see or hear through their senses at all times. Likewise, that vampire can sense the direction and rough distance to Dracula.
• If Dracula created or sired the wearer, Dracula can command the wearer telepathically.

If a human wears it:

• It grants the power of Mesmerism, with a rating equal to 5 + the wearer’s Hypnosis ability. Using Mesmerism always requires a 2-point spend.
• If the human takes Seward Serum, it increases the General point bonus to 17, not 12.
• It increases the effect of a Red Room: attempts to locate Dracula are at -7, sweats Renfields in 6 hours, provides 25 points to a Jack, lowers magic Difficulties by -4 (DH, p. 187).
• Dracula can see or hear through their senses at all times; their Difficulty to resist him increases by +4. Likewise, they can sense the direction and very rough distance (here/close/far/far away) to Dracula. Alternately, a psychically gifted human (or one with Dowsing as a paranormal ability; NBA, p. 196) can use the ring as a pendulum to find Dracula’s location on a map (like the one on the Spirit Board; DH, p. 279); it lowers the Difficulty for Remote Viewing (NBA, p. 197) of Dracula by -4.

If it’s been stolen, Dracula will move heaven and earth, and kill any number of interfering mortals, to return it to his finger. So … great way to lure him into an ambush, amirite?

Minor Item: This is the ring of Dracula, or one of them at any rate. All members of the Conspiracy recognize it and will (absent other conditions like being attacked) obey its wearer with an Intimidation spend … until word gets out that a signet ring has gone missing somehow. Worn by Dracula, it increases the Difficulty to resist his Mesmerism by +2.

If stolen, Dracula wants it back, badly enough to give the thief his personal sadistic attention or to send a pack of ghouls after it, but not badly enough to do something foolish.

Fraudulent: This is a movie prop. A 2-point Forgery spend can fake up a provenance (either as a collectible or as a supposed antique) that makes it worth $20,000 or so to the right buyer. Offering it at Sotheby’s (DH, p. 198) might still be an interesting way to ping the Conspiracy network (or Edom) and see who answers.

Connections: If it’s not on Dracula’s finger, it might be buried near his Tomb (DH, p. 308) or gathering dust in his Castle (DH, p. 207). Perhaps Van Helsing or Lord Godalming picked it out of Dracula’s ashes in 1894 and a Legacy has it now. If Edom managed to find it then, or in Romania in 1940, it’s kept in a tin-silver-and-aluminium-lined, magnetically and electrically inert, cross-incised rosewood box at Ring (DH, p. 172) or Seward’s Asylum (DH, p. 195). Only during an ongoing tactical operation requiring it does Edom move it to Carfax (DH, p. 185); intercepting that shipment would make a fine operation for the Agents. Or perhaps Van Sloan (DH, p. 87) kept it himself, and it keeps him alive … for just a small cost in blood. (Edom might also have kept the Minor Item signet ring Dracula sent to Hawkins in 1893, or it might be somewhere in Hawkins’ house in Exeter (DH, p. 167).) The Romanian government might have confiscated it in 1946; perhaps it’s in a Museum (DH, p. 215) or a deep SRI warehouse beneath Pitesti Prison (DH, p. 218). The Medievalist (DH, p. 122), Art Forecaster (DH, p. 103), and Bookseller (DH, p. 106) all covet it and could produce surprising sums to purchase it, as of course would the Extraordinary Objects Department (DH, p. 161) or the Caldwell Foundation (DH, p. 160); a sketch of it might appear in John Dee’s Journal (DH, p. 270).

Wherever it turns up, does it want to return to its Master? If only there were some sprawling epic about a Ring of Power and a Dark Lord to model that story line on, ideally one connected somehow to Christopher Lee …

Dracula’s Curse (2002)

Director: Roger Young

Dracula: Patrick Bergin

This production began on Italian TV (shot on video) as Il Bacio di Dracula (The Kiss of Dracula); I watched the Artisan DVD version entitled Dracula’s Curse, which cuts about an hour out of the run time because I just said Artisan. (Some of it shows up in the “deleted scenes,” which is even more maddening.) So I can’t speak to the pacing, which I think depends on how much you enjoy seeing the novel spool out; I didn’t find it a problem, certainly not compared to the always awful effects shots (they’re really, really awful) and the intermittently flat acting, not improved by terrible dubbing and looping. Probably the worst offender is Hardy Krüger Jr’s shouty-mannequin Harker, which is a special shame because this is the first Harker (possibly ever) to actually be written as an interesting character. He’s an American broker expat living in Budapest, desperate to score big so he can live up to his own nouveau-riche class consciousness (he splashes out on a red Porsche with his first bonus) and his fiancée Mina’s (Stefania Rocca) Davos-class expectations. That’s right, I forgot to mention — the movie is set in modern transnational Budapest, not Victorian London. The updated story and modern setting are actually the best things about this version, that and Muriel Baumeister’s party-girl Lucy. Sadly, Patrick Bergin’s lumbering Dracula (who ludicrously calls himself “Vladislav Tepes”) is not.

