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

by Butler, Charles E.

  Outside, Dracula hypnotises Lucy to joining him in the garden. Mina spots the two on a bench and screams. Van Helsing and Seward examine the body and proclaim that Lucy is dead. After the burial, the Count arrives at the sanitarium and is forced into a childish war of words with Van Helsing in an ancient Moldavian tongue. As he leaves, the Professor names him as the probable vampire that bit Lucy.

  At the Westenra tomb, a gravedigger sits and laments the death of so young a girl as Lucy speaks to him from her coffin. He opens the lid and Lucy bites him.

  Jonathon informs Seward that he intends to sit by Lucy's grave. Van Helsing finds the body of the gravedigger. Back at the grave, Jonathon is tempted by an undead Lucy but is saved by Van Helsing's crucifix. In the crypt, Van Helsing hands Jonathon the stake and hammer.

  Reluctantly, Harker takes it as Van Helsing takes cover. When the stake is hammered home, an unusual amount of blood spews forth covering Harker completely. The same happens on the second hit.

  Dracula appears outside Mina's bedroom and begins to hypnotise her. Unfortunately there is a maid present as well and she becomes hypnotised just as much causing chaos. When the hypnotised Mina can't find the door, Dracula decides to venture in after her by first telling her to douse the lights. The lights go out and Dracula enters. He emerges seconds later carrying the maid. Quickly realising his mistake, he runs back for Mina.

  Back at the sanatorium, Jonathon is asked by Seward to use the servant's entrance while Van Helsing explains that Lucy was a vampire. When Seward enquires about Jonathon's bloodstained shirt, Van Helsing replies that he has been to many stakings. You have to know where to stand.

  In Carfax, decorated with candelabras, Dracula and Mina proceed with the dance of love. On completion, Dracula bites Mina.

  After some comedy with a confused maid the next day, Mina tries to seduce Jonathon by getting him to touch her. Dr Seward walks in and rebukes Jonathon, ordering him out of the house. But Van Helsing notices a scarf around Mina's neck. Pulling it away, he reveals the puncture wounds. He burns Mina's hand with a crucifix and they discuss a plan to unmask Dracula, setting up an elaborate ball.

  At the ball Dracula arrives and is surprised to find Renfield there who also has an invitation. He notices Mina and asks Jonathon if he could have the next dance with her. While they dance, Van Helsing uncovers a large mirror in which only Mina is seen, as Dracula casts no reflection. As the crowd look on in awe, Dracula gets the wrong impression and begins to dance more frantically.

  When the dance finishes, he notices the large mirror and smashes it with a stool. He escapes through a window carrying Mina. Renfield is carted off to the sanatorium with the promise of incarceration for life.

  Seconds later, Renfield is released to lead the heroes to Dracula's lair. On a hilltop run to Carfax, we see Renfield being followed by Van Helsing, Seward and Harker.

  Renfield enters the abbey claiming to the Count that he has lost his followers as we hear Jonathon's voice outside. The Count takes Renfield by the throat and throws him down the long flight of steps. As the heroes break into the abbey, they trample Renfield underfoot.

  Dracula prepares to bite Mina but is held at bay by a large cross found by Van Helsing. As the Professor shouts for a stake, Dracula's shadow takes a powder. Picking Jonathon up by the throat, Dracula tells him there is nothing he can do. Jonathon stabs the Count in the eyes with his fingers.

  The Count recovers and holds Jonathon to the ground with his foot, preparing to bite Mina, as sunlight creeps through the slatted windows and gives him a hotfoot. Van Helsing opens the rest of the slats like Venetian blinds and Dracula transforms into a bat and heads for the rafters. A roof trap door is opened by Renfield coating the Count in sunlight. He spirals to the floor, cursing Renfield, hitting the deck as ash. Mina awakes and Jonathon sweeps her up in his arms and leaves.

  Renfield picks up the ash and sits it on the coffin. He draws a face in it with his finger. Seward tells him that he no longer has a master and that he is a free man. They leave. Van Helsing raises the coffin lid and has the final word on the matter before leaving the abbey.

  Review

  When viewing this film, I was reminded of the quote of Christopher Lee that,

  "You may laugh at things in the film, but you never laugh at Dracula!"

  Even George Hamilton held his dignity in Love At First Bite (1979), and had a self-deprecating manner that made him endearing as he delivered throwaway one-liners with relish:

  "Children of the Night - Shut up!"

  Mel Brook's first mistake is to parody the old Universal film starring Bela Lugosi, rather than go back to Stoker. Unfortunately, the 1931 version is already guilty of unintentional self-parody, and the years have not been kind to Mr Lugosi's performance as a whole. In the present author’s opinion, it is the drawing power of the Count himself that has kept the myth continuing in its enormous popularity, and not this broken down blockbuster from the 'thirties.

  Madness for star name bankability has Leslie Nielsen step into the Count's cape on the successes of hisThe Naked Gun film series. While Nielsen is amusing and watchable by turns, he in no way resembles Bela Lugosi, nor does he seem in the slightest to have any European ancestry. He does try a cod-imitation of Lugosi with amusing results, but for the most part, he is just Frank Drebin with fangs. In one sense, it is worse casting than David Niven's Count Dracula, in the supposed British comedy, Vampira (Old Dracula: 1974).

