Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) directed by André Øvredal

 

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a film that "fills in" what happened on the ill fated boat that took Dracula and his boxes of earth from his homeland to England. The basics of the story are taken from the captain's logs found the Bram Stoker's original novel and then it adds characters to flesh out the details. In the book we simply know the ship arrives with everyone dead, filled with boxes of earth and rats. The logs tell of something that killed the crew members while at sea. The horror in that part of the book comes from not knowing what happened in any detail. As readers we know it's Dracula feeding on the crew until he reaches his destination and it reinforces him as a source of evil. 

In my opinion that is all there needs to be, this idea of backfilling fictional stories (looking a you Star Wars) so there are no gaps from one event to another is something that really bugs me. Those gaps are often what makes the story work. The viewer fills in nebulous details with ideas of their own and, in the case of a horror movie, that is where the fear and dread comes from. Our own fears can make the film seem much more personally scary. 

The new characters are not bad ones, the lead as the black doctor is well acted and interesting and the woman found in one of the crates - put there as a way to keep Dracula fed on his trip so no one will know he is there - is also a good movie idea. Just not one where we already know what is going to happen. There is also the issue of a few pages in a book or a few minutes in a film allow you to not notice some things that a 2 hour film gives you plenty of time to mull over. In this case while watching we kept asking if they know the "thing" is attacking at night and hiding on the ship, those mysterious boxes would be a good place to do a day search and when they realize that they are where the creature is hiding during the day why not throw them all overboard and save yourselves? Why does it take 90% of the film before they start making sure no one is ever alone at night? 

Dracula is also an issue in how he is portrayed. They are going for a Nosferatu type of vampire, fair enough, but that does not work for the rest of the story after this film ends as we all know already. He is naked and sometimes has wings, sometimes he doesn't. They seem to appear as needed in the plot. 

The ending is truly a mess. I won't totally spoil it but there is a survivor who decided to dedicate their life to destroying Dracula, leading to the typical opening for a sequel. Thing is I would guess most readers have read the book especially anyone who would watch this and by the time you are 5 you have some idea who Dracula is and what the story is about so we KNOW this ending cannot have happened! 

I think if this was not about Dracula but some other creature it would have worked much better. 

Nosferatu (2024) directed by Robert Eggers

 

This long awaited remake of the 1922 classic film by Murnau was finally released Christmas day this year. The plot is not different from the original but the details and execution make this film very much it's own thing. A real estate agent is sent to meet a certain Count Orlock in in the carpathian mountains to sell him a property for a large sum of money. He arrives, and Orlock is an undead creauture that decides it will take control of the agent's new wife. The agent escapes and gets back home just before Orlock to warn his wife, who because of her odd connection to the monster already knows he is coming. The rest of the film is a race to destroy the menace somehow before the entire village dies from him or the plague he has brought with him. 

Spoilers: 

I was not sure this would work. I saw The North man and it was OK, but basically had the same plot as Conan the Barbarian. It was well filmed with great performances but had its faults. Luckily, this movie is not a copy of the original and keeps away from many of the expressionistic trapping of that one (though not all of them which is good) and relies much more on true gothic horror and the folklore of the Carpathian region involving vampires to create something new and terrifying for a modern audience. Orlock is really nothing like Max Schreck in the silent version physically. Schreck has a slim monstrous beauty in a way. Bill Skarsgård is a walking corpse with a voice that give you nightmares and is unrecognizable in any way from his real life appearance and voice. The original was considered one of the most scary films at the time due in most part to the look of Nosferatu and this new version gives us a new image to lose sleep over. 

Visually I also had some trepidation. Eggers is a master of camerawork and transitions and I am always afraid he will slip into something that looks great and takes me out of the film. He doesn't do that, in fact i would say as fantastic as the cinematography is, it stays in service of the story from start to end - pulling the viewer through the events until the conclusion. Too many films look like video game segments with sweeping impossible camera moves that are far too smooth and really distracting. See The Lord of the Rings Trilogy for example and almost any new horror movie. This film lives in its darkness and takes you into it without dragging you along, you go willingly and it's seamless. 

