DRACULA - would make a wonderful movie

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

any of you guys thinking of making a movie and can't decide what to do, make it "dracula"

in his taped conversations with peter bogdanovich, orson states that "they haven't even opened the book" and "very terrifying and hairaising story"

if you haven't read the book either, do so. because i did, and it is "terrifying and hairaising"

just a suggestion.

bye now!

[Harvey Chartrand]

O_w_O, I couldn't agree with you more. Too bad Orson didn't make Dracula his first cinematic project (well, his second one, anyway). The Mercury Theatre radio version is the troupe's finest hour.
Supposedly, the 1970 Count Dracula with Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom and Klaus Kinski was to be the first Drac movie that followed the novel closely. No such luck. Orson's AD on Falstaff Jess Franco directed, and the film is a mess, hobbled by a minuscule budget and overuse of the zoom lens.
Then, 22 years later, Francis Coppola comes along and he's going to be the first filmmaker to follow Stoker's narrative. Still no luck. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) is anything but. Done in by soft porno scenes, ham acting and the misguided use of silent movie conventions.

As well, no one has ever done justice to Oscar Wilde's masterpiece of the macabre The Portrait of Dorian Gray — one of the most frightening tales of degradation ever written. I'm told that Dorian Gray (1970) with Helmut Berger and Herbert Lom, is pretty good, but the original screen version (The Picture of Dorian Gray/1945) with Hurd Hatfield doesn't work at all. Too glossy. And Hatfield just isn't right for the part. Everyone is saying how beautiful Hatfield-as-Gray is and he looks like hell.

[Jeff Wilson]

A Welles version of DRACULA would have been quite intriguing; I wonder if he would have cast himself in the title role, or perhaps as Van Helsing instead. As far as faithful adaptations of the novel go, I've heard that the 1973 BBC production with Louis Jordan was the most true to the book, but I've never seen it; anyone out there who can comment? Out of all the DRACULA films out there, I have to say my least favorite is the Lugosi/Browning version. Lugosi is hammy, and the film is too stagebound. It's so awful that I can't sit through it. It's amazing to me that FRANKENSTEIN, made the same year, looks so much better and stands up all these years later, far more so than DRACULA.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Apparently, Universal's Spanish version of Dracula, shot at night at the same time as the Lugosi Dracula, is much better.
Totally different cast and director. Carlos Villarias played Drac.
Even the young Welles may have had too well-fed a look to play the Count, but that's what they used to say about Lon Chaney, Jr. who was great as Count Alucard in Son of Dracula (1943).
I agree, not to speak ill of the undead, but Lugosi stinks. And Tod Browning was very hit-and-miss (he got it right with Freaks, which blew his career out of the water).
I kind of like Frank Langella's take on Dracula in the 1979 version directed by John Badham (Langella and Kate Nelligan were both terrific and the "Byronic" finale is really something to behold).

[Jeff Wilson]

The Spanish DRACULA is much better as far as atmosphere and direction, but Villarias more or less apes Lugosi as Dracula. Worth checking out, though. The Universal DVD of the Lugosi/Browning version from a couple years ago includes the Spanish version. Incidentally, anyone interested in the journey of DRACULA from novel to screen should read David J. Skal's excellent book HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC. Just a great book.

FREAKS is much more interesting than DRACULA, and the end is great in an amusingly sick way. Plus, all the actual freaks give the film an obvious disturbing edge. It's got some moments. "One of us, one of us..." Too bad it got cut so severely, but it's amazing it got produced in the first place, much less by a large studio.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

well, how about robert arden for the part of dracula.

he was good at keeping that steady angry look on his face during mr. arkadin. i don't remember him smiling once. and i don't think, in dracula, he did too much smiling. or none at all.

orson could have been the professor. he has a part that i thought was interesting.

in the book, he put a circle of some kind of paste on the ground to keep her, and himself protected. and had a conflict with dracula himself.

even in his obesity and old age, i think orson could have done a good job of it. it could be considered "dracula: the later years"

oh well. bye now!

[Welles Fan]

Jeff, I have the BBC/Louis Jourdan Dracula, and I have considered it definitive since I first saw it back in the late 70's. It is easily the most faithful to the novel. Jourdan is quite sensuous, yet evil as the count. Frank Finlay is virtue personified as van Helsing. Judi Bowker and Susan Penhaligon are excellent as Mina and Lucy respectively, and Jack Shepherd is a tragic Renfield.

I agree that the Lugosi version is the most boring/over-rated/flaccid version of the story Ihave ever seen. Lugosi had no sex appeal/sensuousness whatsoever.

Next to the Jourdan Dracula, I enjoyed Christopher Lee's first outing-Horror of Dracula (with the greatest Dracula death ever!), F W Murnau's nosferatu, and Jck Palance in a Dan Curtis TV production.

So far, no film of the novel has managed to tell the story from several points of view (from journals, etc) as the novel did.

