News About Things For Which You Cannot See.
Work on the site continues. This time, it is not on the things you can see, but on the backend. I now have control of many of the functions of the site from menus that I have built into the site. In the past, making a new post required 9 pieces of software, and I had to manipulate my database directly, (kind of a no no.)
In the near future, I will be able to launch a post to the site with two programs, a browser and Photoshop. I won’t even need Photoshop if I am not using an image as a header. There is still a ton of work to do. I let the code for this site for a bit and things need a little spring cleaning.
Also, I will fix my RSS problem. Right now, if you subscribe to my feed, you will find it woefully inadequate.
This bit of news by the way is the first to be placed onto the site with my new backend. So I am kind of excited about that. Sadly, few if anyone will ever see it :/ Peace.
The book Dracula, published in 1897, can be an odd read. Much of the story is told through diary entries, newspaper reports, and ship logs. The stories protagonist shifts often as the Count moves from Transylvania to a ship bound for England, then on to London. This creates a sense that no one in the story is safe from Dracula. As the count travels, he leaves death and destruction in his wake, but his killing is quiet and he leaves no witnesses. This makes the story claustrophobic and physiologically scary. The novel has great pacing and has been considered one of the scariest horror stories ever written. Because of this, films based on the character of Count Dracula have flourished since the 1920's.
The novel Dracula is broken into four acts. The first act details what Jonathan Harker experienced while in Dracula's castle. Jonathan Harker is an English solicitor sent to Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a new property in England. While in Count Dracula's crumbling castle, we learn of the harem that he keeps and Harker barely escapes alive. The second act covers the Russian ship, Demeter. This ship never makes it to its destination and the story is told through the captain's log. Act three takes place in London, where Dracula preys on and entrances an engaged woman named Mina who, has chosen a fiance from three potential suitors. The famous Dr. Abraham Van Helsing enters at this point as the first character to understand that Dracula is drinking the blood of his victims. Once Mina's fiance and the other suitors believe Van Helsing's theory, Dracula's London lairs are destroyed and he is on his way back to Transylvania. Act four takes place in Dracula's castle as Van Helsing kills the three brides of Dracula. Soon after, Nina's suitor's find themselves in a fight with gypsies trying to return the count to his castle. In the climactic moment, Dracula is stabbed in the heart with a bowie knife and turns to dust. "It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our site" (Stoker 332). Once Dracula is dead, Nina is released from her trance and later names her first child after Quincy, the suitor who stabbed Dracula before dying of knife wounds from the gypsies.
When Bram Stoker wrote the novel Dracula, he was the business manager for the Lyceum Theatre in London. Stoker was Irish born, and "...never actually traveled to Transylvania. Instead, he used tourism guides from the areas he wished to write about" (Dracula: The Vampire and the Voivode). Vampires had been written about before Dracula, but Stoker's boyhood fear of being buried alive, and the legend of Vlad the Impaler mixed together to form Count Dracula. This version of a vampire was not killed with a stake through the heart, but was afflicted by sunlight.
Vlad the Impaler was a Romanian prince and ruler who lived in the 1400's. As his name suggests, he was known to execute his enemies by impaling them and stories of his cruelty spread faster than his army. He is thought to have, "...killed as many as twenty-five thousand men women and children" (Dracula: The Vampire and the Voivode).
Bram Stoker's Count Dracula could enslave rats and wolves to help his causes and could change into any number of animals. In Stoker's novel, Dracula changes into a dog, a bat, and maybe mist. While the cinema has portrayed Dracula's ability to turn into a bat quite often, his ability to change into a dog is integral to the plot of the novel, and a large dog is mentioned on more than one occasion with regard to the ship that carried Dracula to England. "But, strangest of all, the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below..." (Stoker 69). "A good deal of interest was abroad concerning the dog which landed when the ship struck, and more than a few of the members of the S.P.C.A., which is very strong in Whitby, have tried to befriend the animal. To the general disappointment, however, it was not to be found" (Stoker 71). In The Origins of Dracula, Clive Leatherdale explains,
"Dracula commands wolves and rats to do his bidding as if they were part of his animal slave-world. However, when needing to disguise himself in England he does not transform himself into a wolf or a rat, for a wolf would have been too conspicuous and a rat too vulnerable, and Dracula is too shrewd to take unnecessary risks. When bounding ashore at Whitby from the stricken Demeter, Dracula assumes the form of a huge dog. In Brittan, as he presumably knows, dogs attract affection, not stones." (152)
Some Dracula films do show the Count changing into animals other than the bat. In more than one film, and maybe even Stoker's Dracula, he can turn into a mist when trying to hide in plain sight. Part of the allure of the book and films seems to be that Dracula could possibly change into anything.
