The Romance of Dracula; a personal Journey of the Count on celluloid

by Butler, Charles E.

  Her selfishness shows when she departs for Budapest to meet Jonathon at Mr Hawkin's expense, without stopping to think about the dangers that she may be leaving to her own family.

  On her return with Jonathon, with nuptials performed in Carpathia off screen, she finds her family decimated and offers herself to the Count in a final, end it all, gesture.

  When the realities of her nightly shenanigans hit home, she joins in the fight against Dracula, but stresses that he must not be pursued with hate, but rather with pity. It becomes obvious that Dracula is proving a better lover than Jonathon ever will be. However, the Count leaves her feeling "unclean!" and ashamed, steering her on the path to his destruction.

  Facing the brides outside the Castle, she recognises them as sisters and feels their eventual death throes as they are destroyed in their sleep. In a peculiar turn of thought, she welcomes Van Helsing, the man who has just staked and decapitated her sibling, as a trusted friend and saviour, enough to camp out with him alone in the wilds of Transylvania.

  Firing one crack shot - beginner's luck? - that saves her husband proves that she still enjoys having him around, and will not mock her marriage vows again.

  Judi Bowker would make a bid for big screen stardom when she appeared as Andromeda in the original Clash of the Titans (1981).

  Bosco Hogan is another small screen actor (Dr Mark Reynolds in BBC's Ballykissangel), to take the role of Jonathon Harker; one of the few Harkers to have the good fortune of a well rounded characterisation. Like Murray Abraham, he is able to emit all kinds of emotions. In love with Mina he is steadfast and loyal - so much so, that he never mentions her transgressions with the Count as being her fault.

  "Why didn't you wake me?" he asks, on finding his bride covered in the Count's blood.

  "I tried to," she replies. The implications towards his own impotence seem to go over his head; perhaps that latter scene is his way of not confessing his own peccadilloes at the hands of Dracula's brides?

  He obviously enjoys their teasing with a letter written to Mina, but doesn't seem to favour the idea of gnawing on babies after a perfect evening in.

  With Dracula himself, he becomes a naive pawn in the Count's plans, succumbing to mind games and sarcasm from his host that drive him to frustrated tears. He becomes angry in his unease as he provides some sarcasm of his own. Through dialogue not found in the novel, Dracula states that:

  "I would happily have taken you to view the countryside, if you had asked to do so."

  "When would we have gone?" spits Harker, "In the dead of night?!"

  However, he is spared the fate of becoming the Count's toyboy as in Roger Young's version. I suppressed a smile when Harker showed surprise at having to stay for a month at Castle Dracula. The weight of his trunk seems to emphasise that he probably expected to stay at least a year!

  Accurately, he is never bitten on the neck by the Count or his brides, but is the first one to suspect the real dangers of his infiltration of England. He shows bravery when stepping out of the window of his castle prison. Arriving home with his new wife, he still retains his paranoia as he begins spotting the Count almost everywhere and his combat skills fail him at the worst moments, when it is a shot from his wife, that saves his neck from a mad gypsy's knife.

  Quincey P. Holmwood is American but uses the obviously English moniker that Stoker bestowed on the absent Arthur. He is played by Richard Barnes, who utilises a questionable accent. Quincey has arrived from the US to visit his fiancée, Lucy. When he arrives, he finds her quiet and pale and jokingly implies that,

  "I hope that I won't always have that effect on ya"

  As with most girls hearing bad jokes, Lucy quits the scene and heads to bed, opening the windows to let the Count in.

  Holmwood has his good points as he uses his contacts in the American Consulate to locate the missing Harker. He is the only one to offer every last drop of his blood to save Lucy and eagerly welcomes her caresses in her throes of death. He stakes her with equal ardour when realising her possible involvement with another man may have been more than " just friends." Finally, he takes a bullet in the abdomen but, and maybe this is because he is called Holmwood, and not Morris, he refuses to die at the fade out.

  Mark Burns plays Dr Seward with a forward looking seriousness, aided by his assistant, Bowles, played by George Raistrick. Although described as being in love with the ailing Lucy and sharing many of his scenes with Frank Finlay's Van Helsing, he fails to have any shining moments to define his character. He questions Renfield and, in turn, answers his questions in a serious manner, recording his findings in monologues on his phonograph.

  Even when Lucy implores him to stay with her during her ordeal, he simply shrugs and misses an opportunity of some valuable screen time by leaving her alone to inhale the fumes from the Professor's garlic flowers. Like previous - and later - Sewards, he is content to waste away in the comfortable halls of anonymity.

  Likewise, his assistant, Bowles, stands around like a nightclub bouncer or cloak-room attendant with a constant mean look on his face. Jumping into action with Renfield, he escapes with a slashed wrist. His orders to have the inmate strait-jacketed are never carried out.

  Renfield is generally the part sought out by actors in the Dracula story. He is the story's everyman; omitted from many major versions and clumsily inserted into various non-adaptations over the years. No past to speak of and yet raving wildly about the promise of great things to come.

