Dracula Lives

by Robert Ryan

  “Yes. He and many other pioneers of film were the professors who taught me every aspect of moviemaking. I learned makeup, for example, from Lon Chaney himself.”

  “Really? Chaney was notoriously secretive about his makeup.”

  “True. And he kept his secrets. I’m talking about the basics, a few tricks here and there. Sometimes I would approximate some of his grotesqueries as his stand-in while he was getting ready for the next shot.”

  Quinn felt as though he’d entered a time machine and been transported to one of his favorite moments in history. The fact that he was talking to the one man in the world who had been privy to even the most rudimentary of Lon Chaney’s makeup secrets shook loose an avalanche of questions, but he didn’t want to disrupt the flow of the evening. He forced himself to keep quiet and let his strange host tell his tale in his own way.

  “I was anxious to start making my own films,” Markov went on, “but Tod and I seemed to need each other, so I stayed by his side. Probably longer than I should have.” A barely perceptible wistful sigh escaped before he added, “But those are stories for another time. You asked about my involvement with Dracula. As you can see, it was really an involvement with Tod Browning that eventually led to Dracula. I can regale you with anecdotes from the set later, if you wish, but it is getting late, and there are other things we need to discuss.”

  “However you want to tell your story is fine with me,” Quinn said. “I find it all quite fascinating.”

  “Very well. One moment while I tend to my duties as a stoker.”

  He gave a wry grin, and Quinn made an appreciative nod at his pun. As Markov prodded the fire and effortlessly added two more large logs, Quinn marveled at how physically sound he was at such an advanced age. Johnny had also appeared very sturdy, and Quinn wondered how the elderly hermit and his servant kept so fit.

  The fire leapt back to life. Markov’s expression hardened as he resumed his story. “When we were shooting Dracula I’d had an unpleasant exchange with Junior.”

  “Carl Laemmle’s son.”

  Markov nodded.

  “In my research that led me to you,” Quinn said, “I got access to all of Universal’s production notes on Dracula. I read Carl Junior’s memo to Browning, asking him to keep an eye on you, because you were—in his words—‘taking liberties.’”

  The first hint of color came onto Markov’s pale face, but he remained otherwise inscrutable. “Indeed,” he said coolly. “What else did he say?”

  “He said he walked in on you in Lugosi’s dressing room when Lugosi wasn’t there. You were wearing his cape and standing in front of the mirror saying, ‘I … am Dracula.’ Which of course Lugosi often did between takes to stay in character. Laemmle also said you were ‘haunting’ the Spanish production that was shooting on the same sets at night. That you sometimes spent the night sleeping in Dracula’s coffin. Laemmle was concerned that you would disrupt the production, upset the artists.”

  Quinn didn’t mention another memo he’d discovered when researching Browning’s productions at MGM. During the shooting of London After Midnight, Irving Thalberg had cautioned Browning about Tilton, who had been seen rummaging around in “something even God cannot touch. Lon Chaney’s makeup kit.”

  “Yes,” Markov said defiantly. “I did those things. Being a part of Dracula was the ultimate dream come true for me. I had been obsessed by the Dracula/vampire mystique since reading Bram Stoker’s novel as a boy. I’d probably read the book at least a dozen times. And, yes. While the others were laughing and joking between takes, I took it very seriously. It was real to me. I felt evil on that set. It emanated from Lugosi, because he took his character so seriously. For me, that opening line of his is still the most powerful in the history of cinema:

  “I am … Dracula.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Markov delivered the line perfectly. Possibly even more chillingly than Lugosi.

  “I was completely in Lugosi’s thrall. My God, I helped set up the lighting for those famous close-ups of his eyes. Those eyes.”

  Markov’s gaze shifted from Quinn to the empty space behind Quinn’s back, as though Lugosi were back there pulling him in with that mesmeric stare. A few seconds later he blinked, and whatever he’d seen or imagined lost its hold. “There were many such moments,” he went on. “Another was when I helped set up the famous shot looking down on Dwight Frye in the hold, and he gives that maniacal laugh.”