The first film still in existence to tell the tale of Count Dracula could not actually use the title Dracula due to copyright issues. Instead, F.W. Murnau directs the 1922 German film Nosferatu and the Dracula character is named Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck. Nosferatu is a silent film, with dialog and text relayed to the viewer with placeholders. In Nosferatu, the character of Jonathan is warned against going to the counts castle and is only taken halfway by his coach. Count Orlok himself, though disguised, picks Jonathan up while on his walk. The horses and the carriage are draped in all black and as we see a few minutes later, Count Orlok is similarly always dressed head to toe in black. Max Schreck plays this character perfectly. He is tall, thick shouldered but thin. He has pointy fingers, ears, and teeth. The count moves in a stutter step motion, slowly stalking his victims. He also has the ability to hypnotize "Ellen," named Mina in Stokers novel, without meeting her. In this version of the film, Jonathan is married to Ellen, whereas in the novel, he had no relation to her.
The count brings Jonathan into the castle and feeds him. Just as the count does in Stoker's novel, Jonathan cuts his thumb while cutting bread and the count can hardly resist tasting his blood. In the morning, Jonathan notices bite marks on his neck but attributes them to bugs. In this version of the tale, Count Orlock must bring boxes of Transylvanian soil on his journey to England. "As a vampire, he draws his strength from the unholy soil they contain" (Joslin 13). Jonathan watches the count loading himself into one of the boxes of soil while locked in Orlok's tower. One main difference between Stokers Dracula and Nosferatu are the "brides of Dracula." In the novel, Dracula had three brides who had been enslaved by the Count. The film Nosferatu never mentions the brides.
Count Orlock kills everyone on the ship en route to Germany and the deaths are attributed to the plague. As more people die in the town, fears of the plague keep people in doors. While Jonathan is missing, Ellen pines for him and Orlok watches her through the window of his new home. We meet an insane man who craves the blood of insects and a version of Van Helsing but in the end, Orlok is killed by his own lack of attentiveness. While engrossed in sucking the blood from Ellen, the sun rises and the count disappears in a puff of smoke. In this scene we see that the count has a reflection in mirrors and during the film, no one uses a cross, garlic, or a stake on the vampire.
There are a few versions of this film today. All character names were changed for the release of Nosferatu in an effort to not infringe on copyright, yet attributed the film to Stoker. Since Stoker had died by the time of filming, his wife ordered the destruction of all copies. The version we see today was one of the edited versions with sections of the original cut into it. Nosferatu is neither official nor is it the first version of Dracula's tale. But Max Schreck's performance and the fact that it was the first widely known version to be close to the original meant that it will be remembered as the first Dracula film, "as opposed to the two earlier versions, one Russian and one Hungarian, which seem no longer to exist" (Joslin 13).
Two other oddities about this film remain interesting to viewers. The fear of plague is prevalent in this version of the story. This likely has a lot to do with the Spanish Flu, which lasted from 1918 through 1920 killing upwards of one hundred million people. The second oddity we see with this film is its soundtrack. When first released, the video footage would have been shipped with a score to be played by the musicians in the theatre. This score has been lost, and the "restored" version we see now contains a score thought to be close to the original. Because it is not the original, many versions of the soundtrack to Nosferatu exist. Depending on which score you choose, the tone of the film changes dramatically. One version, by the metal band Type O Negative, contains tracks from their first four records, adding a layer of dissonance to the film that makes Nosferatu even more unnerving.
