The Romance of Dracula; a personal Journey of the Count on celluloid

by Butler, Charles E.

  The accurately named Quincey Morris makes his movie debut, but doesn't show any signs of being from Texas, and is described as a barrister by Mina. Listening to his friend, Jonathon, constantly whingeing about how he brought the Count to London, he steels himself for the battle with the fiend and becomes plagued with his own questions and ideas, raising the horrific possibility of Van Helsing becoming one of the undead.

  Both Quincey and Harker share the acting sensibilities of a lump of wood and are utilised to perform the actual legwork in the hunt for Dracula. They are prone to shooting stuffed animals and even despatch the three brides in a scene that is parodied almost shot for shot in Tom Holland's Fright Night (1985).

  It is Taylor's Quincey Morris who sadistically throws a burning torch into the Count's coffin rendering him, first, to a dime store mannequin and then to ashes without resorting to a stake or kukri knife.

  The two ladies - Franco regulars, Maria Rohm (Mina) and Soledad Miranda (Lucy) - are lush, delectable eye candy of the first order, but don't seem to perform any of the acts described for their characters in the novel, save to be bitten by the monster and fall down - a job that Ms Miranda seems to have trouble with. Although, she does redeem herself as being pretty creepy in her, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, bloofer lady segment.

  Paul Muller as Seward is also destined to remain anonymous. An actor who has even less to do than Harker and Quincey, he sits beside Renfield in his cell asking repeatedly:

  "What happened?"

  Maybe he put this question in a letter to the scriptwriters after the film was completed? Director Franco would continue his unique take on the vampire cinema with such exploitative adventures as Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), with resident Count Australian actor Howard Vernon and a slumming Dennis Price, in his last role, as Dr F.

  All in all the film as a whole is a major letdown. An enjoyable romp in schtick that is a kind of landmark film in that it successfully fails in its attempts to be the first true representation of the Bram Stoker novel.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jack Palance

  BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1973: Dan Curtis Productions, UK/USA)aka: Dracula

  Director: Dan Curtis

  Synopsis

  The film opens on the shot of a bleak wooded landscape to the accompaniment of howling wolves. A pack of German Shepherds tear across the grounds of a real castle. With the screech of background violins, we witness the introduction of Count Dracula, swiftly racing through corridors and down flights of stairs as though the Devil himself were on his heels.

  Jack Palance as Bram Stoker's Dracula,

  scream the credits, red on black.

  The film begins properly with a heading that places us at Bistriz, Hungary 1897. Jonathon Harker arrives at the inn and is greeted with a letter using Stoker's words and spoken formerly in voiceover by Dracula:

  "My Friend,- Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well to-night. At three to-morrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land. - Your friend,

  'DRACULA' "

  Anxiety is prevalent amongst the natives when Harker tells of his destination. He is driven to the Borgo Pass and met by the Count's caleche. The driver is indifferent to his passenger's enquiries, but Harker boards it anyway and promptly falls asleep en route. Waking up, he is alarmed to see that the German Shepherds from the beginning of the film are paralleling his caleche. On arrival at the Castle, we see Dracula in an ambiguous light, at the top of a staircase. He offers his welcome with a strange intonation.

  He ushers Harker into the Castle and bades him eat, excusing himself in the process that he has already dined. He orders Harker to show him photographs of the properties acquired for him. Dracula talks a lot concerning the old days of war and honour, but has the habit of totally disregarding his visitor when the latter puts forward any type of conversation.

  Happily for Harker however, the Count chooses the Carfax estate to set up his home in England and is willing to seal the deal. The Count leaves the room on a whim and Harker is alone. He ventures out of his rooms and finds a secret hallway behind a curtain. A door opens into a library, where Harker drinks wine and reads books and finds a photograph of his friends Arthur Holmwood, Mina Murray, his fiancée Lucy Westenra and himself. Lucy's face has been circled with biro.

  Sharp eyes would have already spotted Lucy on a painting of Dracula hanging in the Count's main room. We have already been treated to one of the film's soft focus flashbacks where Dracula frolics with Lucy but calls her Marianne. Harker doesn't have time to ponder this line of enquiry as he is suddenly set upon by three strange women who charge with claws unsheathed, tearing at his collar.

  Dracula breaks up this catfight and proceeds to bully Harker into writing letters home that will inform friends and family that he is to remain for a month as a guest of the Count. Letters completed, the Count throws Harker against the wall rendering him unconscious.

  On waking, Harker finds the door locked and uses some handy vines that hang outside the window to gain access to the turrets of the Castle. A stairway leads down again towards an underground cellar. Here we find Dracula sleeping in a coffin. Harker attacks the figure with a shovel but only has time for one swing as two extras dressed as wandering gypsies overpower him and leave him unconscious. As Dracula leaves for England, Harker is left to the mercy of his three snarling brides.

