Blood for Dracula = Friggin' ridiculous

Alright, I did not know what I was getting myself into when I put Blood for Dracula on my Netflix queue. I knew that Andy Warhol was involved, and that there was probably going to be sexual overtones, but I was not expecting what I saw. First, Dracula is this pale, scrawny guy with a bad accent, who travels with his pale, scrawny male secretary to Italy (I think) to search for virgins to drink. Second, he finds a family of a gambling-addicted father, a money and status obsessed mother, and a young man hired hand who is only concerned with communism and banging as many of the four beautiful (and beautiful in this sense is defined as skinny, pale, reddish haired young women) sisters as he can. The three oldest sisters are either obsessed with sex (with the hired hand, or with each other, or some combination of the two (yes, that means that there are threesomes, or some weird combination of a sister and the hired hand having sex while a second sister watches, eating chocolates) ), or with kissing each other (yes, now I've implied insestial (not a real word) lesbianism). The youngest, being "fourteen" (the actress is clearly not fourteen), is the only one who is really innocent and non-corrupt, and therefore the only character worth giving a damn about.

Now that is pretty much the entire cast, so who am I supposed to care about? The fourteen-year old virgin. Okay. But in the end, there's just her and the hired hand, who end the movie by closing a back door of the mansion, so they're probably going to have hot, ridiculous, creepy sex after the credits role.

Alright, if that doesn't make the movie worthless, I'll try to look at its treatment of vampirism. The opening scene, I should have recognized, was an indication of the entire film. The opening credits show Dracula applying makeup and painting his gray hair black in front of a mirror. Then, the camera pans to show the mirror, and the lack of a reflection. So this movie starts out by giving a big "F*** You!" to the rules of vampirism. How can a vampire groom himself in a mirror? But it's kind of clever, so I laugh and accept it. It does, however, cost it a Suspension of Disbelief Point (SoD Point), which I'll explain in a moment. Then, after the basic plot is laid out, Dracula walks out into the sunlight to travel to Italy to feed on his virgins. Another SoD Point lost.

When I watch a movie like this, I usually give it somewhere between five and seven points of suspended disbelief (SoD Points). Every time the movie fails to suspend some of my disbelief, it loses a SoD Point. If it uses up all of its SoD Points, I stop caring about the movie. So, by starting out with the vampire/mirror contradiction, and the vampire/sunlight contradiction, it lost two SoD Points. But one of them was comedic, and actually made me laugh, so I didn't mind all that much.

But then, once the plot gets into full bloom, and I hear the word 'wirgin' (the pronunciation of the word virgin with their awful accents) every other word, and witness scene after scene of unnecessary nudity, or some form of rape, either at the hand of the hired hand (forcing the daughters to have sex with him, which they first resist, and then seem to enjoy) or at the hand of Dracula (who isolates one of the daughters, asks her if she is a virgin, and then tackles them and forcefully sucks their blood (which they first resist, and then seem to enjoy) ), I realize that the movie has used up more than its allotted number of SoD Points.

Need I continue? The acting is horrible. The dialogue is forced and unconvincing. By the end, when the hired hand realizes that Dracula is a vampire, I don't care anymore because any logic or rule (besides the "Booby Rule," which I'll discuss in a moment) is thrown out the window, I have stopped caring about the characters, their plights, and the movie as a whole. The "Booby Rule" seems to be the only real driving force of the movie, where each scene is either a build up or the scene itself where one or more of the sisters show their breasts and/or have sex with the hired had and/or each other.

Oh, yeah. And one more thing. At the end, when two of the older (non-virgin) sisters, who have been turned into pseudo-vampires, are trying to bring the youngest sister to Dracula, she runs to the hired hand for help. He explains what's going on, and then recommends that "...you should lose, that, uh, virginity of yours" so that Dracula won't chase after her. He then proceeds to force himself on her, which she initially resists, and then seems to enjoy, and then is caught by her mother, who breaks them up. Then, Dracula walks in, and laps up the remaining blood from the forced sex...I'm sorry if this is getting too graphic. It's the movie's fault, and I feel like it's my duty to splay it out like this.

