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

by Butler, Charles E.

  In Lucy's tomb - legend on the plaque: Lucy Westenra (1879-1902) - Van Helsing opens the coffin with intentions of cutting off her head. The coffin is empty. Outside the tomb, the Professor and Seward find a wandering child with wounds in his throat claiming to have been with the Bloofer lady. Van Helsing informs Quincey that the wounds were made by Miss Lucy, who discounts the supposition as "impossible!"

  Back at the tomb, Lucy is seen growling with abandon at the three avengers. Again, enticing Quincey, she is forced back into the tomb by Van Helsing, who asks with cross held high,

  "Am I to proceed in my work?"

  Said work begins in the next scene as Van Helsing lays out a saw, a stake and a scalpel on a neighbouring coffin lid. He also produces a large stake with a charred, blackened tip. Quincey performs the staking amidst prayer said by Van Helsing and Lucy's screams. Lucy is again beautiful in death: "God's true dead". Seward and Quincey leave the tomb as Van Helsing stuffs wild flowers into her mouth and cuts off her head with the scalpel.

  At the following meeting in the house, Mina takes the minutes as Harker recaps on notes from his diary whilst at Castle Dracula. It is stated that the boxes are indeed coffins filled with hallowed earth from Transylvania. All agree to be included in the fight with the vampire.

  Mina then visits Renfield who explains his reasons for collecting the lives of insects and birds. Van Helsing confides that Mina must be excluded from the fight because of the threat to her that Dracula poses. Seward, Quncey and Van Helsing break into Carfax where, with holy wafers, they proceed to sanctify a number of coffins.

  We witness Mina in bed as a large mist creeps across the lawn and seeps into her bedroom, encircling the bed. Mina appears transfixed as Dracula appears. He strokes her face:

  "so young, so lovely," he coos.

  We then learn that 29 boxes out of 50 have been sanctified. Mina insists that she needs to speak to Renfield again. Van Helsing pours cocoa as he passes on the news that the remaining 21 boxes have been discovered in Mayfair.

  Mina, watched over by Seward and Bowles, visits Renfield again. Renfield notices a difference in her manner and refuses to recognise her. Nonetheless, there is a lot of talk concerning life and the soul and Mina admits to having strange dreams. Renfield kisses her on the cheek and notices puncture wounds on her neck. He dismisses her and pleads to Dr Seward to be released, throwing himself on the ground in his frustration.

  Back in his cell, Dracula returns and asks why Renfield refused the gift - Mina - that he had sent to him. While Dr Seward records notes in his phonograph concerning Renfield's case, we hear a scream. Renfield is found a bloody husk in his cell and dies, but not before informing Van Helsing that Mina is under Dracula's spell.

  While Jonathon sleeps beside Mina, Dracula again invades her bed chamber.

  "I need your blood," he says, and bites her.

  He opens his chest for her to drink. Van Helsing and Seward enter the room.

  Again, Van Helsing and Seward enter the room, this time hearing screams from Jonathon who is startled out of sleep and gazing at the bloodied form of his wife.

  Mina screams again when her forehead is burned by the holy wafer:

  "Even the Almighty shuns me!" she shrieks.

  Tracking down and consecrating more boxes, our heroes are stalled by the arrival of Dracula. He states the need for survival as his reason for blood-letting and the fact that he must recruit disciples even as God does. A window is willed to explode and Dracula disappears in a mist as Jonathon empties his gun at the escaping ghost.

  Back home, Mina insists that Dracula should be pitied and should not be pursued with hate. She also suggests that she has a kind of link to the Count and that there is only one place that he can find safety now - his home in Transylvania.

  On horseback are Quncey, Seward and Harker; Van Helsing and Mina follow in horse and cart, tearing across the landscape of Transylvania. Mina knows of a shortcut. When pressed by Van Helsing how she knows about this, she cites Jonathon's diary.

  In the dark by firelight, Mina prepares a meal for Van Helsing, excusing herself that she has eaten already.

  In the darkness beyond the trees, we hear the giggling of Dracula's brides. Mina smiles as Van Helsing scratches a circle around her in the ground. The brides moan their dissatisfaction as he begins to break and sprinkle the Host in the newly-dug trench. Mina becomes cold and realises that she cannot leave the circle. She tells Van Helsing that there are,

  "None safer from them than I. I am their sister"

  Van Helsing shields her with the Host as the brides also try, but fail, to penetrate the circle. Soundtrack growls and snarls with agitated horses accompany a lengthy enticement. Then the brides vanish in mist.

  Chirruping birds announce the dawn. As Mina rests, Van Helsing ventures to the Castle where he dispatches the brides in quick succession. Intercut shots show Mina reacting to the stakes being driven home.

  Through binoculars, Van Helsing and Mina witness the final box containing the Count being loaded onto a wagon by four gypsies armed with shotguns. Giving chase are Seward, Harker and Quincey. Van Helsing loads a rifle and hands it to Mina. In the ensuing battle, Quincey is wounded, but the gypsies are defeated with Mina delivering the final shot to rescue husband Jonathon. They all race to the box, now in the courtyard of the castle, and force it open as the sun goes down.