  My own favourite lampoon in the film is Nielsen sporting a Gary Oldman hairstyle, which is revealed as being formal headwear. His cuddly character of Dracula is more fatherly than Van Helsing as he intrigues ladies by commenting on their amazing ucepital mapilliories. He uses bad judgement in picking Renfield as his slave when it is obvious that the man is certifiable before Dracula hypnotises him.

  When confronted by his list of crimes to the people of Wallachia, he shrugs off explanations with a simple,

  "They had it coming to them".

  With the aid of a convincing double, Nielsen follows in George Hamilton's (two)steps, becoming a terrific dancer, and launches into two impressive dance sequences in the movie. Brooks also arms Dracula with a horny, detachable shadow that, unfortunately, was hilarious when used straight in the Coppola film.

  His Count does explore some interesting avenues. For instance, we learn that vampires do dream and that Dracula is not beyond the thought of being released from his curse if drinking the right blood and, with CGI help, transforms into the cutest bat on record.

  But, for the most part, he is left to Drebin-esque buffoonery, such as placing his coffin below a low hanging chandelier or slipping on bat droppings. He also narrows down his literary counterpart's petty streak as he begins trading insults with Van Helsing in an ancient Moldavian tongue like a spoilt schoolboy.

  Nielsen had been a competent character actor for many

  years. In 1958 he starred as Glenn Ford's nemesis in the comedy western The Sheepman, and, in 1956, he had tried to teach Anne Francis how to kiss in the inspirational science fiction classic, Forbidden Planet, before turning up as victims, lawyers and family friends in various episodes of the hugely popular Columbo television series in the 1970s.

  But in 1980 he was thrust into the limelight as a leading comedy actor when he took the role of the deadpan flight doctor in Airplane! Ironically, the part had been turned down by fellow Dracula, Christopher Lee. In 1982 he had featured in the fun-filled but ill-conceived anthology film Creepshow. A bomb for its creators George A Romero and Stephen King.

  Casting himself as the learned Professor Van Helsing, Mel Brooks takes the honours in the comedy stakes. Described as a metaphysician and philosopher, some kind of medical doctor, who knows more about obscure diseases than anyone else in the world",

  Van Helsing adds that he "also has a hand in gynaecology!", and shrugs off the researches of modern medical science as "pish posh!"

  He enjoys his own scientific lectures as he competitively forces the students in
his charge to pass out through nausea. When contacted by Dr Seward due to an emerrrgency, he promptly swings into action with tons of garlic and a dirty monocle, pinpointing the cause of vampirism almost immediately.

  His vampires are also given the choice of how they would like to be destroyed. By the conventional stake and hammer or the more savage, stuffing the mouth with garlic and beheading, and, as a final measure, tearing their ears off!

  This to be performed by someone who loves them.

  Choosing the stake, a reluctant Jonathon Harker finds that Lucy has digested more blood than the average vamp, causing a tomb-filling rush of the red stuff and totally soaking Harker. Ever the professional, Van Helsing returns home looking immaculate because, with most stakings,

  "You have to know where to stand!, lamenting that "we should have put down newspapers".

  It is a performance that will obtain chuckles every time.

  As Renfield, Peter McNichol outdoes Arte Johnson in Love at First Bite in his impersonation of Dwight Frye, his best scene being a seduction by two female fleshpots.

  "What are you doing to the furniture?" he asks dumbfounded and insists that they, "wrong" him at the top of his voice. When trying to explain the experience to his host, he sums up his realisation with the question, "Have you ever been to Paris?".

  But he also has fun with an annoying gypsy woman, Madame Ouspenskaya (Anne Bancroft), who hands him a crucifix for his protection, then orders that he pay 15 kopeks, whilst rattling her throat for eerie emphasis when describing the horrors that wait at the castle.

  He is also the first Renfield of the cinema to play an active part in the destruction of Dracula, as he unwittingly opens a skylight that lets in the sunlight, and reduces his master to ashes. For the rest he is left to the energetic slapstick that Frye's own performance cried out for in the original.

  Dr Seward is another of Brooks' madcap psychiatrists. Harvey Korman enjoys himself as the stuffy authoritarian, who has no time for mischief-makers, and orders wayward prisoners to be straitjacketed and then given an enema in that order. He furnishes the books for Van Helsing to study his opponent,

  "Yes we have Nosferatu. We have Nosferatu Today!"

  Unlike the Browning version, Seward is taken along to Carfax and witnesses the Count's destruction, his final scene indicating that he may have found the perfect dogs body in patient Renfield.

  Steven Weber's stuffy turn as Jonathon Harker raises a naive giggle or two, especially when counter-acting Van Helsing that Lucy "must be staked by someone who loved her!"

  "I only liked her" he whines.

  When Lucy turns her attentions on him in the tomb, Harker reminds her that, "I'm engaged. And you're dead". Thrusting her delights forward she corrects him with, "I'm undead!" Still unnerved, but unfazed, Harker retorts, "Well, I'm not unengaged!"

