Dracula in the 1970s: Prints of Darkness
Preface (7/19/2018)
It was in 1997 that I first received a rather flattering telephone call from an editor in New York, asking if I'd be willing to participate in a new published anthology that he was compiling for Midnight Marquee Press. The book would assemble many genre writers of the period in a collaborative effort celebrating the "life," and death of Bram Stoker's literary creation in film.
The "editor," whose name shall go unspoken here, said that he had grown up with my work in such publications as The Monster Times, and that he would be honored to include a chapter by me in the pages of his forthcoming book, which was to be called Dracula, The First Hundred Years.
I was asked to write a somewhat light-hearted examination of the "Dracula," and related vampire films, and television productions of the 1970's.
Prompted, perhaps, by his professed "love" for my work, I agreed, and began fabricating a new article for his publication. I set about writing a lengthy new piece and, once finished, sent it off by mail to New York. I received a congratulatory telephone call from the "gentleman" in question shortly following its receipt, advising me that he was delighted with my work. He said that it was everything that he could have hoped for, and more, and that while many of his writers would need to be heavily edited, my work would be published essentially as I had written it.
Now, it's normal for an editor to send each of his stable of writers the "proofs" of their edited work once completed, prior to publication, so that they might be gone over and approved for content. Months went by, however, without any further communication from the book's editor.
I'd begun hearing ominous rumblings from a number of writers, grumbling that their efforts had been heavily tampered with and changed, and that there was brewing trouble in "paradise." I continued to rest easily, however, in the spoken assurance that my work would be published essentially as written.
When the book was at last published, however, I discovered to my horror that my work had been badly distorted, compromised, and truncated.
Wherever I had spoken of actor Christopher Lee with affection and reverence, my text had been re-written to ridicule and attack him. Wherever I had spoken of actor Frank Langella with respect and admiration, my text had been re-written as would reflect the secret yearnings of a smitten school girl in drooling affection for her hero.
Large chunks of my writing had been unceremoniously removed and altered, without either my knowledge or permission by an unscrupulous "editor" who had unkindly inserted his own cryptic observations and prejudice under my name and byline, shabbily using my personal reputation either to malign or revere the films and performances that he had either loved or loathed.
When I asked why he had done this to me, he replied that he thought that "it was funny."
Reviewers of the volume, who had taken offense to many of the cruel observations expressed supposedly by me, were harsh in their very personal criticism of my work. I set about composing a letter-writing campaign to address these issues, stating rather forcefully that the offensive opinions determined objectionable were either edited, or added, after my work had been submitted, and neither with my knowledge or consent.
Consequently, sales of the volume plummeted, and the "editor" complained that I had "murdered" his book.
In the twenty years since its publication, the title has come to be reviled by readers, and wholly disavowed by its unwitting publisher. In the decades that followed, I'd longed to have my work published in its entirety, and as originally conceived as written.
Here, then, for the first time ever, and with enthusiastic permission of Midnight Marquee Press, is the published premiere of my original work - "Dracula In The Seventies: Prints Of Darkness."
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The most reassuring aspect of trends and cycles is that as one door closes, another one opens. The same may be said of coffins. As the mortuary door was abruptly rusting shut on the Dracula cycle of the 1950s and 1960s, a breath of deliciously stagnant air was about to escape into the otherwise staid seventies.
In the interim, however, Hammer Films, the dominant producer of such pictures, was continuing to nail the lid on the market. The number and quality of these gentle excursions into blood-letting had diminished but they still retained, you should excuse the expression, a healthy stake in the genre.
HAMMER STUDIOS
Hammer had established itself in the mid-fifties as the horror capitol of England and a major contender, with Universal studios in the U.S., for a financially sought-after championship title. Beginning with the acclaimed first entry in the Quatermass franchise in 1955, Hammer released a consistently excellent stream of adult horror and science fiction melodramas.
In 1957 they seemed to strike gold with the controversial release of a remake of the 1931 Universal/Boris Karloff gem, Frankenstein. The “rub,” however, was that the supposed remake would be updated to fit the sensibilities of a more liberated generation of film goers. Color would be added to lend realism to the series, along with generous doses of sex and violence.
It proved to be an unbeatable and potent recipe for success at the box office.
The critics were offended. The public was shocked. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Rarely had such generous portions of female cleavage been so loving displayed on the motion picture screen. Blood was spilt in lurid, gurgling detail.
The film was a sensation while prurient interests had seldom been better, or more amply satisfied.
The following year saw the release of Hammer's second monstrous remake.
This time they turned their attention to Bram Stoker's immortal vampire, Dracula. Horror of Dracula reunited the creative team responsible for injecting new blood, so to speak, into the earlier Curse of Frankenstein.
Peter Cushing, the evil Baron, this time played the vital Dr. Van Helsing, while the stately monster returned from the crypt once morem as Christopher Lee became the terrible Count. This new incarnation of the undead aristocracy revitalized the genre and brought the anemic vampire richly back to life.
With a literate, crisp screenplay by Hammer veteran, Jimmy Sangster, Lee's Dracula was frightening to behold, a fierce, powerful aberration whose fangs housed and dripped blood while snarling his defiance in provocative composure. Stalking his hapless victims to the thunderous rhythms of composer James Bernard's primal, passionate accompaniment, this was a savage predator who ripped out the throats of his prey like a ravenous wolf.
Lee and Sangster gleefully discarded the gentlemanly count of previous films, replacing the civility of Bela Lugosi with the untamed fury of a wild, vicious animal. The stunning chase and unforgettable climax of this first Dracula pitted Van Helsing's grim, heroic determination against the centuries' old ferocity of the rabid vampire cornered in his den. It is, perhaps, the quintessential sequence in the repertoire of small, once mighty, independent studio.
As the 1960s drew to a close, Hammer was already in decline, its glory years sadly behind it. There was still the occasional smattering of brilliance, however, as in their final Quatermass experiment, the breathtaking Five Million Years To Earth in 1967, but their glory years were gone and the beleaguered studio, its creative team largely dissipated, was beginning to repeat itself in unflattering self-parody.
