Right now I'm reading The Ignored, a novel by Arizona-based horror writer Bentley Little, about a man who is so average and nondescript, that he is practically invisible to his work colleagues and the public at large. The only attention he gets is of the toxic kind, from a boss who intensely dislikes him. He eventually meets similarly near-invisible people -- the Ignored -- who decide to use their "superpower" for evil.
It's a somewhat uncomfortable read, since I see a lot of myself in the protagonist, who, in addition to being a person who can be safely ignored, is aggressively non-assertive, constantly passing on opportunities to meet new people, have new experiences or confront life's little problems -- at least until he meets up with his fellow "Ignored" compatriots. Like the protagonist, my tastes run to the mainstream: I prefer pop rock to classical or jazz, genre fiction (especially mysteries) to literary fiction, genre films to art house. And if I had to pick one quote that sums up my philosophy of life, it would be "Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."
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| Some books you just can't put down. |
But maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Blogging (in the age of podcasting) about moldy-old genre movies few have ever heard of is not normal, not to mention average. When it comes to people, what does "average" really mean anyway? Scratch the surface of a seemingly average person, and you usually find eccentricities, rare talents and life stories that are anything but.
Having grown up as a Monster Kid in the 1960s, I was definitely not in the mainstream of my kiddie cohort. Once I discovered the Universal monsters via the Shock Theater syndicated movie package broadcast on my local TV station, I was a goner. I was that obnoxious kid who begged his parents to buy him copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein at the drugstore, and to be allowed to stay up to watch the wacky ensemble cast of Gravesend Manor do their skits in between segments of old black and white horror movies (and sometimes I paid the price by being too scared to sleep -- yes, I know, what were my parents thinking?).
Sometimes, I'd run across a treasure like a Creature from the Black Lagoon board game at Woolworth's, and more pathetic begging would ensue. I could sense the frustration of my teachers when I'd draw Frankenstein, Dracula or the Wolf Man for art assignments, or when I showed up at the class Valentine's Day exchange with cheesy monster-themed Valentines. I was an odd kid, but for my part, I couldn't understand how anyone could not be fascinated by these movies.
Not having a steel-trap memory, I'm not sure which classic monster I encountered first on the old black and white console TV. But Bela Lugosi's Dracula had to be among the first. Sure, there were more eye-opening monsters like the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man, and the Creature, but even for a nine-year-old kid, there was something compelling about an elegant creature of the night who could pass for human, and exploit that faux normalcy to feed on his victims.
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| Bela Lugosi's Dracula snuck up on theatergoers in 1931 and drained them of their pocket money. |
It would be years later when, delving deeper into my fandom, I would read critiques about how static, set-bound and dialog-heavy the 1931 Dracula was, but in those first viewings, I was transfixed by the eerie set-pieces that are commonly acknowledged as the film's hallmarks:
- The first view of the forbidding landscape leading up to the castle
- The creepy, illuminated eyes of the coachman (Dracula himself) who picks up Renfield
- Dracula's claw-like hand emerging from the coffin
- The spectral brides hovering like white birds of prey
- The "children of the night" speech
- The "I never drink... wine" declaration
- Renfield's insane laughter from the dark hold of the ship
- A close-up of Dracula's ghoulishly pale face descending upon a victim
- Dracula slapping the mirror out of Van Helsing's hand
Problems with pacing or lack of camera movement meant nothing to the nine-year-old me who couldn't wait for the Gravesend Manor crew to show their beautiful, ugly mugs in between creepy morsels of movie. And for all its faults, the original Dracula is still eminently, almost supernaturally watchable for me.
In my foggy memory, it seems like there was quite a bit of lag time between my introduction to the Universal monsters and my awareness of Hammer's technicolor reboots. But then, I have a recollection of my mother dropping my older brother and me off at the downtown theater (which was dusty and creaky even then) for a matinee of Dracula: Prince of Darkness. That movie came out in 1966, and even assuming it was a later reissue, that would have been around the same time, or not long after, I was enjoying Universal's sundry horrors on the local channel. (Okay, I know what you're thinking -- your mom dropped off two boys, one barely in his teens, one pre-teen, at the theater to see a blood-soaked Hammer film? What kind of monster was she? Well, I recently talked with my brother, and he has no memory of it. So it's possible that I somehow hallucinated it. Anyway, it was a small town and it was the 60s. And I just read Quentin Tarantino's recollections of of his mom doing the very same thing in his new book Cinema Speculation. I'd like to think my mom was just as cool as Tarantino's.)
