The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

Please Demeter

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter
USA/UK/Canada/India/Germany/
Italy/Sweden/Switzerland/Malta 2023
Directed by André Øvredal
Universal/Amblin

Warning: Slight spoilers nipping at your neck.

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, directed by André Øvredal who gave us Troll Hunter (reviewed by me here) and The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (reviewed here), is a film I’ve been wanting to see on these shores for a while now. It was due for a cinema release in the UK last year (as it got everywhere else, it would seem) but Lionsgate, who were to be the distributors over here, suddenly pulled it and themselves out of the UK market altogether at that time (is what I’ve read but I’m sure I’ve seen their logo on stuff since then). So it never got a general release over here... not at the cinema nor on physical media (and I suspect not on streaming yet, either). So I just got fed up waiting and took a route to see it which, to be fair, was available to me even a month or so before the film was originally due to be released... I just wanted to see it at a cinema at the time. But, don’t worry, I will be giving some money back to the company at some point soon because I will definitely be shipping over a US Blu Ray of this one pretty sharpish (when I can afford the exorbitant postage that country charges these days).

Okay, so if you don’t recognise the reference in the title... well it’s more than spelled out in the opening of the film but, basically, this is a take on the events that happened from the captain’s log of the Demeter, on its journey taking 50 boxes of soil from Transylvania to where it washed up as a wreck at Whitby in Yorkshire. As told via a brief section of logs in Chapter 7 of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Now, the film is well made and well acted by the likes of Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi and genre star Liam Cunningham as the Captain of the Demeter. That being said, if you’re a Dracula purist, then you should be forewarned that, although the start and end point are pretty much the same... the film does take some liberties with the events as described in Stoker’s original novel. So, yeah... don’t expect a verbatim adaptation of those paragraphs within the chapter. They... sort of match up.

That out of the way... when did a screen version of the Dracula story (even a small part of it such as this) ever match up to the original Stoker very well anyway (not very often, truth be told)? So, it’s a good addition to the body of cinematic Dracula tales over the years and, as it happens, one of the more competent and entertaining ones. The writers on this one have managed to populate the story with some likeable characters you will absolutely care about when confronted with peril and, it’s a quite likeable horror romp, to be sure. There are even a few jump scares thrown into the mix.

And let’s not forget the look of the Dracula ‘creature’ in this. He’s quite obviously based on the Count Orlock variant version as seen in F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror in 1922 and various other iterations of the character taking that classic look over the years. Indeed there’s a remake of Nosferatu hitting screens again at the end of this year. And the creature here is realised very well. I was a little worried about how they were going to marry up the beast here with what Dracula was going on to do when he got to England but the epilogue of the story, so to speak, shows him blending into things quite nicely. However, unlike the original version of Nosferatu and the 1931 version of Dracula, there is no Renfield character in this iteration.

Now there are a few clichés thrown into the mix. For instance, as soon as you see there’s a ship’s dog, you just know he’s going to be one of the vampire’s first snacks. And sure enough, the dog along with all the livestock are slaughtered fairly early on in the picture (thus destroying the crew’s meat rations in the process). But, there is also a young kid in this too and, a big round of applause to the film makers for not doing the usual and having him spared the horror of the voyage. He actually comes to a very gruesome end at some point (yeah, that’s the spoiler folks... you were warned). To be fair, though, if you’ve read the novel you’ll know there are no survivors (even though there’s a big ‘well actually’ moment for the film... perhaps the producers wanted a sequel but... hmm... they’ll need to do a prequel too, to do it properly).

But, lots of nice shots, with a nice colour palette and lots of creaking sound effects, as the ship goes on its journey and various, diminishing crewmen are picked off one by one as they stand watch each night. Unfortunately, not all the laws of vampire mythology seem to hold sway here. Yes, sunlight burns and kills those poor souls that Dracula has started drinking and so he and the majority of his prey (those who are not having regular blood transfusions... it gets complicated, okay?) only come out when the sun is down. Having said that, though, cruciforms/crosses seem to have absolutely no effect on the creature at all. Similarly, the crew underestimate it all the way through by not being familiar with the various vampire laws and traditions, such as a modern cinematic audience is... so pretty much all of their time they believe shooting this creature will be their salvation.

But, any inconsistencies with the source material aside... I had a really good time with The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, it has to be said. I’m going up to the first day of the 2024 Frigthfest later today (at time of writing), where there is actually a lone, subtitled for hard of hearing print being shown as a ‘one off’ over the course of the five days (although I’ve not got a ticket to that one myself) so I’m hoping some nice stall holder has got a US Blu Ray of it in his merchandise stall, if I’m lucky.* Either way, this is one of the better of the current crop of vampire films being made these days and I’d thoroughly recommend this one to fans of that subgenre. Much fangs for this one.

*No such luck but a postage free copy from WOW HD arrived through my door a few days ago.

Dracula (2020)

Leaving Demeter Running

Dracula (2020)
Airdate: 1st, 2nd and 3rd January 2020
BBC 1 Three Episodes

Warning: Yep... spoilers residing within.
Don’t read this if you don’t want to know.

So this was unexpected.

