Harker surmises that Lucy is in danger and begins tearing bed sheets. Climbing out of his window, he runs out of rope and drops to the ground. The child plays his violin over Harker's inert form. We see the coffins being moved by raft. Loaded onto a ship. Destination: Varna to Bismarck. The coffins contain soil for botanical experiments. Opening a coffin shows that they also contain rats.
Harker wakes in the gypsy camp and implores the Mother Superior that they stop the black coffins. We see the ship at sea; Lucy sat forlornly on a bench. Van Helsing is informed to visit Renfield in his cell. The lunatic holds a cage of flies. Attacking the guard, he is put into a strait-jacket. On a bench in the churchyard, Lucy is informed that no letters have arrived. Harker dresses to leave stating that he must go because evil is on its way. We next see him charging off on horseback.
On the ship, the captain stresses that there is a stranger on board as many of his men have taken ill. A cook and a mate have disappeared altogether. Lucy visits Renfield who delivers the news that the master of the rats is coming.
They are 400,000 strong.
He steals a paper from the guard and reads of the oncoming plague. The captain of the ship ties himself to the wheel. He is the only one on board. The bat flies past the screen. Dracula walks the deck. Harker races back. Lucy is at the window as the ship rumbles into the city. Renfield announces that "the Master is here!"
Inspecting the ship, not a soul is found on board and the hold is teeming with rats. The Captain has throat wounds and his log speaks of fever and disappearances. Fear. Rats and the plague. We see Dracula carrying his coffin under his arm. Going through a churchyard, he enters his new home and feigns agony as he passes a crucifix on the wall. He begins to move the rest of his cargo. A horse and carriage brings Harker to the Harding residence. He dismisses Lucy and asks who she is. Lucy faints. Van Helsing diagnoses Harker's trouble as a brain fever.
Harker mentions that the sun is hurting him and curtains are drawn. Outside at night, Dracula casts a large shadow over the house as he peeks through the window at the stricken occupants inside. Lucy is at her mirror getting ready for bed when the door opens behind her. We see nobody, but as the door closes we see the shadow of Dracula. He steps into frame and asks Lucy that she be his ally because his life cannot sustain with the absence of love. Lucy reveals the cross around her throat and Dracula backs away. The door closes of its own accord through her mirror. Pall-bearers walk into the street with their burdens.
Renfield escapes locking an unsuspecting guard in his cell. Cut to Lucy reading of Nosferatu while her husband looks on, still not recognising her. He can come as a black wolf or bat, she reads. Only a woman pure in heart can halt his purpose if she can make him forget the first crow of the cock. He will be destroyed by the first light of the dawn.
Dracula instructs Renfield to go north and that the rats and the Black Death will be with him. Lucy is seen working her way around the town square, asking for help from the procession of pall-bearers. She is told that there is no town council and that the Mayor is dead. She tries to tell them that she knows the cause of the plague. The pall-bearers dismiss her like zombies.
Back home, Van Helsing tells her that it is her imagination. She decides to do what must be done alone. Jonathon still doesn't recognise her and Lucy weeps. We witness Dracula racing through the streets. In daylight, Lucy visits Dracula's new home. The steps are adorned with rats. Inside she finds a coffin also filled with rats. She breaks the Host into it.
The next scene shows the town square and revellers dancing around small funeral pyres. Animals wander around. At one table Lucy is invited to join a last supper. The next shot shows the same table overrun with rats but no people. A maid knocks on Lucy's door and takes her to the Harding residence.
We see Harding's wife, Mina, being examined by Van Helsing. She has two tell-tale marks on her throat. Dracula watches at his window as Lucy sprinkles more of the Host around Jonathon. Lucy lies on her bed as Dracula bends into frame. Her heavy breathing covers the soundtrack. Dracula bites. A lengthy shot of the bat flying. Dracula raises himself to go, but Lucy holds him to her and he bites again.
Outside we hear the crow of the cock. Dracula slowly raises his head as the crowing continues. He staggers to the window as the sun hits the frame. Stepping back, we see that his eyes have filmed over. He throws himself to the floor in a convulsion and then lays dead.
Lucy, looking radiant with a smile, also dies.
Van Helsing makes his examination and calls for a stake and hammer. Retrieving the tools, he is implored by Harker not to do it. As the hammering happens off-screen, we see Harker grab at his chest.
The officials arrive and Harker accuses Van Helsing of murdering the Count. Van Helsing is arrested. Harker instructs a maid to sweep up the Host and steps from the circle. A close up shows us that he has changed into a vampire.
The last image, with an operatic accompaniment on the soundtrack, shows Harker riding across windswept sands with a frightening purpose.
Review
With the addition of sound, Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu (1922), is made even more distant than the original. Interminably long scenes slow down the action and don't add any kind of apprehensiveness as in the original.
