by Marvin Kaye
breed, thanking Satan for eternal nightlife.
She just didn't know.
Maybe she was still undecided because she had never slipped into the
blackness of death. Kate Reed, her Victorian friend, had done the proper thing.
Kate's father-in-darkness, Harris, had drunk her blood and given of his own, then
let her die and come back, turned. Chandagnac, Geneviève's mediaeval father-indarkness, had worked on her for months. She had transformed slowly, coming
alive by night, shaking off the warm girt she had been.
In the last century, since Dracula came out of his castle, there had been a lot of
work done on the subject. It was no longer possible to disbelieve in vampires,
even in a country like the United States which was still comparatively free of them.
With the
nosferatu in the open, vampirism had to be incorporated into the
prevalent belief systems, and this was a scientific age. These days, everyone
generally accepted the "explanation" that the condition was a blood -borne
mutation, an evolutionary quirk adapting a strain of humankind for survival. But, as
geneticists probed ever further, mysteries deepened: vampires retained the DNA
pattern they were born with as warm humans, and yet they were different
creatures. And, despite a lot of cracked theorising, no one had ever convincingly
adjusted the laws of optics to account for the business with mirrors.
If there were vampires, there could be magic.
And Alucard's ritual—the mage's thirteen movies—might work. He could
come back, worse than ever.
Dracula.
She looked up from the city lights to the stars.
Was the Count out there, on some intangible plane, waiting to be summoned?
Reinvigorated by a spell in the beyond, thirsting for blood, vengeance, power?
What might he have learned in hell, that he could bring to the Earth?
She hated to think.
She drove through the studio gates shortly before dawn, waved on by the
uniformed guard. She was accepted as a part of Orson's army, somehow granted
an invisible armband by her association with the genius.
The Miracle Pictures lot was alive again. "If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!"
had run the self-mocking, double-edged slogan, all the more apt as the so-called
fifth-wheel major declined from mounting Technicolor spectacles like the 1939
version of
The Duelling Cavalier, with Errol Flynn and Fedora, to financing
drive-in dodos like Machete Maidens of Mora Tau, with nobody and her uncle.
In recent years, the fifty-year-old soundstages had mostly gone unused as Miracle
shot their product in the Philippines or Canada. The standing sets—seen in so
many vintage movies—had been torn down to make way for bland office
buildings where scripts were "developed" rather than shot. There wasn't even a
studio tour.
Now it was different.
Orson Welles was in power, and legions swarmed at his command, occupying
every department, beavering away in the service of his vision. They were
everywhere: gaffers, extras, carpenters, managers, accountants, makeup men,
effects technicians, grips, key grips, boys, best boys, designers, draughtsmen,
teamsters, caterers, guards, advisors, actors, writers, planners, plotters, doers,
movers, shakers.
Once Welles had said this was the best train set a boy could have. It was very
different from three naked girls in an empty swimming pool.
She found herself on Stage 1, the Transylvanian village set. Faces she
recognised were on the crew: Jack Nicholson, tearing through his lines with
exaggerated expressions; Oja Kodar, handing down decisions from above; Debbie
W. Griffith (in another life, she presumed), behind the craft services table; Dennis
Hopper, in a cowboy hat and sunglasses.
The stage was crowded with onlookers. Among the movie critics and TV
reporters were other directors—she spotted Spielberg, DePalma, and a shifty
Coppola—intent on kibbitzing on the master, demonstrating support for the
abused genius or suppressing poisonous envy. Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman,
and Jane Fonda were dressed up as villagers, rendered unrecognisable by makeup,
so desperate to be in this movie that they were willing to be unbilled extras.
Somewhere up there, in a platform under the roof, sat the big baby. The
visionary who would give birth to his Dracula. The unwitting magician who might,
this time, conjure more than even he had bargained for.
She scanned the rafters, a hundred feet or more above the studio floor. Riggers
crawled like pirates among the lights. Someone abseiled down into the village
square.
She was sorry Martin wasn't here. This was his dream.
A dangerous dream.
The Other Side of Midnight
A SCRIPT BY ORSON WELLES
BASED ON DRACULA, BY BRAM STOKER
Revised final, January 6,1981
1: An ominous chord introduces an extreme CU of a crucifix, held in a knotted
fist. It is sunset, we hear sounds of village life. We see only the midsection of the
VILLAGE WOMAN holding the crucifix. She pulls tight the rosary-like string from
which the cross hangs, like a strangling chord. A scream is heard off camera,
coming from some distance. The WOMAN whirls around abruptly to the left, in the
direction of the sound. Almost at once the camera pans in this direction, too, and
we follow a line of PEASANT CHILDREN, strung out hand in hand and dancing,
towards the INN, of the Transylvanian Village of Bistritz. We close on a leaded
window and pass through—the set opening up to let in the camera—to find
JONATHAN HARKER, a young Englishman with a tigerish smile, in the centre of a
tableau Breughel interior, surrounded by peasant activity, children, animals, etc. He
is framed by dangling bulbs of garlic, and the VILLAGE WOMAN's crucifix is
echoed by one that hangs on the wall. Everyone, including the animals, is frozen,
shocked. The scream is still echoing from the low wooden beams.