As you know I find the work of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss a bit hit and miss... sometimes I find it brilliant and at other times, beyond irritating and disappointing. Well, I have to say, this one exceeded any hopes I had for it and managed to be quite spectacularly entertaining throughout each of the three episodes. Quite wonderful stuff.

Now I complained bitterly just recently and on this very blog, when the BBC did a free and easy excuse for an ‘adaptation’ of War Of The Worlds... mutilated more like it (which I reviewed here). I would almost have been much more happy to accept it, I suspect, if there had been at least one ‘straight’ adaptation of the novel before the BBC did what they did to it... possibly not because, it was indeed terrible but at least there would have been a history of adaptation so that people could now have a go at legitimately subverting the source.

Dracula is completely different territory. There have been lots of good adaptations already... not of the novel which, I suspect, still hasn’t been done properly, but of the 1924 stage version Hamilton Dean wrote from the Bram Stoker novel, which had major simplifications to the book and which he knew would play better as a visual spectacle. In fact, it’s quite likely that most of the versions subsequent to the two 1931 versions of Dracula from Universal are based on the John L. Balderston revisions to that adaptation, if memory serves.

So I’m not uptight about bothering to do the novel again and also, there have been enough straight adaptations now of the play that I can easily forgive people doing their own thing with Stoker’s fascinating Count. After all, how would I be able to enjoy movies like Son Of Dracula, Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein or Dracula Vs Frankenstein without being able to let go of the original. So, yeah, I wasn’t expecting to see a straight adaptation which is just as well, although Moffat and Gatiss have certainly infused this new version with a lot of the same plot points, often disguised and embedded into the DNA of the thing rather than ticking the boxes in a more conventional manner.

Also, they have been rather clever for people who have enjoyed various versions of Dracula over the years and, I have to say, they won me over really quickly. After the setting up of a ‘start to mid-point’ framing device in the first episode (a flashback and then forward technique which they use, to an extent, in all three episodes), the first ten minutes or so of Episode One is almost a straight remake of the early scenes of the two 1931 Universal versions. Right down to the line readings and arrangement of the dialogue. Honestly, the only things which were missing and, it has to be said once I’d seen what they were doing, pining for, were the girl quoting “Around the rugged rock...” and the appearance of a total non-sequiter of an armadillo in Castle Dracula. And, honestly, if they had actually put the armadillo in I would have been ecstatic.

As it was though, the way the story is done in the first episode as a recollection from the now ‘vamped up’ Jonathan Harker (played by John Heffernan) and Sister Agatha Van Helsing (played by Dolly Wells, who also plays her ancestor in the third episode), was absolutely ingenious and though a good deal of the ‘surprise’ moments were, actually, not all that surprising, Moffat and Gatiss do have a few moments up their sleeve and, especially at the end of the second episode, did manage to blind side me a couple of times... so that’s good.

The second episode was actually my favourite, which tells of the journey to Whitby on the Demeter but, with a wonderful twist at the end and, honestly, quite a different version of the voyage which was established cinematically, originally, in the 1922 version of Nosferatu (one of my two blog title namesakes). And, frankly, the final twist of the second... which has a much different line reading from when we see it again when revisited in the third (Dolly Wells is definitely delivering it as Agatha at the end of episode two and as Dr. Helsing in the third)... is bloody brilliant and reminded me of why I loved some of the early episodes of Sherlock so much.

There’s absolutely loads of good stuff I could say about the set design, the scoring, the way the camera frames some of the set ups, the graphic, artifical dream landscape glimpsed in the third episode etc but this would have to be a long review and that stuff is perhaps much better touched upon in a book about the show. But asides from some brilliant direction and top notch pacing throughout... often maintained by cutting the story in a non-linear way to break the flow and stop things from going on too long... we have to give credit, too, to the two brilliant actors who absolutely make this show their own.

I don’t know who Claes Bang is but his portrayal of Dracula and what he makes of the sometimes exquisitely playful lines he is given are absolutely first class. The chameleon shift from charming to brutal and back again really does help lift the show past what it might have been and you have to love this stuff.

But then... even he is upstaged in this. Dolly Wells’ performance as Agatha Van Helsing and her modern day equivalent (and sometimes a cross pollination of both due to Agatha’s blood-memory being in the blood the modern incarnation of her drinks), is absolutely fantastic. The way she pulls off the wit of the lines and matches Claes Bang blow by verbal blow is just incredible and I would love to see more of this lady in this kind of role. Van Helsing and Dracula have absolutely brilliant chemistry together... which is quite right, after all.

And of course, the other thing is, despite there being no armadillo, the way that Moffat and Gatiss pepper the show with both subtle and often quite blatant references to, not just Dracula’s cinematic and literary history but also other gothic or cinematically sympathetic moments, is wonderful and enrich the show for some of us who might be getting a bit tired of the abundance of Dracula at this point.

So yeah, asides from the Universal and Balderston parallels I mentioned earlier, we had the castle in the first episode actually ‘played’ by the exact same castle that F.W. Murnau shot his 1922 Nosferatu variant of the story in. There’s a wonderful moment in the first episode, where Harker runs into the full on ‘younged up’ version of Dracula which is absolutely an obvious homage to the ‘animal predator’ version of Christopher Lee’s wonderful portrayal from the Hammer Dracula movies... red contact lenses too (or some CGI trickery).