As a new decade was dawning, Hammer continued to release new excursions into the Dracula mythology, which usually proved little more than variations on a much-repeated theme but, while the films themselves had declined in quality, there were moments of inspiration which allowed the disparate parts to elevate the films on the whole. Bad Hammer was, after all, still miles above other studios copycat thrillers.
Hammer Productions entered the new decade in the Fall of 1970 with the release of their fifth Dracula film, Taste the Blood of Dracula, on September 16th.
The film introduced Ralph Bates to the screen in the first of his horrific forays for Hammer. It also starred Christopher Lee once again in the role he loved to hate or, perhaps, hated to love. Increasingly dissatisfied with the growing mediocrity of the scripts Lee voiced his displeasure at being typecast in a genre he had grown to loathe. Indeed, he had thrown open his arms enthusiastically to director Billy Wilder a year earlier and eagerly embraced an opportunity to portray Mycroft Holmes in Wilder's bittersweet romantic adventure, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
In the role that Lee later described as his personal favorite of his performances, the actor seemed to joyously poke fun at his own perceived stiffness and pomposity, while enacting the senior Holmes as a humorless civil servant. One must eat, however, and so Lee reluctantly donned the regal cape of the Transylvanian prince once more and invited audiences to taste the now somewhat anemic blood of his romantic alter ego, Dracula.
Taste the Blood of Dracula was a pallid offering, indeed. Audiences delighted in Lee's unquestionably regal presence as Dracula but his moments on screen were simply that, mere moments, while the rest of the picture seemed lacking either in atmosphere or interest. Indeed, everyone in the cast appeared to walk through a strictly by-the-numbers script.
The sets, costumes and general atmosphere of the film were generally first class as always but the heart and soul of Bram Stoker's creation seemed comatose at best.
Peter Cushing's absence was deeply felt, leaving the necessary sparks between the two actors an electrical failure. The film simply failed to ignite.
Even in later years, when the stories had degenerated still further, the presence of these two titans assured audiences a degree of charm and romanticism. The absence of one or the other made the picture's shortcomings, like the Count's reflection, all the more transparent.
Dracula had risen again, to be sure, but this was a grave endeavor for the count who played second fiddle to his misbegotten disciples. The teenaged daughter of one of his sworn enemies occupied more scream time than Lee, alluring and a lure for the downfall of her father and his friends. James Bernard, however, contributed one of his most exquisite scores to the picture, providing the few genuine moments of afterglow to an otherwise sadly mediocre endeavor.
If their earlier effort featured little of the vampiric count, Hammer's next foray into vampirism would obliterate him entirely.
The Vampire Lovers, released later that fall, was yet another retelling of Sheridan Le Fanu's novel Carmilla.
Filmed originally in 1931 by Carl Dreyer in France as Vampyr and later by Roger Vadim as Et Mourir De Plaisir (Blood and Roses) in 1960 and once more as Terror In The Crypt in 1963, Le Fanu's 1871 novel has had nearly as many incarnations as his character.
The Vampire Lovers, it should be noted, did not imply affection for the undead but, rather, the previously understated sexual predilections of the naughty cult or, in this case, lesbianism.
Ingrid Pitt played the cultured daughter of a countess, sheltered by General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing) and his family. Marcilla (Pitt) seduces and murders the general's niece and disappears into the night. Spielsdorf vows revenge, tracking Marcilla (now Carmilla) to her latest haunt, a sumptuous estate where she encounters a young girl with an even more sumptuous body. Emma Morton (Madeline Smith) is lovely, innocent and virginal, succumbing to the numbing tutelage of her calculating friend who delights in biting her, not in the throat, but into the tips of her nipples. Carmilla, it seems, is actually a survivor of the infamous vampiric family Karnstein, bent on sharing her horrific legacy with partners both willing and unwilling.
The General ultimately finds his dangerous prey and renders her harmless by means of decapitation. Hammer had found an evocative way for Carmilla to give the General "head."
The Vampire Lovers was, in the final analysis, a success. Sincerely acted and overflowing with generous helpings of stylish eroticism, the film managed to overcome the absence of a definitive male vampiric influence, as well as cheesy color and release in America by the teen oriented American International Pictures. Peter Cushing comfortably lent solid, if brief, support, while a shadowy figure on horseback may or may not have been Dracula himself.
1970
The first year of the seventies provided a blood feast for Hammer.
Before the end of 1970, the studio released its second Dracula film of the year and its third vampire essay.
It's been said that not even plastic surgery could have saved Scars of Dracula from its fate but, despite its disastrous reputation, as well as some scathing observations by its star, Christopher Lee, the film is actually far more interesting than the earlier Taste The Blood Of Dracula.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker (Five Million Years to Earth), with a lovely score by James Bernard, Scars of Dracula returned the unholy count to his castle in the Transylvanian mountains and provided the series with one of its most unforgettable images, the sight of Count Dracula crawling down the outer wall of his castle, face first, to a window somewhere below.
The stunning imagery, taken directly from Bram Stoker's novel, was breathtaking to behold and an unnerving reminder of the vampire's true rodent like persona. This was, after all, not an aristocratic royal but a vile, detestable creature of the night. If the remainder of the screenplay was routine, the film distinguished itself in these inspired moments, including a stunning finale in which the vampire prince pulls a stake from out of his chest and is then immolated by a bolt of lightning, setting his cape aflame. Scars of Dracula was, despite its unwarranted reputation of mediocrity, a welcome return to the quality of the earlier films in the series.
A worthier candidate for derision was the studio's next excursion to the crypt, Lust for A Vampire. An unofficial remake of The Vampire Lovers, which had been released only a year earlier, Lust seemed further evidence that the studio had simply run out of ideas. The production was plagued by difficulties from the outset. Peter Cushing had been scheduled to star but was forced to decline the assignment due to the illness of his beloved wife, Helen.