There’s no reason that a vampire can’t be sort of pouchy looking, but you have to really bring the menace; Bergin instead underplays his smug, mustached younger Dracula. This Dracula can change age without feeding, apparently, and impersonating his own older uncle (“Count Vladislav Tepes”) is part of his elaborate seduction of Harker. As his own older uncle Bergin looks appropriately Satanic and menacing, but overplays to compensate. Since he’s mostly acting against the world’s prettiest piece of wood Hardy Krüger Jr. it comes off as ridiculous, not scary. If I haven’t mentioned Giancarlo Giannini’s Enrico Valenzi (the “Van Helsing” part) it’s because the movie also treats him as an afterthought, and like many good Continental actors, Giannini’s response to a bad role is to quietly wait it out. Director Young made a lot of Bible movies, and may be the source of the Dracula-as-Nietzsche element — this Dracula seduces the striving youngsters with the promise of a life without a conscience, which is another good idea in this frustrating mix. Dracula Dossier Directors can get a lot of mileage from that and other underused good bits here: the Demeter recast as a Danube barge is fresh, Quincy as an Argentinian makes good cosmopolitan sense, and Lucy’s daylight bloofer lady scene plays with current child-abduction panics. See it as an arsenal of modernized Dracula tropes first and a movie second, and you’ll be happier — and from all evidence, closer to the filmmakers’ intent.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Updated to the New Europe (and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, for the final battle you can pre-order hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

House of Frankenstein (1944)

Director: Erle C. Kenton

Dracula: John Carradine

“The world I see is far away. Yet very near. A strange and beautiful world … in which one may be dead … and yet alive.”

— Rita Hussman (Anne Gwynne), unconsciously giving us the epigraph for the entire Universal horror series

John Carradine’s first appearance as Dracula (of at least five) is unprepossessing to say the least. Accidentally reanimated when mad scientist Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) threatens an officious policeman with the stake in his skeletal chest, he re-skeletonizes in the sunlight just 27 minutes into the film. He never gets screen time with Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) or the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.), so the picture isn’t a true monster rally so much as a picaresque freak show. The bulk of the film centers on Niemann’s quest for revenge on the men who jailed him for Frankenstein-inspired experiments, and it’s just fun to see Karloff actually get to ham it up in a proper mustache-twirling speaking role for a change. There’s a great bit at the end where Strange’s Monster cradles the dying Karloff in his arms — who knew that meta was a thing in 1944?

But none of that is, strictu sensu, Dractober-relevant. Carradine has to take Dracula a lot of places in his 10 minutes or so of screen time: he knuckles under to Niemann’s threats to sabotage his coffin, suavely insinuates himself (as “Baron Latos”) into Burgomaster Hussman’s (Sig Ruman) household, seduces Hussman’s grand-daughter-in-law Rita (lovely and spirited Anne Gwynne, playing up as an all-American girl in Backlot Gothic-land) with dreams and mesmeric visions, drains Hussman in silhouette as a bat (expertly shot by Kenton), flees with Rita in a coach, crashes and crawls to his coffin (discarded by Niemann to distract Dracula’s pursuers from himself), and expires piteously scrabbling at the lid. That’s more action than Dracula gets in some full-length features, and Carradine is mostly up to the job. He’s best as the seducer, of course; his menace is either animated (in bat-shadow form) or understated. His Dracula is ruled by his passions: fear, lust, hunger, and fear again. That could have been interesting in a more full-fledged Dracula, especially with the Shakespearean Carradine in the title role.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. In expanded and silhouetted form (drinking deep from your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order dapper-mustached hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Nosferatu (1979)

Director: Werner Herzog

Dracula: Klaus Kinski

“For me, genre means an intensive, almost dreamlike stylization on screen, and I feel the vampire genre is one of the richest and most fertile cinema has to offer. There is fantasy, hallucination, dreams and nightmares, visions, fear, and of course, mythology.”