My stand out favourites, among other things you may or may not have caught, were the opening of the second episode being an homage to The Beast With Five Fingers, a version of Vincent Price’s sunglasses from the AIP movie version of Tomb Of Ligeia and a blue version of the carpet pattern from Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining adorning Dr. Seward’s wallpaper. My favourite one of all, though, was the hospital room Dr. Helsing is a patient in during episode three... AD/072... being a less than subtle reference to my all-time favourite Hammer Dracula movie, Dracula AD 1972. Wonderful stuff.

it was perhaps less than wonderful to see the guy fro the annoying Cineworld campaign show up as the Texan, Quincey, from the novel but... I guess it’s good that he’s getting work in the business and I wish him well. However, the supporting cast of loads of modern character actors that you never really remember the names of was also superb and there were even some ironic vampire names amongst the supporting characters too (cough... Lord Ruthven... cough).

Finally... and I know some people had a problem with it... but I also loved the ending. Not just the sacrificial romantic sentiment but also the way it was shot... which was an absolute dead steal from the movie version of The Final Programme (reviewed here) which is one of my favourite movies of one of my favourite literary heroes. It almost even kind of made sense at this point because this version of Dracula, transposed to modern times, was beginning to get a little more like Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius character as the show progressed to its conclusion so, I’m absolutely convinced that Moffat and Gatiss would do something interesting with that character, should Moorcock ever give his blessing.

The only flaw I could find in the production... asides from Agatha’s floating dead body still being visible and 'out of time' in the shot as Dracula leaves his underwater coffin at the end of the second episode... was the fact that, at the end of the first episode... Mina definitely invites ‘Johnny’ into the chamber, specifically by name... and not Dracula. It could be argued, perhaps, that since Dracula was, quite literally, wearing Harker’s face at this point that he was also, in fact, Harker but I think that’s pushing it a bit. Still, there could be a case to be made so let’s just sweep that little slip up under the bloodstains and enjoy the production for what it is.

And that’s me done with the new Dracula. Absolutely loved it for many reasons and I’ll definitely be picking up the score CD at the end of January and the Blu Ray in a month or two. A solid and interesting effort and a worthy and blisteringly entertaining addition to the vast array of cinematic and television Dracula’s of the last 100 years. Beautiful work.

Dracula Untold

Taste The Vlad Of Dracula

Dracula Untold
USA/Japan
Directed by Gary Shore 
Universal Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: I guess this is technically somewhat spoilery.

Okay so, after seeing the recent version of The Mummy (reviewed here) I was reminded that the new Universal Dark Universe* monster movies were originally to have begun with this one, Dracula Untold. However, I don’t think this one did very well at the box office and so, even though it would fit like a glove, hand in hand with the new version of The Mummy, Universal have stated that this is not part of that new cycle.

Now, this is a film I totally ignored at the cinema (like a fair few people, as it turns out) because the trailer looked truly dismal and more about Vlad The Impaler, the real life figure whom Bram Stoker’s Dracula was said to be inspired by, rather than actually treating him in his more common version of a contemporary, womanising vampire. And, strangely enough, that’s actually a fairly accurate portrayal of what this film is about, although the main character, played here by Luke Evans, does take possession of various vampiric and demonic powers fairly promptly in the course of the story. However, I’d noticed that, just lately, this film has been getting some good word of mouth from people on Twitter and so, when my local Computer Exchange had a Blu Ray of the movie going for only £3... I figured I’d give it a look.

Well... you have to give the cast and crew some brownie points for trying.

The acting is all pretty good from Luke Evan’s Vlad to his lover played by Sarah Gadon and, of course, Dominic Cooper as Mehmed. We even have Charles Dance on hand as a sort of ‘almost but not quite’ Nosferatu style, old vampire geezah who strikes a bargain with Vlad when he is in desperate trouble. Added to this is the really quite nice cinematography and for anything else negative you might want to lay at the feet of the movie makers here, you have to give it credit for being really nice to look at, at the very least.

However, while it’s certainly a ‘far from terrible’ movie, it’s hardly a great one and I personally believe that its chief problem is that the script and dialogue is just not that great and the fairly dull structure of the film is really not doing it any favours... especially when it comes to the sensibilities of a modern audience. To say it’s singular in its storytelling would be pretty accurate and the structure is like something out of an old Universal or Republic serial... just without the variance in locations and inventiveness which was often on hand in the best of those.

So the story structure is... Vlad comes back from his wars and discovers the source of the power he will use later in the film. Vlad is threatened with something horrible and, when he attempts to comply, his strong moral centre (seriously... this is Vlad The Impaler?) means he refuses and brings the full wrath of his enemies on him. So he strikes a deal for ‘supernatural vampire powers’ and fights the armies, moves his people somewhere else, fights the armies all over again... then loses both his motivating spirit and becomes a full fledged vampire... so he creates a vampire army to finish the war off once and for all. And.. that’s more or less it.