Cushing was replaced by Ralph Bates, who took the role as a favor to the distraught Cushing and director Jimmy Sangster, himself a last-minute replacement for Terrence Fisher (Horror of Dracula), who had broken his leg.
Once again, the terrible Karnstein family was wreaking havoc across the countryside in the person of their nubile daughter Carmilla, cleverly changing her name this time to Mircalla. Perhaps Clark Kent's glasses might have made for a more effective disguise. The lust in the title told it all.
Where The Vampire Lovers was erotic and suggestive, Lust for A Vampire was bawdy and nearly pornographic. Star Yutte Stensgaard was selected for her twin peaks rather than for her artistic abilities. As attractive as they were, however, she couldn't act. Nor could Mike Raven as Count Karnstein. Consequently, the film was an embarrassment for everyone concerned. For all of its notoriety and supposed titillation, the film is an incomparable bore.
The studio fared better with their next film.
Countess Dracula
Countess Dracula, released one month later in England but delayed until October, 1972, in the U.S. was actually more an historical drama than a horror film. Based upon the life and mis-deeds of its true-life villainess, the picture recounted the bloody eccentricities of Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess, who bathed in the spilt blood of virginal women, and was reputed to have murdered more than six hundred fifty people. Ingrid Pitt played the infamous Countess with customary relish, as she found herself in a pickle over past and present indiscretions. While the real Bathory rivalled her male counterpart, Vlad the Impaler, for the sheer savagery of her brutality, the fictional Countess was somewhat more toned down, embarking on her career of crime as an aged matriarch who discovers quite by accident that the blood of virgins, mixed with bath water, is a magical elixir of youth.
Needless to say, the good Countess was never dirty again.
Distinguished British actor Nigel Green co-starred with Pitt as her loyal consort, Captain Dobi, in what distressingly proved to be his final performance. Critical reviews of the film were better than most, but the public was largely indifferent. The picture premiered in England as the lower half of a double bill toplining Hell’s Belles. Nigel Green took his own life on May 15th, 1972. It was a tragic finale to a respected career.
Twins of Evil strolled down the Hammer aisle next in yet another variation of the often used Carmilla story.
In this outing, Peter Cushing appeared as a fanatical Puritan cult leader committed to eradicating the infestation of vampirism troubling his village. Count Karnstein has been borrowing from the village "library," a veritable treasure trove of nubile young virgins with whom he has his way.
However, One Man's Way is not another's and when the already unpleasant Count is drafted into service by the reincarnation of his undead, incestuous' ancestor, Mircalla, the Count's ugly demeanor becomes all the meaner.
Madeline and Mary Collinson, real life twin sisters, appeared both in the film and in a celebrated Playboy magazine pictorial, spectacularly designed to display their twin charms. The plot, in which one sister is infected with the vampire plague, while her innocent sibling is unjustly mistaken for her, was not unlike The Black Room (Columbia, 1935) in which Boris Karloff played twin brothers, one good-one evil, and the resultant chaos when the evil twin is murdered and replaced by his better half.
While Peter Cushing lent credibility to the well-traveled story, it remains, rather unfairly, the notoriety of the popular Playboy spread for which the film is best remembered. Released in June of 1972 in America, the film has much to recommend it apart from its sensationalistic umbilical connection to Hugh Hefner.
As Hammer continued its uphill struggle to retain control of the declining and dancing horror market, a quiet revolution was taking root across the waves in America, where the cemetery plot of a modest made for television movie was about to change the face of vampirism forever.
ABC Movie of the Week
On January 11, 1972, the ABC Movie of the Week premiered what would become the most popular made for television movie in history, or at least the history of television up to that time. The Night Stalker began innocently enough as a straight mystery concerning the blood draining murders of strippers and prostitutes in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Darren McGavin asCarKolchak and Barry Atwater as the Night Stalker
Assigned to cover the story for the Las Vegas Daily News is a former star reporter for the big New York City papers, Carl Kolchak, who has recently fallen upon hard times, while hungrily searching for the story that will catapult him back into the big time. Kolchak quickly senses that there is significantly more to the story than has been conveyed by the Las Vegas police department.
On the scent of a more provocative truth, Kolchak screams to the police that "This nut THINKS he's a vampire."
What neither the reporter or the viewing audience suspects at this point is that the "Vampire Killer" really is, in fact, a vampire.
As scripted by Richard Matheson, from an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, whimsy is replaced by terror as both reporter and audience come to realize the unthinkable truth.
Produced by Dan Curtis whose vampire soap opera, Dark Shadows, had captivated viewers in the sixties, The Night Stalker put together a powerhouse collaborative effort. Written by Matheson, whose credits include The Shrinking Man, I Am Legend, Bid Time Return (Somewhere in Time) and various classic episodes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ series, as well as directed by tv veteran John Llowellyn Moxey and starring the great Darren McGavin as the intrepid reporter, ABC's The Night Stalker literally took the country by storm.
Filmed in 1971 and broadcast early in 1972, The Kolchak Tapes was retitled shortly before its air date. Character actor Barry Atwater was virtually unrecognizable as the ageless vampire, Janos Skorzeny, while Ralph Meeker, Carol Lynley and Simon Oakland rounded out the impressive veteran cast.
Interestingly, not only Bram Stoker but Mickey Spillane was represented in the teleplay, for both Darren McGavin and Ralph Meeker had famously portrayed Spillane's infamous private sleuth, ‘Mike Hammer’. McGavin played the detective for years in the popular CBS television series, while Meeker portrayed Hammer in the cult classic Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955).
The Night Stalker was an altogether delightful mixture of comedy and horror. It went on to inspire a sequel, The Night Strangler, and a still popular television series, Chris Carter's cult favorite The X Files.
Carter was deeply influenced by Kolchak and set about creating a modern variation of The Night Stalker, combining both horror and comedy for his own hit television show. Carter successfully enlisted Darren McGavin to play a part in an episode of his own series, but when he suggested that McGavin reprise his performance as the slightly insane reporter for another episode of The X Files, the aging actor wisely preferred to leave well enough alone.
