by Marvin Kaye
Dissolve
9. A Drawbridge
Over the wide moat, now stagnant and choked with weeds. We move across it
and through a huge rounded archway into a formal courtyard, perhaps thirty feet
wide and one hundred yards deep, which extends right up to the very wall of the
castle. Let's see Toland keep all of it in focus. The landscaping surrounding it has
been sloppy and casual for centuries, but this particular courtyard has been kept
up in perfect shape.. As the camera makes its way through it, towards the lighted
window of the castle, there are revealed rare and exotic blooms of all kinds:
mariphasa lupino lumino, strange orchid, audriensis junior, triffidus celestus.
The dominating note is one of almost exaggerated wildness, sprouting sharp and
desperate—rot, rot, rot The Hall of the Mountain King, the night the last troll died.
Some of the plants lash out, defensively.
Dissolve
10. The Window
Camera moves in until the frame of the window fills the frame of the screen.
Suddenly the light within goes out. This stops the action of the camera and cuts
the music (Bernard Herrmann) which has been accompanying the sequence. In the
glass panes of the window we see reflected the stark, dreary mountainscape of the
Dracula estate behind and the dawn sky.
Dissolve
11. Int. Corridor in Castle Dracula—Faint Dawn—1885
Ornate mirrors line both walls of the corridor, reflecting arches into infinity. A
bulky shadow figure—Dracula—proceeds slowly, heavy with years, through the
corridor. He pauses to look into the mirror, and has no reflection, no reflections,
to infinity. It seems at last that he is simply not there.
Dissolve
12. Int. Dracula's Crypt—Faint Dawn—1885
A very long shot of Dracula's enormous catafalque, silhouetted against the
enormous window.
Dissolve
13. Int. Dracula's Crypt—Faint Dawn—1885
An eye. An incredible one. Big impossible drops of bloody tears, the
reflections of figures coming closer, cutting implements raised. The jingling of
sleigh bells in the musical score now makes an ironic reference to Indian temple
bells—the music freezes—
DRACULA'S OLD VOICE
Rose's blood!
The camera pulls back to show the eye in the face of the old Dracula, bloated
with blood but his stolen youth lost again, grey skin parchmented like a mummy,
fissures cracking open in the wrinkles around his eyes, fang-teeth too large for his
mouth, pouching his cheeks and stretching his lips, the nose an improbable bulb.
A flash—the descent of a guillotine-like kukri knife, which has been raised above
Dracula's neck—across the screen. The head rolls off the neck and bounds down
two carpeted steps leading to the catafalque, the camera following. The head falls
off the last step onto the marble floor where it cracks, snaky tendrils of blood
glittering in the first ray of the morning sun. This ray cuts an angular pattern across
the floor, suddenly crossed with a thousand cruciform bars of light as a dusty
curtain is wrested from the window.
14. The Foot of Dracula's Catafalque
The camera very close. Outlined against the uncurtained window we can see a
form—the form of a man, as he raises a bowie knife over his head. The camera
moves down along the catafalque as the knife descends into Dracula's heart, and
rests on the severed head. Its lips are still moving. The voice, a whisper from the
grave
DRACULA'S OLD VOICE
Rose's blood!
In the sunlight, a harsh shadow cross falling upon it, the head lap-dissolves into
a fanged, eyeless skull.
Fade Out
Count Dracula Cast and Credits, as of January 1940
Production Company: Mercury Productions. Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures.
Executive Producer: George J. Schaefer. Producer Orson Welles. Director Orson
Welles. Script: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles. From the novel by Bram
Stoker. Director of Photography: Gregg Toland. Editors: Mark Robson, Robert
Wise. Art Director: Van Nest Polglase. Special Effects: Vernon L. Walker.
Music/Musical Director: Bernard Herrmann.
Orson Welles (Dracula), Joseph Cotton (Jedediah Renfield), Everett Sloane
(Van Helsing), Dorothy Comingore (Mina Murray), Robert Coote (Artie
Holmwood), William Alland (Jon Harker), Agnes Moorehead (Mrs. Westenra),
Lucille Ball (Lucy), George Couloris (Dr. Walter Parkes Seward), Paul Stewart
(Raymond, Asylum Attendant), Alan Ladd (Quincey P. Morris), Fortunio
Bonanova (Inn-Keeper at Bistritz), Vladimir Sokoloff (Szekeley Chieftain),
Dolores Del Rio, Ruth Warrick, Rita Cansino (Vampire Brides), Gus Schilling
(Skipper of the Demeter).
"Mademoiselle Dieudonné," intoned the voice on her answering machine,
halfway between a growl and a purr, "this is Orson Welles."
The voice was deeper even than in the 1930s, when he was a radio star.
Geneviève had been in America over Halloween, 1938, when Welles and the
Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast their you-are-there dramatisation of H. G.