The film has some pretty major flaws other than the trite dialogue and singular structure, however. I mean the writers are on a losing battle trying to make Vlad Tepes somehow a bit of a family man who all his army and close friends love... without denying the fact that he went around impaling his enemies in truly horrible ways. Um... yeah, it doesn’t quite work does it? Especially when he continues to do that rubbish later in the film and everyone is still all... “Alright geezah! How’s it going? We all missed you.” Luke Evans, who is a pretty good actor (see him in Professor Marston And The Wonder Women as soon as possible, reviewed here), does his best with the material but it’s a seriously conflicted kind of script to be honest.

Another stupid thing is that, while I would never have predicted that the film was going to go off and do something interesting at some point, there’s a whole thing where the head vampire played by Charlie Dance strikes a bargain with Vlad. With great vampire power comes great vampire responsibility and Dance wants to lose his vampire powers forever and pas them onto somebody else (an outcome which is clearly contradicted in the final scene of the movie, by the way). So Vlad has the useful, army crushing vampire powers for only three days unless he gives into his unnatural thirst and drinks blood before then... in which case he’s cursed forever and is bound to walk the countryside only at night because sunlight is lethal to him (something else which is totally contradicted by the last scene, by the way). So I guess it’s a case of Vlad-u-added Tax in terms of his unearthly powers. And, since you know this is a Dracula origin story... you know he’s going to have to drink blood at some point before the end so, well, it’s not going to be that surprising is it?

Oh yeah... and about those vamped up, ramped up powers. After discovering that if he runs through the forest fast enough he can become a swarm of bats (there might be some unintentional humour in this scene... just saying), he starts doing it a lot more and that’s how he defeats thousands of men in an army single handedly... by becoming bats and, presumably, batting them to death. The fight scenes are not that great or clear, to be honest. Oh, and there’s a scene where he faces off against the villain of the piece, who worked out he’s a vampire (the bat swarming must have given it away) and somehow deduced he’s got a somewhat powerful allergy to silver. So, you know, he fights him in a tent standing in loads of silver coins and thus weakening Vlad in the final battle to, presumably, build up tension in the audience in case they think he somehow can’t win. Which is ridiculous because, you know, he’s Dracula now. And, yes, there is a bit where the villain throws silver coins at our hero in much the same way as somebody might throw sand in the face of an opponent. There might have been vague, smiling disbelief at the silliness of it all at this point... from this member of the audience, anyway.

Now, all the above taken into account, it really isn’t a terrible movie... just not a good one. The film features an epilogue scene set in the modern day featuring our vampish hero encountering Mina Harker for the first time and the presence of Charles Dance as a voyeuristic background figure... thus setting it up to possibly be the first past of that Dark Universe sequence. Now, all things being equal, I really wouldn’t mind if Luke Evans returns as Dracula in one of the new Universal Monster movies because, as completely ludicrous as this film gets in some places... it’s fine as a basis for a character which could be better written. So, yeah, bit of a wasted opportunity here but we’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I end this review by saying that, unless you have a lot more than just a casual investment in the Dracula character and his history, then Dracula Untold is probably not going to ring your bell very much. If you’re into historical horror, there might be some bright spots for you but, for the most part... I was certainly Vlad when it was all over.

*It looks like the Dark Universe franchise at Universal has, since the time the first draft of this review was written, stalled somewhat... possibly for good. I hope it comes back to our screens soon though.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb

Reap Throat

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb
1971 Spain Directed by Seth Holt & Michael Carreras 
UK London FrightFest screening 27th August 2017.

Warning: Spoilers towards the end.

Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb is one of my top six favourite Hammer movies and, as such, I was pleased to find that a new restoration for Blu Ray release was being premiered at this year’s FrightFest. Although it is one of my favourites, it must have been at least a decade since I last watched it and I found, on rewatching this now, that I’d forgotten quite a few things about the film since I’d last seen it. I also found I’d got it mixed up in my head with Bram Stoker’s original story, The Jewel Of Seven Stars, on which this film (along with a few other movies) is based.

The film stars the absolutely wonderful Valerie Leon in a dual role as Amanda and the ‘mummy’ of the title, Tera. While this isn’t the first movie to depict a female mummy (I’m sure that, at the very least, Santo or some other Mexican character probably got to it first and there was also a TV adaptation of this Stoker story which aired just before this was released), it’s still a pretty rare phenomenom in film and you can kind of see the influence of this and how it possibly paved the way for such modern female Mummys as Patricia Velasquez in The Mummy Returns and Sofia Boutella in the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, The Mummy (reviewed here).

Miss Leon is just amazing here in a role which is perhaps a little less talky than you would expect but, then again, there are a lot of stretches in this movie which are done without dialogue and the film is, arguably, better for it. Her mere presence tends to dominate every scene she’s in so I’m surprised we didn’t see a lot more of her in similar roles over the years. It’s an interesting character in that one never quite knows, as the film progresses, if Amanda is the main protagonist or antagonist as the grip of Tera’s legacy takes a hold of her mind at various moments.

In this, the character is joined boy her ‘boyfriend straight out of the sixties... luv’, played by Mark Edwards. In a bizarre twist, as in-jokes go, the character he plays is named Tod Browning, after the director of the US version of the 1931 Dracula (and strangely not after the director of the 1932 film The Mummy, which would maybe have made a little more sense). The film has a few sly little references, actually, such as a To Let sign on a house being named after Hammer’s own Christopher Neame and Roy Skeggs.

