Dracula

Why I created this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115964#2939435

I'm not, myself, intending to re-read Dracula for a while yet; but I've just mentioned it on the 'Gothic gossip' thread and it seemed to me that the sooner the better for a Dracula thread so that it's here whenever anyone wants it.

This is what I posted on the 'Gothic gossip' thread:

I'm listening to an interesting BBC Radio 4 programme as I write - Was Dracula Irish?. It argues for a lot more roots to the story in Irish history than we generally acknowledge.

According to the web page, there is 'over a year left to listen' at the time of posting.

ETA - Ignore the bit where it says '962 mins'; it doesn't last that long - honest.

And before the programme, there was a trailer for a new radio dramatisation of Dracula, to be broadcast next Sunday (the 'classic serial' slot).

An article in the latest edition of Tartarus Press's Wormwood (no. 19) by Brian J Showers looks into the question of why Stoker didn't write a sequel to Dracula.

There's an argument that Stoker deliberately left the way clear for a sequel - the count's despatched rather perfunctorily (knives to throat and heart) compared to the elaborate ceremony used on vampire-Lucy (and Stoker deleted a final paragraph where Castle Dracula collapsed in apparent sympathy upon the Count's death).

Whilst he cannot say why Stoker didn't write a sequel, Brian does examine and remove the arguments against its being possible: no historical precedent (not true); not justified by the commercial success of Dracula (no, it was a moderate success and had gone into multiple reprintings before the year was out); "Stoker's Autonomous Artistic Expression" - no, even his friends said Stoker wrote for money.

Just a more or less random observation to mark Bram Stoker's birthday. In the last few months I've read a couple of stories which use the character of Dracula in an oblique manner, i.e. the 'sinister stranger' who makes the acquaintance of the protagonist turns out to be the Count, or the twist at the end reveals the you-know-what pursuing the hero is ... you-know-who.

Annoyingly, I can't really say any more without identifying the stories in question, and thereby turning this post into a massive *spoiler*. I did wonder though, if this was just a statistical 'blip' in my reading, or if there are a lot of these type of story about.

#4 - Can I own up to a guilty pleasure? 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer': I thought it was really cleverly written on times and really enjoyed most of it. And the episode your post immediately brought to mind was 'Buffy vs. Dracula'.

I've just looked up the episode's quotes on IMDb. There are some amusing ones there, but not the particular one I wanted. It's a piece where Spike - resident, 'neutered' vampire - sounds off about how Dracula's ego and love of publicity (if I remember right, he calls him a 'publicity hound' or 'fame hound') spoilt it for everyone - that book was Dracula's fault and, since it, everyone knows about stakes and garlic and so forth.

Incidentally, Spike had some of the best lines in the series. My favourite was, "Never liked picket fences anyway. Bloody dangerous things." Unfortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I suspect Spike and Angel in 'Buffy' were directly responsible for all this 'Twilight' stuff. But that's all off-topic - better stop now.

Incidentally, I've read in several places, including the web page I link in #1, that Dracula is the all-time biggest-selling book after the The Bible. I have to admit I'm a little sceptical.

ETA - Um ... strong whiff of déjà vu about this post - apologies if I'm harping on an old bone. Damn, now I have to apologise for a mixed metaphor.

#6 Dracula is the all-time biggest-selling book after the The Bible.

I have heard that asserted on a number of occasions and by fairly authoritative (i.e. not Wikipedia) sources.

My French colleague however, rejects this and claims that The Three Musketeers is the biggest-selling book after the bible (where "biggest" means largest number of copies).

PS I loved your Spike quote about picket fences.

I've seen the Quotations of Chairman Mao claimed as the 2nd-most printed book in a couple places. I dunno whether it sold in such huge numbers however - maybe they handed it out for free in a true socialistic spirit?

Telephone directories have huge runs too, or they used to. Either way: doesn't mean they provide a great reading experience.

#8 Mao's little red book was handed out free all over the world in the 60s. I remember we had several copies dropped into our letterbox over the years.

#9 I find that each edition of the phonebook changes ever so slightly making it a fascinating challenge to spot the changes. (Not)

The Dublin Book Festiva ended last evening. It ran from 13th to 18th November. Its stated aim is the promotion of literature written by Dublin authors.

When I read the festival programme and attended the festival's main venue where a temporary bookshop had been set up, I was amazed to find that in 2012, the centinary of Bram Stoker's death, there was not a mention of the man nor was there a single copy any of his books available for sale, let alone any copies of the novel that has reputably sold more copies than any other novel in the world. I consider this a major failure of the festival and believe it could be considered an insult to one of Dublin's most famous sons.