Wells's "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid" and convinced half the Eastern
seaboard that the country was disappearing under a writhing plague of vampire
blossoms. She remembered also the rhetorical whisper of "who knows what evil
lurks in the hearts of men?," followed by the triumphant declaration "the Shadow
knows!" and the low chuckle which rose by terrifying lurches to a fiendish,
maniacal shriek of insane laughter.
When she had first met the man himself, in Rome in 1959, the voice hadn't
disappointed. Now, even on cheap tape and through the tinny, tiny amplifier, it
was a call to the soul. Even hawking brandy or frozen peas, the voice was a
powerful instrument That Welles had to compete with Welles imitators for gigs as
a commercial pitchman was one of the tragedies of the modern age. Then again,
she suspected he drew a deal of sly enjoyment from his long-running role as a
ruined titan. As an actor, his greatest role was always himself. Even leaving a
message on a machine, he invested phrases with the weight—a quality he had
more than a sufficiency of—of a Shakespearean deathbed speech.
"There is a small matter upon which I should like your opinion, in your
capacities as a private detective and a member of the undead community. If you
would call on me, I should be most grateful."
She thought about it. Welles was as famous for being broke as for living well.
It was quite likely he wouldn't even come through with her modest rate of a
hundred dollars a day, let alone expenses. And gifts of rare wine or Cuban cigars
weren't much use to her, though she supposed she could redeem them for cash.
Still, she was mildly bored with finding lost children or bail jumpers. And no
one ever accused Welles of being boring. He had left the message while she was
resting through the hours of the day. This was the first of the ten or so days
between the Gregorian 1980s and the Julian 1980s. She could afford to give a
flawed genius—his own expression—that much time.
She would do it.
In leaving a message, Welles had given her a pause to think. She h
eard heavy
breaths as he let the tape run on, his big man's lungs working. Then, confident that
he had won her over, he cut in with address details, somewhere in Beverly Hills.
"I do so look forward to seeing you again. Until then, remember… the weed of
crime bears bitter fruit!"
It was one of his old radio catchphrases.
He did the laugh, the King laugh, the Shadow laugh. It properly chilled her
bones, but made her giggle, too.
She discovered Orson Welles at the centre of attention, on the cracked bottom
of a drained pool behind a rented bungalow. Three nude vampire girls waved
objects—a luminous skull, a Macbethian blooded dagger, a fully articulated
monster-bat puppet—at him, darting swiftly about his bulky figure, nipping at his
head with their Halloween props. The former boy wonder was on his knees,
enormous Russian shirt open to the waist, enormous (and putty) nose glistening
under the lights, enormous spade-beard flecked with red syrup. A man with a
handheld camera, the sort of thing she'd seen used to make home movies, circled
the odd quartet, not minding if the vampires got between him and his director-star.
A few other people were around the pool, holding up lights. No sound
equipment, though: this was being shot silent. Geneviève hung back, by the
bungalow, keeping out of the way of the work. She had been on film sets before,
at Cinecittà and in Hollywood, and knew this crew would be deemed skeletal for a
student short. If anyone else was directing, she'd have supposed he was shooting
makeup tests or a rehearsal. But with Welles, she knew that this was the real film.
It might end up with the dialogue out of sync, but it would be extraordinary.
Welles was rumbling through a soliloquy.
It took her a moment to realise what the undead girls were doing, then she had
to swallow astonished laughter. They were nude not for the titillation of an eventual
audience, for they wouldn't be seen. Nonreflecting nosferatu would be completely
invisible when the footage was processed. The girls were naked because clothes
would show up on film, though some elders—Dracula had been one—so violated
the laws of optics that they robbed any costume they wore of its reflection also,
sucking even that into their black hearts. In the final film, Welles would seem to be
persecuted by malignly animated objects—the skull, the dagger, and the bat Now
he tore at his garments and hair like Lear, careful to leave his nose alone, and
called out to the angry heavens. The girls flitted, slender and deathly white, not
feeling the cold, faces blank, hands busy.
This was the cheapest special effect imaginable.
Welles fell forward on his face, lay still for a couple of beats, and hefted
himself upright, out of character, calling "cut." His nose was mashed.
A dark woman with a clipboard emerged from shadows to confer with the
master. She wore a white fur coat and a matching hat. The vampire girls put the
props down and stood back, nakedness unnoticed by the crew members. One
took a cloak-like robe from a chair and settled it over her slim shoulders. She
climbed out of the pool.
Geneviève had not announced herself. The vampire girl fixed her eye. She
radiated a sense of being fed up with the supposed glamour of show business.
"Turning was supposed to help my career," she said. "I was going to stay
pretty forever and be a star. Instead, I lost my image. I had good credits. I was up
for the last season of Charlie's Angels. I'd have been the blonde."
"There's always the theatre," Geneviève suggested.
"That's not being a star," the girl said.