In 1931, the movie Dracula is released. Less than three minutes into the film, Nosferatu is winkingly mentioned by name to Jonathan, (known as "Renfield" in this film,) the man on his way to meet with Dracula. Not long after, we meet Bela Legosi's Count Dracula as he emerges from his coffin along with his three speechless brides. Dracula will soon take Renfield the second half of the way to his castle. As with Nosferatu, Bela Legosi's Dracula is disguised, and turns into a bat halfway through the journey. Bela Legosi always over plays Dracula. His wild, menacing stare is sometimes laughable by today's standards. Bees, armadillos, spiders, and possums roam his otherwise perfectly dilapidated castle. But Bela Legosi's Dracula is still all about mood and tone. He moves slowly, and wears a flowing short cape. Many of the lines he speaks in Dracula are still parodied today. "Listen to them. Children of the Night. What music they make." and, "There are far worse things awaiting man than death." (Dracula) are early examples.
During Renfield and Dracula's first meeting, Renfield cuts himself with a paper clip. A crucifix scares an approaching Dracula who shields his face with his cloak and backs away. In this version of Dracula, the Count still brings three boxes of earth from his home to England. Renfield, driven insane by Dracula becomes a slave to him. He wants to help Dracula in return for eternal life. Renfield is listed as the only survivor of the "Vesta" and is taken to an insane asylum where he begins eating flies and spiders for their blood.
Once in London, Dracula immediately begins taking lives. His first victim is a flower peddler and he soon moves on to entrance another woman who works in the theater while she sleeps. Once Dracula has dispatched his second victim, Van Helsing enters, stating that he knows the cause of death. At this point, Dracula is already obsessed with Nina, and bites her during the night. What follows is thirty five minutes of Van Helsing trying to convince everyone that Count Dracula is a vampire. By the films end, Dracula has turned Nina into one of his brides, though she is cured when Van Helsing stabs Count Dracula through the heart with a stake.
This version of Dracula establishes many "rules" for future vampire films. Dracula is susceptible to the crucifix and wolfs bane. He cannot be seen in a mirror, and can only be killed by a stake through the heart. As with Nosferatu, this telling of the story relies on pace and tone to keep the suspense high. It mostly works. But toward the middle of the film, Count Dracula engages in multiple dialogs with various members of the cast while standing in full light. Each of these events makes the count more human and therefore less scary. Bela Lugosi's wobbly baritone in full studio lighting is a little comical by today's standards.
1931 audiences were scared, and excited by this new Dracula. The year Dracula was released, Universal posted it's only profit during the Depression. This adaptation of Dracula also showed that American audiences wanted more supernatural films to help them through the financial issues the country was facing. Bela Lugosi, who had played the character of Dracula on the stage production which the film Dracula was based, became a household name.
Sadly, Dracula would be Bela Lugosi's peak. Lugosi became heavily typecast as a horror movie villain and his roles steadily declined. In many cases, he was cast as the B villain. Movies such as Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, and Mark of the Vampire all saw Lugosi chosen for his accent and name recognition. In 1948, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein has Lugosi reprising his role as Dracula, but with a comedic bent. By the time Lugosi begins working with Ed Wood, he is having issues with drug addiction. Bela Lugosi's last performance is in the 1959 film Plan 9 From Outer Space, where scenes Ed Wood shot for another picture are interspersed with scenes by Tom Mason as Lugosi had died almost three years prior. Sadly, Lugosi's last film is often considered one of the worst films ever produced.
Lugosi is so tied to the character of Dracula that every child's Halloween outfit is based on his. Almost any time you hear someone speaking like Count Dracula, they use Lugosi's accent. The singer Rob Zombie, based his heavy metal band on the Lugosi film, White Zombie; and the influential Goth rock group Bauhaus, has one hit single entitled, Bela Lugosi's Dead. His role in Dracula made and destroyed Bela Lugosi.