The genre received an additional transfusion in 1972 with the release of American International's Blacula. The studio had begun the decade in its usual lurid manner with Count Yorga, Vampire, a cheesy yet occasionally frightening vampire film with Robert Quarry delivering a fine, understated performance as the count. Subtlety was rarely the studio's forte, however, and Quarry's earnest effort was sadly overshadowed by the inescapably cheap look of the film.
With the growing prevalence of black exploitation films crowding the American film market it was natural that someone might suggest a black horror film.
Dimension Productions
Dimension Productions announced their entry into the genre with the forthcoming Black Dracula. While the film never proceeded beyond pre-production it evidently inspired Power Productions to begin work on a similar screenplay entitled Blacula. While Blacula seemed to suffer from the same cheapness of appearance plagued by most American International presentations, it was also blessed by the towering presence of William Marshall in the title role. A major influence on the American stage, with an astonishingly rich voice rivalled only by Orson Welles, Paul Frees and James Earl Jones, Marshall's very presence in the film elevated its stature tremendously.
A gifted actor, Marshall had endeared himself five years earlier to science fictions fans by guest starring in a classic episode from Star Trek’s second season. "The Ultimate Computer", filmed in December, 1967, featured Marshall as a brilliant but tortured "mad" scientist named Richard Daystrom, whose mental engrams have been imprinted in the circuits of an equally mad computer named M-5. So popular was Marshall's performance that references to his character and the Daystrom Institute, named after him, continue today on various Star Trek incarnations.
At the actor's insistence, the script for Blacula was given a taste of racial significance. As Prince Mamuwalde, Marshall visits Castle Dracula in 1815 in search of support for an end to the European slave trade. Apparently unaware of the Count's unsavory reputation, he attempts to enlist the Count's help, only to be met by racial slurs, vampiric attack and entombment. Dracula, played by actor Charles Macaulay, condemns Mamuwalde and his wife Luva (Vonette McGee) to a living death behind the walls of a hidden chamber within the castle. Luva will die a slow, horrible death, but the black prince, for his perceived arrogance, will suffer the unquenchable thirst of the living dead. He is dubbed Blacula by his host and walled up within the castle for one hundred fifty years until, inadvertently, released by grave robbers in what would become a grave endeavor, indeed.
Despite the noble intentions of its star, however, Blacula would rarely rise above its lurid inspiration. Conceived and executed as a cheap exploitation film, the production was doomed in advance to a cheesy look, script and direction.
Not even the performance of a former "Othello" could save this misdirected venture from the proverbial fate worse than death, yet a sequel would follow a year later.
Scream Blacula Scream was even less successful than its predecessor. With lackluster direction by Bob Kelljan, who had similarly defanged Count Yorga, Vampire, this new Blacula was anything but a scream.
When asked about his working relationship with the director, Marshall seemed to have no recollection of him. Informed that Kelljan had "directed" the second Blacula, film the actor responded..."Supposedly".
If Dracula had fallen on hard times, his friends and family members continued to proliferate throughout Europe and the British Isles.
Hammer Films returned to the genre in 1972 with the release of Vampire Circus. Once again, a vampire is setting up shop in a middle European village, terrorizing women and children first, thus proving that chivalry is not dead...even if the women and children are.
When the evil Count Mitterhouse is finally cornered and impaled, he vows to return, a pale reflection of himself, and gain back his power by devouring the toxic blood of strangers. Time passes, while the accursed villagers suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous scripting. In order to keep the seemingly leprous community at bay, the emperor decrees that the misbegotten village be quarantined.
Astonishingly, a large mysterious circus troupe manages to elude the emperor's gendarmes, arriving in the town prepared, along with Mickey and Judy, to put on a show. It isn't long before a series of mishaps begin to befall the beleaguered townspeople. Virgins, of course, are the meal of choice and the first course. Other family members soon follow.
The dreaded circus performers metamorphose at will into panthers and assorted fanged beasts, recalling Val Lewton's atmospheric fantasy, The Cat People. When the Count himself finally returns to life, the future prosperity of the village of Schtettel is thrown seriously into doubt until a heroic young man traps the Count's head within the bow string of a crossbow, firing the fatal arrow that decapitates the unwelcome intruder.
Hammer was obviously searching for other paths and journeys that might breathe new life into their fading horror franchise. If not the raging success that they had apparently hoped for, Vampire Circus at least showed a refreshing willingness to experiment with the genre and attempt new formulas. While bestiality and incest may not have been the stuff that dreams are made of, their nightmarish sensuality certainly enlivened this latest entry into the studio's vampire mythology.
Dracula entered the mod era late in 1972 mixing sex, drugs and rockin' vampires. One of the silliest, if not the worst of Hammer's Draculean excursions, Dracula A.D. 1972, was an embarrassing amalgam of traditional and juvenile narratives pitting the once noble aristocrat against modern day teeny boppers.
On the plus side was the joyous reuniting of Peter Cushing with his old friend and acting partner Christopher Lee, as Dr. Van Helsing and Count Dracula. The highlight of the film remains the opening sequence in which the two old enemies battle a heroic fight-to-the-death atop a careening coach. While both actors had obviously aged in the years following their initial battle in 1957, their obvious joy in playing opposite one another once more was infectious.
One hundred years after their ferocious fight we segue to present day London, circa 1972, where a grandfatherly Lawrence Van Helsing seeks to protect his lovely granddaughter, Jessica (Stephanie Beacham), from the seduction of innocence.
Dracula's descendant, Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame), celebrates a black mass inside an abandoned church witnessed by a group of terminally bored teenagers including Jessica and the luscious Caroline Munro as Laura.
Growing apprehensive over the sobriety of the ceremony, the immature, darkly spiritual, congregation escapes a vaguely perceived impending danger, leaving behind the foolish Laura who dies to regret her decision. Dracula returns to life, wisely attacking the voluptuous Laura, while unfortunately eliminating Ms. Munro from the remainder of the film.
