by Ryan Britt
Dramatically, I think it is very dope that Obi-Wan puts a lightsaber in Luke’s hand, but if he wanted to prevent all of this, then he and Qui-Gon Jinn should have been going around teaching people on poor planets to read years and years prior. In a meta-criticism of the universe he actually lives in, Han Solo says, “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.” If we read “hokey religions and ancient weapons” as a stand-in for “Star Wars,” then we can also pretend that “blasters” become “books.” If there are to be real Skywalkers in our world—those who swoop in to save a decadent and dulling culture from dangerous laziness—complete with wide-eyed idealism and string sections in our guts, you can bet we’ll all be just a little bit, maybe a lot bit, better read.
Wearing Dracula’s Pants
Say what you will about hipsters and the twenty-first-century epidemic of skinny jeans, but as a teenager growing up in the ’90s, I was glad to get a reprieve from the super-baggy-can’t-touch-this pants options of the previous decade. Though, to be honest, when I started buying and wearing pants that were a little tighter, it probably had less to do with being a hipster and more to do with trying to be like Dracula.*
In the 1931 film adaptation of Dracula, Bela Lugosi’s history-making turn as the famous vampire finds the character with superpowers coming out of his ears: he can transform into bats and wolves (the latter, offscreen), he can fly, be invisible (also offscreen, for obvious reasons), suck your blood, control your mind, and make an impressive real estate negotiation in which he swaps a castle in Transylvania for one in England. But his most lasting superpower is easily his sense of style. No one else in this movie looks nearly as suave as Lugosi’s Dracula, and in a contest between who has the better pants—Dracula versus the movie’s “good guy,” John Harker—Dracula totally wins.
Monster-guru John Landis told me once that he thought because of the “exchange of bodily fluids,” vampires were always about sex.* He also said that Lugosi’s portrayal of the character redefined how we thought about Dracula: “In the book he’s not sexy,” Landis said, “but Bela Lugosi was this hot matinee idol in Budapest. What is considered stilted acting now was quite dashing then.”
Because vampires have been connected with sex since forever, Lugosi’s decision to play Dracula as a slick, overtly sexual, fashion-forward icon isn’t without its literary roots. Predating the 1897 Bram Stoker novel by seventy-eight years, John William Polidori’s 1819 short story “The Vampyre” featured a smooth operator named Lord Ruthven, a suave, sexy vampire who gives Dorian Gray a foppish and vapid run for his money. Written during a super-famous dark and stormy night while hanging out with Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, this short story is often credited with giving everybody the idea that immortal people who drink your blood will also be people you’ll want to sleep with.
Considerably less sexy than Lord Ruthven is James Malcolm Rymer’s 1845 vampire, Varney, who stars in the serialized “novel” Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood. This multipart thingamabob was part of those “penny dreadfuls” you’ve probably heard about: cheap publications in Victorian England that were designed to elicit thrills from readers and to get them coming back for the next installment. If you were to time-travel back to the 1840s and try to simulate bad television through prose, Varney the Vampire would probably be what you would come up with, and you’d be a genius for doing it. It’s thin on characters and consistency, but heavy on engaging the reader with exclamation points and weird, bizarrely direct questions. Asking “What is that—a strange, pattering noise, as of a million of fairy feet?” or “Was that lightning?” the sentences themselves do almost everything short of saying, “Do you see the Vampire?” Calling the writing clunky would be too easy and a tad cruel, but there does seem to be something of the proto–Choose Your Own Adventure book imbedded in penny dreadfuls, plus there are a lot of other cool vampire-firsts in Varney. The whole look-into-my-eyes mind-control thing originates here, as do the fangs that leave the telltale two-pronged vamp-nip on the neck. Neither Lord Ruthven nor Varney had to be invited to your house to start terrorizing people, but Varney is decidedly grosser in appearance than Lord Ruthven, meaning Varney took some sexy points away from vampires for a while.