She was obviously a newborn, impatient with an eternity she didn't yet
understand. She wanted all her presents now, and no nonsense about paying dues
or waiting her turn. She had cropped blonde hair; very pale, almost translucent
skin stretched over bird-delicate bones; and a tight, hard, cute little face, with
sharp angles and glinting teeth, small reddish eyes. Her upper arm was marked by
parallel claw marks, not yet healed, like sergeant's stripes. Geneviève stored away
the detail.
"Who's that up there, Nico?" shouted one of the other girls.
Nico? Not the famous one, Geneviève supposed.
"Who?" the girl asked, out loud. "Famous?"
Nico—indeed, not the famous one—had picked the thought out of
Geneviève's mind. That was a common elder talent, but unusual in a newborn. If
she lasted, this girl might do well. She'd have to pick a new name though, to avoid
confusion with the singer of "All Tomorrow's Parties."
"Another one of us," the starlet said to the girl in the pool. "An invisible."
"I'm not here for a part," Geneviève explained. "I'm here to see Mr. Welles."
Nico looked at her askew. Why would a vampire who wasn't an actress be
here? Tumblers worked in the newborn's mind. It worked both ways: Nico could
pick words up, but she also sent them out. The girls in the pool were named Mink
and Vampi (please!), and often hung with Nico.
"You're old, aren't you?"
Geneviève nodded. Nico's transparent face showed eagerness.
"Does it come back? Your face in the mirror?"
"Mine hasn't."
Her face fell, a long way. She was a loss to the profession.
Her feelings were all on the surface, projected to the back stalls.
"Different bloodlines have different qualities," Geneviève said, trying to be
encouraging.
"So I heard."
Nico wasn't interested in faint hopes. She wanted instant cures.
"Is that Mademoiselle Dieudonné?" roared the familiar voice.
"Yes, Orson, it's me," she said.
Nico reacted, calculating. She was thinking that Geneviève might be an
important person.
"Then that's a wrap for the evening. Thank you, people. Submit your expenses
to Oja, and be back here tomorrow night, at midnight sharp. You were all
stupendous."
Oja was the woman with the clipboard: Oja Kodar, Welles's companion and
collaborator. She was from Yugoslavia, another refugee washed up on this
California shore.
Welles seemed to float out of the swimming pool, easily hauling his enormous
girth up the ladder by the strength of his own meaty arms. She was surprised at
how light he was on his feet.
He pulled off his putty nose and hugged her.
"Geneviève, Geneviève, you are welcome."
The rest of the crew came up, one by one, carrying bits of equipment.
"I thought I'd get Van Helsing's mad scene in the can," explained Welles.
"Neat trick with the girls."
The twinkle in his eye was almost Santa Clausian. He gestured hypnotically.
"Elementary movie magic," he said. "Georges Méliès could have managed it in
1897."
"Has it ever been done before? I don't recall seeing a film with the device."
"As a matter of fact, I think it's an invention of my own. There are still tricks to
be teased out of the cinema. Even after so many years—a single breath for you,
my dear—the talkies are not quite perfected. My little vampires may have careers
as puppeteers, animators. You'd never see their hands. I should shoot a short film,
for children."
"You've
been working on this for a long time?"
"I had the idea at about seven o'clock this evening," he said with a modest
chuckle. "This is Hollywood, my dear, and you can get anything with a phone call.
I got my vampires by ordering out, like pizza."
Geneviève guessed the invisible girls were hookers, a traditional career option
for those who couldn't make a showing in the movies. Some studio execs paid
good money to be roughed up by girls they'd pass over with contempt at cattle
calls. And vampires, properly trained, could venture into areas of pain and
pleasure a warm girl would find uncomfortable, unappetising, or unhealthy.
She noticed Nico had latched on to a young, male assistant and was alternately
flirting with him and wheedling at him for some favour. Welles was right: she could
have a career as a puppet mistress.
"Come through into the house, Geneviève," said Welles. "We must talk."
The crew and the girls bundled together. Oja, as production manager, arranged
for them to pool up in several cars and be returned to their homes or—in the case
of Nico, Mink, and Vampi—to a new club where there were hours to be spent
before the dawn. Gary, the cameraman, wanted to get the film to the lab and
hurried off on his own to an all-night facility. Many movie people kept vampire
hours without being undead.
There was an after buzz in the air. Geneviève wondered if it was genius, or had
some of the crew been sniffing drac to keep going. She had heard it was better
than speed. She assumed she would be immune to it; even as a blood drinker—
like all of her kind, she had turned by drinking vampire blood—she found the idea
of dosing her system with another vampire's powdered blood, diluted with the
devil knew what, disgusting.
Welles went ahead of her, into the nondescript bungalow, turning on lights as
he went. She looked back for a moment at the cast-off nose by the pool.
Van Helsing's mad scene?
She knew the subject of Welles's current project. He had mentioned to her that