  A cut takes us to a beach and to a wrecked portion of a ship. At the wheel is a dead man holding a crucifix with Dracula stood just a few feet away. A title tells us that we are in:

  Whitby, 5 weeks later.

  We learn of Lucy's sleepwalking through conversation as Mina arrives with Mrs Westenra who mentions the penny dreadful episode of the destruction of The Demeter. Nine out of ten boxes filled with earth were missing she informs us. In the case of Lucy, Mrs Westenra confirms that a new doctor has been brought on to the case, a Dr Van Helsing.

  We are then taken to the house of Hillingham, the mainstay for most of the action in the film. Van Helsing quickly explains his fears for Lucy and he and Arthur agree to keep a night watch over her. Dracula uses his hypnotic powers to set them both to slumber and his object of desire joins him in the garden.

  Lucy proves to be an eager conquest. After lengthy cavorting with the Count, she is found desolate and wan on a bench. Blood transfusions can't replace the sense of loss mirrored in her eyes.

  At the local zoo, we see Dracula being harangued by a cockney zookeeper. This nuisance is dispatched by the wolf that the Count has become friendly with. On closer inspection, the wolf turns out to be another German Shepherd dressed in a shabby grey coat. But it seems to enjoy its few moments of screen time as it crashes through a window and begins to chomp on Arthur.

  Three gunshots put paid to the dog’s advances as Dracula exits out the back way. Cut to a shot of Lucy dead under a tree, with tears streaming down her face.

  Van Helsing, who had missed the action to further research his suspicions elsewhere, returns as pallbearer to Lucy as she is buried during a downpour of torrential rain. When she appears later at Arthur's window she is quickly sent packing by a determined Van Helsing wielding an ultra-bright crucifix. This is followed by the staking of Lucy in her tomb. Not a drop of blood in sight, but Van Helsing is brutal and gives weight to the look of disgust on Arthur's face.

  Again, Lucy sheds more tears in death.

  That night Dracula arrives at the tomb to wake Lucy as his bride. On finding her corpse defiled, he flashbacks to another time and similar circumstances: his wife, Marianne, on her deathbed and he, cursing as guards keep him from the corpse. Blood boiling, he goes into a frenzy and wrecks the tomb.

  He follows Van Helsing and Arthur as they move Mina and Mrs Westenra to the George Hotel for safekeeping while they try to locate the boxes
from the doomed ship. Dracula storms the hotel, swatting resistance aside with the sweep of his arm, but doesn't harm the ladies and makes good his escape.

  Van Helsing discovers that Dracula has used the services of a number of shipping firms to move his coffins, eventually landing at Carfax, barely ten miles from Hillingham. Nine of the coffins are found and destroyed. This completed, our heroes return to the George to find that the women have gone back to Hillingham. The Maitre d’ explains the previous night’s attack.

  Dracula discovers his broken coffins and roars his annoyance. He proceeds to Hillingham where he is confronted by Van Helsing and Arthur. Using Mina as a shield, he orders them to drop their crosses and then viciously rips open his chest for Mina, making her,

  "Blood of my blood. Kin of my kin. My slave" Dracula throws Mina on the bed and leaves. Van Helsing hypnotises Mina and learns that Dracula has boarded the Czarina Catherine in a bid to return home. They follow as Mina asks that Van Helsing destroy her if the inevitable occurs and she becomes like Lucy. The doctor agrees and drops her at Bistritz with instructions that he and Arthur intend to return to England. This information is intended to confuse the Count who is locked by some unexplained ESP to Mina.

  Free to hunt, Van Helsing and Arthur make the final trek to Castle Dracula on horseback. They discover the Count's three brides in the underground cellars but only dispatch one lady on camera. A physical set to with a now ravenous Jonathon Harker is brought to a halt when Harker falls into a handy pit filled with wooden stakes. A further search of the Castle ends in the main dining room. Dracula's final coffin rests below the giant painting of Vlad the warrior; Arthur recognises Lucy's face painted in the background as Dracula enters.

  "You are in my domain, now, Gentlemen. You shall not leave" he warns.

  More cross waving and Dracula begins to toss his opponents aside in another physical hands on free-for-all. Van Helsing peels down a curtain to reveal the morning sunlight. A door is opened by Arthur revealing more light. Dracula cowers under the crosses and is staked to an overturned table with a spear wielded by Van Helsing. As the Count dies we hear war cries and chants of

  "Dracula, hail Dracula".

  The camera pans to the painting and words appear on the screen:

  'In the 15th Century in the area of Hungary known as Transylvania, there lived a nobleman so fierce in Battle, that his troops gave him the name, Dracula, which means devil.

  Soldier, statesman, alchemist, warrior. So powerful was he that it was claimed he succeeded in overcoming even physical death. To this day, it has yet to be disproved.'

  Review

  The film was scripted by Richard Matheson, the Godfather of American horror stories; The Incredible Shrinking Man, I am Legend, and scriptwriter for a number of the best horror films of the 1960s and 1970s.