  Jack Shepherd, star of TV's long running Wycliffe series, is no exception. With fast line delivery and constant movement, he is a pleasure to watch, though, he too, like Mr Burns, has promised to play his part straight. He gathers flies around leftover meals and deposits them in jars on his cell window ledge. He feeds them to his captured blue jays, clucking and cooing like an expectant grandmother. So engrossed is he in his feeding habits, that his expectant arrival of the Count is explained in one very short scene, and he gazes out of his window at a superimposition of Louis Jourdan's face.

  He has two meetings with Mina who talks at length of life and the soul and who relays her dreams to him because there is no longer anyone at home to confide in. As an affront to his captors, he kisses Mina on the cheek. He wants Mina. But not the Mina who visits a second time as he finds her changed and bloodless, and not in the way that the Count expects him to have her - mainly, bleeding her dry.

  Seeing his own dream in tatters, he begs Seward for his freedom and writhes around on the grass lawn in anguish when he is refused. Back in his cell, he is visited by Dracula who mortally wounds him off-screen. As his death throes begin, it is his final confession that puts the vampire hunters on the right track.

  Dracula's brides - Susie Hickford, Belinda Meuldijk and Sue Vanner - are tempting sirens, hiding in the bowels of the Castle and emerging, giggling ecstatically, when a lost traveller presents the opportunity of a midnight snack. They tease and flirt with Harker, but pout sullenly when their meal is whisked away by the Count:

  "You never loved." they chide him.

  "Oh, yes I have," he retorts giving each one a playful sock on the chin. He promises that they will have Harker when he has finished with him.

  As an aperitif, he offers a new born baby that, in the film’s most notorious scene, they attack, red-eyed with a bloodied, lip-smacking euphoria.

  As mentioned, this adaptation suffers many of the drawbacks of the novel. One such drawback is the pointless sequence concerning old sea salt, Mr Swales (George Malpas). Meant as comedy relief in the novel, here he just slows down the action, his function to be a recognisable body when Dracula's death ship hits Whitby.

  That brief aside and a longer running time than necessary are really minor pitfalls in what is essentially one of the most accurate versions of the novel ever made for television by a British production company.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Frank Langella

  DRACULA (1979: Walter Mirisch Pictures/Universal, UK/USA)

  Director: John
Badham

  Synopsis

  A wolf mourns balefully off-camera as the moon shines its light across the ocean. A treat assails our ears as a lush, romantic score by John Williams sets the scene for a provocative re-telling of the story.

  After the credits we are put aboard a ship fighting the elements. Rain pours down and thunder crashes as the crew begin to cast wooden boxes overboard. In the cargo hold we see many wooden crates with the stamped legend: Count Dracula - Whitby. The camera holds on one box and, amid the shouting of the sailors, we hear the frantic snarling and growling of a large animal inside.

  This particular box is next for eviction, but catches on the side of the ship. The animal inside the box begins to break the wood and we see clods of earth spew forth followed by a fur-covered hand, almost simian in nature, reaching out to grab a luckless sailor by the throat.

  The man is killed instantly as the claw shears through his neck. The box is dropped to the deck and the animal, a large wolf, breaks out, glaring at a mid-shipman who has lashed himself to a wheel. The wolf howls triumphantly before the ship crashes into the rocks of Whitby harbour.

  Cut to a house on the coast that doubles as the home for the mentally insane, Dr Seward's sanatorium. In an elegantly designed bedroom, we see Mina Van Helsing and Lucy Seward. Amid the cacophony raging at sea outside, we are told that Mina is ill and must rest as much as she can and that Lucy is visiting to make sure she does just that. Lucy is called to attend at the asylum, where all the inmates are frightened by the noises outside.

  Left alone, Mina looks through her window and witnesses the ship coming to ground. She ventures out into the storm and sees a large dog or wolf leap from the carnage and disappear into a cove. She follows and discovers the body of a man dressed in a jacket with fur collar but no sign of the wolf. We see the man’s hand emerge from beneath the sleeve and tenderly clasp Mina’s own.

  The next morning, frantic movement of a different kind, as the locals begin to scavenge the ship for salvage. Dr Seward seems to hold dominance over the proceedings as he is able to vouch for the young solicitor from London, Jonathon Harker, to board the doomed vessel.

  Harker is searching for the whereabouts of his client, Count Dracula, and is informed that he is the only survivor. He is being taken care of at the asylum by Mina and Lucy. Also on hand is Milo Renfield, ranting at the lawyer for selling Carfax Abbey from under him.

  The next two or three scenes are intercut to tell two stories. We learn that Dr Seward has invited Dracula to dinner as a pleasantry whilst he recovers from his ordeal. Cut to Renfield loading the remaining boxes into Carfax. In the Seward household stories of the wrecked ship are being mulled over; particularly one concerning a local dog that has had its throat tore away by some savage claw. At Carfax, Dracula rises from his coffin and Renfield is attacked by a small bat.