HARKER: What did I say?
The INNKEEPER crosses himself. The peasants mutter.
HARKER: Was it the place? Was it [relishing each syllable] Castle Dra-cu-la?
More muttering and crossing, HARKER shrugs and continues with his meal.
Without a cut, the camera pans around the cramped interior, to find MINA,
HARKER's new wife, in the doorway. She is huge-eyed and tremulous, more
impressed by "native superstitions" than her husband, but with an inner steel core
which will become apparent as JONATHAN's outward bluff crumbles under
assaults. Zither and fiddle music conveys the bustle of this border community.
MINA: Jonathan dear, come on. The coach.
JONATHAN flashes a smile, showing teeth that wouldn't shame a vampire, mina
doesn't see the beginnings of his viperish second face, but smiles indulgently,
hesitant JONATHAN pushes away his plate and stands, displacing children and
animals. He joins MINA and they leave, followed by our snakelike camera, which
almost jostles them as they emerge into the twilight Some of the crowd hold aloft
flaming torches, which make shadow-featured flickering masks of the worn
peasant faces.
JONATHAN, hefting a heavy bag, and MINA, fluttering at every
dis
traction, walk across the village square to a waiting COACH. Standing in their
path, a crow-black figure centre-frame, is the VILLAGE WOMAN, eyes wet with
fear, crucifix shining. She bars the HARKERS' way, like the Ancient Mariner, and
extends the crucifix.
VILLAGE WOMAN: If you must go, wear this. Wear it for your mother's sake. It
will protect you.
JONATHAN bristles, but MINA defuses the situation by taking the cross.
MINA: Thank you. Thank you very much.
The WOMAN crosses herself, kisses MINA's cheek, and departs. JONATHAN
gives an eyebrows-raised grimace, and MINA shrugs, placatory.
COACHMAN: All aboard for Borgo Pass, Visaria, and Klausenburg.
We get into the coach with the HARKERS, who displace a fat MERCHANT and
his "secretary"
ZITA, and the camera gets comfortable opposite them. They
exchange looks, and MINA holds
JONATHAN's hand. The coach lurches and
moves off—it is vital that the camera remain fixed on the HARKERS to cover the
progress from one soundstage to the next, with the illusion of travel maintained by
the projection of reflected Transylvanian mountain road scenery onto the window.
We have time to notice that the MERCHANT and ZITA are wary of the HARKERS; he
is middle-aged and balding, and she is a flashy blonde. The coach stops.
COACHMAN (v.o.): Borgo Pass.
JONATHAN: Mina, here's our stop.
MERCHANT: Here?
MINA (proud): A carriage is meeting us here, at midnight. A nobleman's.
MERCHANTS: Whose carriage?
JONATHAN: Count Dracula's.
JONATHAN, who knows the effect it will have, says the name with defiance and
mad eyes. The MERCHANT is terror-struck, and ZITA hisses like a cat, shrinking
against him. The HARKERS, and the camera, get out of the coach, which hurries
off, the COACHMAN whipping the horses to make a quick getaway. We are alone
in a mountain pass, high above the Carpathians. Night sounds: wolves, the wind,
bats. The full moon seems for a moment to have eyes, DRACULA's hooded eyes.
JONATHAN (pointing): You can see the castle.
MINA: It looks so… desolate, lonely.
JONATHAN: No wonder the Count wants to move to London. He must be
raging with cabin fever, probably ready to tear his family apart and chew their
bones. Like Sawney Beane.
MINA: The Count has a family?
JONATHAN (delighted): Three wives. Like a Sultan. Imagine how that'll go
down in Piccadilly.
