‘Stand by the kites! – Are you ready? – Let go!’
Guessing his meaning more by his gestures than by his words, they let the wires run out. The kite streamed steadily up in the wind which had mysteriously arisen to whip the raindrops fiercely into their faces.
Crash!
With a hideous crackle the lightening struck the kites. A beam of fire zipped down the wires holding them, down the eerie funnel of the tower to the cosmic diffuser suspended above the body. A shower of sparks played over the long- dead face and the hands of a dial began to jig rapidly.
With eyes glued to this dial Frankenstein waited while the storm raged louder and fiercer overhead. Pretorius joined him, rubbing his thin hands together nervously. He was grey with excitement, sweat dripped from his forehead, and his queer, pale eyes glinted malevolently.
Shock after shock passed through the diffuser and entered the body. The indicator on the dial rose. Forty – fifty – sixty.
Overhead the white faces of the waiting men peered down the shaft. Both had had their orders.
Suddenly Frankenstein stepped back and touched a lever.
‘Ready?’ he yelled. ‘Stand back! It’s coming up.’
There came a steady thumping from the floor below. It was the hydraulic lift at work. The table maintaining the body lurched, steadied and began to rise. Higher. And higher.
It reached the top of the tower.
Like a thousand demons let loose the storm concentrated its fury upon it. It seemed to be lit by a constant stream of lightning. Great flashes of combustible gas illuminated the shaft, jagging the darkness with flickering light.
Suddenly from one of the men on the battlements came a yell of terror.
‘The Monster! It’s loose! It’s after me!’
Together Pretorius and Frankenstein peered upward. A gigantic shape loomed over the narrow opening far above. It picked up the screaming man, shaking him as if he had been a rat and threw him bodily over the parapet. Maddened by the sound of the storm it was running amok high up there in the battlements.
The sound of its roars reached them far below. There was no mistaking it.
‘How much drug did you give him?’ shouted Frankenstein in the Doctor’s ear.
‘Enough to keep ten men under for a couple of hours more.’
Frankenstein groaned.
‘Damnation! He’ll ruin everything!’
But even as he spoke, a faint luminosity began to spread over the table containing the corpse above. Both noticed it together.
‘Thank Heaven! We’re in time, Pretorius. Pull over that switch.’
The doctor obeyed, and with a strange hissing sound the whole devilish contraption descended.
Together they stared at the still swathed body on the table. Forgotten now was the raging Monster overhead. They were grimed with dirt and exhausted with their efforts, but their greatest moment was yet to come. Had the experiment been a success?
Slowly, almost awfully, Frankenstein bent over the corpse. With shaking fingers he loosened the bandages covering its face. He took them off. Then he fell back gasping.
A pair of vivid blue eyes looked up at him. Strange eyes. Eyes that had in them the questing wonder of a child’s and yet were filled with terror.
He turned to Pretorius.
‘She lives!’ he cried, triumphant. ‘She lives! She lives!’
It was the culmination of the wildest dream. A mate had been made for the Monster.
As Pretorius and Frankenstein watched the slender figure of the girl they had created move gracefully, if a little unsteadily, across the floor of their laboratory they envisaged all that this triumph might mean.
A new race of creatures to be born in the world. Offspring of once-dead bodies. What would they be like? It was a staggering speculation.
Unlike the Monster, this girl was nearly perfect in appearance. The Monster had been the pioneer creation. It was crude and unprepossessng. All that Frankenstein had learned while making it had been utilised to this second creature’s benefit. As yet, of course, she could not speak. Moaning faintly, and staring about her in terror like one barely awakened from a nightmare, she sat on a ledge by the wall of the laboratory, enduring the critical glances of her creators.
Suddenly with a queer little jerky gesture, she threw up her head and a shrill cry escaped her lips.
Following the direction of her gaze, Frankenstein gave vent to a low exclamation.
The Monster was standing in the doorway. Its face was cracked in a hideous grimace which the scientist recognised was meant to be a smile. In spite of himself, Frankenstein shuddered.
Pretorius gripped his arm.
‘Sh! my friend. Watch!’
Ponderously the Monster heaved its huge bulk down the steps and into the room. Its mouth worked spasmodically. It walked straight to the staring girl.
‘Friend,’ it said.
The staring blue eyes grew wider. She shrank back. The two scientists watching could see fear make way for panic in the small, drawn face.
A note of anger crept into the Monster’s voice.
‘Friend?’ it said again, reaching for the girl’s hand with one gigantic hand. There was a note of command in the voice.
Something about this ghastly travesty of love sickened Frankenstein.
‘Stop!’ he cried.
The Monster turned with a snarl and caught the girl fiercely to him. Her mouth snapped wide and a high metallic scream rang forth. It maddened the Monster. It began to croon reassuringly to the girl, but its harsh notes only terrified her the more. She screamed again.
Swiftly Frankenstein crossed the room and took her from him. A bellow of fury escaped it.
‘She hate me – like others!’ mouthed the Monster. Once more it made for the girl.
At that moment there came an interruption. The door of the laboratory was flung wide and Elizabeth appeared. Finding herself unguarded, she had managed to escape.
‘Henry!’ she called.
Frankenstein motioned her back.
‘Get out,’ he cried, ‘as you value your life!’ He knew, none better, the temper of the Monster when roused.
She shook her head.
‘Not without you.’
A terrific crash told of the shattering of a trayful of glass apparatus. Smashing its way towards him, the Monster reached out once again for the girl. One hand fell for an instant on the electrical control lever.
‘The lever! Look out for that lever! You’ll blow us all to atoms!’ shrieked Pretorius, flinging everything within reach at the raging creature.