I shall be contacting the organisers on this matter.

> 12

That does seem a shame, to say the least. An oversight by - I presume - self-consciously highbrow organisers, or a deliberate policy to exclude Stoker?

#13 I don't know how you could say such a thing. One would think you were there and noticed that it appears James Joyce is the only author Dublin produced. ;)

As it happens, the only event at the festival that was in anyway related to the Gothic was the session Brian J. Showers organised in the Gutter Bookshop for Longsword by Thomas Leland. You would have enjoyed it. Albert Power and Jarleth Killeen discussed the book and its position in Gothic literature. John Kenny of Albedo1 acted as referee.

It was a great session. If you are on Facebook and have access to the Swan River Press page you can see photographs.

Apparently Longsword pre-dates The Castle of Otranto by three years making it the first Gothic novel to be published.

I'm already a "Facebook Friend" of The Swan River Press, as a matter of fact (and disgraced myself with a comment of Ralph Wiggum - level banality this evening.)

I looked at the photos of the Longsword event yesterday, and it did indeed look like an interesting event.

Longsword itself has been purchased but not yet read - like so many of my books, alas. Someone in the Folio Society Devotees group outlined his plan to deal with his unread books a while back - retire immediately, and live forever. I think I'll have to do the same!

#15 retire immediately, and live forever. I think I'll have to do the same!

I know the feeling.

I have a lovely display of both Swan River Press and Tartarus Press books and most of them are untainted by having been read. I hold my head up as Umberto Eco states that the wealth of a mine is in the in the unmined resource, and consequently the wealth in a library is in the unread books. From that point of view my library is very wealthy.

The thought of retiring immediately is attractive, though living forever could present difficulties.

I'd begun to compose something longer but it was disappearing up its own pretentious fundament. I'll just note that two recent BBC documentaries about the music and culture of Britain's teenagers between the end of WWII and the Beatles - "Rock 'n' Roll Britannia" and "Trad Jazz Britannia" - through some light on the curious and much-derided "teenagers" in Hammer's Dracula AD 1972.

I can't claim this as an original observation. Jonathan Rigby in his book English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema had already noted that if their antics have any basis in reality, it was a reality at least 10 years before the setting of the film. However, it was good to see for myself things like the skull ashtrays in the 2i's coffee bar, the keenness for jazz (New Orleans ("Trad") or Bop, but not both), and a degree of violence that, at one and the same time, appears to be both a source of anxiety and complacently laughed off in the media.

The film's structure has also been criticised, with Dracula, resurrected after 100 years, doing nothing but hang around in a de-sanctified church until a van Helsing can despatch him again. I like to think that the events shown in the film are all just a sideshow for Dracula, and in fact he's really busy setting up the massive business empire that he has in The Satanic Rites of Dracula.

I've just finished Barbara Belford's Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula. I've posted a short LT review; the book's okay, I suppose, but I didn't feel it got me at all close to the man.

Can anyone recommend a really good biography of Stoker? I've been looking and suspect there isn't a better one, but ...

> 19

I've never read a full-length biography of Stoker. I do have a mental image of the man that's in accord with the passage you quoted in your review, but it's built up from various sources: introductions to sundry editions of Dracula; radio and television documentaries about Dracula, or Stoker, or the Gothic more generally; mentions in works about the 1890's, and so on.

After reading a considerable portion of his fiction (and I've now got all the rest here, waiting), I've become quite fascinated and puzzled by the man.

So far, I find his attitudes towards women impossible to pin down. The same thing goes for his attitude towards fiction and fiction-writing.

My impression is that he had a great gift for writing. Yet he never became a really good writer (even Dracula has its flaws - as is widely accepted). Why? Was he not capable of it? What I read in Belford about his thoroughness and work ethic suggests that he had the application to pair with his natural talent to produce something of a really high standard. Did he simply not consider writing important enough - just as a way of earning his bread, perhaps? Yet it's difficult to imagine someone who didn't thoroughly enjoy writing producing a gloriously self-indulgent and rambling patchwork quilt of a novel like The Lady of the Shroud (said he while perpetrating posts like this ...)

I've found answering these questions unexpectedly difficult. I suspect this is not so much that the information isn't out there as that few serious researchers have, so far, regarded Stoker as important enough to be a subject. Yet, if this is the case, one would have thought that, with the academic growth of Gothic studies in recent decades ... perhaps I'm wrong and the potential meat for a doctoral thesis or the like just isn't out there for them.

Or, perhaps, there's a really insightful biography out there that I haven't come across yet ...