A Spanish language version of Dracula was also released in 1931 directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarias in the Count Dracula role. Universal had green lit the American and Spanish version simultaneously and the two films were shot at the same time, on the same sets. When the American production staff shut down for the evening, the Spanish production team would begin filming, staying through the night. Universal was able to make a Spanish version of the film at a fraction of the cost. The plot of the Spanish Dracula is identical since the two shared a script. But the two do have differences in tone and the Spanish version is longer, containing more expository shots.
In 1936, Universal Pictures released a direct sequel to Dracula called Dracula's Daughter. Directed by Lamber Hillyer, Dracula's Daughter only sees one returning star, Edward Van Sloan in the role of Dr. Van Helsing. While this film starts right where the 1931 Dracula left off, Count Dracula remains dead in the film. Instead, Dracula's daughter, as the film's title implies, is its antagonist. Much of Dracula's Daughter centers on Van Helsing trying to prove his innocence. The police do not believe that Count Dracula was a vampire and accuse Van Helsing for his murder. Dracula's body is stolen and burned and Dracula's daughter, the Countess Marya Zaleska, uses a jewel encrusted ring to enchant her victims. In the end, the stake through the heart that kills her is an arrow shot by her manservant. Dracula's Daughter is the only film that can truly be considered a sequel to Dracula but it is not based on any writings of Bram Stoker.
Universal Pictures releases the third film in what it considers the Dracula trilogy in 1943. Son of Dracula was directed by Robert Siodmak and starred Lon Chaney Jr. as Count Alucard. (A name chosen because it is "Dracula" spelled backward) "Son of Dracula is as much a stand-alone film as, say, The Return of Dracula in 1958 (which, despite its title, is also not a sequel)" (Joslin 137). Son of Dracula, while considered to be a very strong film, it mostly remembered for its visual effects, the main effect being the transformation from bat to Count on screen.
While films like Dracula's Daughter and Son of Dracula attempted to carry the Stoker story further, the actual Count Dracula story would not be told again until 1958. The character of Count Dracula has a cameo in House of Frankenstein and its sequel, House of Dracula focuses on all of Universal's popular monsters. It is odd that, the most notable Dracula film of the 1940's doesn't even bear the count's name in the title.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was a comedy horror film released in 1948. Directed by Charles Barton and staring the comedy team Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, this movie is Bela Lugosi's second and final appearance as Count Dracula by name. To say that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a Dracula film would be a stretch. In this film, Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula and Frankenstein's monster are both released by the unwitting Costello character. Lon Chaney Jr., who played Count Dracula in Son of Dracula, plays the Wolf Man who attempts to enlist Abbott and Costello to aid him in stopping Dracula's plan. Meanwhile, Dracula turns the surgeon Dr. Sandra Mornay into a vampire, and she attempts to hypnotize Costello's character. A series of gaffs end with Costello being prepped for a brain transplant with Frankenstein's monster. Before Dr. Mornay can perform the surgery, Abbot's character and the Wolf Man rescue Costello. The film ends with a reveal of the Invisible man, a teaser for the 1951 film, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man.
While Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a fun romp through the Universal Monster universe, it is hardly the fitting end Count Dracula deserves. At the end of many Universal Pictures monster movies, there is a reveal for the next film. In this case, the next film will not star Dracula, Frankenstein, or the Wolf Man "This time they won't be back. Comedy has killed them" (Joslin 147).
In the 1950's, 60's, and 70's, Hammer Productions produced low quality horror movies with more sexual content and more violence than had been seen previously in Dracula films. The Hammer films are less about nuance and tone, and more about shock. That is not to say that these films are bad. Most of these films are campy and over the top, but are fun to watch in their own way.