  “An iconic shot. Arguably the creepiest laugh in cinema history. Did it seem that way at the time?”

  “Of course, we didn’t think of it in those terms, but yes. It was chilling. Give Dwight Frye credit. That laugh was his invention. He was a highly dedicated stage actor whose star had been rising on Broadway. One critic had compared him to Barrymore. Tod had told him that, for that shot, they needed the insane look and laugh of a person becoming a vampire, a good man who had been turned into something evil, and that’s what Dwight came up with.

  “And Lugosi. His very presence in that role was chilling. And not just because he had the look and the voice. None of that would have mattered if he hadn’t been the dedicated actor he was, who took his role so seriously. Some of the other actors made fun of him standing in front of the mirror during breaks, practicing his entrance line: ‘I am … Dracula.’ But that’s why it’s remembered as one of the most famous moments in cinema history, while their careers are entirely forgotten. Lugosi wasn’t just hitting his mark and saying his lines. He knew he was playing a role he was born to play. My experience on Dracula was the most powerful of my life. It haunts me to this day.”

  With a move obviously perfected through long practice, he swirled and drank his brandy, as though anesthetizing eighty-year-old ghosts.

  “When Dracula turned out to be a smash, studios realized there was big money to be made in horror. I was putting together my pitch to persuade the Laemmles to let me direct, but Thalberg had gone to MGM, and when he offered Tod a deal to come over there, I reconsidered. I’d been in Tod’s shadow for so long at Universal, they probably just considered me a gopher. And since Tod had gotten the okay to bring me with him to MGM, I decided one picture would get us established and I could make my pitch there. Unfortunately, that one picture was Freaks.”

  Markov shook his head, the regret still fresh after all these years. “Tod had been determined to do it for years, and on the heels of his Dracula success, Thalberg humored him. The movie was an utter disaster. People ran from the theater at the preview. Watching those real-life sideshow freaks was unbearable to most people. Tod’s career never recovered. He and everyone associated with him fell into disfavor. I stuck around, visions of directing burning in my head, but nowhere to take them. MGM certainly didn’t want to hear from Tod Browning’s ‘personal assistant,’ and I was sure that going back to Universal would be a dead end.

  “As eager as I was to start my own career, I couldn’t bring myself to abandon him when he was at his lowest. I stayed with him, hoping I could help him turn it around. But the handwriting was on the wall. MGM only gave him four pictures in the next seven years. For me the best part of that whole miserable period was learning more about the camera from James Wong Howe when he shot Mark of the Vampire.”

  “One of the all-time great cinematographers.”

  “Without question. He told me Lon knew more about the camera than any actor he ever worked with. In the early days at Universal, Lon had done some directing. He loved to make home movies. Sometimes he’d film things between takes, some short scenario he’d concocted. When we finish here I can show you the one I mentioned earlier.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Quinn said.

  Markov nodded, gazing sadly at his brandy but leaving it on the table, as though some memories were beyond its capacity to heal.

  “In 1941, Tod finally gave up and retired to Malibu. I stayed in Los Angeles to pitch whatever stories I came up with. I didn’t need the work or the money. I’d gotten rich by using my insider k
nowledge to invest in sure things in the film industry—technological breakthroughs, productions I knew would make money. So I spent my time writing.

  “My obsession with the Dracula legend had always made me want to make my own version. I saw what Tod did wrong—the staginess, the slow, talky pace, unimaginative camera work, and so on—and was convinced I could do much better.

  “My Dracula couldn’t be a remake. Aside from copyright issues, I didn’t want to be bound by the story as Stoker told it in his novel, or the stage version that had been adapted for the movie. Both were severely flawed, as far as I was concerned. I wanted to make a sequel. That way I could tell whatever Dracula story I wanted to tell. At that point, I didn’t know what that story would be. All I knew was that it would pick up where Dracula had left off—right after Van Helsing had driven the stake into his heart. Unfortunately, Universal was thinking the same thing. While I was still trying to come up with a good scenario, they came out with their sequel.”