The Count shies away from crosses and yet runs through a whole churchyard full of them without the slightest harm. Harker walks to the Castle without Gustav Von Wangenheiem's earlier enthusiasm. In fact, everybody seems to be suffering from a severe case of lethargy before anyone is bitten.
Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast), has more to do than Professor Bulwer, but just rambles on about scientific research that should be carried out before combating the vampire and puts the whole thing down to Lucy's overwrought imagination; even continuing this train of thought after discovering Mina's body drained of blood. At the end of the film, he automatically knows to obtain a stake and hammer without any briefing whatsoever.
With reservations, Herzog cast Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula. Generally, Kinski's roles had amounted to little more than expressive character cameos and he would often refer to his films as "junk." As Dracula, he was constantly required on screen, his unpredictable eccentricities causing numerous problems with himself and Director, Herzog.
Mainly, his interpretation of the Count.
Herzog had wanted Dracula to be swift in his movements. Kinski preferred the slow, laboured characterisation that eventually made it to the screen. He also denied seeing the silent inspirational film, taking credit for his original make-up of the blood sucking phantom. Massaging Japanese kabuki make-up into his bald pate and centralising the vampire's teeth, he cut a very disturbing figure kitted out in kinky midnight satin as he hurdles gravestones with his own coffin tucked under his arm.
When an actor declares that
"To be bitten, the desire to be blood-sucked is actually very natural",
His interpretation of Dracula is definitely one to watch out for. He really carries the weight of centuries on his back. Moaning and groaning - literally - he seems to suck the life from his guests before he attempts to go for the jugular. Like a peeping Tom, he spies on the Harker household and is able to enter Lucy's bedroom unbidden.
Unlike Max Schreck's Graf Orlok, Kinski's Count Dracula has an aversion to anything religious and is seen achingly avoiding a crucifix on his nightly rounds. Losing the supernatural and ethereal qualities of his predecessor, he projects an aura of a vapid, decaying fungus. Ironically, the script gives his reason for the earth boxes as being used as an involvement for the Count's botanical experiments as is the explanation that Frank Langella furnishes in John Badham's film.
Going cold turkey as the sun's rays strike him leaves aside the need for a big-budget disappearance or dissolution and also emphasises the extent of research that Kinski pumped into his portrayal.
It is probably the Count's most understated death rattle.
Unfortunately, any touches of originality that the actor puts forward are woefully m
isplaced as Herzog sweats to recapture key scenes from Murnau's film without taking the time to consider why they were in the original at all.
Kinski's best scene is at the Castle when he intimidates Harker into giving over his blood and then collapses, totally spent, preferring to talk the night away.
The rest of his CV is littered with stints as famous characters: Jack The Ripper, the Marquis De Sade and again, Count Dracula in the sequel to Hertzog's film. Viewed today, Nosferatu, Vampire in Venice (1988), again reveals actor/director mismatch as Kinski eventually ended up directing most of the film himself.
An actor who imprinted many feelings on others, both hot and cold, with a filmography that lists almost 150 films, he is perhaps best remembered by British and American filmgoers for his scene-stealing turns in For A Few Dollars More/Per Qualche Dollaro In Piu (1965), as the psychotic, hunchback gun-slinger, and Renfield in Bram Stoker's Count Dracula/El Conde Dracula (1970).
He was found dead in Lagutinas, California, November 23rd, 1991, from natural causes aged 65. His two daughters, Nastassja and Pola, are both actresses. The title of his autobiography is: All I Need is Love: a Memoir.
Lucy Harker is played with virginal steadfastness by Isabelle Adjani. She has more gumption than all the men put together in the film. She knows the problem long before the title credits have run and implores Jonathon not to go to the land of phantoms. She spends her time staring out across the ocean waiting for her husband’s return.
But she seems to have trouble getting the men in her life to take her seriously. As Van Helsing puts her deductions down to brain fever and wild imaginings, she is used to explain the monster's prowess to the audience and decides to restrict the vampire's rampage by entering his new home and consecrating his coffin with the Host herself!
When the vampire is destroyed by the sunlight, Van Helsing reneges that he should have listened to the girl. A repugnant poignancy hangs in the air with her brief scene with the repellent vampire. Finally sacrificing herself to Dracula, she allows a radiant smile to light up her corpse, unknowing that, as the book says:
Nosferatu will go on forever.
Indeed, it is Van Helsing's blind staking of the monster that transfers the beast's soul into Jonathan Harker.
Ms Adjani would go on to star in the cult film Subway (1985) and had already shone in Roman Polanski's best film The Tenant (1976).
Speaking of which, Renfield is a very bizarre turn by Le Locotaire (The Tenant) author, Roland Topor. Wearing a neck brace and a vicious scar that hints at some extreme brain surgery, he utilises a nervous laugh between every line of his dialogue and hordes flies in just the one large cage, preferring to look at them longingly rather than eat them. He is irritating enough to make the Count's own skin crawl as the vampire tends to keep him at arm’s length during their conversations together.