The first Hammer film to feature Count Dracula was the 1958 Horror of Dracula. The film was titled this way to separate it from the other Dracula films, and its plot is a loose adaptation of Stoker's book. Terence Fisher directs Horror of Dracula and it stars Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and Christopher Lee as the Count Dracula. In this version of the film, Jonathan is a librarian who is hired by Dracula. A woman appears to Jonathan during the dinner scene with Dracula while the count is away. She warns him to leave but Jonathan does not heed her warning. Jonathan is later attacked by the same woman, who is revealed to be a vampire but Dracula stops her. Jonathan awakes later in his room with bite marks on his neck and flees to the vault where Dracula sleeps. Jonathan is able to stake the woman but he fails to kill the count and is trapped in the vault with Dracula. At this point, Van Helsing begins to investigate and it is revealed that Jonathan has been turned into a vampire, and is now stalking his wife, Mina. In the end, Van Helsing kills Dracula by dropping the curtains in the library letting in daylight. Dracula turns to ash and dies. This version of the Dracula tale contained so much gore that it was originally released with an X rating.
Horror of Dracula stands as a huge departure from the novel. One of the main reasons for this was that its budget was so small. In Hammer Productions first Dracula film, the Count never makes it to England despite the fact that Hammer is a British company. But buckets of blood are used in the film and Christopher Lee's Dracula, while older than previous versions, looks great and moves quickly when he attacks.
Two years after Horror of Dracula, Hammer released a sequel entitled The Brides of Dracula. While Dracula does not appear in the film, Peter Cushing returns as Van Helsing and Terence Fisher directs. This film barely mentions Count Dracula and the female vampires have little in common with their predecessor.
In 1966, Hammer releases Dracula: Prince of Darkness. This film marks the return of Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and again, Terence Fisher directs. This film is a direct sequel to Horror of Dracula but is so filled with plot holes that it is easier to think of it as a stand-alone movie. The opening shot of Dracula: Prince of Darkness reuses the footage from Horror of Dracula followed by scenes from Dracula's burial. Through a series of highly unlikely events, two couples end up stranded in the woods outside of Dracula's castle. They are brought to the castle by a driverless coach and meet with a servant named Klove. This servant has prepared food for the couples and unpacks their bags in the rooms where they are to sleep. Soon, one of the visiting men follows a noise to the crypt and is killed by Klove. Klove then uses the man's blood to bring Dracula back to life. Dracula is killed when he and his coffin are thrown into the icy moat surrounding Dracula's castle.
Dracula: Prince of Darkness overuses the crucifix and while all of the characters seem to know that a stake through the heart will kill a vampire, Dracula is assumed dead even though he is not staked. The other oddity in this film is a lack of dialogue from Lee's Dracula. Lee claims that the dialogue was terrible and that he refused to speak his lines but the screenwriter is on record that he never wrote any lines for Lee to speak. One of the reasons it took eight years for Lee to return to the role is attributed to contract issues and this argument may be an extension of that issue. Either way, a silent Dracula is more shocking and it brings some fresh air to the character.
1968 saw the release of another Hammer Productions Dracula film. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave continues down the path toward a more violent, and more religious Dracula tale. Freddie Francis directs and Christopher Lee again returns as the Count Dracula. In this film, a priest travels to Dracula's castle to cleanse it from all of its evils. After affixing a crucifix to the castle door, the priest falls and gashes his head, pouring blood into the frozen moat where Dracula was left at the end of Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Dracula is eventually killed by the Lord's Prayer after he has fallen onto a crucifix.
Dracula has Risen from the Grave pushes the Dracula story further into the religious territory. Satan's curses are mentioned and crosses and prayers are the norm. While Christopher Lee again plays a wonderful Count Dracula, his role has been reduced from its original glory. "The main liability of Dracula has Risen from the Grave is its continuation of Hammer's reduction of Dracula to little more than a stalker and sexual predator" (Joslin 173).
Hammer Productions release more Dracula pictures between 1970 and 1974, each worse than the one before it. Scars of Dracula, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Dracula AD 1972, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, are all quick and dirty productions that are little more than a cash grab and will not interest any but the most die-hard Dracula fan.