— Werner Herzog, giving us the epigraph for this whole project

“This is not a remake” insisted Werner Herzog, who seemed to consider it first and foremost an exorcism of the greatest of German films, Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), which we’ll get to anon. (That’s in Herzog’s estimation anyhow; I’d put Lang’s M above it myself.) It was also, I suspect, an exorcism of Klaus Kinski, his “best fiend” collaborator, as much as it was a vehicle for that actor, who may have been the best ever for the part both physically and emotionally. Isabelle Adjani’s Lucy deserves as much appreciation as Kinski’s Dracula; her iconic purity precisely equals his iconic poison. The combination of epochal director and ideal actors gives this film a claim to be the best ever Dracula film, and it may in fact be the best ever film to be made of Dracula, which is not quite the same thing.

First and foremost, Kinski’s Dracula is motivated not by greed and rapacity but by inertia: he is cursed with immortality, and exists to spread death. His presence in Wismar sets off not an orgy of biting — although he does fang “Mina” (the film’s Lucy-equivalent, Martje Grohmann) she doesn’t become a vampire — but the plague, spread by a horde of … ineffectually-dyed white rats. (Herzog’s inability to obtain proper gray rats just cripples the horror, it has to be admitted.) Herzog restores the original names Murnau couldn’t use for fear of lawsuit, but keeps Murnau’s plot mostly intact, with an extra Herzogian note of existential bleakness. As against that, Harker (Bruno Ganz) works much harder to damn himself than in any other version, a Catholic interpolation along with the crucifixes and holy wafers Herzog re-introduces to the story after the irreligious Murnau excised them. The cross is not enough to turn Orlok into Dracula, however — Kinski apparently fought to keep the original Murnau names, but (sadly) lost. Indeed, by getting past fidelity to Stoker’s myth Herzog opens up a world of sound and vision, creating and re-creating a documentary of a nightmare.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Remade and enriched (perhaps by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order 11,000 darling hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

The Batman vs. Dracula (2005)

Director: Michael Goguen

Dracula: Peter Stormare

A few truths: Doug Moench’s graphic novel Batman & Dracula: Red Rain is a superior Batman vs. Dracula story. It could not have been made into a children’s animated cartoon. Which (despite a good bit of blood and a shocking – heh – death scene for the Joker) this film very much is. Also in the truth department: yes, we all wish Paul Dini’s Batman: Animated Series shop had done this story instead, and yes, Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula series for Marvel is the best four-color Dracula of all time end of story. Enough about things that aren’t this. This is an anime-inflected superhero story that imports elements of the Dracula mythos. It indeed keeps some of the original novel’s detective-hunt feel as Batman (Rino Romano) tries vainly to track down Dracula’s tomb somewhere in Gotham Cemetery (“it must have been moved after I died” speculates the child-brain of Dracula, or of writer Duane Capizzi). It also keeps the original novel’s science-vs.-Satan edge, as the World’s Greatest Detective-Biochemist develops a cure for vampirism after only a few nights of ditching the fetching Vicki Vale (Tara Strong). Tom Kenny’s wiseacre Penguin makes an acceptable Renfield, mostly to keep the Joker (Kevin Michael Richardson, properly manic with a good threatening baritone) around as a somewhat-independent threat until he becomes a lab monkey.

Sadly, Batman and vampire Joker’s mid-movie fight (in a blood bank!) seriously outclasses either of Batman’s fights with Dracula, although the first one does establish Dracula’s menace (Stormare does what he can, too). It’s just that in a world with Killer Croc and Clayface — and Batman! — Dracula has a harder time standing out. (The film hangs a Bat-signal on this problem by briefly having Batman accused of Dracula’s mass abductions: a witness sees a gigantic bat shadow at the scene …) This highlights the difficulty involved in monster-rallies and super-universes alike — and one we saw earlier on Buffy — Dracula needs to be a singular threat, or at least the King of Threats, to properly bring the awe and terror. Dracula as Just Another Villain suffers from his very familiarity; this version doesn’t bring enough originality despite a last-minute turn to Carmilla as the MacGuffin, and the kids’ cartoon format prevents him from bringing enough horror. In a game, at least, you can amp up the second.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Released from its tomb (by the Penguin and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order superheroic hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)