> 21

I don't know. One consideration must be the simple fact that Stoker was so busy with his day job as Irving's business manager (all the Victorians are unbelievably, scarily industrious).

Another may be a matter of temperament. There are some writers whose strength lies in their industry and invention, it "just pours out of them" (I know, it's never that easy!). Dickens was a lot like that, and the structure of his novels has been criticised (because, of course, he wrote them as serials and didn't necessarily know where he was heading, when he started a new one).

If that's how it was for Stoker, then if he'd had more time in which to write he might have written more (much more), but with the same unevenness and flaws that you noted, rather than refining and polishing the works that we do have.

cool what people say about dracula

I think that Jonathan Harker's journal in the first section of 'Dracula' is so brilliant. The move from mundane normality to escalating horror is so effectively done and scares the pants off me every time I read it!

Now, has anyone read the sequel to Dracula by Dacre Stoker (Stoker's great grand nephew) and Ian Holt? It has absolutely atrocious reviews on Amazon! I picked it up for a few pounds in a remainder store, but it remains unread.

> 24

I didn't think much of the book, to be honest. What interested me more, around the time of the book's publication, were the press interviews that Dacre Stoker did. It's clear that the family felt and, I got the impression, still feel, that others have benefited financially from Dracula (book and, more importantly, character) when it should have been them.

I have to admit that I haven't even considered reading that one. I've never been able to make head or tail of this phrase they use - 'reestablish creative control over' - regarding the original novel, and, in any case, it seems to me a pretty invalid reason for creating a work of fiction - it rather antagonises me, I'm afraid.

#26 - ... and, in any case, it seems to me a pretty invalid reason for creating a work of fiction - it rather antagonises me, I'm afraid.

Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair, there. Plenty of people write novels hoping to make money, sell screen rights, and so forth - which I assume is what they were talking about - so who am it to get high and mighty over it?

Still not going to read it any time soon, though ...

>25 housefulofpaper: >26 alaudacorax: I wasn't aware that the family felt that way. Bit strange given the length of time since the book was written. At least the original was copyrighted in the UK for 50 years so the family must have seen some benefit from that. However, I was surprised to read a while ago that the book was in the public domain in the USA since its publication as Stoker failed to follow the appropriate copyright procedures.

>26 alaudacorax: I won't probably read it soon either. There's hundreds of other unread books in my house staring at me wistfully from groaning bookshelves that take priority.

>28 Rembetis: Rembetis. It was his American publishers who did not follow the correct copyright procedure. They neglected to send copies to the US copyright library.

> 29 Thanks, pardon my error!

Does that mean that Universal Studios did not have to pay Stoker for the rights to make Lugosi's Dracula? I have David J Skall's book on Dracula from novel to screen ('Hollywood Gothic') but it's one of the unread books I spoke about earlier.

>30 Rembetis: pardon my error!

I had no intention of correcting anything you wrote, simply adding detail to the event. It is quite critical in the family's view as it meant Stoker received nothing from any of the subsequent US copies of his novel or derivative works in the US.

>32 frahealee:

Just listened to this on YouTube. Thanks for the link!

It's not Stoker's text but I think it includes nearly all the incidents in the novel.

The style of the recording sounds quite like the American radio dramas of the same time (the internet has made a lot of these available - oh, and they do sound different from the BBC's radio dramas). Another upload on YouTube shows that this recording more or less matches a 1960s graphic novel version of Dracula...more or less: I wonder if Christopher Lee made the changes himself, to make the dialogue and speech balloons flow better as a vocal performance?

>36 frahealee:

Damn, missed that. It would have been a good excuse to re-read two or three of his short stories with, perhaps, a half-bottle of wine. What I need on my computers is a 'Gothic authors' birthdays calendar'.

>39 gregg003:

... and been buried at midnight under a lonely crossroads with a stake through his heart ...

>40 alaudacorax: :-)

>6 alaudacorax: - ... apologies if I'm harping on an old bone. Damn, now I have to apologise for a mixed metaphor.

I was wrong there, it's not a mixed metaphor. I was just starting to look through this thread and it suddenly came into my head that there's an old Welsh legend about a harpist who makes a harp out of an old bone he finds in a river, which turns out to be the bone of a victim of an undiscovered murder and - I think - the harp sings out for justice and names the killer ... or something like that.

>43 frahealee: I didn't read too far into that link because The Beetle sounds like something interesting to read. I've been dodging Dracula in part because my sister said it was very boring and my to read stack certainly wont suffer for the lack. Though I recently heard it was an epistolary novel, and in a youtube commentary on it I heard that it really only works as a book, story wise, I'll give it another look, and see if I can find another copy that isn't printed on decorative mock onion skin pages.