Although the plot is fairly close to Stoker’s original novel (or perhaps novella?), it’s a little bit of a departure in terms of where the narrative direction goes... it’s anything but formulaic... and this helps mark it out as being from a particular period in Hammer’s cinematic history when they were being a bit more experimental (perhaps that’s why it’s one of my favourites). That being said, the film does have a ‘Mummy’s curse’... or perhaps legacy would be a better word in this case... as Amanda was born as her mother died, at the exact time her father discovered and opened the tomb in Egypt which housed Tera (as in the original story, if memory recalls). She is destined to become Tera reborn if certain elements, years later, are brought together when the Seven Stars align in the right way on a certain date. Of course, the party who discovered the tomb have all split up in later years and each have one of these essential artefacts in their ownership. However, by the power of Tera’s severed hand, the artefacts are slowly brought together as the ‘body count’ element of the film gets underway. As the distinguished Kim Newman said in his introduction to the screening, there’s a heck of a lot of throat ripping in this movie and, for some reason, people seem to have their throats torn out by a magical, invisible enemy and not directly by the creeping severed hand which is rendered, as it is in every other film featuring a creeping severed hand, in a way which in no way detracts from the comedic element of having... well... a creeping severed hand (wow... I managed to work that phrase three times into the same sentence and am still not bored with typing it... I’ll see if I can return to it at some point).

The film has a troubled production history... Peter Cushing started filming in this one as Amanda’s father, Professor Julian Fuchs, but his wife died very early on in the filming and he left to be replaced by the always excellent Andrew Keir, who had previously played iconic character Professor Bernard Quatermass in Hammer’s own excellent remake of Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed here) four years before... a role he would return to decades later on the radio. As if that was not bad enough, director Seth Holt, whom Mr. Newman told us tended to know exactly how his movies would slot together in his head, died half way through production and Michael Carreras took over to carry on shooting and editing. Alas, Holt never told anybody how the film would slot together in the editing room and so, despite having a script, there are probably some differences in the way it was put together as opposed to what it was supposed to look like. Perhaps this jigsaw puzzle of an exercise explains why Miss Leon’s night gown seems to inexplicably change colour in a scene following on from another... maybe the footage was supposed to be taking place on another night rather than as seen here (did anyone else notice that or is my mind playing tricks on me?). Indeed, some scenes like the death of a character in his car are pieced together in a truly abstract manner and make it something of an expressionist piece, although I suspect the original intent may have been quite different. It’s a neat solution if not all the footage was available to be put together (perhaps a creeping severed hand absconded with the film stock)... never mind the fact that a pair of characters react instantly to the death, even though at least one of them couldn’t have known about it yet. Again, possibly an editing mistake or even, as is such the case with a lot of questionable moments in modern movies, an editing decision.

Everyone is, of course, marvellous in this picture, which has a whole host of familiar British character actors (although, alas, not Hammer regular Michael Ripper, as this was the only Hammer Mummy movie not to feature him). We also have a more sinister... ‘almost but not quite but maybe he is depending on a certain point of view’... villain of a character played absolutely brilliantly by James Villiers, who some might remember best as the lead villain in the second of Richard Johnson’s Bullldog Drummond movies, Some Girls Do.

In addition to the sterling cast, though, we have a tremendously loose atmosphere which, admittedly, doesn’t do much for the pacing but certainly gives the film a very strange vibe to it and which I truly think does the movie a lot of good. There’s some wonderful shot compositions using vertical shapes in one sequence and some truly amazing camerawork in a scene where the camera just pans around speedily at weird Dutch angles in an insane asylum as the laughter and wails of the patients play on the soundtrack to a fairly disconcerting effect. Add to this the great Tristram Cary’s not so subtle but extremely striking score to the film and you have a sure fire winner. Add in Tera’s amazingly ornate costume which, as Kim Newman pointed out... nobody in the world could have worn as well as Valerie Leon... and you have a minor but no less potent piece of iconic Hammer Horror imagery added into the mix too.

One thing about the Hammer films of this specific period which always got me was their unbelievably bleak endings. In the original TV serial of Quatermass And The Pit, for example, things are all wrapped up happily by the good Professor when he delivers a speech telling people what just happened and why everything is going to be fine for a while, if I’m remembering correctly. The Hammer film version eschews that ending and just concentrates on a spent Professor Quatermass and his female companion as they look on silently recovering from the destruction caused in the last twenty or so minutes of the film. It’s far bleaker and Hammer had a phase where all their films were ending with this kind of pessimistic atmosphere and this one is no exception. Bram Stoker revised his original story years later to give it a far more optimistic and upbeat ending to what it had in his original text but the Hammer film has a much more ambiguous ending. It has been noted that this is the first time Hammer had filmed a Mummy movie where the Mummy wasn’t swathed in bandages and that’s quite correct except... in the ending that claim possibly comes into question. As the Professor’s house falls in on him and kills two of the characters, including the Professor, we have a little scene where one of the characters has survived and is wrapped in bandages for her wounds in a hospital. It’s Valerie Leon again, her eyes are quite distinctive (as they need to be here) but, the film leaves us with the question as to which version of Valerie Leon it is... Amanda or Tera. Actually, if you listen to one of the nurses mention her state of undress when she was brought in, I would have to conclude that it’s definitely Tera who survives the movie to live and rip throats another day but I guess the case could be argued either way. Whatever the answer is, the camera freezes on her open eyes peaking from behind the bandages to give us another grim ending to a Hammer Horror.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb has been nicely restored here and if you’ve never seen it before then this is probably the best version to catch... since they seem to have sorted out their ‘day for night’ photography shenanigans from the previous release of the film. So it’s good news that this latest version will be out as a new Blu Ray/DVD later in the year, then. Certainly a nice thing for those Hammer enthusiasts out there to add to their Christmas list, no doubt. I know I’ll be after this one, for sure. Now if they could just do the same kind of Blu Ray corrections for Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, I’d be even happier. 