A few decades later, things heat up again. Twenty-six years before the novel Dracula, in 1871, Irishman Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu drops his novella “Carmilla,” which gives us the first lesbian vampires. Although Carmilla is more adept at seduction than Varney, even the reader isn’t totally sure who or what she is at first. Most important, and unlike those dumb male vampires before her, she becomes the first vampire who really has to be invited inside your house in order to bite you.* In 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula also has to be invited in, and Stoker borrows even more from “Carmilla” than just that! Stoker has Dracula turning into a dog in the novel, and Carmilla turns into a black cat. Both Dracula and Carmilla have a propensity to only strike at nighttime, and in “Carmilla,” there’s even a vampire-hunting expert named Baron Vordenburg whose name doesn’t sound at all like that of Dracula’s nemesis, Dr. Van Helsing.* Both Vordenburg and Van Helsing are Dutch persons, and yet, the American phrase “going Dutch” for some reason never caught on to mean “locating and killing vampires.” We live in a screwed-up world.
So, how did we get sexy vampires from all of this stuff? Isn’t this Bram Stoker guy’s novel Dracula an unsexy giant rip-off of a bunch of other vampire stories that came before it? Kind of, but Dracula had some loose historical basis, too. Most people who dig vampires agree that Stoker based Dracula’s background on a fifteenth-century Bulgarian folk hero named Vlad the Impaler,* sometimes called Vlad Dracula, but never Vlad “the Butch.”* The novel also sports cool narrative flips and was widely praised by Stoker’s contemporaries, including Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was more loved than any other vampire thing before, maybe because it just happened to be a full-blown, whole novel. So, rip-off or skilled literary mash-up, Dracula brought vampires into the twentieth century, and the character himself became the vampire to beat.
This isn’t to say he’ll always be that way. To put it in perspective, if you were to ask somebody twenty years ago to name the “most famous” fictional novel about wizards, people would probably say J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Today, I’m sure Tolkien would get mentioned for sure, but I bet more people would say J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. And then you’d suddenly realize only forty-two years passed between J. R. R. Tolkien publishing The Return of the King in 1955 and J. K. Rowling putting out the first Harry Potter novel in 1997. After just four decades, Rowling’s wizards are arguably way more recognizable in the pop zeitgeist than Tolkien’s wizards. On the vampire front: it was fifty-two years between Varney and Dracula, and Stoker almost permanently took over vampire fiction until Anne Rice started up. The average person probably thinks of Dracula as being the “original” vampire, even though he isn’t, and even he’s hanging on by a thread these days. So, it’s not inconceivable that in one hundred years Harry Potter or Dumbledore could be considered the “original” wizards, not Merlin or Gandalf. Who knows who the twenty-second century’s big vampire will be? Maybe Edward Cullen?
But why do we still care? And how is it connected with sex? When we consider the very real fact that at least half of the people who claim to like vampires have never even read Dracula, how do we account for everyone’s total and complete familiarity and obsession with him? Not only has everyone heard of Dracula, they can literally hear his voice in their brains, just like the “real” Dracula if he were controlling your mind. I’m talking of course about the “I vant to suck your blouud” Transylvania accent.
A few Octobers ago, I went to one of these haunted corn mazes the week before Halloween. It was in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and after watching a little nifty Headless Horseman show, my girlfriend and I lined up for the entrance to the maze. Suddenly, a faux-Transylvan
ian accent came booming out of the loudspeakers: “Gouood evening . . . and velcome to the horrors that avait you in the maze beyond . . .” I looked around and quickly found on a raised platform the master of ceremonies, a teenage kid in half-assed Beetlejuice makeup wearing a mic that was part of a headset, like she was Shakira or a telemarketer. Playing this “character” was probably going to help her get her equity card. I was so pissed, and not just because the accent was bad, but because it was so out of place with the Sleepy Hollow stuff. “It’s not even period specific,” I hissed under my breath. My girlfriend rolled her eyes. It’s a wonder why anyone hangs out with me at all.
Still, it’s weird that some poor, struggling actor working a crummy haunted maze in upstate New York inherently just knows to put on the Dracula voice if she needs a bargain-basement “Halloween voice.” It’s not like this kid did an impression of Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan or David Boreanaz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Most people still associate the word “vampire” with Dracula. And even though Sesame Street’s Count has a lot to do with that, I’m not convinced that’s the only reason. What I’m saying is this: even if people don’t think of Bela Lugosi specifically when they hear that “scary voice,” it’s still the go-to scary voice because it started out not as a scary voice but instead as an I’m-trying-to-seduce-you voice.