Silently, with no hoof or wheel sounds, a carriage appears, the DRIVER a black,
faceless shape. The HARKERS climb in, but this time the camera rises to the top of
the coach, where the driver has vanished. We hover as the carriage moves off, a
large bat flapping purposefully over the lead horses, and trundles along a narrow,
vertiginous mountain road towards the castle. We swoop ahead of the carriage,
becoming the eyes of the bat, and take a flying detour from the road, allowing us a
false perspective view of the miniature landscape to either side of the full-side road
and carriage, passing beyond the thick rows of pines to a whited scrape in the
hillside that the HARKERS do not see, an apparent chalk quarry which we realise
consists of a strew of complete human skeletons, in agonized postures, skulls and
rib cages broken, the remains of thousands and thousands of murdered men,
women, children, and babies. Here and there, skeletons of armoured horses and
creatures between wolf or lion and man. This gruesome landscape passes under
us, and we close on CASTLE DRACULA, a miniature constructed to allow our
nimble camera to close on the highest tower and pass down a stone spiral stairway
that affords COVERT access to the next stage…
… and the resting chamber of DRACULA and his BRIDES. We stalk through a
curtain of cobweb, which parts unharmed, and observe as the three shroud-clad
BRIDES rise from their boxes, flitting about before us. Two are dark and feral, one
is blonde and waiflike. We have become DRACULA and stalk through the
corridors of his castle, brass-bound oaken doors opening before us. Footsteps do
not echo, and we pass mirrors that reveal nothing—reversed sets under glass, so
as not to catch our crew—but a spindle-fingered, almost animate shadow is cast,
impossibly long arms reaching out, pointed head with bat-flared ears momentarily
sharp against a tapestry. We move faster and faster through the castle, coming out
into the great hallway at the very top of a wide staircase. Very small, at the bottom
of the steps, stand JONATHAN and MINA, beside their luggage. Sedately, we fix on
them and move downwards, our cloaked shadow contracting. As we near the
couple, we see their faces: JONATHAN awestruck, almost in love at first sight,
ready to become our slave; MINA horrified, afraid for her husband, but almost on
the point of pity. The music, which has passed from lusty human strings to
ethereal theremin themes, swells, conveying the ancient, corrupt, magical soul of
DRACULA. We pause on the steps, six feet above the HARKERS, then leap
forwards as MINA holds up the crucifix, whose blinding light fills the frame. The
music climaxes, a sacred choral theme battling the eerie theremin.
2: CU on the ancient face, points of red in the eyes, hair, and moustaches
shocks of pure white, pulling back to show the whole stick-thin frame wrapped in
unrelieved black.
THE COUNT: I… am… Dracula.
Welles had rewritten the first scenes—the first shot—of the film to make full
use of a new gadget called a Louma crane, which gave the camera enormous
mobility and suppleness. Combined with breakaway sets and dark passages
between stages, the device meant that he could open The Other Side of Midnight
with a single tracking shot longer and more elaborate than the one he had pulled
off in Touch of Evil.
Geneviève found Welles and his cinematographer on the road to Borgo Pass, a
full-size mock-up dirt track complete with wheel ruts and milestones. The nightblack carriage, as yet not equipped with a team of horses, stood on its marks, the
crest of Dracula on its polished doors. To either side were forests, the nearest
trees half life-size, and those beyond getting smaller and smaller as they stretched
out to the studio backdrop of a Carpathian night. Up ahead was Dracula's castle, a
nine-foot-tall edifice, currently being sprayed by a technician who looked like a
colossal man, griming and fogging the battlements.
The two men were debating a potentially thorny moment in the shot, when the
camera would be detached from the coach and picked up by an aerial rig. Hanging
from the ceiling was a contraption that looked like a Wright brothers -Georges
Méliès collaboration, a man-shaped flying frame with a camera hooked onto it, and
a dauntless operator inside.
She hated to think what all this was costing.
Welles saw her, and grinned broadly.
"Gené, Gené," he welcomed. "You must look at this cunning bit of business.
Even if I do say so myself, it's an absolute stroke of genius. A simple solution to a
complex problem. When Midnight comes out, they'll all wonder how I did it."
He chuckled.
"Orson," she said, "we have to talk. I've found so
me things out As you asked.
About Mr. Alucard."
He took that aboard. He must have a thousand and one mammoth and tiny
matters to see to, but one more could be accommodated. That was part of his
skill as a director, being a master strategist as well as a visionary artist.
She almost hated to tell him.
"Where can we talk in private?" she asked.
"In the coach," he said, standing aside to let her step up.
The prop coach, as detailed inside as out, creaked a lot as Welles shifted his
weight. She wondered if the springs could take it.
She laid out the whole thing.
She still didn't know who John Alucard was, though she supposed him some
self-styled last disciple of the King Vampire, but she told Welles what she thought
he was up to.
"He doesn't want a conjurer," Welles concluded, "but a sorcerer, a magician."
Geneviève remembered Welles had played Faustus on stage.
"Alucard needs a genius, Orson," she said, trying to be a comfort.
Welles's great brows were knit in a frown that made his nose seem like a
baby's button. This was too great a thing to get even his mind around.
He asked the forty-thousand-dollar question: "And do you believe it will work?
This conjuring of Dracula?"
She dodged it. "John Alucard does."
"Of that I have no doubt, no doubt at all," rumbled Welles. "The colossal
conceit of it, the enormity of the conception, boggles belief. All this, after so long,
all this can be mine, a real chance to, as the young people so aptly say, do my
thing. And it's part of a Black Mass. A film to raise the devil himself. No mere
charlatan could devise such a warped, intricate scheme."
With that, she had to agree.
"If Alucard is wrong, if magic doesn't work, then there's no harm in taking his
money and making my movie. That would truly be beating the devil."
"But if he's right…"
"Then I, Orson Welles, would not merely be Faustus, nor even Prometheus, I