Like his illustrious ancestor, Lawrence Van Helsing specializes in researching and investigating occult practices, and begins to suspect that his relative's evil nemesis has returned to exact a personal revenge.
Not surprisingly, Dracula's method of revenge involves transfusing Jessica's blood with his own, taking her as his vampire bride. When Jessica's boyfriend becomes undead and summons her to the desecrated churchyard at the Count's command, Van Helsing lies in wait, blinding Dracula with holy water, sending the disoriented vampire plunging into an open grave lined with carefully placed stakes.
Other than a few memorable sequences reuniting Cushing and Lee, such as in the opening moments in which Van Helsing impales the Count with a broken spoke from the crashed carriage wheel, Dracula A.D. 1972 is a jaded attempt to draw blood from a stoned generation.
Poorly directed by Alan Gibson, ineptly lit and photographed by Dick Bush, with abysmal music by Michael Vickers, Dracula A.D. 1972 is easily the weakest, most ineffectual entry in the series.
While filmic variations of the old vampire legends were deteriorating both in quality and quantity, an unexpected love letter to the genre came seemingly from out of nowhere in 1974 with the surprising publication of Arthur Lennig's book The Count: The Life and Times of Bela "Dracula" Lugosi.
Published by G.P. Putnam Sons in New York, The Count was a warm, loving and extremely poignant examination of the failed life and career of one of Horror Filmdom's most tragically misunderstood players. Dealing richly with Lugosi's matinee idol status in his native Hungary, his beginnings as a stranger in a strange land called Hollywood, his all too brief, yet dazzling star, and his untimely decline and fall into sadness and drug addiction, Lennig's biography remains a revelation. It's unlikely that the most callous reader could find himself unmoved or untouched by the final moments in Lugosi's life, as related by his widow, Hope.
"He didn't answer when I spoke so I went to him. I could feel no pulse. Apparently, he must have died a very short time before I arrived. He was just terrified of death. Towards the end he was very weary, but he was still afraid of death. Three nights before he died he was sitting on the edge of the bed. I asked him if he were still afraid to die. He told me that he was. I did my best to comfort him. Lennig concludes..."So, on August 16, 1956, Lugosi, who had feigned death so many times during his career, would feign death no more."
ANDY WARHOL
It was left to a major star, dead eighteen years, to bring a momentary dignity back to the genre.
Bram Stoker's immortal literary creation was now under constant attack by satirists and well-meaning incompetents who continued, sadly, to assault his once terrifying countenance. Perhaps the most reprehensible ravishing of the Count came from modern history's most blatant purveyor of mediocrity,
Andy Warhol who produced a test tube rip off of the classic novel replete with repellent gore and tasteless pornography. Alternately known as Blood for Dracula and, unashamedly, Andy Warhol's Dracula, Paul Morissey took a pathetic stab at directing with nonexistent style or clarity of vision.
With an inept starring performance by Udo Keir and presented in 3-Dimension (two more than the film possessed), Blood for Dracula is a repugnant exercise in bloated self-indulgence that is both regrettable and forgettable. Dracula had now truly been seduced and abandoned.
David Niven, having already played Ian Fleming's master sleuth James Bond in a broad satire known as Casino Royale, directed by veteran Quatermass technician Val Guest, now essayed a performance as Count Dracula in a decidedly minor spoof, Vampira (alternately known as Old Dracula), starring Teresa Graves in the title role as the Count's Countess.
Originally titled Vampirella, the title was not so subtly altered when Warren publications, owner of the former title, strenuously objected. Neither Vampira or the infamous Warhol Blood for Dracula did much to resuscitate an increasingly anemic legend.
By comparison Hammer Films' Kronos, released in America in June, 1974, as Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, was a veritable feast of fresh air. Infused with boyish enthusiasm, Kronos was a swashbuckling adventure replete with swordplay, sorcery, sex and vampirism - not necessarily in that order.
Hampered by an undistinguished performance by an awkward star, Horst Janson, Kronos was, nevertheless, an innocent fantasy that attempted once more to reinvent the vampire legend with new rules and regulatory guidelines. The sparkling beauty of Caroline Munro was also very much in evidence, a far tastier morsel to envision than the earlier depravity of Udo Keir. Directed by Brian Clemens from television's The Avengers with music by Laurie Johnson (First Men in The Moon, The Avengers), the film may have been a trifle too experimental for its own good and became, ultimately, yet another failure at the box office.
Another failed experiment, Hammer's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, filmed shortly after Dracula A.D. 1972, was released in England in January, 1974 but wouldn't see an American release until six years later in November, 1978.
The film gained notoriety later as the picture that transformed Dracula into Howard Hughes, as well as the final appearance by Christopher Lee as the vampire prince. In this telling, Count Dracula has at last tired of death on Earth and has decided to end the world not only for himself but, quite generously, for everyone else inhabiting the planet, as well.
He'll accomplish the task, no mean feat this, by developing a deadly new strain of plague to eradicate the whole of humanity from the earth, thereby eliminating once and for all time the annoying source of his needed blood supply.
The film also generated some remarkably erotic and kinky imagery including half-naked women shackled and chained in a hidden cellar while being feasted upon by Dracula's hungry disciples.
However, the most sexually arousing sequence involved a blatantly satanic ritual in which a willingly submissive young woman lay writhing naked upon an altar as drops of blood were agonizingly spilt over her breasts, stomach and exposed vagina. Finally, she is stabbed in the heart with a large ritualistic dagger, brandished by a hooded priest of the cult, bringing her exquisite torment to a 'climax' with a shuddering scream.
Peter Cushing joined his friend once again as the modern-day ancestor of the original Dr. Van Helsing, seen earlier with his granddaughter, Jessica, in Dracula A.D. 1972. This time, however, Jessica was played by Joanna Lumley, rather than Stephanie Beacham in the first updated version. Professor Van Helsing's prey is a reclusive billionaire whose mysterious activities have been shrouded in secrecy. Indeed, no one has ever actually seen the elusive D.O. Denham who lives and maintains his offices in the inaccessible penthouse suite of a great high-rise.
