The mage was amused. “What an improbable notion? But it has some substance. If you made twelve ordinary films about the Devil, he might seem more real to people, become more of a figure in the culture, get talked about and put on magazine covers. But, let’s face it, the same thing happens if you make one ordinary film about a shark. It’s the thirteenth film that makes the difference, that might work the trick.”
“That would be your film? The one made by a director who understands the ritual?”
“Sadly, no. A great tragedy of magick is that the most effective must be worked without conscious thought, without intent. To become a master mage, you must pass beyond the mathematics and become a dreamer. My film, of the Devil you say, would be but a tentative summoning, attracting the notice of a spirit of the beyond. Fully to call His Satanic Majesty to Earth would require a work of surpassing genius, mounted by a director with no other intention but to make a wonderful illusion, a von Sternberg or a Frank Borzage. That thirteenth film, a Shanghai Gesture or a History is Made at Night, would be the perfect ritual. And its goaty hero could leave his cloven hoof-print in the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese.”
XXV
In January 1981, Welles began filming The Other Side of Midnight on the old Miracle Pictures lot, his first studio-shot – though independently-financed – picture since Touch of Evil in 1958, and his first “right of final cut” contract since Citizen Kane. The ins and outs of the deal have been assessed in entire books by Peter Bart and David J. Skal, but it seems that Welles, after a career of searching, had found a genuine “angel”, a backer with the financial muscle to give him the budget and crew he needed to make a film that was truly his vision but also the self-effacing trust to let him have total artistic control of the result.
There were nay-saying voices and the industry was already beginning to wonder whether still in-progress runaway budget auteur movies like Michael Cimino’s The Lincoln County Wars or Coppola’s Dracula follow-up One From the Heart were such a great idea, but Welles himself denounced those runaways as examples of fuzzy thinking. As with his very first Dracula movie script and Kane, The Other Side of Midnight was meticulously pre-planned and pre-costed. Forty years on from Kane, Welles must have known this would be his last serious chance. A Boy Wonder no longer, the pressure was on him to produce a “mature masterpiece”, a career book-end to the work that had topped so many Best of All Time lists and eclipsed all his other achievements. He must certainly have been aware of the legion of cineastes whose expectations of a film that would eclipse the flashy brilliance of the Coppola version were sky-rocketing. It may be that so many of Welles’ other projects were left unfinished deliberately, because their creator knew they could never compete with the imagined masterpieces that were expected of him. With Midnight, he had to show all his cards and take the consequences.
The Other Side of Midnight occupied an unprecedented three adjacent sound-stages, where Ken Adam’s sets for Bistritz and Borgo Pass and the exteriors and interiors of Castle Dracula were constructed. John Huston shaved his beard and let his moustache sprout, preparing for the acting role of his career, cast apparently because Welles admired him as the Los Angeles predator-patriarch Noah Cross (Chinatown, 1974). It has been rumoured that the seventy-four-year-old Huston went so far as to have transfusions of vampire blood and took to hunting the Hollywood night with packs of new-born vampire brats, piqued because he couldn’t display trophies of his “kills”. Other casting was announced, a canny mix of A-list stars who would have worked for scale just to be in a Welles film, long-time associates who couldn’t bear to be left out of the adventure and fresh talent. Besides Welles (Van Helsing), the film would star Jack Nicholson (Jonathan Harker), Richard Gere (Arthur Holmwood), Shelley Duvall (Mina), Susan Sarandon (Lucy), Cameron Mitchell (Renfield), Dennis Hopper (Quincey), Jason Robards (Dr Seward), Joseph Cotten (Mr Hawkins), George Couloris (Mr Swales) and Jeanne Moreau (Peasant Woman). The three vampire brides were Anjelica Huston, Marie-France Pisier and then-unknown Kathleen Turner. John Williams was writing the score, Gary Graver remained Welles’ preferred cinematographer, Rick Baker promised astounding and innovative special makeup effects and George Lucas’s ILM contracted for the optical effects.
There were other vampire movies in pre-production, other Dracula movies, but Hollywood was really only interested in the Welles version.
Finally, it would happen.