Wordsworth Classics Guest Blog

Will The Real Protagonist Please Stand Up?

My look at the two main archetypes of heroes in literature and film can be found here as a guest blog at Wordsworth Editions.

Dracula's Heir

Heir Raising

Dracula's Heir: An Interactive Mystery
by Sam Stall 
Quirk Books 
ISBN: 9781594742859

Well this is a very nice idea, I must say.

In this modern age where the Kindle and other such reading devices have, for better or worse, taken such a hold on the international reading market, it was nice to hold in my hands a rather unusual volume which prides itself, almost, on giving the reader an interactive experience which is more of a tactile one. That is to say, although I’m sure the contents of this book could be fairly accurately reproduced in an electronic form, to do so would be to miss the point somewhat and take away a lot from the charm of the book... it would lose almost everything in translation to a virtual realm, I fear.

To explain, Dracula’s Heir comes with the strap line “An Interactive Mystery” but, this is not interaction in the sense that most youngsters would understand it today. This is a puzzle of a book, a whodunnit if you like, with the emphasis being placed more on the “Who is the vampire?” aspect of that question at the heart of this story. But the way in which the story within the story is presented, reveals another mystery... Why is the author of this work in danger? If you solve the riddle of who is the vampire and just what their link is with the original Bram Stoker novel Dracula, then you will also, I expect, have the answer to the original question of the fictional author’s own hasty mortality.

To find the solution to this conundrum, you read through the book and, at various regular and random intervals, you come across sealed or ‘bound in’ pieces of printed paraphernalia which you can study at your leisure to help in finding clues to the story at hand. This is a sequel to the original novel but it takes the premise that Dracula was actually a true account of the happenings involving the real people in the book... and that Stoker’s account of their adventure is seen from the time of the events to be a highly fictionalised fancy instead of what it is for the people in the book... a recording of the nightmarish events of their very real life.

Starting off with an author telling how he came to be in possession of all the wonderful artefacts dotted about the book, we then start reading the post-Dracula journal extracts of the Dr. Seward character from the original novel, and this account is what takes up the bulk of the book, taking little pauses here and there while you study the wonderful clues and “interactive” items dotted throughout; such as handwritten letters, old photographs, a reproduction of two pages of a Victorian newspaper, an extract from Renfield’s journal and even a mysterious unpublished chapter or Bram Stoker’s Dracula which was withheld from publication at the request of Jonathan Harker, in case it caused him unnecessary embarrassment should the contents of that chapter, which takes place very early in the original Stoker novel (before he has even met Count Dracula), come to light. This fictional “lost chapter” again takes the form of a smaller book or pamphlet attached to one of the pages of the actual book.

I have to say upfront, one way in which this book falls down a little, is because I was pretty sure I knew who the vampire in this tale was right from the introduction of a particular character into the narrative and, alas, the writer’s attempt at misdirection to point to other characters within the story just reenforced that belief which, at the end of the book, turned out to be the correct solution to the mystery. That being said, it’s such a wonderfully presented thing, and fairly well written (although I’m not sure Stoker would have used some of the words which frequent that mini chapter, or at least not have spelled them like that) that I am quite happy to dismiss the obviousness of the book’s final solution because I had such a great time reading this one... even though it’s a fairly quick read.

Another great thing about it is the illustrations in the book by Roland Sarkany, which really do depict events as they happen in Dr. Seward’s journal and take the form of truly beautiful black and white plates detailing some of the action in the story. Now, I have to say that in one sense the illustrations are an intrusion, because they do kind of break the fourth wall of the book, so to speak, by illustrating something which is being presented as fact, but there is certainly room in the premise to the extent that the fictional author of the story has prepared the documentation for publication... which presumably also meant him commissioning illustrations for this work. However you want to justify it though, intrusion or not, the illustrations are fantastic and give it another little lift which the various clues and artefacts found in the pages are also doing... making this tale a rare and tactile experience for people who like to really engage with a book in ways in which an electronic device can only hollowly mimic, without properly replicating the actual experience of holding this volume in your hands and working through the clues as they are presented.