I noticed your list though, Frah, how does Le Belle Dame Sans Merci come up? Is it referring to the poem by Keats?

Enter the Romantics of course. I can never think of Dracula without pondering the vampire/Ricean vampire thing (it's come up a lot since Twilight brought in sparkly vampires), and the ideas that Ann Rice got her vampire aesthetic from Polidori, who got his from Byron, and supposedly Byron wasn't too happy about that. I read Byron's vampire fragment but I don't think I've read all of Polidori's, or the opera is spawned (I think Der Vampyr is the one that's most popular or continuous at this point).

I'm not sure if I'm actually getting anywhere. It's late and I suddenly realize that, but I've been re-thinking some of my old fictions (with a vampire!) and this thread reminded me of the copy of Lord of the Dead I bumped into while my mom and I are organizing. Byron isn't getting a break on this. I kind of really, really hope that Linda Baily does with Byron what she did with Shelley.

>45 WeeTurtle:

I recently heard it was an epistolary novel. Not exactly, but the story is told through letters and diary and journal entries. Some of them stretch credulity, with characters scribbling away in extremis.

and in a youtube commentary on it I heard that it really only works as a book, story wise. I don't think I buy that. After its initial success Dracula wasn't a massive hit again until the stage play, which was over 20 years later. In fact, to my mind one of the most interesting things about Dracula is how malleable the story is, what gets left in, and what gets left out, of the various dramatic, audio, cine- and televisual, comic book, and dance adaptations and continuations.

Polidori's story isn't very long but it generated a number of unofficial sequels by other authors (most of them French, it seems). I saw this brand new edition in a bookshop in Strasbourg a couple of weeks ago (maybe my last chance to travel to the Continent pre-Brexit). This includes the continuation by Cyprien Bérard

https://www.amazon.fr/vampyre-John-Polidori/dp/2373050552/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&amp...

An English translation available here (I should say I can't read French and I haven't read this, or any other, translation:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vampire-Lord-Ruthwen-Cyprien-Berard/dp/1612270042/ref=t...

The "look inside' function can be used to see the usefull introduction.

>46 housefulofpaper: I'll read over La Bell Dame again, since I have my Keats collection on hand, right next to Frankenstein. ;)

What the youtuber was getting at was that the details in Dracula that make it work as a horror and atmospheric story is the book formula which allows a read to experience past and present at the same time (through letters, etc) instead of the constant "real time" that a movie uses. Of course though, I'll give the real thing a read before I decide. I've seen maybe 4-5 Dracula adaptations on film.

On a side note, I read that there's been another, more modern rewrite of Polidori's story-play-opera that works into it, spoofs of modern stories like Twilight, Ann Rice, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This amuses me a bit since Buffy is already spoofing Dracula to a point, portraying him as a famous (and vain) vampire that makes all of his movies and plays himself. ;)

I've had Orson Welles', 'Mercury Theater', radio broadcast adaptation of Dracula on my computer for perhaps a couple of years and never got round to listening to it. I've just listened to it.

It was quite an experience. It's after midnight here, and the wind is moaning in the chimney and rattling things outside. Then there is all the crackle and hiss on the ancient recording, so that on occasions I had to strain to hear, which actually enhanced the experience, I thought.

Of course the story was heavily cut to fit a fifty-five minute broadcast, including a couple of main characters, and Welles took the odd liberty with it over and above that. I quite enjoyed it for all that and, indeed, it was probably truer to the book than most film versions.

I could definitely hear Bela Lugosi in a couple of the performances.

One frustration, in the accompanying picture - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK4frrg7SyU, assuming it is of the 'Dracula' cast, the two women are so alike they look like sisters and I couldn't for the life of me decide which one was Agnes Moorehead. My only memory of her is as Endora in the TV series Bewitched and that's given me an image of her as a diva, so I'd like to think she was the one in the flamboyant hat. But she played Mina and Mina really should be the one on the left and Lucy should have the hat. Incidentally, I've been quite unable to find out anything about the Lucy actor, Elizabeth Fuller.

And one little puzzle: the Arthur Holmwood character was left out of the adaptation, but I'm almost sure I remember either Mina or Lucy referring to someone as 'Arthur'. Now I'll have to listen to it again ...

>49 alaudacorax:
I remember noticing particularly that the section where Mina psychically pursues Dracula had a "feel" about it that was closer to the novel than any other version I had seen or heard.