  The Count arrives at dinner and is very jovial company, all smiles and smarm as he talks of things worse than death. He doesn't eat his soup and instead proceeds to cast a spell on Mina Van Helsing. Mina then suffers a seizure of sorts which the Count eases using a rare form of hypnotism.

  To the detriment of Harker, Lucy then invites Dracula to dance a waltz with her. Later, as Jonathon and Lucy sit under the stars, Dracula climbs down the side of the wall and proceeds to continue his seduction of the ailing Mina, clawing away at her window like some gigantic leech before appearing through the mist as a Latino stud complete in open-necked shirt. Mina expires and is buried in the local graveyard.

  A telegram is wired to Professor Abraham Van Helsing who becomes very curious at the mention of two puncture marks found on Mina's throat. Anarchy breaks out at the asylum when a baby is murdered by what appears to be a nightmare vision of Mina. Using a white stallion, Van Helsing learns that his daughter, Mina, is indeed the vampire that is terrorising the locals. The horse becomes agitated and frightened when it comes across her burial spot. Placing garlic on his daughter's grave, Van Helsing looks on as Dracula, on horseback, can't approach the grave to pay his respects. With a gruff snarl, the Count turns and gallops away.

  We have already been witness to Dracula and Lucy's blossoming relationship at Carfax Abbey, now decked out gloriously with candles and cobwebs. A wolf howls and Dracula laments:

  "The children of the night, what sad music they make"

  The Count doesn't bite Lucy on the neck and prefers nibbling on her earlobes.

  But, regardless of this, it seems he has made an impression. The next night, proclaiming her as "my best beloved one", he whisks her off her feet Valentino fashion and bites her in the throat after much romantic nuzzling.

  A cup of tea and a blood transfusion later and Lucy is beginning to perk up.

  Van Helsing and Seward venture into Mina's grave at midnight and discover that she has ripped through the side of her coffin and escaped into the underground mineshaft, using its network of tunnels to prey on the town. Van Helsing follows and comes across his daughter, a leprous zombie speaking Dutch prayers and clawing for his throat. The Professor forces her away with a crucifix and she is impaled in the confusion on Dr Seward's stake.

  Back home, Dracula confronts Van Helsing. Breaking a large mirror - "they are the playthings of mans vanity" - he begins a battle of wills with the doctor and is driven away by garlic flowers and a cross. Jonathon Harker agrees to accompany Van Helsing to Carfax where they have another confrontation with Dracula. In bat form, he gouges out Jonathon's cheek, but scarpers when Van Helsing brings down the roof and floods the place with sunlight.

  Lucy heads for Dracula's home as the men proceed to take out Mina's heart. They follow in Harker's 1920s automobile and lock her in Seward's sanatorium. She goes all fanged and red eyed and attacks Harker, but the cross prevents her doing any serious damage. Meanwhile, at that very moment, Dracula breaks into Renfield's cell - he had been incarcerated after an attack on Harker - and twists his head around, killing him instantly. The Vampire then kidnaps Lucy and prepares to head for home aboard the Czarina Catherine.

  Following the coach carrying Dracula's final crate, our heroes, in Harkers jalopy, are forced off the road and have to walk the remaining ten miles to the Scarborough coast where they see that the Czarina has already sailed.

  Not to be put off, Van Helsing and Harker board the ship and find not only Dracula, but also Lucy in the crate. Lucy grapples with Jonathon while Van Helsing opens the Count's shirt for the obligatory stake. Dracula wakes and impales Van Helsing. Turning his attention to Harker, he doesn't see the dying Professor take aim with a large hook.

  Dracula is hoisted into the air, the hook embedded in his back, and forced up, through the roof and into the daylight, thrashing wildly and screaming like a banshee, ageing rapidly as the sun glares on the horizon.

  Back below decks, Lucy has returned to normal and gives Jonathon a "can you forgive me?" look. Jonathon and Lucy then witness the Count's remains torn from the hook and begin to glide back towards Transylvania and home. Before the fade out we see a smile (of hope?) cross Lucy's face.

  Review

  That the film is based on the original Deane/Balderston play is obvious when, as in the 1931 version, we hear of things happening off-screen. An inmate of the asylum describes Mina's attack on her child in theatrical prose way beyond the character's intellectual understanding.

  Renfield states that Dracula has promised him lives and that he is scaling the building with

  “His red eyes and laughing with his red mouth with sharp, white teeth like rats, millions, thousands of rats!”

  This is never seen because Dracula, through Langella's own wish, bares no fangs in this version, and would probably develop a hernia if he strained hard enough to change his eye colour.

  What we do see are some impressive set designs - and some initially engaging, but eventually boring, drawing-room melodrama, highlighted with short bursts of fluid action scenes.

  But it doesn't entirely cohere because of contradictions and confusion in D W Richter's revised
script. The first confusion is the changing of the names for the two heroines. Mina is now Dracula's first victim and Lucy is the bait used to follow and finally snare him. Also frustrating is the fact that they have now become the daughters of Van Helsing and Dr Seward, respectively.