So, yeah. Stupid, pointless, unnecessary, ridiculous, insulting and mind-numbing movie. Don't watch it. And I want to apologize for any incoherency in this post. I consumed a high-alcohol beer in the process of watching this film (which I think was crucial to me actually sitting through the entire film) so if some of my logic seems fuzzy or my sentences (and added parenthetical annotations) confusing, you have my deepest apology.

Nosferatu in 1922, 1979, and 2000

The first movie version of Dracula came in 1922 as F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu. He couldn't convince Stroker's estate to give him the rights to the Dracula story, so Murnau just changed the name and embellished a little bit, and out comes Nosferatu. It's a choppy, silent, black and white film of around an hour and a half. And yet it manages to have some of the most unsettling, creepy moments in a vampire film to date.

Max Shreck, who played Nosferatu, is simply terrifying, with no need for speech. He has this rat-like appearance, with long creepy claws and two small fangs towards the center of his mouth, rather than the popularized Dracula appearance that everyone knows today.

But, truth be told, Bram Stroker's description of Dracula is nothing like this at all: "...a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache...his face was strong--a very strong--aquiline, with high bride of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forhead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profuse elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose (almost a unibrow), and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips..."

So really, Dracula isn't all that scary. And that just wouldn't do for the movie business, so they created Nosferatu and Dracula as we all now know him. And it worked out for them. For instance, a old man with a mustache couldn't make this scene from Nosferatu scary, only a pale, clawed, rat-like thing could:





This, among other scenes in the original Nosferatu, were used (or stolen, or "homaged") in many other Dracula/Nosferatu films to follow. But you cannot match the level of creepy that this first one had. Maybe it's because of the black and white, silent choppiness. Maybe it's because this Nosferatu just looks so scary. I'm not sure. Roger Ebert explains it like this: "The film is in awe of its material. It seems to really believe in vampires."

There was another version of this film done in 1979 by Wernor Herzog, one of my new favorite directors, called Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. Klaus Kinski, the brilliant and regular actor in Herzog's films, plays the Count. Since the original Nosferatu was German, Herzog (being also German) felt like this movie should be redone as soon as Dracula entered public domain. The film is very similiar to the original Nosferatu, and manages to enhance the story without diminishing the power of the original.

Kinski is fantastic, as he always is, as the count. He's creepy, rat like, a very sad character, and completely believable as a several-hundred year old vampire who's well past his prime. The use of sound and dialogue is very well done, and the story has more of a coherency to it that the original Nosferatu didn't have. Or maybe that's just my closer relationship with films with dialogue over silent films.

The scenes when Harker is held prisoner in the count's castle, and especially when he cuts himself and Kinski dives for the cut, claiming that the knife may have been dirty and the wound must be sucked to ensure no blood poisoning, is very scary. The movie even made me jump a couple of times, which none of these vampire films have done to me yet. Herzog is also a very good filmmaker, and there are creepy scenes with thousands of gray rats roaming the streets, spreading the plague. And Renfield, Harker's boss and as it turns out the Count's servant, has this laugh that is unbelievable in it's creep factor.

And finally, as it seems with anything vampire related, there is also a strange comedy/horror hybrid that deals with Nosferatu, called Shadow of the Vampire. I want to thank Hatrack.com forum members for letting me know about this one. It stars Willem Dafoe who plays Nosferatu, who plays Max Shreck. Now, no, that's not a mistake. The movie plays with the idea that the person who played Nosferatu in F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu really was a real vampire, and that Max Shreck was just a made up name to cover his true identity. And they cover his appearance by stating that Max Shreck is a character actor who completely immerses himself in the character. Sounds bizarre and conveluted, right? A movie about the making of a vampire movie where Dafoe plays the part of a vampire who's playing the part of an actor who is supposed to be playing the part of a vampire. And bizarre it is, and ipso facto must have John Malkovich, who plays the director F.W. Murnau. Much of the movie is tounge and cheek. It's a ridiculous premise, but they make the most of it.