The sound design in the film is great. I didn't notice the soundtrack much to be honest but there are all sorts of crazy, disturbing noises woven into the shots that add to the fear and sense of unrest.

The folklore has to be addressed since Eggers is famous for his research and Nosferatu has some nice nods to the actual legends rarely seen. A horse is used to find the grave of a vampire and I've only seen that in the disappointing Dracula with Frank Langella. They use iron stakes, nice touch! The vampires are walking rotted corpses not sexy teenagers. Nosferatu is pure evil, without morals or a dumb backstory to make you "understand him better". 

The cast is all stellar. Skarsgård  is the stand out, he can't help but be and Lily-rose Depp really gets her role and her character as well as manages to freak you out with her fits of hysteria as they were called. I was hoping Willem Defoe would be Nosferatu before production started as he was so good in the role in "Shadow of the Vampire" but he was better as the eccentric vampire hunter, a role that recently I have come to really detest how it is interpreted. Francis Ford Coppola had Anthony Hopkins as a mean, perverted Van Helsing and Laurence Olivier's turn at the part was cold and underwhelming. This was a good balance of dedicated and crazy. 

As a life long fan of the Murnau film, I can say I was impressed by this version and I also love the Herzog version which is, again, a totally different take on the same story. Believe it not, a lighter version. Eggers brought the silent film into today while keeping it's look and feel firmly rooted in the past and gothic horror traditions. it could have easily gone over the top or into cliché after cliché but made it's own way instead. This is a bleak, tense often violent film so it is not for everyone and not for anyone who wants anything that resembles most vampire tales. If you want the real deal don't miss it. 

Dracula (1979) Directed by John Badham

 

This could easily have been called "Frank Langella's Dracula" since his presence is the driving force throughout. After rising to fame on stage in the role that was electrifying on Broadway and on tour for years (yet somehow never revived since) a new film version HAD to feature Langella. 

The film is not a film version of the play which had amazing hand drawn sets by the infamous gothic artist Edward Gorey and instead became much more like a Hammer studios reboot, adding a good amount of gore and some over the top set pieces but none of the humour we had seen on Broadway. Dracula is graceful and articulate, no Transylvanian accents here and a high budget allowed for interesting, if not always effective, special effects and costumes. 

Things to love about movie are the John Williams score (though his self "referencing" from other of his score is very noticeable) and the locations are beautiful dripping in gothic horror elements and the lovely matte painting work involving Dracula's Carfax Abbey. I guess the interiors of Carfax Abbey are also striking, but also they seem to be trying to replicate Gorey's illustrations in the real world which doesn't really work. There are bats, including a GIANT bat head at the rear of the main hall. Who built this place? It's way over the top where most of the other locations and props are less prone to self parody. 

Things to love less are the lack of connection or sympathy for any of the characters. They and the scenes they are in vary in tone and never congeal into more than a series of events. The characters of Lucy and Mina names are switched, Renfield has no role in the story. The movie starts with Mina somehow leaving her room unnoticed in a violent storm to get to a boat she saw crashing into the shore from her window where she sees a wold jump off the boat and go into a cave where she find not the wolf but Dracula? It's hime but we only see his hand take hold of her hand then...  it's never mentioned she was there or how Dracula got from the cave to his new house and Mina doesn't seem to know him at all when he visits later on. The end is equally nonsensical. After a complex series of events to save Lucy that isn't terrible but goes on a little long, the count is killed after being hoisted up on a hook to the sunlight on the boat he is trying to escape on and is burnt by the sun. We only see the start of this process and the shot makes it seem that he transformed in to a kite and flies away over the ocean? Lucy seems free of him but she sees the kite-count and gives an enigmatic smile. What? 