  “Dracula’s Daughter,” Quinn said. “1936. Gloria Holden played the part.”

  “Yes. And she had cremated his remains. How could I bring him back to life after that? I kept groping for a plausible premise. Then, in 1938, Universal re-released their biggest box-office hits as a double bill—Dracula and Frankenstein. When I saw the blockbuster business they did all over the country, I had a eureka moment: combine the central ideas of the two most popular horror stories. I wouldn’t need Dracula’s body. I could use the dead to create the undead. An entirely new Dracula. Not the suave Lugosi. More like Nosferatu, only worse. A hideous vampire of pure evil. Instead of lightning, I would use the blood of the original Dracula to bring him to life as a vampire.”

  “But if he’s been cremated, how would you come up with his blood?”

  “I mean the original Dracula. The one that inspired Bram Stoker. The Prince of Wallachia. Vlad Dracula III. Vlad the Impaler.”

  “Even more of a challenge. He’s been dead for five hundred years.”

  “A challenge, yes, but not an insurmountable one. The historical record tells us Vlad Dracula was beheaded in a battle against the Turks. The body was supposedly found, but the head never was. For the purposes of my story, the head would have been recovered and kept alive. Severed heads being kept alive for some nefarious purpose is a plot device that’s been used many times.”

  “True. That would certainly add an interesting element. Stoker used his name, which was one of the best decisions in the history of literature, and fictionalized him into a vampire, but there is no evidence that Vlad Dracula ever engaged in vampirism.”

  “My research had proven otherwise,” Markov said.

  Quinn knew how thorough his own research had been. There were apocryphal mentions of an occasional sip of blood taken from one of his impalement victims, but nothing substantiating the idea that the Wallachian ruler had been a vampire. Nevertheless, Quinn allowed for the possibility that Markov’s Dracula obsession could have uncovered something he’d missed. “How so?”

  “I can show you my proof later. For now, suffice it to say that this is one of the plausibility issues I agonized over. Even when I knew I was writing nonsense, such as the ridiculous notion that a brain and heart could be kept alive indefinitely in a jar, inserted into sewn-together dead tissue taken from corpses, then bombarded with electricity to create a fully-functioning human being—never mind the question of all the other internal organs that would have been needed—the scientist in me kept trying to make everything at least remotely physically possible.

  “So the writing dragged on, until I saw the monster rally pictures Universal started making in the ’40s. You are familiar with them, I’m sure.”

  “Very. Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man meets Dracula and so on. They’re riddled with inconsistencies, especially the lame explanations of how monsters who seemingly died in the previous movie not only didn’t die, they somehow all ended up in the same place.”

  “If they bothered to explain at all. When I saw House of Dracula, I finally accepted the fact that you could happily throw plausibility out the window.”

  Quinn smiled knowingly. “You must be talking about how a perfectly healthy Dracula shows up after he had gotten caught in the sunlight and turned to a skeleton in House of Frankenstein.”

  Markov sighed and shook his head. “Just waltzes in without a word of explanation, as if it never happened. I wish John Carradine’s vastly overrated performance had never happened, but that’s neither here nor there. The audience didn’t care. They just wanted to eat popcorn while being scared by their favorite monsters, no matter who was playing them or how illogical the story was. Their appetite for horror was insatiable.”

  “It always has been,” Quinn said. “We see it not just in movies, but whenever there’s a car accident and people slow down to gawk. Or in the media’s endless highlighting of real-life horrors. ‘If it bleeds it leads.’”

  “Indeed,” Markov said. “In my case, blood was the lead. The crux of the story. I had made it part of the title: The Blood of Dracula.

  “Even so, I went through countless drafts until I had a script that satisfied me. By the time I did the final re-write, the war had just ended, and I started thinking of my Dracula as a kind of Hitler. But instead of an Aryan master race, his master race would be vampires. Thus Dracula would remain the supreme ruler for all eternity of the most powerful race on earth. A master race of vampires.”