If it’s possible to get blasphemous about the unholy, I’m going to go ahead and say what I’ve been dancing around: Dracula the literary character is not super interesting, but Dracula the cinematic character as played by Bela Lugosi is. This sexed-up, over-the-top performance from Bela Lugosi is what saved the whole thing from obscurity. The character in the book spoke with perfect English, but that doesn’t really work in a movie. So, in the approximation of the thing, the simulacrum of Dracula becomes the “real Dracula.”
If you’re a film snob, you’re probably blowing a gasket now and asserting that the 1922 German film Nosferatu is a more important vampire movie than 1931’s Dracula, but I call arty bullshit on that. Nosferatu was an unauthorized “retelling” of the Stoker novel, and it’s not funny, and it’s certainly not sexy. It might take vampires more seriously than the Lugosi film, and might be true to the creepy spirit of the novel, but to me, all of that doesn’t make it legit. Actually, to get rowdy for a second, Nosferatu is a snobby idea of what a vampire movie should be: obscure, hard to watch, off-putting. I admit that it might legitimately be a better piece of art than the 1931 Dracula, but it’s not a movie I’d rather watch. Lugosi is just cooler.
In the Lugosi movie, when Dracula moves from Transylvania to London, the first thing he does is crash the opera and start making the moves on the ladies. In particular he’s interested in Miss Mina (Helen Chandler), though Mina’s friend Miss Lucy (Frances Dade) has the hots for Dracula just a little bit more. Soon after Dracula chats them up, the women are combing their hair and gossiping about how great Dracula is. Mina mentions she wants someone more “normal,” to which Lucy dismissively says, “Like John?” As I alluded to before, John Harker (David Manners) does not wear cool pants. He’s practically swimming in his giant I-go-to-the-country-club pants, and Manners plays the white-bread-boy character with unintentional schmaltz. John isn’t nearly as cool or interesting as Dracula. This guy is a bro of the same ilk as Jack Driscoll from King Kong, and I love imagining a spin-off movie where the two of them play flip-cup and argue about fantasy football or if their girlfriends are ever allowed to be alone. If John were absent in Dracula, it would free up the movie from having to be saddled with a traditional hero, and then maybe Dracula would win! There’s a great scene toward the end when Mina—partially under Dracula’s power—tells John that “it’s all over.” The finality of her tone has the shadow of a real breakup, and for a second you get the notion that Mina actually wants to be with Dracula, and this isn’t mind control at all.
If you’re wondering why monsters like Dracula have such power over us in general, it’s right here in this movie. Both Mina and Lucy were into Dracula arguably before he started using mind-powers, and even if they weren’t, we—the audience—totally were. Dracula is either the bad boy we want to become or the taboo bad boy we might want to date. Bela Lugosi embodied the best taboo aspects of vampires, which started with Lord Ruthven and, of course, Carmilla. If the vampire is “the biter,” then post-Carmilla, and the cinematic 1931 Dracula, “the bitee” becomes complicit in the whole thing. We’re literally rooting for Dracula to win. These jokers he’s hanging out with aren’t ready for his sense of style or his crazy ideas about relationships. Lugosi’s Dracula is the sexy monster, the thing we wish we could either possess or become, if regular boring life weren’t standing in the way.