Director: Freddie Francis

Dracula: Christopher Lee

A peculiar blend of apathy and attention makes this perhaps the most frustrating of the Hammer Draculas. Anthony Hinds (writing as “John Elder”) cares so little about the script that he doesn’t even bother to name Ewan Hooper’s weak Renfielded priest, and he allows that same priest to undercut the real inner conflict (between atheism and Christianity) of the hero Paul (Barry Andrews). But Father No-Name is such a weakling that his return to Jesus (to say the needed prayer over a staked Dracula, to make sure it takes this time) plays as pure opportunism, not as redemption. As against that, Freddie Francis brings all his cinematographic energies to the problem of making yet another Dracula movie stand out. We get a cool red-amber-gold gel effect whenever Dracula uses his powers, and the lighting (except for the standard-awful day-for-night shots) is great throughout. Better still, many major scenes — including a Dracula chase! — are shot on and over the rooftops of Kleinenberg, something far more original in 1968 than now.

Lee, of course, is excellent, channeling his surly attitude about Hammer into a sneering, contemptuous performance lashed by emphatic cruelty and predation. Sadly, his main dinner course, Veronica Carlson’s Maria, is as bland and uninteresting as her uncle the Monsignor Ernst Muller (Rupert Davies, just terrific in the part) is layered. Embodying both the smugness and the righteousness of the Faith (as opposed to Father No-Name’s opportunism and impotence), Muller makes a great foil for Dracula. His death is genuinely shocking, as if Van Helsing had succumbed at the third-act turn. Is God truly dead? Can the atheist-but-handsome-and-true Paul defeat Dracula while alone in the universe? If anyone had cared enough to hammer down that last act, this might have been the best one in the series. As it is, we just have its potential to mine for games. Dracula uses Father Renfield tactically throughout: to channelize his prey into an ambush, to cover Dracula’s line of retreat with an ambush of the pursuer, to infiltrate the enemy camp and gather intel. Francis’ optical effect makes for effective Dracula spoor — a sudden “your vision tunnels, glowing gold at the center with blood red shadows at the edges — adrenaline shock, perhaps?” should creep any player out. All this and vamparkour too!

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Completed by a Pater Noster (and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order unfrozen hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Dracula: Gary Oldman

Whatever happened to Francis Ford Coppola? It beggars the imagination that the director who made five masterpieces in ten years (Patton, The Conversation, Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now) also made this chemical fire of a film. Even the uneven Eighties Coppola was better than this, at least sometimes (The Outsiders, Tucker). Watching it again for this project I realized that what Coppola had made was a live-action cartoon of Dracula: Lucy’s (Sadie Frost) vomited blood spraying in Van Helsing’s face, Dracula’s stalking/meet-cute of Mina (Winona Ryder) in London, the ludicrous muscle-armor, the rare roast beef, perhaps even Keanu Reeves’ “Whoa, I am totally British” accent as Harker — all these things are just bits, like Daffy Duck getting his bill blown off before resuming the story unharmed. They are, however, bits that don’t work at all. And sadly, they outweigh the bits that do. Coppola’s insistence on using only in-camera and practical effects (all developed before 1931) gives the film a dreamlike atmosphere in its best moments, a great gunfight in the final chase features a properly Texan Quincey (Billy Campbell) using his Winchester to deadly effect, Eiko Ishioka’s costumes are ridiculous as clothing but wonderful as expressionist artifacts, Monica Bellucci is the best of Brides. Some bits might have worked or partially worked but wound up overplayed or overused or just crowded into each other: the ceaseless homages to every other Dracula movie, the wolf-o-vision, Tom Waits’ full-throated Renfield, Anthony Hopkins’ authentically bipolar Van Helsing (“King Laugh”), the zoomy independent shadow as Dracula’s id.