I've written on the blog before about that first time viewing of Dracula: Prince of Darkness, wherein a victim is strung up over a casket and his throat slit to provide the blood to reanimate Dracula's ashes. That was a harsh test of my still-developing nervous system, but I survived, and went on to survive even rougher scenes. (Although I've seen my share of slasher movies, in my old age I've lost my tolerance for anything featuring extreme graphic violence.)
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| Christopher Lee's Dracula had critics seeing red, but movie exhibitors saw lots of green. |
There's no shortage of accounts of how radical, even shocking, Hammer's monster reboots were at the time, bringing out vitriol from the critics and ticket sales in equal measure. The costumes and sets were beautiful to look at, but there was an undercurrent of nastiness (and sexiness), absent from the Universal films, that would often explode in your face in gorgeous, gory Technicolor.
As a kid, I was not so much shocked as awed by Christopher Lee's Dracula. The aristocratic bearing was still there, but Lee used every inch of his 6'5" frame to supplement that bearing with terrifying animal energy. Add the preternaturally red eyes and the long fangs tinged with blood, and you realized you weren't in Universal's genteel, Gothic Kansas anymore. Lugosi's Dracula would sneak up on you like a ghost in the night; Lee would pounce on you like a jackal.
Similarly to Lee as Dracula, Peter Cushing brings vitality and kinetic energy to the role of Van Helsing, to the point that he could be mistaken for Douglas Fairbanks as he leaps around like a swashbuckler while engaged in mortal combat with the Count at the climax of Horror of Dracula. While Edward Van Sloan was cool, stoic and unflappable in 1931, Cushing was hot, intense, and in control, not one to suffer fools (or vampires) gladly.
So, which is my favorite Dracula? Well, which of your kids is your favorite? Or put another way, sometimes you want homemade cherry pie ala mode, and sometimes you want the gooey sweetness of a hot fudge sundae with a blood-red cherry on top. Here's a test: Close your eyes and think of the ultimate iconic image of the bloodsucking Count. Whose face do you see?
Dueling Draculas Trivia:
⚰ Universal initially announced that John Wray, who had recently been in the critically acclaimed All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), would play Dracula (but Lugosi's experience with the stage role eventually won the day.) [Weaver, et al., p. 24]
⚰ Unlike the original novel or the 1931 film, the entirety of Horror of Dracula takes place in or near Transylvania. [Hutchings, p. 90]
⚰ Lugosi, who did his own makeup for the stage role, insisted on doing the same for the movie. [Weaver, et al., p. 26]
⚰ The energetic climax to Horror of Dracula, in which Van Helsing leaps off the table to tear down the curtains, and then use crossed candlesticks to force Dracula into the sun's rays, was Peter Cushing's idea. [Hutchings, p. 93]
⚰ Several scenes in the 1931 script never made it into the movie, including closeups of Dracula with fangs bared and his victims' neck wounds, and a sequence on board the Vesta, with shots of the captain and crew screaming as Dracula stalks and corners them. [Weaver, et al., p. 30-31]
⚰ As the shoot for Horror of Dracula was wrapping up, Hammer execs instructed visiting photographers to only shoot Lee from behind, so as not to spoil the thrill of Dracula's first appearance for theater goers. [Hearn, p. 31]
⚰ Director Todd Browning brought the 1931 film under budget, spending a little over $340,000 on an allotment of $350 K. It turned out to be a blockbuster, wracking up $50,000 in ticket sales in its opening 2 days at New York's Roxy Theater. [Weaver, et al., pp. 24, 31]
⚰ Christopher Lee has just 13 lines of dialog in his inaugural role as Dracula. [Hearn, p. 32]
Sources:
1. Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas & John Brunas, Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946, Second Edition, McFarland, 2007
2. Peter Hutchings, Terence Fisher, Manchester University Press, 2001
3. Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films, Titan Books, 2007.
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| Happy Halloween from Films From Beyond! |
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