Another iconic vampire—Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) from the long-running soap opera Dark Shadows*—is similarly loved by audiences (and other characters) without having to rely on vampire mind-control powers. In 2013, I was lucky enough to talk to Joseph Caldwell,* one of the original writers of Dark Shadows. He told me that contextualizing Barnabas as a sympathetic vampire was essential to prevent the character from just being seen as a “serial killer.” Caldwell explained that a vampire’s urge to kill is a “compulsion” and likened it (as Landis did) to a sexual act. “It’s a metaphor for compulsive sex!” Caldwell declared, and he was probably right. The ratings for Dark Shadows reportedly went up to twenty million viewers after the introduction of Barnabas Collins.* And the reason why all those people rooted for Barnabas to “win” had nothing to do with him having powers over people or possessing them, but instead, because Caldwell and other writers played the character straight. If the audience didn’t buy Barnabas Collins as a real person, they wouldn’t care. Which is the same reason why Dracula beat out Varney, both on the page and, of course, as Lugosi. In fact, the Dark Shadows writers’ room was so in love with the 1931 Dracula that Caldwell claims the writers often intentionally mangled the warm Italian salutation “Tante Bella Cose”* to become “Tante Bela Lugosi!”
Other non-vampire monster movies often take their cues from Dracula, specifically 1933’s King Kong. We’re told by that movie’s metafictional filmmaker Carl Denham that we’re watching a “Beauty and the Beast” story, but that’s too simple. Faye Wray’s Ann Darrow in King Kong has way less agency than Miss Mina in Dracula. The real reason Denham calls the King Kong story “Beauty and the Beast” is because he’s a flim-flam man, trying to sell everyone on the idea that Ann Darrow might have learned to love Kong. And unlike Dracula, she doesn’t really. And could you blame her? What could they have in common?
The more a monster looks like a grotesque inhuman creature, the more the metaphor becomes uninteresting. In 1954’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, there are two men—not counting the titular creature—who are vying for the affections of the leading lady, Kay. One is the supposed nice guy, David, and the other, Mark, is a big-time asshole. In these kinds of movies, we can often tell which guy is a huge jerk because he’ll be the one more willing to use violence against whoever the monster in the movie happens to be. Because we’re already kind of rooting for the monster in these situations (you get ’em, Dracula/King Kong/Creature!), siding against the monstrous human male who is foaming at the mouth for bloodshed becomes easy.
Even the original Godzilla (Gojira in Japan) wasn’t immune to this formula. Never, never forget: a major plot point in the classic first ever Godzilla is the fact that young, handsome boat captain Hideto Ogata and his girlfriend, Emiko, jointly decide to put their engagement announcement on hold because, duh, Godzilla is attacking! If monsters existed in real life, psychologists would probably see a pattern in people trying to weasel out of committed relationships because they’re afraid of “Dracula” or “King Kong” or “Godzilla.” Which is just a metaphor for a commitment-phobic person. In the newest 2014 incarnation of Godzilla, the screenwriters are either completely aware of this monster-as-home-wrecker theme, or are totally unaware. Either way, the effect is the same. The new Godzi
lla doesn’t threaten the romances of any of the movie’s human characters, really, but instead, we’re told he’s only put on this Earth to stop OTHER monsters from having sex. Godzilla in the twenty-first century is a thing that monster-blocks his fellow monsters.
If your relationship can survive monsters, I suppose it’s a strong one, and that, maybe more than anything, is why we love monsters so much. We go on dates to scary movies or to haunted houses to grab on to each other and test the ability that we can get through something as frightening as a vampire or huge ape. Dating someone who doesn’t like scary movies or haunted houses is fine, but you should still probably watch one with someone you love anyway, just to make sure you can both survive it. Part of why jerky guys like John in Dracula are so lame is their total disbelief in the existence of this far-out stuff in the first place. The idea there could even be a vampire, another way of living your life, another place to buy your pants, is just totally out of the possibilities of this character’s mental and emotional universe. Which is why, while watching the movie (or reading the book), we hate those characters, and we want them to get what is coming to them.
One of the smartest monster movies of all time, and one of the few classics that doesn’t pit boring nice guys against sexy, exciting monsters is the excellent 1941 flick The Wolf-Man. Instead of monster versus boring guy, both things are made into the same character. Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot, a dough-faced, totally likable, not conventionally handsome guy-next-door. Early on in the movie, Talbot is bitten by a gypsy named Bela, who—you’re never going to believe it—is played by BELA LUGOSI. That’s right, Dracula himself passes the monster fangs to the new monster in this movie. This is kind of like when Richard Roundtree shows up in the 2002 remake of Shaft to give Samuel L. Jackson’s new Shaft advice about being Shaft.