And worst of all, the ultimate travesty of a Mina in love with — not mesmerized by (as in the movies by and large), much less raped by (as in the novel), but in pure, redemptive, fulfilling love with — Dracula. For this above all reasons, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is famously no such thing despite giving us the London Zoo wolf, the full Crew of Light, Van Helsing holding off the Brides with a charmed circle, and a daywalking Dracula. Which brings us to Gary Oldman. As I’ve said before, in the final analysis Dracula films stand or fall on their Dracula. Oldman is a superb actor, but his “menacing” Dracula is too campy (Fifth Element) or too psychotic (The Professional) and his proto-hipster, curly-locked “Prince Vlad” is no Cary Elwes. More to the point, when the whole cinematic world is clearly psycho, a psycho Dracula just doesn’t stand out. He doesn’t threaten the green-lit, peacock-spangled, model-train, ruff-bedecked, morphine-shooting, Richard-Burton-porno “Victorian” world of the film any more than Tom threatens Jerry.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Lushly draped in seventy pounds of Gustav-Klimt-inspired robes (and in your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order razor-lickin’ good hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula (2006)

Director: Bill Eagles

Dracula: Marc Warren

When you give me a secret history behind the story of Dracula, it makes it very hard for me to hate on your movie’s flaws. This ITV-WGBH production casts Arthur Holmwood (!) as the prime mover of the action. Discovering the death sentence that is his congenital syphilis, Holmwood (Dan Stevens) contacts the psychic Alfred Singleton (!!) of the Brotherhood of the Undead, who meet in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea (!!!) for a solution. Their researcher, Van Helsing (David Suchet), has discovered a real vampire, but it will take substantial donations, gifts of property — and the regrettable sacrifice of a few lives — to bring him to London. And our familiar story now begins, with a sexually frustrated Lucy (Sophia Myles) unable to understand her new husband and open to Dracula’s approach.

Marc Warren begins as a creepy old-Oldman Dracula in Transylvania but feeds on Harker (Rafe Spall) and enough sailors that by the time he reaches Whitby he is the Byronically youthful Marc Warren. Warren almost makes you forget his Edward-Cullen-ish petulant smolder when he goes wild in the Holmwood library or cold in the Cheyne Walk sanctum, but the eeriest moments are saved for Van Helsing, locked away in the Brotherhood’s cellar, surrounded by twig-and-twine crosses out of some Blair Vampire Project prop room. As you can tell from the brief synopsis, this movie, with its satanic cults and secret agendas, makes for great Dracula Dossier inspiration from the jump. Any vampire can draw power from Dracula’s psychometric-animalistic hunt for Mina (by sniffing a lock of her hair in Transylvania), his mind-controlled suicide sentence on Singleton, and his teleporting during the final fight where only a badass John Seward (!!!!) saves the day. And a good thing, too, as we have already learned that this Dracula can get even worse as he “will learn of London’s unholy ground, where its suicides are buried, and he will draw a great strength from them.” Taste the Telluric Psychogeography of Dracula! The tag scene is unnecessary except to set up a putative sequel that I will totally watch, because Cheyne Walk, people. Cheyne Walk.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Freed from its Cheyne Walk basement (and strengthened by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order unhallowed yet Byronic hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula 3D

Director: Dario Argento

Dracula: Thomas Kretschmann

It may seem like special pleading that I give the universally-panned Argento Dracula a pass while kicking the box-office-smash Coppola Dracula in the fangs. The differences, however, are significant. First and foremost, of course, Argento subverts Coppola by having his Mina’s love for Dracula be the result of a trance he casts upon her: his Dracula is both more pathetic and more dangerous because his hunger is greater than sanity. And while Argento’s film can be accused of being just as cartoony as Coppola’s, in his vision the insanity always springs from Dracula, preserving the novel’s irruptive fear. Sure, the human world is weirdly lit and strangely affected, but unlike Coppola, Argento has been using those techniques for decades now. People who slate this movie because it looks like it was filmed through a succession of jujubes (and scripted on a succession of shrooms) simply out themselves as never having really seen an Argento film — they all do, from Suspiria on down.

Yes, it is disappointing that Argento went to the crummy CGI well when he had perfectly good practical effects that could have done the job in some cases — blood gushing from Italian ladies should not have been untrodden ground for our Dario. (At least he filmed the movie in native 3D instead of post-producing it in.) Rutger Hauer’s Van Helsing is visibly exhausted throughout, as against Kretschmann’s sense of banked power and wolfish violence as Dracula. And yes, Dracula turning into an enormous grasshopper more than squanders in tone and seriousness what it gains in jaw-dropping shock value. (Although one Balkan vampire, the ala, inhabits grasshoppers…) The plot and incidents are indeed a mishmosh of previous Dracula films, including Coppola’s (Marta Gastini’s dress even evokes Winona Ryder’s in the final scene), but that said, Argento seized not only on the plots of the Hammer cycle but their color and lighting schemes as well, deepening the homage considerably. And somehow Argento’s film is the only one in a century to actually interrogate the town’s relationship with its murderous — but economically beneficial — vampire lord. There’s truth, and much of wisdom, in them thar jujubes.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Transformed into an enormous grasshopper (and fed by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order lush, zoomy hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)