While the film doesn't really work, Langella 100% does his best despite the efforts of maybe Badham to rob the vampire of all mystery and repeating shots over and over. We see Dracula's feet only leaving a carriage etc, a shot which leads to seeing him completely at least three times. There are multiple shots though a web with a spider on it as a character walks beneath. We get it, they are caught in Dracula's web... move on. It's frustrating to see the real potential of a great film wasted but it's worth taking a look for the good elements if you can handle the bad ones. 

Dracula Rising (1993) Directed by Fred Gallo

Somehow, this guy is NOT Dracula in this movie! 

 

What a mess this movie is! Christopher Atkins of Blue lagoon fame is Dracula? Sure, though his monk "buddy" is more Dracula like and is the actual bad guy in this film. 

Not sure I can describe the "plot" most of the movie takes place in flashbacks, like 80% of it. This gives the excuse to show Atkins as the young hot Dracula with his soon to be burnt alive love having sex and swimming naked at some waterfall with full frontal. I guess they had to reference Blue Lagoon somehow. He has a monk pal who is also sexy and whips him when he is bad or immoral or something... it's VERY homoerotic. 

Anyway they both become vampires and to be honest I couldn't follow the path to that with all the flashbacks and the friend coming across more as Dracula than Dracula as they carry their feud/relationship? into modern day with the obligatory reincarnation of Vlad's old flame. She ends up in a flaming car by Dracula saves her and... I can't even remember. No one is good in their roles though they all look hot which I think is the point, maybe the only point to make this in the first place. 

Dracula - Sovereign of the Damned (1980) animated Marvel Comics adaption

 

It is no secret I am a fan of the 1970s comic book "Tomb of Dracula" and particularly the artwork of Gene Colan. It was a great comic that ran 7 years and had a fairly steady storyline form start to finish. 

This is an animated TV show version taken directly from the comic. I had heard it existed and finally saw it online, as you can now too!  I wasn't expecting artwork anywhere close to the books and I didn't get it but they did make an effort to keep the characters similar to their original look. The backdrops have much to be desired and the animation itself is very low end. The dubbing in English is pretty awful.

They do keep to the storyline, the one where Dracula is worshipped by a Satanist cult and they did not shy away from the more shocking elements including a little nudity. What really did shake me was they included Dracula's newborn baby son getting shot in the face! I have NO idea who this project was aimed at. Certainly not Saturday morning kid show audiences and it's a little too kiddy looking for teenagers. 

All in all I would say if you are a "Tomb of Dracula" fan it is worth a look, otherwise it might confuse the hell out of you. 

Dracula (2020) Netflix series by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss

Spoilers galore.

This version of Dracula can be lauded for playing with all the tropes and original story elements in new and surprising ways. As a three part series, each 90 minutes, there is plenty of time to horrify, shock and surprise even someone like me who is sort of a fan of Vampire lore. What the show does best is it takes some barely touched on sections of the Stoker Novel and expands them into a new main story. The first past takes place in the convent where Johnathan Harker is recovering... well recovering is not the right word in this version. In the novel he just spends some time there and then goes home to his fiancé. In this version, he is basically dead and turning into a vampire after having been feasted non by Dracula and then "killing himself" but jumping off the castle tower and into the river below. The set up is very much like the original story and then takes this turn into batshit craziness. He does not survive the first episode.  Sister Agatha, Agatha VanHelsing we find out is questioning him until Mina stakes him and Dracula arrives to collect Johnathan? It's not really clear why he is there but it works.

The second part starts with the good sister and Dracula playing chess and him explain to her how he survived on so few people while travelling from his home to Britain on the ship "The Demeter" which before a bloody game of "ten little Indians"  as the passengers and crew are quickly used for food and become suspicious, not of Dracula, but of the mysterious guest in room 9 who no one sees. As it turns out, it's Agatha who's chess game with the count is in their minds as he uses her for a steady food source. She does get the better of him as they try and hang her killing the missing crew when she spit blood at the vampire and his true nature is exposed. The episode is not fast moving but I thought it was effective and again, it's turned a detail in the novel into a main story. It ends in the most crazy way possible. The ship is blown up, Agatha drowns and Dracula hides in a remaining coffin on the ocean floor until he walks to shore where he is met by a helicopter, military looking personnel and... Agatha?

