The Vampire Sextette

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