While Hammer Productions was busy killing Dracula, the count continued to pop up in different retellings. Some were worth watching while others were as bad as what Hammer was pumping out. The first of these in the latter category was a film released in 1972 called Blacula. This William Crain directed "blaxploitation" film retells the story of Count Dracula as an African prince unwilling to help the ruler of an African nation stop the slave trade. Most of the film takes place in 1972, after the counts coffin, with him inside of it, is sold to interior designers in Los Angeles. There are not a lot of good things to say about this film. Critics hated it and it has been largely forgotten despite it being one of the top grossing films of 1972.
Andy Warhol also took a stab the legend of Dracula with the Italian film, Blood for Dracula. The film had trouble getting released as its gore, incest, and nudity resulted in an X rating. There is an R rated cut of the film but the shortened plot makes little sense and the original, rated version is difficult to find.
Another adaptation of the 1931 Dracula is released in 1979. This version differentiates itself with a subtitle and is called, Dracula: A Love Story. Its story is functionally identical to the 1931 version and did not perform as expected at the box office. Also released in 1979 is a nearly identical retelling of Nosferatu. This version, called Nosferatu the Vampyre, has few lines, great makeup and is almost as scary as the original. It is almost a shot for shot remake of Nosferatu, however, and has been largely forgotten.
While the 1980's brought mostly comedy Dracula films, and vampire films missing the count, the original Stoker tale sat dormant. In 1992, a reboot titled, Bram Stoker's Dracula took theaters by storm and was followed by a reboot of Frankenstein called, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein released in 1994. Bram Stoker's Dracula was dark, violent, and sexual. The most shocking scenes in the film took place in quasi dream sequences as a way to counteract their content. Francis Ford Coppola directs some rather large names in this film and much of the plot follows that of Stoker's book.
The film starts in 1462, Vlad Dracula, played by Gary Oldman, forsakes religion after his wife commits suicide while he was at war. Fast forward to 1897, a solicitor named Jonathan travels to Transylvania to help the count purchase property in London. Jonathan is played by Keanu Reeves who exhibits what is quite possibly the worst British accent in the history of film. Instead of a paper cut scene, Dracula walks in on Jonathan shaving and licks the blood covered blade after Jonathan slips and cuts his neck.
Jonathan is engaged to Mina, played by Winona Ryder, and when Dracula sees a picture of her, he believes she is the reincarnation of his long dead wife. Dracula leaves his wives to kill Jonathan and moves to England with his boxes of soil. Jonathan does escape and makes his way back to London while Dracula kills a few women in preparation for his seduction of Mina. The film goes back and forth with "the rules" of the Count Dracula character. Dracula cannot be seen in mirrors and reacts violently when presented by a crucifix, (though his reaction to the crucifix could be a reaction to his loss of faith). But this version of Dracula appears young and handsome during the day and can walk in the sun with no ill effects. Mina does fall in love with Dracula and admits that she is indeed his reincarnated wife.
Once Dracula begins Mina's transformation into a vampire, they begin traveling back to Transylvania. After a battle where Dracula is stabbed in the heart with a bowie knife, Mina and Dracula return to the chapel when he first denounced religion 400 years prior. After Mina tells Dracula that she loves him, she kills Dracula and cuts off his head and the two drift to heaven together.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a fan favorite in the series and is thought to have taken the right liberties when telling a love story. As opposed to previous versions where Dracula is simply bad because he is a vampire, here Dracula is a monster because he is lovesick. It brings a different perspective to a story that has been told so many times before.
If Bram Stoker's Dracula, is considered the most recent retelling of the classic story, what of the original Nosferatu? Nosferatu is Dracula after all and the first film is considered a classic Dracula film. In 2000, a film entitled Shadow of the Vampire; served as a great revisitation of the Nosferatu tale. Shadow of the Vampire is a Meta film, detailing events that occurred on the set of the original Nosferatu. E. Elias Merhige directs as John Malkovich plays the director of Nosferatu and Willem Dafoe plays Max Schreck playing the Count Orlok. This film is a blast to watch. Dafoe's portrayal is a real treat. And of course the set of the film is besieged by a Schreck, who is a real vampire. In the end, Dafoe's Schrek is killed by sunlight filming the very scene Count Orlok would have died in.