At the end of the book, there is a sealed section with a few more pages, once it’s been clarified... and anyone reading this will surely know this is coming so I don’t think this would constitute a spoiler... that the fictional author has gone missing. The arrival at the publishers of the long letter, the contents sealed in the end section, is from the actual vampire of the tale and explains the connections and the full details of the web of deceit which you will find revealed to you as you read through the book. At the end of the day, there’s nothing truly revelatory about the contents of the sealed section if you have been paying attention throughout the story, but it does give a sense of closure to the proceedings and, although this end section probably wasn’t needed, it certainly didn’t detract from the content of the rest of the book and, all in all, I have to say that I had a really great time with this tome, which was an unexpected Christmas present.

Definitely recommended for lovers of the Dracula myth and for people who like minor puzzle solving. I’ve since found that the publishers, Quirk Books, have put out at least two more ‘interactive mysteries’ of a similar nature... one written by Sherlock Holmes’ Doctor Watson and another one which involves the early days of Bruce Wayne and his more famous alter ego, Batman. All I can say is, on the strength of this wonderful little journey of a story, those two are definitely going on my Christmas list this year. A lovely present and a corker of an experience, even if the mystery itself is perhaps a little too easy to solve.

Dario Argento's DRACULA

Tooth High To A Grasshopper

Dario Argento's Dracula
2012 USA
Directed by Dario Argento
Sony Italian BluRay Region A,B & C 

Dario Argento is a bit of a legend of a movie director these days... and rightly so, having stolen Mario Bava’s thunder somewhat when, in 1969, he repopularised (and how) the Italian giallo thriller single handedly with the first of many spectacular gialli which he made over the decades, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. The director is mostly a practitioner of this form of cinema although, since people often find themselves confused between movies depicting serial killers and movies depicting monsters, he is often misconceived as being primarily a director of horror films.

It’s true, of course, that Argento has directed both films and TV episodes which fall into the horror genre, including one of his most famous films, Suspiria. However, his horror direction is only a small body of work compared to his giallo output and should never, I believe, be considered his primary voice... although he is obviously inspired by both a sense of the gothic (instilled in him by some of the writers he used to read when he was ill in bed as a child, if memory serves) and the famous cinematic forays of the past which encapsulated that very atmosphere as their primary focus (with offerings from Universal, RKO, Hammer and the like).

I first got into Argento at the dawn of DVDs when, after about a year or two of the machines being on the market, I finally bit the bullet and bought a player primarily because I found out you could get American DVDs of the Flash Gordon serials. This was important stuff. Of course, owning a multi-region DVD player, like pretty much anybody who is serious about film in my country would, opened up a wealth of possibilities and suddenly more controversial directors who were either not allowed to have films released in my country or were heavily censored over here (which amounts to the same thing... who wants to see a censored version of a movie?) were now instantly accessible to people in the UK properly for the first time. Which is why, I think, genres such as the giallo, the spaghetti western, sexploitaiton, blaxploitation, nunsploitation and pretty much every other kind of interesting genre around have found a big resurgence in popularity... people now have relatively easy access to these kinds of movies.

Argento, it has to be said, has been producing films which have been less than popular with his fans of recent years, although I have no problem with most of them... my one caveat being his awful version of The Phantom Of The Opera (which isn’t a recent one, as it happens). I remember being in a packed Fright Fest screening of his previous film Giallo and the audience, in which there were undoubtedly a lot of Argento fans, was howling with collective laughter at some of the execution of the movie. Now I saw no real problem with, most, of it... but I’ve always thought of Argento as primarily a visual and aural stylist, which makes sense seeing as he comes from a background of churning out very successful gialli. These films are not about acting or their ludicrous scripts... they’re about visual style and great music. So I really don’t have the same kinds of issues as some people do with his later stuff (like The Card Player, for example, which I loved).

His version of Dracula, of course, is obviously a horror story but, although it has a certain sense of a thread of adaptation running through it, it changes things around sufficiently from both Stoker’s original novel and stage play versions (and, of course, the later stage adaptations which Universal studios culled their original version from) to be different enough for even the most jaded fans to find something fresh in the story. I suspect the location budget also had something to do with that (it’s all set in one village) but even so, there are some interesting things going on here. Carfax Abbey is mentioned as Carfax Sanitorium, for example, which was formerly run by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Dr. Seward is completely written out).

Does this make for a good movie then?

Well... yes and no. I think it’s all down to how much certain outrageous ingredients spoil the main course for you. There was one point about a quarter of an hour before the end, for example, when I started laughing out loud.

Now then, the acting by a lot of the cast is not up to scratch. You expect that from an Argento movie and it shouldn’t, in itself, be a problem if you are already used to this director’s work. However, surprisingly, there is also some pretty good acting in this one too. The director’s daughter, Asia Argento, can always be relied on to give a great performance (and on the strength of the one movie I saw that she directed, I suspect she might even be a better director than her old man... the talent runs in the family) but we also have Thomas Kretschmann giving a really great performance as Dracula and Rutger Hauer making a more than competent Van Helsing... although Dracula’s nemesis doesn’t actually turn up until the last part of the film.