Denham is, of course, Dracula himself who has fully adapted to the lifestyles of the rich and infamous. When Jessica is abducted by Dracula's henchmen, Van Helsing follows to prevent the girl from becoming the monster's bride. Jessica is freed as Pelham House is set ablaze, fleeing into the dark woods with the vampire in close pursuit. Entangled in the vines of an imposing hawthorn bush the Count, as personified by Christopher Lee, is destroyed for the last time.
This appearance also marked the last time that the terrible titans of terror, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, would appear together in a Hammer Film Production. It was the end of an era for both men.
Easily the most bizarre retelling of the Dracula legend by Hammer reared its unlikely severed head in October, 1974, with the release of The Legend of The Seven Golden Vampires, also known as The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula. Had it been a musical, it might alternately have been called Seven Brides for Seven Vampires.
This could well have been the inspiration for Forrest J Ackerman's often repeated review - "It wasn't released. It escaped."
Well, maybe not, but it certainly fits. It must have seemed an inspiration during the Kung Fu craze of the seventies to combine the two genres, along with the greatest film studios of both England and Japan. Shaw Bros. eagerly accepted the offer to join with Hammer in producing the first martial arts Dracula film.
Unfortunately for the companies, it looked as though Matt Dillon was more adept at mastering martial arts than the seven brothers who should have stayed home to sing, dance and marry their seven brides.
Happily, Christopher Lee emphatically declined the role of Dracula in the co-production, leaving the hole to be filled by John Forbes-Robinson who was, at best, an ineffectual Count. Of course, the little-known truth unearthed here was that Dracula, who had evidently tired of being a reclusive billionaire, had transformed himself into Kah, an Asian practitioner of the occult arts. Surely now the seven brothers would endure The Wrath of Kah. You shouldn't know from it.
Steve Vertlieb and composer James Bernard
Peter Cushing was enticed into portraying Van Helsing one last time and if there is any joy to be found in this numbingly imbecilic enterprise, it is the joyous enthusiasm this great actor brings to the part, combined with the wonderful music of Hammer's least appreciated genius, composer James Bernard.
Hammer’s final horror effort was the only moderately effective thriller To the Devil a Daughter, based upon the novel by Dennis Wheatley, and featuring Christopher Lee as an evil, excommunicated priest who plans to offer up his godchild to the devil upon the attainment of her eighteenth birthday. Richard Widmark co-starred as an expert on occult practices persuaded by the girl's father to save her from the Satanic cult.
The film is best remembered for the much-advertised nudity of the sweetly nubile daughter of German actor, Klaus Kinski. Nastassja Kinski, barely eighteen years old in her first screen appearance, was the flower of virginal innocence. Her nude scenes on and off the screen were captivating to say the least, but it was an inauspicious beginning to a solid "body" of dramatic work by the young actress and a tepid farewell, at best, to the "Hammer House of Horror."
After the release in America of To the Devil A Daughter in July, 1976, vampires in general and Dracula in particular appeared dead in the running water, but all of that was about to change, and change dramatically.
In the annals of motion pictures, the year 1939 is universally acknowledged as the single greatest year of important releases in the history of the industry.
1977
Similarly, the year 1977 was about to emerge as a pivotal turning point for Bram Stoker's' "Prince of Darkness."
The year began innocuously enough with an episode of a network television series starring Dennis Weaver. McCloud was aired once monthly as part of the Mystery Movieseries on NBC.
On April 17th, 1977, the program telecast a bizarre episode entitled "McCloud Meets Dracula" in which a baffling series of killings appear vampire-related.
Universal's premier vampire of the 1940's, John Carradine, was reincarnated as Lauran Belasco, an eccentric horror movie actor who believes himself the descendant of the historical Dracula.
Coincidentally, the family name Belasco served writer Richard Matheson, as well, as the name of the mad Satanist in his towering horror novel Hell House (The Legend of Hell House, Fox-1973). Diana Muldaur co-starred in the episode, along with Tom Snyder as himself, interviewing Belasco on The Tomorrow Show.
Carradine/Belasco recounted his career for Snyder to the accompaniment of film clips from House of Dracula and House Of Frankenstein in which he portrayed his infamous ancestor. In the end, Belasco is revealed as the actual murderer.
Steve Vertlieb and Veronica Carlson (House of Frankenstein) at Monster Bash, October 2014
Chased across the rooftops by the detective at the finale, the actor jumps from the roof like a "bat outta hell," and vanishes from sight. Appropriately enough, a bat outta hell appears where Belasco disappeared, and flies off into the sunset. For the production, a magnificent painting of Carradine as the Count was created by the artists at Universal, which reappeared some years later on the wall of horror television host Roddy McDowall in Fright Night.
DRACULA ON STAGE
Thirty years after the creation of Bram Stoker's literary masterpiece Dracula, Hamilton Deane, the son of Stoker's boyhood friend, decided to translate the novel for the London stage. An actor and playwright, Deane's theatrical interpretation premiered at the Little Theatre in London on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 1927, running for 391 performances, with an additional three years in the provinces. Deane often appeared in these productions as Van Helsing. So potent was the resurgence of interest in Dracula that American producer/publisher Horace Liveright imported the successful play to the New York stage where it opened at the Fulton Theatre on October 5th of the same year.
Presented in a "slightly different version" than the English play, Deane seemed to acquire a mysterious, uninvited collaborator in the person of American journalist and foreign correspondent John L. Balderston who later co-authored the screenplays for Bride of Frankenstein and Gone with The Wind.
Starring on Broadway in the title role of the play was a little known Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi who would recreate his performance four years later for the first sound motion picture based on Bram Stoker's novel.
The New York engagement of the play ran for 261 performances and then enjoyed huge success on the road. And the rest, as they say, is history.