  “An interesting approach,” Quinn said. As he tried to guess where that angle might have taken Markov’s Dracula, he felt the same excitement he’d often felt during one of the exercises he’d conducted in his screenwriting class. He and his students would invent a premise for a horror movie, then see how far they could take it in one session. Ideas for plot elements would start bouncing around the room, coming faster and faster, until the more dramatic students couldn’t sit still and began acting out moments. Especially the scary ones.

  “So did your movie get made?” Quinn asked.

  Markov’s sip of brandy was apparently to steel himself for the next part of the story.

  “The furor over Freaks had died down, so I made the rounds of the major studios, hat in hand. Producers kept me dangling, waiting for phone calls that never came.” Bitterness tightened his features. “I got disgusted. With myself for groveling, as much as with the benighted fools who had been given the keys to the kingdom. I shoved the script into a drawer and left it there. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

  “Finally I swallowed my pride and made the rounds again—this time to the poverty row studios. I reached the bottom of the barrel and persuaded Midnight Pictures to let me make it. They gave me two weeks and thirty thousand dollars. It was barely released in 1947. My magnum opus. And, until now, my swan song.”

  “I would love to see it.”

  Markov seemed to be deciding how much of his life to reveal. “We shall see. That film is so painful for me that I haven’t watched it since the initial screening.”

  “I understand.”

  “I kept waiting to see if it would bring me any offers, but none came and I was pushing fifty. I’d had enough of Hollywood, and New York’s film industry was taking off, so I moved my family there. More promises that were never kept. My monomania drove us to Boston, thinking I might be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. More lies.”

  Maybe you just weren’t good enough, Quinn thought. Whatever the reason, Markov couldn’t be telling him the whole story.

  “Finally I decided to do what Carl Laemmle had done: create my own studio with its own backlot. A self-contained world for making movies. Of course, mine is much bigger. He started Universal on a 230-acre lot. My property here is almost 7,000 acres.”

  “But why here? It’s virtually inaccessible. The long, harsh winters would make outdoor shooting difficult. There’s no talent pool—”

  “I had my reasons. I wanted to be left alone to do things my own way. As for talent and accessibility, I wrote treatments that w
ouldn’t need a big cast and could be shot mostly indoors. I did my casting in Boston and brought everyone here. For them it was a chance to go on location. And the price for the property was right. The state was practically giving land away when I bought it in 1955.

  “Five years and two million dollars later, I moved in with my second wife and two grown children. I had been grooming them as filmmakers and actors since they were little, even teaching them things like swordplay and horseback riding for the action scenes we might one day shoot. My hope was that they would eventually take over whatever I was able to build, but, alas, only one of the projects I planned has ever gotten off the ground. There were … family problems. I will not burden you with those. They are my cross to bear.”

  He waved the topic away, but Quinn remembered the son who had been charged with attempted murder in Boston in 1954.

  “I have many treasures and secrets I will reveal to you,” Markov continued. “Some are quite dark.”

  A weariness had settled onto him that went beyond merely physical. Beneath his polished air, Quinn had gotten glimpses of something troubling him deep down in his soul. Markov closed his eyes and tried to massage it away. When he opened them again, a slight tremor rippled across his face. For one flicker of an instant, Quinn thought he glimpsed Lon Chaney Jr.

  There was much more going on here than the nostalgia of an impossibly old eccentric. Quinn’s curiosity about the supernatural and the occult sprang to life. He needed to know more. “I would like to learn as much as you care to tell me about your ‘treasures and secrets.’ Even the dark ones.”

  Markov leaned forward, alert. “Your visit has gotten the blood flowing in these old veins. When I read your background in your initial inquiry, I realized you could be the perfect person to assist in culminating my cinematic legacy.”

  “How so?”

  “You and I are kindred spirits. You said you once harbored the dream of becoming a great horror director. The same dream I have harbored all my life. It is too late for me to have a career, but I am almost finished making the ultimate horror film. A monster rally to end all monster rallies.”