  There had been talk in the early 1970s of a Hammer film titled Dracula Walks the Night, to be co-written by Matheson and resident Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were to continue in their roles as Dracula and Van Helsing as they square off in Victorian London. Van Helsing would team up with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to destroy the fiend. As a further plus, it was to have been directed by Terence Fisher.

  Unfortunately, with the advent of vampire saturation from the American market with films like Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and Blacula (1972), Hammer had to churn out more economical potboilers like Dracula AD 1972 (1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), robbing fans of what would have been the most interesting Dracula story conceived up to that time.

  On viewing Bram Stoker's Dracula, I came to the conclusion that I thought that Matheson had meant his story to be set on a larger scale; maybe utilising ideas from the ideas mentioned above. Although that is only conjecture on my part, but with the confines of the budget and only a promise of a television showing, the finished script had to be scaled down somewhat. What we are left with is a short film loaded with references to Producer/Director Dan Curtis's previous explorations with vampires: The House of Dark Shadows (1970) and The Night Stalker (1972) also scripted by Matheson, with a smattering of dialogue and incident thrown in from Stoker.

  Jack Palance probably seemed an odd choice to take the lead role, but, in frock coat and greying temples, he does his best effort to bring humanity to his ethnically correct Count, playing him as an obsessed tyrant yearning for his lost love, Marianne, and finding her in Lucy Westenra.

  He swaps his period dress for the obligatory cape thereafter and his enthusiasm for their first date at Hillingham adds a real spring to his step. His disregard for the rest of the human race is obvious in his bullying tactics with Jonathon Harker, and he is prone to childish tantrums when crossed. He boasts of his victories over the centuries, but one cannot help but think that he probably inaugurated the campaigns just for something to do.

  Adding a deep supernatural growl to his cries of anguish highlights the fact that this is a Count with serious anger management issues.

  One can imagine the kind of hold he had over his subjects when alive, as we see him playfully teasing and caressing his wife and then, raging unheard curses at the courtiers that hold him back when he discovers her dead. This is a man who is ruled by his passions and who regularly throws the rattle out of his pram when he can't have his own way, but one who will eventually reduce his brides to tears because of his unruly behaviour.

  The action scenes are played out in much the same way as in The Night Stalker, with adversaries being tossed aside or hurled through a convenient window. Bullets bounce off the Count but, other than that, the rest of his powers seem to be depleted.

  There are no bats or mist and he has to rely solely on his tremendous strength and powers of persuasion. Staring down both Van Helsing and Arthur after feeding on Mina, his body language tells us that he'll come back any time he wants to, and no one will stop him! It is one of the most quoted scenes of understatement in a Dracula movie and always leaves the viewer, like Van Helsing and Arthur, gaping open-mouthed in disbelief.

  Stoker's Dracula speaks of siding with Attila and the Huns. This ties in with Palance's own film iconography. The legendary screen bad guy actually played Attila in the film The Sign of The Pagan (1954). He had also previously partnered with director Curtis for the hit-and-miss television production, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968). Trivia note for comic book fans: when Marvel Comics began their successful stories based on Stoker's Count, The Tomb of Dracula, artist Gene Colan used the features of Jack Palance as the template for his vampire king long before this film was made.

  Twice nominated, for Sudden Fear (1952), and, more memorably, Shane (1953), as two-gun psychotic Jack Wilson to Alan Ladd's diminutive hero, Palance would eventually take the long overdue Oscar statuette at the age of 73 for his performance as ageing cowhand Curly, in City Slickers (1991). In delight, he performed one-armed push-ups during his acceptance speech, stopping the show.

  Jonathon Ross hosted London Weekend Television's In Search of Dracula (1996), with an esteemed guest list: Francis Ford Coppola, Sadie Frost, Gary Oldman, Richard E. Grant, Christopher Lee, Ken Russell, Grace Jones and Jack Palance, all discussing the longevity of Bram Stoker's character.

  Twice married, Jack Palance died in California on 10th November 2006, truly a sad loss of one of the silver screen's largest giants.

  Van Helsing, described in the film as a friend of the Holmwoods, is played with grim determination by Nigel Davenport (father of This Life and Ultraviolet star Jack). A strong, dependable character actor of stage and screen, his cinematic horror debut was in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960).

  He brings an uncompromising edge to the doctor, by far the most dynamic Van Helsing to hit the screen. He talks like a stern country schoolmaster to his protégé Arthur and turns into a grim pipe-smoking authoritarian when confronted by the horror of Dracula. He carries crosses and stakes but doesn't explain his reasons. Unflinching, he hammers these stakes into female corpses, wiping a
way their death tears when he has finished with infinite tenderness.

  When staking Dracula himself, he uses a large spear that seems to give him added strength as it shears through, not only the body of Dracula, but also the thick, wooden table that the Count rests against.