History, however, often repeats itself and, fifty years later, on October 20th, 1977, a brand-new production of Dracula opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway. Directed by Dennis Rosa, with celebrated scenery and costumes designed by Edward Gorey, the enormously popular revival starred the gifted romantic actor Frank Langella as the Count.
Langella would enjoy somewhat modified success several years later in a similarly inspired revival of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes for The Williamstown Theatre, but it was this inspired production that all too briefly elevated the sensitive actor to star status. Dracula, The Vampire Play enjoyed newfound success on the New York stage and generated numerous road companies across the country. Count Dracula "lived" again.
Neither the enormity, nor the importance, of this new stage production had escaped the notice of the British Broadcasting Corporation for, on Halloween night, 1977, the BBC in conjunction with America's Public Television, broadcast their own version of Bram Stoker's novel. Count Dracula, as scripted by Gerald Savory and directed by Philip Saville, would quickly become and remain the definitive interpretation of the famous novel.
The casting of the title character, as it had so often occurred before, (Lugosi, Langella) would lean toward a romantic leading man or matinee idol. French actor Louis Jourdan, who had scored so well for MGM in Madame Bovary with Jennifer Jones in 1949, for Universal with Letter from An Unknown Woman with Joan Fontaine in 1948 and, again, for MGM with Gigi, in 1958, was cast in the leading role. His Count was suave, debonair and lethal. Appearing with Jourdan were Bosco Hogan as Jonathan Harker, Judy Bowker as Mina (later to star as the heroine for Ray Harryhausen and Charles Schneer in their production of Clash of The Titans), Susan Penhaligon as Lucy, Jack Shepherd as Renfield and Frank Finlay as Van Helsing. The BBC production offered standout performances by all of the cast, particularly by Jack Shepherd as Renfield and, in perhaps the most compelling interpretation of the character ever enacted, by the redoubtable Frank Finlay, second only to Peter Cushing, in his powerful portrayal of Professor Van Helsing. (Finlay later turned the tables on himself as scientist turned vampire in Tobe Hooper's epic science fiction drama Lifeforce (1985)).
Dramatist Gerald Savory had been drawn to the Dracula novel since 1920 when, as an eleven-year-old boy, he and his brother, with the two children of their mother's friend, had been read the story aloud in varying dramatic styles by both women whilst vacationing in Folkstone, England for the Easter holidays.
Savory's mother, an actress and leading lady of the period, was rather prim and proper in the reading of her chapters. Her friend, an actress as well, was more animated and expressive in her performance, chilling the children's blood with nightmarish renderings. More than fifty years after that memorable vacation, the writer fulfilled a lifelong ambition, turning his favorite novel into a highly literate television play.
Additionally, he turned the teleplay into a novel published the same year in England by Corgi Books. In the book's preface he writes ‘Above all, I believe that both the television version and the following pages will give a very clear idea of what first, rather surprisingly, stuck in my schoolboy mind and which is the core of the original novel - the struggle between good and evil. Whatever Count Dracula represents - Satan, beast or virulent disease - Professor Van Helsing lays it on the line. "Evil will not disappear just because we disapprove of it. We must fight."
The superlative production of Count Dracula which aired on Halloween night, 1977 has been acclaimed during the past forty years for its literacy and remarkable faithfulness to the original Stoker novel.
Its settings and set pieces remain startling and shockingly effective.
At Castle Dracula, Harker is unnerved while shaving as Dracula enters the room and casts no reflection in the small mirror. The Count mocks him by placing his fingers upon the glass surface, reflecting not even a shadow. Hurling the mirror out the castle window he admonishes his guest, warning him that mirrors are "stupid things. You shouldn't trust them." Later Harker peers out the window of his bed chamber where he sees Dracula crawling face down across the castle wall, flopping his legs and belly like some monstrous winged rodent, whereupon the stricken ‘guest’ falls back upon the bed in horror.
Now convinced that his life is in deadly peril, the solicitor himself climbs the castle wall, and descends dangerously into the deserted courtyard. There he enters another cavernous alcove, a burial chamber. The vault is lined with large black coffins. Dracula's sleeping corpse lies serene within one of the boxes. As Harker lifts a shovel to smash the body of his host, Dracula turns to meet his gaze, untroubled by the threat.
His eyes burning red in their fury, with cheeks bloated and gorged, he smiles leeringly at his guest, while Harker runs screaming in horror from the crypt.
Count Dracula is filled with perverse, erotic imagery. Rather than feasting upon the blood of his witless guest, Dracula offers his brides a small, wriggling body hidden within a concealed bag. It is, presumably, the desperately struggling body of an abducted infant.
Back in England, Lucy wanders somnambulistically across the coastal beach, ravaged and seduced by the vampire, growling gutterally as he siphons the blood gurgling, unashamedly, from her veins. Mina arrives to return the exhausted Lucy to her bed where, earlier, a large, tentacled bat had lain, expectant, across the bed covers. Their departure is observed by the vampire, arms outstretched, bathed loathingly in enveloping wind and fog.
Attempting to make her daughter more comfortable (Mina and Lucy are sisters in this version, rather than friends), Mrs. Westenra removes the garlic necklace from Lucy's throat, rendering her vulnerable once more to the toxic "kiss of the vampire."
The window shatters, and a huge white dog confronts the women, snarling its contempt, as the mother suffers a fatal heart seizure. Sexually entranced, Lucy abandons her mother, giving herself instead to the now fully metamorphosed Dracula standing by her bed. The vampire wraps himself, spread-eagled, around her supine body, feeding hungrily on her blood.
Another change from the book to the telefilm was the combining of two characters, Quincy Morris and Arthur P. Holmwood, in order ‘to form a more perfect union’ named Quincy P. Holmwood. Lucy, now under Dracula's spell completely, extends her tongue suggestively to Quincy, a blatant invitation to her shocked, staid fiance, to partake freely of her ample sensual delights. When Van Helsing advises him to stay away from her, she growls menacingly and succumbs. Later, much as Peter Cushing as Van Helsing had rendered his Lucy impotent, Finlay's professor impales the undead young woman with a stake decisively plunged into her heart, stuffs garlic cloves into her mouth and severs her head from her body.