Director: Terence Fisher

Dracula: Christopher Lee

Oh Hammer how you vex us. The studio’s best director, Terence Fisher, takes on another story of good and evil, of God and Satan, of art and budgeting. Unable to afford both Lee and Cushing, Hammer recruited Andrew Keir (the future definitive Professor Quatermass) and Jimmy Sangster wrote him an almost Van-Helsing-level part in Father Sandor, an earthy abbot who fights both superstition and the Un-Dead. Then, just to make sure the movie wouldn’t quite work, Hammer cut Lee’s part down to less than ten minutes, all of it non-speaking! (Lee claims he wouldn’t speak Sangster’s lines; Sangster claims he didn’t write any — again, one assumes, to save expensive filming-Lee time.) Lee makes the best of what he gets, with his most savage, animalistic portrayal of Dracula, all hissing and snarling. He even snaps a sword blade in half, nearly quivering with ravenous fury. Critics (both cultural and thespian) are right to single out Barbara Shelley’s performance as the straitlaced Helen turned sexually voracious vampiress — only to be held down by a squad of monks (!) and staked by Father Sandor. Someone had been reading their Gothics, and I suspect it was Jimmy Sangster.

Sangster’s both lurid and knowing screenplay, by the way, is why I believe Hammer’s budget not Lee’s sensibilities dictated a wordless Dracula. The script amazingly manages to sustain momentum in the nearly 45 minutes before Dracula’s wonderfully gruesome resurrection, and the four innocents sojourning in Castle Dracula bicker and posture believably but not (quite) annoyingly. The castle’s attempts to draw in travelers are creepy enough even before we meet the vermicious Klove (Philip Latham). And what a line this is: “He has seen and touched her — he considers her his.” The “final Brits” go back to the Castle a little too readily, but the final chase is another doozy. The finale, featuring Father Sandor and Diana (Suzan Farmer) blazing away with rifles not at Dracula but at the frozen river under his feet, is the best one in the Hammer cycle.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Reconstituted with prig’s blood (and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order enigmatically non-speaking hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966)

Director: William Beaudine

Dracula: John Carradine

And now for something completely different. This perfunctory, sleepwalking movie should not be as terrible as it is. Indeed, the premise and even the plot are sound: Dracula is in the Old West, and a recently reformed Billy the Kid, jealous of the interloper, returns to his criminal ways to gun down the Count. Slavoj Zizek says something about the act of paraphrase creating banality, but in this case, the paraphrase creates potential. It’s the execution that’s banal; Carradine at least has the excuse of having been drunk the entire time. Filmed in four days (or three, sources vary) by the legendarily uncaring William “One Shot” Beaudine, any flicker of potential was well and truly quashed.

A few surreal moments aside (such as Dracula, in full sideshow mentalist garb of top hat, floppy red cravat, and cape, announcing himself as “Mr. Underhill” from Boston) it just plods along from bad to worse, and not even “so bad it’s good” bad. I added this movie to the list for two reasons. First, I wanted to look at Dracula in the context of the Western, and I had entirely misremembered this flick from my misspent UHF-monster-movie youth. The movie I thought this was is the considerably more interesting Curse of the Undead (Edward Dein, 1959), which probably counts as the first vampire Western, a subgenre that encompasses the Iranian-American low-fi rebel flick A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014), John Carpenter’s 1998 Vampires (an homage to Rio Bravo), and Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (the best vampire film of the 1980s, a very good decade for vampire films). Watch those instead of this one. The second reason I included this movie is that it is, after all, still John Carradine as Dracula and that has to count for something. Thankfully, this grease trap would not be Carradine’s final outing as the Count. Pretending for the moment that his brief cameos in softcore disco flick Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979) don’t, er, count, Carradine fans can take satisfaction in TV workhorse Glen Larson’s surprisingly decent “McCloud Meets Dracula” episode. Aired in April 1977, it was the last episode in McCloud‘s run; Carradine kills delightfully as the senile-actor-or-real-vampire villain. And given its cowboy-cop premise, it’s even sort of kind of (not really) a Western, to boot.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. With added footnotes in German (and mayhap your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order a silver mine’s worth of hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary (2002)