So now in modern day the end of the series pits Dracula against the ancestor of VanHelsing who has him imprisoned in a high security vampire facility. Well not all that secure, and thesis where the series starts to fall apart, as Dracula is somehow allowed to go free because... the law? Plus Zowie the new VanHelsing manages to just take a vile of vampire blood and drink it for... reasons. She is dying of cancer, but it doesn't help with that. It does let her communicate with the count in some sort of dreamworld. Meanwhile the Count Dracula falls for an egotistical millennial chick who let him feed of her for the eventual gift of eternal life. She gets her wish in the worst way as when she dies and is laid to rest... she get cremated, something Dracula didn't know was a "thing" in this new era and she escape, but is quite the gory mess. Up to this point the story is getting messier but it is still interesting and it remains that way, mostly due the excellent performances of Claes Bang (Dracula) and Dolly Wells (VanHelsing). The ending, to me a least, was a big letdown. Dracula throughout has been an unfeeling monster. Cold, cruel, inhuman. Seriously, he deserved to go out with bang and be punished for his actions, but instead he drinks the blood of Zowie which is poisonous to him after she reveals he ashamed of his immortal existence and most of his mutation, including being burnt by the sun are mostly self imposed.  It's a let down. When VanHelsing tears down the curtains in the vampires penthouse exposing him to the light he should have exploded in the rays of the sun, or suffered in some way that punished centuries of unforgivable behaviour. Nope, they lie in each other's dying arms in the light of the sun.... WTF?

Should you see it? I would say yes because it's pretty great until the last five minutes. there is much to recommend about the the majority of it. It is a shame the ending just doesn't live up to lead up.

The Unholy Films of Dracula

There have been 1000s of films with Dracula as a character in them, maybe 10s of 1000s. The idea of vampires had existed in legends for centuries but the titular character in Bram Stoker’s book created a sensation that continues to this day. With all these interpretations out there, do any honour to the original story? Over the years some do, most do not. Many, though loosely following the plot at best have managed to create something outside Stoker’s original vision. The cinematic impressions have taken over our memories of Dracula and vampires and superseded the novel’s version almost completely. 

So here is a list of some of the major films that in their own way cover the origins of the Transylvanian Count.


La Mort de Dracula (1921)
This film takes place in an insane asylum and involves an inmate that may or may not be  the undead count. So it has nothing to do with the book but it does have the distinction as the first appearance of Dracula on the screen. 

Nosferatu (1922)
Maybe one of the most iconic telling of the tale.The legendary director Murnau has created a tour de force of surreal horror and loosely follows the original story here and there but goes off the track as it approaches the end and takes on a less action oriented finale in lieu of one where Harker’s wife sacrifices herself by tricking the monster to forget the time and be destroyed by the first rays of dawn. 
It’s a miracle we can see this movie at all. The producers did not get the rights from Stoker’s estate and were ordered to destroy every copy. Luckily for humanity, some people managed to hide copies throughout Europe and we are still trying to put together a complete version to this day. The look of the vampire in this film is so iconic and frightening it rivals even the Lugosi idea of the undead.
In the 80s, this was remade with Klaus Kinski by Werner Herzog in both German and English. Well worth seeing. 

Dracula (Todd browning and Spanish version 1931)
Speaking of Lugosi, Universal studio’s entry of the classic tale is likely the most famous and imitated since it’s release. I have to say, and many would disagree I’m sure, that this version is not so great. Lugosi saves the film with his charismatic performance but the often amazing director Todd Browning’s work on the film is terrible. He was apparently drunk or passed out through much of the filming and the Spanish version, lensed at night on the same sets, is a vastly superior film, in my opinion. The actor playing Dracula is fantastic, the editing better and this version even as more effects that Browning never bothered to add into the English version. We never would have been able to see the Spanish take if it wasn’t for a pristine copy being found in Cuba not too many years ago. All other copies had disappeared over the decades. 
Neither version of the film follows the storyline very closely but this version has become the de facto plot most people have come to expect. 