In 1979 a Stan Dragoti directed film called Love at First Bite, was released starring George Hamilton as Dracula. It was a comedy about Count Dracula but was different than the Abbott and Costello comedies of the 1940's. Where those comedies had been campy, all of the laughs were centered on the antics of Abbott and Costello, and the plots were not based on the Stoker novel. Love at First Bite used the Dracula plot, with a funny twist to get laughs. Dracula is kicked out of his castle by communists and he travels to New York City. On the way, Dracula is separated from his coffin and hilarity ensues as he learns to live in a modern city.
Another film, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, was released in 1995 and directed by Mel Brooks. In this film, Leslie Nielsen plays Dracula in a comedy based more closely to the Stoker novel. As with most films by Mel Brooks, you either like them or don't. If you are the type of person who enjoys Brooks and Nielsen, Dracula: Dead and Loving It serves as a passable comedy that follows as closely to the plot as it can. But the film managed to score an impossibly low "8% fresh" rating on Rottentomatoes.com.
While it is only natural that vampire films would become more violent and sexual as society became more open about these topics; the original films based on Dracula have some fairly major advantages over their modern counterparts. The use of tone and pacing of the earlier films give them a more physiological feel and in turn, tend to be spookier. By the Hammer era, any real suspense had been replaced with sex and gore. These films can be fun to watch once, but will ultimately be forgotten. Modern films like Let the Right One In, cover the topic of vampires more maturely, folding sex and violence into the story in a less gratuitous way. But these films have left the Count Dracula portion of the myth far behind. Even contemporary popular vampire films like Twilight completely omit the original count. Is there nothing else to tell about him? Is he not violent or lustful enough for a modern audience? It could be argued that the death of Bela Lugosi signaled the beginning of the end for the traditional Count Dracula film and it may be some time before movie goers push for a return to the more traditional tale. But the Count has had a good run. One book has spawned over 200 variations and adaptations of the story on both the big and small screen.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Dir. Barton, Charles. Perf. Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chany Jr. Universal Pictures. 1948. Film.
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dir. Coppola, Francis Ford. Perf. Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves. Columbia Pictures. 1992. Film.
Dracula. Dir. Browning, Tod. Perf. Bela Lugosi, Edward Van Sloan. Universal Pictures. 1931. Film.
Dracula has Risen from the Grave. Dir. Francis, Freddie. Perf. Christopher Lee. Hammer Film Productions. 1968. Film.
Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Dir. Fisher, Terrence. Perf. Christopher Lee. Hammer Film Productions. 1966. Film.
Dracula (Spanish Language Version). Dir. Melford, George. Perf. Carlos Villarias. Universal Pictures. 1931. Film.
Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Dir. Brooks, Mel. Perf. Leslie Nielsen. Castle Rock Entertainment.
Dracula's Daughter. Dir. Hillyer, Lambert. Perf. Gloria Holden, Edward Van Sloan. Universal Pictures. 1936. Film.
Dracula: The Vampire and the Voivode. Dir. Hughes, Michael Bayley. Virgil Films and Entertainment, 2011. Film.
Horror of Dracula. Dir. Fisher, Terence. Perf. Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee. Hammer Film Productions. 1958. Film.
Joslin, Lyndon W. Count Dracula Goes to the Movies. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 1999. Print.
Leatherdale, Clive. The Origins of Dracula. Essex: Desert Island Books. 1995. Print.
Love at First Bite. Dir. Stan Dragoti. Perf. George Hamilton. American International Pictures. 1979. Film.
Nosferatu. Dir. F.W. Murnau. Film Arts Guild, 1922. Film.
Shadow of the Vampire. Dir. Merhige, E. Elias. Perf. John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe. BBC Films. 2000. Film.
Son of Dracula. Dir. Siodmak, Robert. Perf. Lon Chany Jr. Universal Pictures. 1943. Film.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Dover Thrift Editions. New York: Dover Publications. 2000. Print.