Gates, ibid
XXVI
Geneviève parked the Plymouth near Bronson Caverns, in sight of the Hollywood Sign, and looked out over Los Angeles, transformed by distance into a carpet of Christmas lights. MGM used to boast “more stars than there were in the Heavens”, and there they were, twinkling individually, a fallen constellation. Car lights on the freeways were like glowing platelets flowing through neon veins. From up here, you couldn’t see the hookers on Hollywood Boulevard, the endless limbo motels and real estate developments, the lost, lonely and desperate. You couldn’t hear the laugh track, or the screams.
It came down to magic. And whether she believed in it.
Clearly, Kenneth Anger did. He had devoted his life to rituals. A great many of them, she had to admit, had worked. And so did John Alucard and Ernest Gorse, vampires who thought themselves magical beings. Dracula had been another of the breed, thanking Satan for eternal night-life.
She just didn’t know.
Maybe she was still undecided because she had never slipped into the blackness of death. Kate Reed, her Victorian friend, had done the proper thing. Kate’s father-in-darkness, Harris, had drunk her blood and given of his own, then let her die and come back, turned. Chandagnac, Geneviève’s mediaeval father-in-darkness, had worked on her for months. She had transformed slowly, coming alive by night, shaking off the warm girl she had been.
In the last century, since Dracula came out of his castle, there had been a lot of work done on the subject. It was no longer possible to disbelieve in vampires. With the nosferatu in the open, vampirism had to be incorporated into the prevalent belief systems and this was a scientific age. These days, everyone generally accepted the “explanation” that the condition was a blood-borne mutation, an evolutionary quirk adapting a strain of humankind for survival. But, as geneticists probed ever further, mysteries deepened: vampires retained the DNA pattern they were born with as warm humans, and yet they were different creatures. And, despite a lot of cracked theorizing, no one had ever convincingly adjusted the laws of optics to account for the business with mirrors.
If there were vampires, there could be magic.
And Alucard’s ritual – the mage’s thirteen movies – might work. He could come back, worse than ever.
Dracula.
She looked up, from the city-lights to the stars.
Was the Count out there, on some intangible plane, waiting to be summoned? Reinvigorated by a spell in the beyond, thirsting for blood, vengeance, power? What might he have learned in Hell, that he could bring to the Earth?
She hated to think.
XXVII
She drove through the studio gates shortly before dawn, waved on by the uniformed guard. She was accepted as a part of Orson’s army, somehow granted an invisible arm-band by her association with the genius.
The Miracle Pictures lot was alive again. “If it’s a good picture, it’s a Miracle!” had run the self-mocking, double-edged slogan, all the more apt as the so-called fifth-wheel major declined from mounting Technicolor spectacles like the 1939 version of The Duelling Cavalier, with Errol Flynn and Fedora, to financing drive-in dodos like Machete Maidens of Mora Tau, with nobody and her uncle. In recent years, the fifty-year-old sound stages had mostly gone unused as Miracle shot their product in the Philippines or Canada. The standing sets seen in so many vintage movies had been torn down to make way for bland office buildings where scripts were “developed” rather than shot. There wasn’t even a studio tour.
Now, it was different.
Orson Welles was in power and legions swa
rmed at his command, occupying every department, beavering away in the service of his vision. They were everywhere: gaffers, extras, carpenters, managers, accountants, make-up men, effects technicians, grips, key grips, boys, best boys, designers, draughtsmen, teamsters, caterers, guards, advisors, actors, writers, planners, plotters, doers, movers, shakers.
Once Welles had said this was the best train-set a boy could have. It was very different from three naked girls in an empty swimming pool.
She found herself on Stage 1, the Transylvanian village set. Faces she recognized were on the crew: Jack Nicholson, tearing through his lines with exaggerated expressions; Oja Kodar, handing down decisions from above; Debbie W. Griffith (in another life, she presumed), behind the craft services table; Dennis Hopper, in a cowboy hat and sunglasses.
The stage was crowded with on-lookers. Among the movie critics and TV reporters were other directors – she spotted Spielberg, DePalma and a shifty Coppola – intent on kibbitzing on the master, demonstrating support for the abused genius or suppressing poisonous envy. Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman and Jane Fonda were dressed up as villagers, rendered unrecognizable by make-up, so desperate to be in this movie that they were willing to be unbilled extras.
Somewhere up there, in a platform under the roof, sat the big baby. The visionary who would give birth to his Dracula. The unwitting magician who might, this time, conjure more than even he had bargained for.