Horror of Dracula (1958)
The first in Hammer’s long series of Dracula films that launched the horror careers of both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Again, the plot of this film cuts and pastes elements from not only the book but from previous films and adds a little more sexiness and blood to the mix. A low budget endeavour, this film benefits from interesting sets and cinematography and the performances of its main actors. It created it’s own look and in a way it’s own horror universe that translated to other Hammer monster films, like Frankenstein and the Mummy. 

Dracula (BBC 1977)
Louis Jordan plays the count in what is the most faithful of all Dracula films by my estimation. Its overall production value is good and the performances are as well. It’s well worth checking out even though it suffers from some unfortunate effects techniques that take away from the otherwise gothic feel of the project. Specifically, the terrible solarization of Jordan’s face now and then. It seems to be saying, we can do this weird thing with video so why not use it? Because it’s terrible and inappropriate would have my response if I was asked. 

Dracula (Frank Langella - 1979)
In many ways, this production is reminiscent of the Hammer films from a few years earlier in style and substance. The story is a hodgepodge of Dracula lore and mixes and matches from previous efforts. Where the film stands out is in Langela’s take on the count (which he had perfected by playing him for years in the stage production), the music and the set pieces. The film fails in pacing and by not delivering what audiences really wanted at the time, which was a movie version of the hit play. A play, which despite the huge success it was world-wide at the time, has never been revived, at least not so far. I would also say the film is murky in style and lighting - making it difficult to figure out what is happening at points. It sounds a little odd to say, but I think movie lacks a soul - something that would make it relatable and new when it’s a typical gothic horror done in a competent manner that sort of sleep walks its way through the story. One thing it had going for it in spades was the John Williams soundtrack. Haunting, romantic and desperate sounding, it’s worth a listen on it’s own merits. Langella's hair might be a little too feathered....

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Francis Ford Coppala’s sumptuous and, face it, batshit crazy adaption of Stoker’s signature novel is visually stunning. Gary Oldman’s over the top performance is worth seeing alone, the rest of the cast seems to sleep walk through their roles and for something called Bram Stoker’s Dracula there is a lot of stuff in it that has absolutely nothing to do with the source material. It adds needless backstory and tries to make the count a victim of his fate, looking for his lost love though the centuries. Oldman has a lot to work with in the role and his vampire walks in the daylight, turns into some sort of bat human thing, has a shadow that (as in Nosferatu) has a life of its own and at one point transforms into some sort of rape-y werewolf - thing. Annie Lennox and Diamanda Galas sing on the sound track which is like a wet dream - for me, anyway. The movie is earnest in its presentation, to say the least, which makes it a little beyond normal criticism. It’s worth checking out but I would have to say, all it’s wonderfully made pieces do not add up to a coherent whole. 

*This film seems to take elements and inspiration in some ways for the 1973 Dan Curtis TV movie of Dracula starring Jack Palance, which is not a bad version of the story but adds in the elements of the historical Dracula and the idea that Lucy is a reincarnation of his lost love. 

Like most film versions of classic tales, Dracula’s legacy is spotty in terms of faithfulness to the author and the original concepts in the book. Also like many adaptions from book to movie, a faithful adaption isn’t always the best one or even possible. I do think the bloodthirsty villain of Stoker’s imagination has fared much better than Shelly’s Frankenstein. Most of those adaption don’t even try to capture the subtle nature of her story and opt for forgetting who the real monster in the story really is. Dracula at least keeps something of his written personality much of the time. 

Deafula

Good bye Countess Dracula

Ingrid Pitt, star of Countess Dracula, Wicker Man ( the awesome original) and many other thing died last night at the age of 73. Concentration camp survivor, actress and totally hot babe, it's sad to know she's gone.