Dracula
We had to download a new app to watch the Superbowl back in February, Tubi. For some reason I was thinking about vampires back then, so I decided to watch the Hammer trilogy, The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil, which were all available on there, and then it recommended me another one, Vampyres, but I wouldn’t follow the IMDB link on that one if you’re at work. Somewhere in the middle I also watched Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb. These flicks are somewhere between horror and pornography. I’m not sure what happened, I think my brother had loved Hammer films when he was young, so they were kind of always on my to-watch list and I finally got around to a few, although I don’t think these are the ones he was endorsing exactly. Anyway, it was a vampire kick, these things happen. The movies are neither so great nor so bad that they deserve many words. But not ultimately satisfied, I decided I would watch a great vampire movie from my youth: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
This should be a watershed movie. It has great effects, many great actors, great sets and was shot right around the time in my life when I feel like movies were really getting good. A certain scene near the beginning also activated certain neurons in your teenage author, the first movie that really imprinted on me for having done so. I had fond memories of this movie, so when I rewatched it with my wife, I was kind of awestruck at how bad it is. Not to dump on anyone in particular, but Keanu is surrounded by people speaking with accents yet his attempts are dismal, as are Winona’s. Lucy’s character is way oversexed. There’s a love plot device involving Dracula which seemed a little hackneyed. On the other hand, Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins are really great, but there’s too much happening for them to fix everything wrong here.
Now I started to wonder, is there something inherently not great about vampires? And just how accurate is this movie to the novel? Is the love story between Dracula and pants and/or Mina real? I had heard the novel was difficult to follow because it is told as a series of diary entries.
It took me over a month to get through this in audiobook but this book is great and it deserves its place as a classic. There is some sexiness but it is far from the principal element. There is a whole spooky ship scene which is rather great and doesn’t seem to be adapted often. Renfield is much more interesting in the novel.
The diary structure is not hard to follow at all, but it adds something wonderful to the atmosphere and the entire narrative structure. First, you get to see each character discover the horror in turn. When Jonathan first brushes off the supernatural, the foreboding is quite intense; later, each of the other characters have his same rationality at first and we get to see it stripped away one by one, a real horror moment. Second, it’s a useful device when in the middle of the novel, instead of narrating each character coming up to speed, we just have this exchange of diaries and then everyone is up to speed. Saves Bram from writing a lot of tedious dialogue about so-and-so telling so-and-so things we already know. Third, it allows him to play with our expectations. When we are getting diary entries from Mina in the final act and then we get one from Van Helsing instead, he creates doubt and tension about Mina right before the last entry. And finally, you get a bit of voyeuristic pleasure from the sensation that you’re rifling through a big pile of diaries containing something not quite believable. Indeed, the final words of the novel state this.
As an armchair language aficionado, I can also tell that Bram Stoker was one as well. He spends a great deal of time discussing the languages and accents of different characters. I don’t find his accents, particularly Van Helsing’s, especially believable, but I appreciate the attempt.
So that was great. I recommend reading or listening to the original. The films are pretty much trash. The Audible version with Alan Cumming and Tim Curry is very nice.