She scanned the rafters, a hundred feet or more above the studio floor. Riggers crawled like pirates among the lights. Someone abseiled down into the village square.
She was sorry Martin wasn’t here. This was his dream.
A dangerous dream.
XXVIII
THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT
a script by Orson Welles
based on Dracula, by Bram Stoker
revised final, January 6, 1981
1: An ominous chord introduces an extreme CU of a crucifix, held in a knotted fist. It is sunset, we hear sounds of village life. We see only the midsection of the VILLAGE WOMAN holding the crucifix. She pulls tight the rosary-like string from which the cross hangs, as if it were a strangling chord. A scream is heard off camera, coming from some distance. The WOMAN whirls around abruptly to the left, in the direction of the sound. Almost at once the camera pans in this direction too, and we follow a line of PEASANT CHILDREN, strung out hand in hand and dancing, towards the INN, of the Transylvanian Village of Bistritz. We close on a leaded window and pass through – the set opening up to let in the camera – to find JONATHAN HARKER, a young Englishman with a tigerish smile, in the centre of a tableau Breughel interior, surrounded by peasant activity, children, animals, etc. He is framed by dangling bulbs of garlic, and the VILLAGE WOMAN’s crucifix is echoed by one that hangs on the wall. Everyone, including the animals, is frozen, shocked. The scream is still echoing from the low wooden beams.
HARKER
What did I say?
The INN-KEEPER crosses himself. The peasants mutter.
HARKER
Was it the place? Was it [relishing each syllable]
Castle Dra-cu-la?
More muttering and crossing. HARKER shrugs and continues with his meal. Without a cut, the camera pans around the cramped interior, to find MINA, HARKER’s new wife, in the doorway. She is huge-eyed and tremulous, more impressed by “native superstitions” than her husband, but with an inner steel core which will become apparent as JONATHAN’s outward bluff crumbles. Zither and fiddle music conveys the bustle of this border community.
MINA
Jonathan dear, come on. The coach.
JONATHAN flashes a smile, showing teeth that wouldn’t shame a vampire. MINA doesn’t see the beginnings of his viperish second face, but smiles indulgently, hesitant. JONATHAN pushes away his plate and stands, displacing children and animals. He joins MINA and they leave, followed by our snake-like camera, which almost jostles them as they emerge into the twilight. Some of the crowd hold aloft flaming torches, which make shadow-featured flickering masks of the worn peasant faces. JONATHAN, hefting a heavy bag, and MINA, fluttering at every distraction, walk across the village square to a waiting COACH. Standing in their path, a crow-black figure centre-frame, is the VILLAGE WOMAN, eyes wet with fear, crucifix shining. She bars the HARKERS’ way, like the Ancient Mariner, and extends the crucifix.
VILLAGE WOMAN
If you must go, wear this. Wear it for your mother’s sake. It will protect you.
JONATHAN bristles, but MINA defuses the situation by taking the cross.
MINA
Thank you. Thank you very much.
The WOMAN crosses herself, kisses MINA’s cheek, and departs. JONATHAN gives an eyebrows-raised grimace, and MINA shrugs, placatory.
COACHMAN
All aboard for Borgo Pass, Visaria and Klausenburg.
We get into the coach with the HARKERS, who displace a fat MERCHANT and his “secretary” ZITA, and the camera gets comfortable opposite them. They exchange looks, and MINA holds JONATHAN’s hand. The Coach lurches and moves off – it is vital that the camera remain fixed on the HARKERS to cover the progress from one sound stage to the next, with the illusion of travel maintained by the projection of reflected Transylvanian mountain road scenery onto the window. We have time to notice that the MERCHANT and ZITA are wary of the HARKERS; he is middle-aged and balding, and she is a flashy blonde. The coach stops.
COACHMAN (v.o.)
Borgo Pass.
JONATHAN
Mina, here’s our stop.
MERCHANT
Here?
MINA (proud)
A carriage is meeting us here, at midnight.
A nobleman’s.
MERCHANT
Whose carriage?
JONATHAN
Count Dracula’s.