  "Sunset," croons the Count as Van Helsing rams the stake into his body.

  The Count dissolves in a violent, billowing mist. When it eases, the Professor crosses himself and prays. We see that Mina's forehead is now unmarked by the burn from the Host. The camera shows all that is left of the Count is a burned, blackened suit.

  In the final scene, we see that all the vampire hunters have survived.

  Review

  Originally aired in three parts in the United States, this over-long saga shares the same highs and lows as Stoker's novel.

  The first half of the book examines Jonathon Harker's imprisonment in the castle. The middle segment concentrates on the decline and eventual staking of Lucy Westenra. The third instalment focuses on Dracula's escape and capture at his Castle refuge. Between each of these are interludes with the maniac, Renfield; the attack on Mina Harker and the coming together of the band of vampire hunters as in every subsequent version of the tale.

  While viewing it again, I was reminding myself that I believed that Bram Stoker had actually written the Harker segment to stand as one short story; all the elements of a hero in peril with no way out are evident in many of the author's tales. As fate would have it, the best of these stories are printed alongside the short story, Dracula's Guest, a segment dropped from Stoker's finished narrative because it was deemed to be too long by the publishers.

  Another reason for this train of thought is the fact that once we leave Harker as a prisoner in Castle Dracula, the story itself seems to fight to regain another foothold. Stoker introduces newspaper clippings with throwaway comedy characters. Letters are written back and forth from young girls in love.

  Another segment, another trial short - the wreck of the Demeter - stands again as a story on its own. We follow this with snatches of descriptions of Whitby, intercut with scenes of Lucy becoming ill over a lengthy period. Her illness is told through frantic letters and telegrams posted and received at a phenomenal speed. Suddenly, Renfield is introduced and we are treated to Dr Seward's obsession with the case.

  The novel finds its way further as Lucy deteriorates and Professor Van Helsing arrives from Amsterdam. Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood seem to be characters added as an afterthought to lend weight to Lucy's virginal promiscuity, a fate that sees them being either placed in the background with little to do, or dropped completely from most film versions.

  Finally, Dracula himself. Once he has reached England, gaining passage on the doomed Demeter, Stoker, like the movies, realises that there isn't very much left for him to do. He becomes a snarling bogeyman, aided by some astonishing shape-changin
g techniques to beef up a wasting narrative.

  We see him through eye witness accounts trying to secure a hold in London, making deals with timber merchants, wearing out-moded fashions and hungrily eyeing the young ladies of Victorian society.

  The final chase back to his Castle is handled in a lot less number of pages than Harker's original meandering journey at the front of the book, the only really decent read in this final segment being the staking of Dracula's brides in Van Helsing's Memorandum. Even Dracula's dissolution is paired down to just two very short paragraphs.

  This film is the most faithful version of the novel transmitted to the screen. As mentioned above, its unwavering eye for detail from the novel gives it the selfsame drawbacks.

  Dracula is an ambiguously charming host. Extremely strong and persuasive, he leads Harker on a terror filled excursion. His Castle holds secrets that can only be guessed at.

  Vampires roam the halls at night and keep the peasants in the village praying for salvation that never comes as they are picked off one by one. The Count sleeps in a suitably dank cellar, gorged on blood, his brides only a few feet away in their own coffins.

  In this version all the characters are rounded out as opposed to being thinly sketched caricatures and their time on screen is never wasted. Taking artistic license, Gerald Savoury's script has Van Helsing himself destroy the vampire with his overlarge wooden stake as opposed to the Bowie knife and the kukri knife wielded by Quincey Morris and Jonathon Harker respectively.

  As Count Dracula, Louis Jourdan brings a different kind of otherworldliness to the part. Ambiguous, sly and seductive, he doesn't rule with the tyrannical ferocity of previous Counts, but uses patronising asides to his guests as he proceeds to seduce and deflower their women. He proves to be the worthy adversary envisioned, if not always accurately implied, by Bram Stoker. He talks with calm authority when approached with the forces of religious artefacts:

  "A symbol of suffering" he tells a cross waving Van Helsing, rebuking his recital for him to depart with a disarming,

  "It always sounds more convincing in Latin, doesn't it?"

  Dracula doesn't excuse the fact that his sole purpose is to drink blood to survive, just as we gorge ourselves on meat and poultry. But in his role as seducer, he is in a class of his own, leading his women into a perfect dreamland state from which they never want to awake. When they do, the excesses of their secret actions are smeared across their bodies for all the world to see in bright red, leaving them to wonder, "what have I done?"

  It is hard to see Jourdan as a crusader of Wallachian history, but we certainly see the boyar aristocracy from which he claims descent. We also witness the sly humour that Stoker never gave him.