  Amy Yasbeck and Lysette Anthony add to the madcap mayhem wholeheartedly with more than competently adequate results. Lysette Anthony gives possibly one of the hottest interpretations of Lucy Westenra on record. Teasing playfully, blushing crimson at the Count's advances, and then brazenly advertising her wares to Jonathon Harker as the bloofer lady.

  Amy Yasbeck's Mina smoulders dangerously when on the turn after insisting on "no hickeys!" She also gets to perform two rigorous dance sequences with the Count.

  As noted above, all the cast give their best in a film that cries out for a better storyboard. The present author would have probably gone with the type of story that fuelled The Return of Dracula (1958), or even the Lon Chaney Jr vehicle, Son of Dracula (1943).

  As it is, this companion piece to Brooks' fabled Young Frankenstein (1974), fails to deliver freshness to an overused concept, and telegraphs most of its laughs long before they happen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Patrick Bergin

  DRACULA'S CURSE (2002: RAI/Radiotelevisione Italiane/Raifiction-Luxvide/Raitrade-Kirschmedia, Hungary/Italy/Germany) aka: Dracula

  Director: Roger Young

  Synopsis

  Titles introduce: The Pampas Plain of Argentina.

  A white stallion grazes on a grassy heath that is bathed in the light of the full moon. The atmosphere becomes heavy, as the sounds turn eerie. The horse becomes unsettled as its eye begins to roll, along with the clouds. A shriek as something flies past. Not once, but twice. Three times. Shrieking grows as the horse whinnies its fear. A bat darts at the horse, attaching itself to the splendid animal.

  Scene switches to one title, red on black: Dracula.

  The horse collapses as the camera lingers for a few seconds.

  Switch to a grand hall teeming with waltzing dancers as the credits play on. The dancers spin one way, the camera another. The camera lifts, pulling back as the credits end.

  The film begins as Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker pledge their love to each other agreeing to marry a week from Saturday. On the grand staircase, we are introduced to Arthur Holmwood, Quincy Morris and Lucy Westenra. Young and full of life, living for the moment. Jonathan and Mina begin to dance.

  A scream as the scene changes and Roenfield rushes at the camera, slamming his head into the iron meshing of his cell door. He dips his fingers in the wound on his forehead and licks away the blood. Dr Johan Seward and an orderly, George, race to the commotion making their way through patients littering the hallway. In his cell, Roenfield raves about a Master who calls him to recruit soldiers. He can't disobey. Seward enters the cell as Roenfield informs that he must be released. Without warning, he attacks the doctor with a makeshift knife, slashing at his arm, but George pulls Seward to safety. As they leave Roenfield to his raving, the maniac pleasantly licks Seward's blood from the blade.

  Back in the ballroom, Mina confides to Lucy about the impossibilities of trying to tame Jonathan. We see Dr Seward as he approaches the two girls. Lucy offers to put out her cigarette if Seward concedes a dance. As they dance, a man appears on the grand staircase amidst the guests and stares at Lucy. She looks back. The man has vanished. Outside, we see the young revelers as Jonathan leads them to his new toy - a bright red sports car. He takes Lucy for a spin as his mobile phone rings and he acknowledges an appointment with a new client. To Mina's consternation, Jonathan leaves the group.

  On foot, he is met by the man who watched Lucy from the staircase. The man introduces himself as Vladislav Tepesh and says that he wishes to purchase Carfax House for his uncle, Count Vladislav Tepesh. He tells Jonathan that he would make 10% commission on a deal worth $2 million. He offers to show him his future.

  Lucy appears as the scene switches. She is dressed in a flimsy bodice and is sleepwalking. She reaches the stairs and misjudges the steps. She falls. Doors open; Mina and Quincy enter from separate rooms. As they race down the stairs to Lucy, they are joined by Arthur, Jonathan and Seward, all in various modes of night attire. Holmwood is jealous as Seward administers to Lucy. She wakes and puts everyone at ease. As she is led back to bed, Jonathan asks Quincy for a word. He tells him of the deal he has just been offered by Vladislav Tepesh and divulges that they could all be rich.

  Quincy is all for bending the laws involved a little, but Holmwood remains sceptical. Outside the mental institute, a taxi deposits its passenger, an old man. Inside the building, a patient threatens Dr Seward with a chair. The old man appears behind the patient and talks him into putting the chair down and to go and finish his pudding. The patient does with no harm done. As he is led away, Seward welcomes the old man as Professor Valenti who confesses to returning from India after carrying out research into slavery.

  They enter Roenfield's cell and the madman happily talks with Valenti. Valenti notices many jars and bottles containing various insects. Roenfield dips into the jar that Valenti is holding, takes out a grasshopper, and eats it. Seward gives a resigned grin to Valenti.

  A restaurant shows the young people sat with Vlad Tepesh. They drink red wine. He drinks white. Conversation turns to talk of divine power and the choices of man. Mina becomes disgruntled with Tepesh's ideas c
oncerning morality as Jonathan tries to calm her. Tepesh leaves and mentions Harker's journey to Romania. Seconds later, Dr Seward introduces Enrico Valenti to the group as the old Professor appears.