The meaning of his words clicked in the Monster’s slow intelligence. With a trumpeting roar of triumph it seized the control with both hands.
‘Henry,’ screamed Elizabeth again, ‘you must come! I won’t go without you.’
For a moment Frankenstein hesitated.
‘I can’t leave them,’ he stammered. ‘Don’t you see –’ But his hesitation gave the Monster the chance it had sought. Like a flash one huge hand shot out and seized the girl from the scientist’s arms. Then it gestured savagely towards the door.
‘You live!’ it cried. ‘Go! Go!’
Frankenstein waited no longer. And as the door slammed behind him and his wife, and the Monster saw them running madly down the hill, it caught the shrieking girl in a close embrace and threw itself flat across the lever.
‘We – belong – dead!’ it cried as the first shudder shook the building.
And the white, gibbering face of Dr Pretorius was the last thing it saw, before there came a blinding flash, a terrific explosion, and the whole tower thundered down in ruins.
DRACULA’S DAUGHTER
by Bram Stoker
In just the same way that The Bride Of Frankenstein is considered by maiy people to be better than its precursor, so Dracula’s Daughter (1936) has many admirers who believe it to be superior to the Bela Lugosi original. Foremost among these is Donald Glut, the leading American vampire historian,
who wrote in his painstakingly researched work, The Dracula Book (1975). ‘Unlike most sequel films, Dracula’s Daughter proved that a second film in a series could be better than the original. The camera now moved and the acting was more restrained, especially in the title role. The Dracula film had come a long way in five years.’
The shift to a female vampire in the starring role came about through Bela Lugosi’s reluctance to reprise the role for fear of becoming typecast – a decision he later regretted when it became evident that his heavy accent and rather wooden style of acting would only secure him vampire-type roles. So, in his absence, Universal Pictures brought in scriptwriter Garrett Fort to adapt for the screen the short story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker (1847–1912), which had originally been intended as a chapter in the famous novel, but was deleted by the author at his publishers’ insistence that the work was otherwise too lengthy.
Fort renamed the Countess Dolingen of the story Countess Marya Zaleska, and made her – in the words of the subsequent movie poster – ‘More sensational than her unforgettable father!’ The Countess was played by the darkly beautiful London-born actress, Gloria Holden, who whetted the appetites of cinemagoers everywhere when, after reading the script, she was reported as having commented: ‘The author has made me a ruthless vampire, a beast in human form. I don’t believe any woman has ever been asked to play such a poisonous role before! He’s made me an insatiable fiend. I would just like to meet the man who wrote such an inhuman role for me. He must be a monstrous, horrible person!’
Despite such apparent reservations, Gloria Holden gave a memorable performance as Dracula’s daughter and was well supported by Edward Van Sloan, who had no qualms about appearing again as the vampire’s nemesis, Dr Van Helsing. An early scene where the Countess burns the corpse of her father, Dracula, on a funeral pyre, set the tone of the picture and came very close to being banned when viewed by the British censor. The ‘body’ was, in fact, a wax model with features identical to Bela Lugosi’s!
The picture was enthusiastically reviewed and fared extremely well at the box office, making doubly-sure that the Dracula legend would endure. In the fullness of time, the picture also inspired a number of other movies, including Blood And Roses (1959) starring Annette Vadim, wife of the French director Roger Vadim; Countess Dracula (1970) with Ingrid Pitt; and, most recently, Catherine Binet’s The Games Of The Countess Dolingen Of Gratz (1981), probably the most faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s original tale, which follows here.
* * *
When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d’hôtel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door:
‘Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late.’ Here he smiled, and added, ‘for you know what night it is.’
Johann answered with an emphatic, ‘Ja, mein Herr,’ and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signalling to him to stop:
‘Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?’
He crossed himself, as he answered laconically:
‘Walpurgis nacht.’ Then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip, and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realised that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay, and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniffed the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high, wind-swept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but little used, and which seemed to dip through a little, winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop – and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses, and frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered fencingly, and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest. Finally I said:
‘Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask.’
For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something – the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself:
‘Walpurgis nacht!’
I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue – and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles and led them on some twenty feet. I followed, and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had left and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English:
‘Buried him – him what killed themselves.’
I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross-roads: ‘Ah! I see, a suicide. How interesting!’ But for the life of me I could not make out why the horses were frightened.
Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said: ‘It sounds like a wolf– but yet there are no wolves here now.’
‘No?’ I said, questioning him; ‘isn’t it long since the wolves were so near the city?’
‘Long, long,’ he answered, ‘in the spring and summer; but with the snow the wolves have been here not so long.’
Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however, and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said:
‘The storm of snow, he comes before long time.’ Then he looked at his watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly – for the horses were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads – he climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey.
I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘about this place where the road leads,’ and I pointed down.
Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered: ‘It is unholy.’
‘What is unholy?’ I enquired.
‘The village.’
‘Then there is a village?’
‘No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years.’ My curiosity was piqued: ‘But you said there was a village.’
‘There was.’
‘Where is it now?’
Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under the clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with life
, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls! – and here he crossed himself), those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and the dead were dead and not – not something. He was evidently afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear – white-faced, perspiring, trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried:
‘Walpurgis nacht!’ and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:
‘You are afraid, Johann – you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone; the walk will do me good.’ The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking-stick – which I always carry on my holiday excursions – and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, ‘Go home, Johann – Walpurgis nacht doesn’t concern Englishmen.’
The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was so deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction, ‘Home!’ I turned to go down the cross-road into the valley.
With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road for a while; then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road,
running away madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger, but I found that he, too, was gone.
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