Director: Guy Maddin

Dracula: Zhang Wei-Qiang

This Guy Maddin film, originally intended for Canadian TV but given a theatrical release thanks to its rapturous critical reception, is simultaneously by far the most audacious and nearly the most textually faithful adaptation of Stoker’s novel. Foregrounding the novel’s subtexts of immigration panic, absentee landlordship, and “the Eastern Question” along with its more often cited wellsprings of female sexuality unleashed, it also takes the opportunity to incorporate little-used novelistic elements such as Mrs. Westenra’s role in her daughter’s death, Quincey Morris, and Dracula “bleeding money” when stabbed. Oh, and it’s a silent, expressionist ballet with a Mahler soundtrack (First and Second symphonies) and lightning-fast neo-Eisensteinian editing (by deco dawson, also credited as “associate director”). But then I said “Guy Maddin film” up front.

If you haven’t seen any Maddin films, this may not be the place to start. (Try Careful, or The Saddest Music in the World, first.) But there’s something to be said for just diving right in, the way Maddin does with this project. Given Mark Godden’s pre-existing adaptation of Dracula for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Maddin made the decision to make a “silent film that just happens to have dancing” rather than a dance movie, and to re-adapt the source material to suit his own idiosyncratic filming and visual styles. Maddin sends his cameras into the midst of the ballet, blending the dancers’ language of gesture and motion with silent film’s language of blocking and emotion into a roller-coaster of expressionism-squared. Zhang’s Dracula is emotion incarnate, mirroring the newfound lusts of his victims and then overmastering and devouring them. Color tints or washes, stark intertitles (often taken directly from the novel’s text), and sudden changes in lighting and resolution create discrete cinematic moments that nonetheless flash by like images in a zoopraxiscope. Maddin claimed to have only read the first half of the novel, and to not even like ballet, and yet he creates a dreamlike tour de force worthy of consideration alongside Murnau or Herzog while exceeding them textually and perhaps even poetically.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Filled with polluted blood (and with your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order red-tinted hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula (1931)

Director: Tod Browning

Dracula: Bela Lugosi

Is it possible for a film to be simultaneously iconic and bad? Not “iconic for being bad” but plain old iconic — establishing the rules for cinematic Draculas to respond to or rebel against for the next century. In the first act of Dracula, Browning (and cinematographer Karl Freund) and Bela Lugosi combine their talents to present a Dracula inextricably tied to the past, to the Gothic, to aristocracy and queasy seduction, to brutality, to unnatural sex and inverted Christianity. All of these things (except mayyyybe the seduction) come straight out of Stoker, but Lugosi dials down the novel’s animalism and plays up the mesmerism (following the path of the stage play he’d performed the lead in for years) and scriptwriter Garrett Fort introduces the — iconic — line “I never drink … wine.” Even after decades of camp and detournement, Lugosi’s authentically Transylvanian accent still sells that line along with Stoker’s classic “children of the night” and the play’s “For one who has not lived even a single lifetime …” dis of Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan). The play provided the evening clothes and opera cape, but it was Lugosi’s decision on stage and in film to code Dracula as a mentalist or magician, and to play him as a “Valentino gone slightly rancid” in Dracula scholar David Skal’s memorable phrase. Even Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman bow to Lugosi’s performance in their own, and Frank Langella purely updated Lugosi’s seducer to the 1970s.

The lesser parts have also felt the Browning chill: Dwight Frye’s unhinged Renfield has almost completely erased the novel’s genteel madman; David Manners’ (or rather the script’s and director’s) bland Harker has likewise nearly expunged the novel’s heroic lover. And here’s where we must take notice of the second half of the question, because Dracula is a bad movie despite its legendarily perfect first act. Browning wrested control from Freund but didn’t care enough to use it: shots become static and stagy, the actors are lost or falling back on instinct, whole plot lines ignored (Lucy isn’t staked in the film) or stepped on (Dracula is staked off screen). Why the movie drops dead 20 minutes in remains an open question: was Browning drunk, a silent director out of his element, pining for his dead muse Lon Chaney Sr. (who would have played Dracula had he not died of cancer in 1930), or sabotaged by a junky script based on the stage play and by Universal’s Depression-era penny pinching? The end result is a film as incompatible with itself as its famous armadillos are with Dracula’s castle, a film trapped between terrifying life and stultifying death.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Surrounded by armadillos (and by your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order mesmerizing hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!