And, just like Buffy, the comedy seems to heighten the serious moments. Dafoe has a scene where some of the crew asks him about the book Dracula, and if it was factually accurate, since he is apparently so deep into his role that he should know about vampires. And his response is quite unsettling:

Shrek: It made me sad.
Albin: Why sad?
Shrek: Because Dracula had no servants.
Albin: I think you missed the point of the book, Count Orlock.
Shrek: Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he... that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes... when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.

(...and then he grabs a bat out of the air and eats it.)

Dafoe does a great job, which is good since the part was specifically written for him. Malkovich is weird and unsettling, but convincing as the obsessed and crazy director.



So here ends the first post relating to my vampire extravaganza. There are others coming soon, which will walk through the other vampire films (Oh yes, don't worry. There are plenty more vampire films) before I conclude with Buffy.

'Tis the Season of VAMPIRES a.k.a. Damn You Joss Whedon

It wasn’t even two months ago that I considered vampires a stupid, pointless thing to read about or watch. Being that they don’t exist, and never have existed, and never will exist, the idea of wasting my precious reading and watching hours on vampires just didn’t appeal to me. And furthermore, two summers ago I had read Bram Stroker’s Dracula, and that was good enough, wasn’t it? How much more could vampires give? And then in strolls Joss Whedon, all cocky and comical and clever. Damn you, Whedon. Damn you and your unbelievable wit and ability to make me care about your characters.

I had completed Whedon’s Firefly series and Serenity movie years ago, and have wallowed like a pig in the mud of Joss’ brain. I’ve read about Firefly, watched the episodes over and over again, and had my close friend knit me a hat so I could further idolize Jayne’s character and ergo Whedon’s brain. I had many reliable sources tell me that I should watch Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. My aunt, my high school librarian, Craig, a regular at the video store I worked at. I respected there decisions, so somewhere in the last few years, in the back of my distracted brain, I knew that I was going to watch Buffy. As time went on, there was no thought about whether I should, it was just a question of when I should. And this last summer, I stopped denying the voices in the back of my brain and asked to borrow the first few seasons of the series from my aunt.

Now, my aunt, in her conniving ways, delivered to me a black trash bag filled with the entire seven seasons. That was three months ago. Today, I have passed the seven seasons on to my brother, Jake, and have purchased for myself the complete, 44 DVD 6,000 plus hour boxed set of the entire freaking series. I am in the middle of the fifth season, and I pop episodes off like I used to pop pimples, compulsively, shamefully, and in private. My brother has surpassed me (in Buffy episodes, not pimple popping) for several reasons. First, he wasn’t also watching the entire seven season television series Trailer Park Boys, which he had already completed and had hooked me on this summer. He also wasn’t trying hard to watch one or two of Roger Ebert’s top 200 movies every week. And I think he doesn’t read as often as I do. And most importantly, he is open about his obsession and inability to control it, as he watches several episodes in a stretch.

If my Summer of Kurosawa has taught me anything, it’s that you can watch a long progression of movies, or I guess television shows, too quickly and miss them when they’re done. You can read my last post, and my inability to watch Kurosawa’s final film for a whopping two

months. So I have fought sorta-hard to limit my consumption of Buffy and her Scooby Gang. And this next series of blog entries in a continuation of that sorta-inner-battle I’m fighting. I want to savor the last two and a half seasons of Buffy that I have left. So I’m going to watch as many vampire movies as I can get my hands on before Halloween. And there are seven of them, plus a rereading of the original Dracula novel.

Now Buffy, don’t feel like I’m abandoning you. I LOVE YOU so much that I’m avoiding you. Don’t look at me like that! I swear I’m yours forever. Please don’t kill me…(and I promise I’ll explore why I am so obsessed with the show towards the end of this series of posts).