In another particularly powerful extract from the original novel, a disturbing mist sweeps beneath Mina's bed chamber door, finally solidifying as the vampire prince. Jonathan sleeps beside her as though drugged, unresponsive to her urgent cries for help.
As Dracula initiates Mina into the rites of the undead, he calls her "my beautiful wine press," and promises unto eternity that "we shall cross land and sea together."
In the ultimate expression of his animalistic craving for her, he slashes his own chest and presses her lips against the newly opened wound, inviting her to drink deeply and partake of his blood. When she awakens, Mina screams ashamedly, tearing at her bloodied nightdress and proclaiming herself "unclean."
Harker, Van Helsing and Holmwood race to Carfax Abby in search of Dracula. In the ensuing confrontation, the light of the crucifix shines upon the vampire's countenance as he calmly defends, to those who would make him their prey, his right to survival. His active, and continuing recruitment of disciples, is little different from their own, in sublime service to their lord, he explains. Hs ravenous feeding on Mina is no worse than their gorging on a cooked bird for supper. "We all must survive," he says. "Where is the difference?"
At campire, en-route to Dracula's castle, Van Helsing and Mina are attacked by the Count's vampire brides, repelled only by the holy circle in which they cower, protected by the power of the eucharis strewn at their feet.
As dawn breaks, Van Helsing completes the journey to the castle and impales the terrible sisters, lying helplessly in their coffins. The companions are reunited late in the day, as Dracula's henchmen bring their sleeping leader home to the courtyard of his castle. There, a climactic fight commences in which Quincy is fatally wounded. Van Helsing rips the lid of the coffin off its hinges as the sun begins to set. His eyes open, a single word - "Sunset~" - escapes the vampire’s smiling lips as Van Helsing's stake plunges deeply into Dracula's chest. As he screams, the life energy of the centuries old aristocrat explodes into the night air, an impassioned wind clinging desperately to its fading seconds of existence, dissipating mournfully in the invigorating rays of moonlight, comforting the still countryside. In the final analysis Count Dracula is a masterful visualization of Bram Stoker's inspiration, and the finest production of the story ever photographed.
NOSFERATU
Germany's golden era produced the first screen translation of Dracula with the release of UFA's unauthorized 1922 release, Nosferatu, Eine Syphonie Des Grauens ("A Symphony of Terror"), starring Max Schreck, whose name in German meant "death."
Indeed, his appearance as Dracula (though never named in the screenplay due to illegal copyright infringements) was truly ghastly, the visage of an upright Doberman Pinscher bleached white.
While the story was not legally sanctioned by the Stoker estate, it remains the most horrifying of the many films derived over the years from Bram Stoker's novel. As directed by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu is truly an "experiment in terror."
In 1979, a remake of the film was attempted by German director Werner Herzog, starring the actor who, three years earlier, had given the devil his daughter, Klaus Kinski. While Kinski's physical appearance imitated Schreck's in the Murnau film, the new translation of the expressionistic classic seemed designed more as an art film than an appreciation of horror literature.
Co-starring Isabelle Adjani as Mina, now renamed Lucy Harker, and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan, Nosferatu, The Vampire is often lovely to look at but, more often than not, a polite, clinically interesting bore. It is ultimately a soulless effort retaining some of the look, while little or none of the passion of the masterpiece it is derived from.
The decade closed, much as it had opened, with a relatively tame bloodletting based, not so much upon Bram Stoker's original novel, as it was upon the remake of a remake. From the advent of its enormously popular stage presentation on Broadway in 1977, rumors of a motion picture version, featuring its sexually magnetic star, flowed abundantly (like blood) within the decision-making corridors of the Hollywood film community.
THE ROMANTIC DRACULA
In July, 1979, four months after the release of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, the screen version of Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston's play Dracula opened in theatres nationwide.
Frank Langella as Dracula
Frank Langella donned the immortal cloak once again and sank his generous fangs into the theatrical box office. The cultured, elegantly beautiful Kate Nelligan portrayed Lucy, while Mina seemed to endure yet another identity crisis. Increasingly elusive, Mina exchanged bodies with her friend, playing ‘host’ to a second fiddle, with dangerous strings attached.
In this version, Mina was Lucy was Mina. "Everybody change partners and dance." The great character actor Donald Pleasence played Dr. Seward this time out but, as written in this most "telling" re-telling, the good doctor was more annoying than supportive.
In what must have seemed at the time a stroke of genius, the most respected actor of the twentieth century, Lord Laurence Olivier, was excitingly cast as Professor Van Helsing. Perhaps because of the manner in which the character was written or, perhaps, due to his advancing age, the once imposing thespian played Van Helsing as a weak, whiny, doddering old man. His Van Helsing was no match whatsoever for the virile, romantic vampire, as embodied by the delightful Langella.
Whatever its shortcomings, however, Dracula, directed by John Badham and scripted by W.D. Richter, is still a highly entertaining and poetic adaptation of the oft told tale.
Charming, handsome, and an ageless presence to be reckoned with, Langella's Dracula is a gentleman, both of culture, and of willful, noble determination. A ladies' man who has tasted centuries of "forbidden" fruit, he will not easily abdicate his reign, despite the bland protests of the intellectually minuscule citizenry determined to wrench him from his heritage of sovereignty.
As Dracula is at last destroyed, his body dancing lifelessly in the wind, the pure essence of his dreamlike nobility escapes, unfettered by gravity, into the soft breeze, where his soul may at last attain a gentle purity, and final peace. It is an unexpectedly lovely, altogether poetic moment shrouded by time and space, made all the more unforgettable by the faintly swelling echo of composer John Williams' haunting score...the wondrous, symphonic echo of an immortal literary creation that continues to haunt both our dreams, and our imagination.
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