Added to this you have Dario Argento’s trademark visual splendour and the shot design and camera motion through those shots is absolutely superb in this one. The striking use of Bavaesque colour is again pushed to the fore and the outrageously saturated pools of red and yellow light sharing the same frame and the greener than green forest in the moonlight are all things of beauty. If nothing else... this film is quite spectacular. There are also a few good doses of female nudity too, which is unusual for this director and, I think, is probably more on show here (albeit briefly) than all of his other movies combined. That, of course, adds its own kind of spectacle into the proceedings... especially lit and shot as well as it is.

That being said... there’s quite a lot of bad stuff here too. One of which is Argento’s fascination with style over substance. I remember, decades ago, Argento was asked in a documentary if, when faced with the insertion of a cool and beautiful shot in his movie as opposed to a shot which would be more appropriate and make total sense within a story, which he would choose. Argento said he would always take the cool shot over logic any day. Dracula is full of “the cool shot” which is a trademark of Argento, to be sure, including one where you see the course of a bullet as it travels from the base of a man’s jaw and up and out through the top of his head... not as audacious as the notorious “bullet scene” from Argento’s movie Opera but certainly an echo throughout the years. However, you also have one scene near the end, the one I started laughing at, where the movie totally “jumps-the-shark” as it were, in modern pop culture parlance...

Dracula, it seems, can transform himself into any kind of beast he wants. One would think he would be fairly subtle in his choice perhaps but, no, he decides to go and kidnap Mina Harker transformed as a giant sized, bright green CGI grasshopper which, while certainly giving the movie a sudden and fierce injection of 1950s B-movie atmosphere... seemed perhaps a fair bit inappropriate given the sombre tone of the rest of the movie and its leanings towards the gothic. This was a fairly unfortunate choice, it has to be said, but taken out of context it looks pretty cool, at least.

But there’s more.

The various “myths” of the vampire are neither adhered to faithfully nor ignored. One or the other or the popular tactic of establishing which of the various trappings are being used would have been a way to go. Set up your ground rules for the audience first. Here, it’s contradictory and, well... all over the shop to be honest. One minute, Jonathan Harker (very much tapping into the pretty boy Keanu Reeves vibe of Coppola’s version of the story) is bitten and is instantly allergic to deadly sunlight... the next we are introduced to the “Renfield” character stand-in, who is also obviously a vampire, but who has no problem with strolling around in sunlight at all. Similarly, Lucy (beautifully played by Asia) is committing her undead crimes at night and sleeping in her tomb by day (just as her master Dracula is sleeping in his protective coffin) but why then is it, when the count himself turns into another creature, he’s perfectly fine running around in the sunlight? None of this makes much sense and neither does the fact that a bitten Jonathan Harker needs to feel the sharp end of Van Helsing’s stake but the equally vamped up Mina Harker doesn’t. None of it makes much sense... which is a big shame, to be honest.

Also, there is a dreadful reliance on CGI blood effects for the trademark Argento gore in this movie and, to me, this just looks awful when compared to a plain, in camera, practical effect. Maybe Argento’s resorted to this finally because of something to do with the 3D process... I don’t know. However, it looks very fake and unsatisfying and I hope he doesn’t continue to go down this route.

However, I let none of this detract from my enjoyment of the film, to be sure. And there are some nice nods both to the original Stoker novel (Kretschmann crawling up the outside of the castle wall) and to Todd Browning’s 1931 version, with both a large spider’s web and the full Lugosi treatment as Kretschmann digs in to the well worn “children of the night" dialogue. And, of course, Rutger Hauer’s impromtu holy cross assembly will bring back fond memories of Peter Cushing’s more succesful attempt in the old Hammer version. So some nice stuff too, including the music...

After the problems Argento had convincing the studio to retain his regularly composer, and once figurehead of Goblin, Claudio Simonetti on the previous project (the final score to Giallo was by Marco Werba), Simonetti has returned to Argento’s side with a brilliant, theremin tinged score which is quite remarkable in tone, although one of the sub-themes did remind me a little of the theme which the group Toto allegedly pilfered for their score for Dune, namely Ronald Stein’s score for Roger Corman’s Haunted Palace. That minor gripe aside though, I’ve been enjoying the score for a year or so now on CD and am pleased to finally be able to hear it in the context of the movie for which it was written. This includes the end title song which is performed by Simonetti’s current progressive rock group Daemonia.

Dario Argento’s Dracula, when all is said and done, is a film which I am more than happy to have in my possession and will definitely get a few spins as the years go by. Perhaps it may be a bit anticlimactic for some to realise that such a legendary director tackling such a legendary story is not without its problems but I, for one, am happy with the result (grasshopper aside) and, to be honest, it’s a lot better than I’d hoped it would be after the feedback I got from some. It looks, like usual for this country, I won’t get a chance to see it in any kind of cinema release over here in its 3D version but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

Oh yeah. About the 3D. If you are buying the Italian Blu Ray of the film (which is shot and presented in the English language anyway, by the way) then you will be shelling out a lot more for the 3D version of the movie than the 2D version, if you have a 3D player. Not to worry though... as the stall holder who I bought this from pointed out to me, the 3D print of the movie is also on the 2D disc, they’ve just repackaged the same disc for the more expensive version to get some extra cash. So if you buy the Blu Ray standard edition, at least on the version I have, you’ll get both versions. Watch out for those large, heaving bosoms in the 3D version though! You might get a wallop.