[jaime marzol]

.....................

jack palance as dracula i liked. but when i see palance in full shot wearing that budget cape that needs another 3 feet on length, i can't help laughing.

i have a tape a friend sent me. it's just him and christopher lee in a room talking. i don't know how many draculas he's done, but he tells this story about one of the versions,

"the director handed me the screenplay, it was supposed to be based on the book, but it wasn't. it was shit. i said i wouldn't do it." the producer comes up to him holding his heart, "i'm an old man, i can't take this. i need you to do it." lee says, "you can do it with some one else." the producer says, "no i can't, i already sold it with you in it." so lee did it. and he said it was shit.

[Welles Fan]

Jaime: I doubt it was the first Hammer Dracula (Horror of Dracula). Lee later made a low-budget "remake" called Count Dracula (I think). I expect that at the time of the first Hammer Dracula (1958), Lee would have made it (and liked making it) even if it was called "Shit Dracula".

But the first Hammer one is certainly not shit. It is at least a good version (in bare outline at least) of the novel.

Sidebar: When I was a kid, nothing (and I mean nothing) scared me more than Christopher Lee with blood in corners of mouth and blood-red eyes as Count Dracula!

Another sidebar: I loved Lee (as Rochefort) in The Three Musketeers movies of Richard Lester. I am so pleased that he has gotten a chance to light up the screen again as Saruman in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. I hpe he lives to see it completed.

[Jeff Wilson]

Thanks for the opinion on the Jourdan DRACULA, Welles Fan; the BBC has started selling DVDs of some of their productions, and this was one of them, but I was hesitant to buy it before getting further opinions about it. Personally, my favorite Count is Christopher Lee, and I have a soft spot for even the worst of his Hammer outings as the Count, cheap rubber bats and all. He scared the crap out of me as a kid also. It is rather silly though, in a film like DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS, where he doesn't say a word because he felt the script was so bad. Hammer's BRIDES OF DRACULA is fine as well.

I had taped the Palance version years ago and never watched it; I just can't picture him as the Count and take it seriously, given everything else I've seen him in.

[Welles Fan]

I ordered the Region 2 DVD when it came out, as my circa-1979 tape (taped off PBS) was getting pretty threadbare. It is predominantly shot on video, with exterior scenes shot on film. Apparently, they didn't like to shoot outdoors with video equipment back then, and mosr miniseries from that time look this way.

PBS showed it again a few years ago, with one significant cut:
[spoiler]There is a scene with Dracula's "brides", in which thay are about to bite into Jonathan harker's neck after he has foolsihly gone to sleep in the library. Dracula storms in with a valise which he drops on the floor. The brides are upset that Dracula never gives them anything, until he reveals that he brought the valise for them. The brides open the valise, and a baby is inside. We see a closeup od a horrified harker, then the brides are seen with copious amounts of blood running out of their mouths down their chins. [/spoiler] PBS cut all reference to the valise and the baby. I think the scene establishes the important fact that even though the Count may be suave and charming, he is one evil dude. All this is in the new DVD.

I think I only liked the Palance film because it was reasonably faithful to the novel. What I like about Palance was that he played Dracula as the still living Vlad Tepes. His demise was a good one: Van Helsing (Nigel Davenport) staked him with a lance which impaled him against a long table that was standing on its end. So the Count "stood" there, impaled underneath a painting of himself centuries past in battle as Vlad Tepes. Last time I saw it I remember it as being slowly paced. Speaking of demises: the one in Horror of Dracula will never be topped, IMO.

[LA]

Welles Fan & Jaime: That "shit Dracula" was probably the 1970 Count Dracula that Harvey mentioned, directed by Jesus Franco. The film is also known as, oddly enough, Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. It seems Coppola wasn't the first to use Stoker's name on a film. Haven't seen it myself, but I hear Lee's make-up at least follows the description of Dracula in the book, although I hear it also includes a bizarre stuffed animal attack.

Haven't seen the Jourdan BBC Dracula ethier, heard of it but had no idea it was available. I'll have to put that on my "must-see" list.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

the only thing i don't think that dracula should be is funny.

mr. mel brooks made his version "dracula: dead and loving it"

yes, for those who like comedy, it is funny. but drama and comedy just shouldn't be combined.

or is that just in the case of mr. welles?

bye now!

[jaime marzol]

................

i need to see that dracula. i'm crazy about bizare stuffed animal attacks. that's the best thing about budget tarzan movies, lots of stuffed animal attacks.

lee was not refering to his first dracula movie on the tape.

talk about scary, the film that scared me the most as a child was lee as the running mummy. that mummy chased you everywhere, and it was fast.

the karlof mummy had to hide in the shadows and surprise you. a short, fat professor with a cane could out run it if he saw it first.

[jaime marzol]

...............

i just looked it up on the web, the shit dracula lee was refering to is dracula hass risen from the grave, directed by that budget prodigy, freddie francis.

first rule is, if you are going to direct a dracula picture, you should not use the name freddie.