  He appears alongside Lucy's suitors on her deathbed, and delivers Harker's own letters back to him after his prisoner has made such pains to have them posted - then, implying that he should write his letters home, stating that he has left for the Balkans. He hands Harker paper so thin that you can almost see through it. This mirrors the transparency of the clues he dangles in front of his guest, the circling of Whitby on the map, his intentions to leave Harker with the three brides and his own ghostlike substance that Harker doesn't crack until it is almost too late. As in the novel, he has the self-styled vampire hunters chasing their own tails for much of the time and takes the fight back to his homeland of Transylvania.

  Louis Jourdan entered films in 1939 with Le Corsaire. He appeared in Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). His most famous film is the nine-time Academy Award winner Gigi (1958), with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier.

  When approached for the part of Count Dracula, Jourdan had no previous experience of the horror genre, but slipped smoothly into the role to become, probably, the coolest Count on record. In 1982, he gained a whole new legion of fans when he appeared as Arcane in the comic book spin-off, Swamp Thing, and featured the following year with Roger Moore and Maud Adams as James Bond's nemesis Kamal Khan in Octopussy (1983).

  At the time of writing he now enjoys retirement in the south of France with his wife of over 60 years, Berthe Frederique "Quique" Jourdan, his last film to date being Year of the Comet (1992).

  Abraham Van Helsing, played by Frank Finlay, oozes a different kind of bedside charm to previous Professors, making the young ladies blush like schoolgirls with endearing blandishments, before smearing garlic all over the room and their personal belongings. When his eccentricity is questioned, he snaps with an unexpected outburst. Seward informs us that he is "a brilliant diagnostician and specialist in obscure diseases". And so he proves to be here, immediately pinning down the underlying problems of Lucy's illness after just one consultation.

  He even carries his collection of saws and scalpels at all times in case he inadvertently loses one of his patients to the dark side, dismissing the obligatory staking and beheading as just another form of treatment to the grieving family members.

  A favourite shot in the film is where Van Helsing looks at the stake and seems to silently ask himself,

  "I wonder if it will be big enough."

  In the hunt for Dracula, his belief in religion, if not God himself, carries him forward as he teaches his allies to stake in time with his prayers. Brandishing only two crosses in the movie, the bulk of his arsenal consists of jars of the consecrated Host with which, it has to be remembered, he has to desanctify 50 coffins - and fill the gaps in his trench that forms a protective circle around Mina.

  As Dracula is a wayward seducer, so Van Helsing becomes an overly protective, if sometimes absent-minded, father to the young ladies in his charge. He attacks the vampire women unmercifully without thinking of the psychological aspects that their stakings may have on the psychically-linked Mina. In fact, I got the impression that this was his first time in the field, and mistakes would be corrected later as, "we live and learn..." etc. However, he does get the added pleasure of dispatching the vampire in front of his open-mouthed charges using the traditional weapon of a stake through the heart.

  Frank Finlay entered films in 1962 after many successful years on stage and would return to the vampire movie as Hans Fallada, another Van Helsing-esque role in Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce (1985). Still working steadily at 83, one of his more recent appearances was as Anorah, the keeper of the Unicorns, in the BBC children’s fantasy series Merlin (2008).

  Susan Penhaligon and Judi Bowker are certainly accurate in their roles as flirtatious tease, Lucy, and independent thinking Mina. Billed here as sisters as opposed to friends in the novel, it is natural to see them sharing a bed together discussing their romantic encounters. Lucy shows a feigned concern for Mina's Jonathon, as she chatters on enthusiastically about her offer of two marriage proposals, leaving Mina crying alone in the dark.

  When a third suitor, Dracula, appears on the scene, she abandons her sister altogether to indulge in night-time excesses draped across a stone sarcophagus, or laid prone in bed when Mina is out of the room, welcoming her lovers hot embrace:

  "Don't tell mother," she gasps, "the shock would kill her".

  Back home, she revels in the carnage described in the tabloids over cornflakes and orange juice, while her mother and sister look on in horror. When cornered by the vampire hunters at her tomb, she angrily growls and hisses at them for letting such a thing happen, all the while probably forgetting that she let the change continue without informing them that something was definitely wrong, watching her fangs grow daily in the same way that we might keep an eye on the advancement of a brand new pimple. From her coffin, as she succumbs to Quincey's jealous staking, her eyes, streaming with tears, seem to imply that,

  "It wasn't my fault!"

  Mina is ready for marriage with her beau, Jonathon Harker. One imagines, if not sees, that this young miss already has her future planned out to the nth degree. All talk is centred around her betrothed at the beginning of the film. She rereads letters to find faults of any kind in a deluded paranoia while he is away on business, using Lucy's illness as an escape from t
he confines of her own bad thoughts and feelings. But she takes her sisterly duties seriously when recognising the possible dangers involved.

  She doesn't berate her sister for having her trail around Whitby at ungodly hours of the night, but takes everything in her stride, even to the point of recriminating against herself when she believes that she has caused the puncture wounds to her sister's throat. Then, tucking her sister into bed with hot cocoa and a goodnight peck on the forehead, promises not to tell mummy.