JONATHAN, who knows the effect it will have, says the name with defiance and mad eyes. The MERCHANT is terror-struck, and ZITA hisses like a cat, shrinking against him. The HARKERS, and the camera, get out of the coach, which hurries off, the COACHMAN whipping the horses to make a quick getaway. We are alone in a mountain pass, high above the Carpathians. Night-sounds: wolves, the wind, bats. The full moon seems for a moment to have eyes, DRACULA’s hooded eyes.
JONATHAN (pointing)
You can see the castle.
MINA
It looks so . . . desolate, lonely.
JONATHAN
No wonder the Count wants to move to London. He must be raging with cabin fever, probably ready to tear his family apart and chew their bones. Like Sawney Beane.
MINA
The Count has a family?
JONATHAN (delighted)
Three wives. Like a Sultan. Imagine how that’ll go down in Piccadilly.
Silently, with no hoof or wheel-sounds, a carriage appears, the DRIVER a black, faceless shape. The HARKERS climb in, but this time the camera rises to the top of the coach, where the DRIVER has vanished. We hover as the carriage moves off, a LARGE BAT flapping purposefully over the lead horses, and trundles along a narrow, vertiginous mountain road towards the castle. We swoop ahead of the carriage, becoming the eyes of the BAT, and take a flying detour from the road, allowing us a false perspective view of the miniature landscape to either side of the full-side road and carriage, passing beyond the thick rows of pines to a whited scrape in the hillside that the HARKERS do not see, an apparent chalk quarry which we realize consists of a strew of complete human skeletons, in agonized postures, skulls and rib-cages broken, the remains of thousands and thousands of murdered men, women, children and babies. Here and there, skeletons of armoured horses and creatures between wolf or lion and man. This gruesome landscape passes under us and we close on CASTLE DRACULA, a miniature constructed to allow our nimble camera to close on the highest tower and pass down a stone spiral stairway that affords covert access to the next stage . . .
. . . and the resting chamber of DRACULA and his BRIDES. We stalk through a curtain of cobweb, which parts unharmed, and observe as t
he three shroud-clad BRIDES rise from their boxes, flitting about before us. Two are dark and feral, one is blonde and waif-like. We have become DRACULA and stalk through the corridors of his castle, brassbound oaken doors opening before us. Footsteps do not echo and we pass mirrors that reveal nothing – reversed sets under glass, so as not to catch our crew – but a spindle-fingered, almost animate shadow is cast, impossibly long arms reaching out, pointed head with bat-flared ears momentarily sharp against a tapestry. We move faster and faster through the CASTLE, coming out into the great HALLWAY at the very top of a wide staircase. Very small, at the bottom of the steps, stand JONATHAN and MINA, beside their luggage. Sedately, we fix on them and move downwards, our cloaked shadow contracting. As we near the couple, we in see their faces: JONATHAN awe-struck, almost love at first sight, ready to become our slave; MINA horrified, afraid for her husband, but almost on the point of pity. The music, which has passed from lusty human strings to ethereal theremin themes, swells, conveying the ancient, corrupt, magical soul of DRACULA. We pause on the steps, six feet above the HARKERS, then leap forwards as MINA holds up the crucifix, whose blinding light fills the frame. The music climaxes, a sacred choral theme battling the eerie theremin.
2: CU on the ancient face, points of red in the eyes, hair and moustaches shocks of pure white, pulling back to show the whole stick-thin frame wrapped in unrelieved black.
THE COUNT
I . . . am . . . Dracula.
XXIX
Welles had re-written the first scenes – the first shot – of the film to make full use of a new gadget called a Louma crane, which gave the camera enormous mobility and suppleness. Combined with breakaway sets and dark passages between stages, the device meant that he could open The Other Side of Midnight with a single tracking shot longer and more elaborate than the one he had pulled off in Touch of Evil.
Geneviève found Welles and his cinematographer on the road to Borgo Pass, a full-sized mock-up dirt track complete with wheel-ruts and milestones. The night-black carriage, as yet not equipped with a team of horses, stood on its marks, the crest of Dracula on its polished doors. To either side were forests, the nearest trees half life-size and those beyond getting smaller and smaller as they stretched out to the studio backdrop of a Carpathian night. Up ahead was Dracula’s castle, a nine-foot-tall edifice, currently being sprayed by a technician who looked like a colossal man, griming and fogging the battlements.
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 57