Once he converses with the Master, he is instructed to go North with the rats by his side, though it is never made clear exactly why. His final scene in the movie shows him scurrying down a Delft thoroughfare towards a frightening obscurity.
Jonathon Harker is played with fascinated bewilderment by Bruno Ganz. He accepts the trip to Castle Dracula to take him away from the rivers that never go anywhere, but just keep coming round and round. When told by a coach driver that he doesn't have a horse and carriage, while he is attending his own rig, Jonathon doesn't press the point but takes the long journey on foot.
Sitting on mountaintops for interminable lengths of time, he slows the picture even further by preferring to take in the beauty of his surroundings. At times, I thought I'd stumbled upon a documentary about the National Geographic.
As a sweaty paranoia takes hold of him as he converses with the Count, a skeletal clock chimes midnight to remind actors and audience that we are still watching a horror film.
He writes in his diary due to the lack of a postal service. Once bitten, he becomes an observer in a house full of strange people, refusing to recognise his wife, but enjoying the attention that she bestows on him.
Like many movie Harkers, he is robbed of his bravery and is trapped by a sprinkling of the Host when the Count makes the moves on his missus. He warns Van Helsing not to stake the undead corpse without too much urgency and then has the doctor arrested for murder, in the only amusing scene that explains that all the officials have become victims of the plague and there is no one to mind the store.
Escaping from his trap with a sly cackle, we see that Harker has become the Nosferatu, ready to carry the pestilence further. Ganz's Harker finishes the movie by riding off toward a sandswept land called Oblivion.
A major copout in the film is when Kinski's vampire moans about the absence of love in his life as he visits Lucy Harker. It is a vampire staple that has dampened the action of many a horror tale, beginning with Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932). But it is never used as so pointless a plot device as it is here.
With his powers of hypnosis gone in this film, and not being able to see himself in a mirror, he offers her the chance to stand by his side as his mate throughout the long centuries. We can see that the embittered Count is on a losing streak trying to snare the beautiful Lucy.
Let's face it, in the looks department, he doesn't have a lot going for him and doesn't seem to be the kind of suitor that you would like to introduce to your friends. Lucy doesn't even offer the most heartfelt, "let's be friends" rejection. The look of awe on her face as she gracefully parts her hair to reveal the crucifix at her throat says it all. But, thinking about it again, the vampire does wind up with the girl after all.
The whole thing has a crawling revulsion that, I believe for the most part, is unintended. Scare factor is zero in a movie whose vividly etched images stay far longer than its running time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gary Oldman
BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992: Columbia/American Zeotrope/Osiris Films, USA) aka: Dracula, the Untold Story
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Synopsis
Intense music opens with a scene that interprets the fall of Constantinople. Van Helsing, in voice over, explains that it is the year 1462 and Vlad Dracula has risen up against the Turks in defence of Christendom. The cross of Constantinople falls. We see Dracula, suited in armour and kissing his wife, Elisabeta, as he marches off to war. The music rises as he battles in silhouette, smashing heads and impaling enemies on giant spears.
Dracula kisses his crucifix and pictures Elisabeta. More voiceover tells us that his wife has received a letter borne on an arrow falsely reporting Dracula's death in battle. She throws herself from the towers of the castle. Dracula enters the church and finds Elisabeta's broken body. A sage informs him that she is a suicide and cannot enter heaven. Dracula renounces God and drinks blood saying that he will rise from his own death. He screams as blood fills the church.
The title: Bram Stoker's Dracula, fills the screen.
The film begins and titling tells us that we are in:
London, 1897, 4 centuries later.
At Carfax District Lunatic Asylum, Renfield is reaching for flies and talking of preparations and rewards from the Master. Mr Hawkins briefs Jonathon Harker on his trip to the Carpathians in place of Renfield.
Harker visits Mina Murray to say his goodbyes. A train whistle and voiceover from Harker's diary tell us that it is the 25th May at Budapest. After a brief description of his surroundings, Harker turns to a letter from the Count. As disembodied eyes watch Harker through the train window, the Count is heard reading the contents of his letter. Accurately using Stoker’s words and ending it with
"...your friend, 'D'."
Mina is seen at her new typewriter, practising her typing skills. Jonathon's coach arrives at the Borgo Pass. A villager hands him a crucifix and the coach hurries off. Wolves begin to gather, as a second coach appears moving in slow motion.
The driver, disguised by heavy armour, loads Harker into the caleche. The wolves follow. Harker looks through the window and notices that they are
driving on the edge of a large abyss. Passing through a blue configuration of flame, the coach settles into a courtyard as a large gate closes behind.
An ominous shot of the Castle as the door opens.
A shadow plays on the wall and a man moves forward as if to meet it. He is carrying a lamp and, introducing himself as Dracula, delivers the 'Welcome,' speech. The wind noises lessen as Harker crosses the threshold.
The Romance of Dracula; a personal Journey of the Count on celluloid Page 15