>43 frahealee:

I was just looking back through this thread and I'm quite surprised that Florence Marryat and The Blood of the Vampire seem not to have registered with me when you first posted. She sounds a fascinating, almost 21st-century character (except for the spiritualism, which is very Victorian of her) and she was the daughter of one of my childhood's favourite authors--which adds a bit of interest. There is so much going on with her. The very fact that somebody else published a vampire novel in 1897 is intriguing enough, but I have so many questions I haven't, so far, been able to answer.

Annoyingly, I couldn't find the month of publication of The Blood of the Vampire. Stoker published in May and such was Marryat's literary fecundity that she could well have written in response to Dracula and in time to publish in the same year. This is the more likely in that, given her activities as an actress and performer, she may well have known Stoker and might, just possibly, have had some pre-publication knowledge of his book. On the other hand, the synopsis I've read seems to suggest that if she was influenced by anything it was Le Fanu's Carmilla.

Anyway, the first thing is to read the book, so I'm going to get a copy. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

>43 frahealee:, >53 alaudacorax:

Actually, I was re-reading this thread in anticipation of a re-reading of Dracula, which I was going to do because I'm watching so many Dracula-themed films at the moment. You are sabotaging me!

>44 frahealee: - ... The Vampire Maid by Nisbet ...

Rather a good little story, though, as so often, not particularly original.

Of course it's always a young lovely lady, never a woman of middle or old age.

But Nisbet does have the dark, older woman in attendance, possibly or possibly not the mother, quite likely facilitating the vampire, and never properly explained. She probably stems from Carmilla, but I'm wondering if she had become an established trope of the vampire tale by Nisbet's time of writing (1900). I wonder how many vampire short stories were around by that time.

I've just finished Dracula--my first reading for quite a few years. Oddly, I hadn't remembered it as quite so gripping. Each evening, I've been having to force myself to put it aside to get on with other stuff. It's normally the other way around--things that I once thought so gripping proving on re-reading to be less so.

I've been listening to an radio dramatisation of Dracula. To be specific it's a 2006 adaptation, first broadcast on the BBC World Service, of Liz Lochhead's 1985 stage version. It stars David Suchet as Dracula and Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Harker (curiously, it must be more or less contemporary with that TV version where Suchet played Van Helsing).

It only has a two-hour running time but Liz Lochhead adds two new characters (Quincy Morris is dropped, as per usual though) and gives lots of dialogue (actually, monologues approaching Samuel-Beckett levels of complexity) to Renfield (who is played as an Irishman, by Jon Glover (Spitting Image voices and "Mr. Cholmondley-Warner" for Harry Enfield, and loads of other stuff). There's some awareness of social and sexual issues that Stoker ignores or glides over, but I'd hesitate to call this a Feminist version, and it does allow for some of the plot mechanics to operate a bit more smoothly than in the novel, actually.

Suchet is of course terrific as Dracula, perhaps especially in the long scene on the night Harker arrives at castle Dracula. He's trying to play the role of friendly host but cannot contain explosions of anger and contempt for the wishy-washy modern Englishman.

Unfortunately, the extra character and background at the start of the play has to be paid for at the end with a reordering of events that sees the staking of Lucy/saving of Lucy's soul coming just before the climax back at Dracula's castle. Which was all a bit rushed to the extent that I had to listen to the final 15 minutes again to understand just what had happened.

Maybe not the best audio adaptation then, but it does some things that other versions haven't attempted, and it might have the best Dracula.

>57 housefulofpaper:
but I'd hesitate to call this a Feminist version, - to clarify, only because to say that seems unnecessarily reductive.

>57 housefulofpaper:

Is that on the iPlayer, Andrew? Couldn't find it on a search, but I have no great opinion of the iPlayer's search engine.

I doubt it. I bought it on CD.

But - it's free if you sign up to Audible (it says here).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dracula-Starring-David-Suchet-Hiddleston/dp/1785295144/...

I wonder if it's worth searching iPlayer (or rather, "Sounds", now) for the other versions that I managed to record in recent years - there's a 1994 version with Frederick Jeager as the Count that was on Radio 4 Extra, and a 2012 version starring Nicky Henson.

It's also time to check the radio listings for treasures over the Christmas period!

>63 frahealee:
Thanks for Sheffield Gothic: it looks an interesting blog (website?) and I shall look into it.
I haven't made a start on The Blood of the Vampire yet (too many distractions recently--Xmas pudding, wine, the kids' toys), but any day now.

>66 frahealee:

I had no idea of these homages to screen vampires by way of CGI dinosaurs!

Quite coincidentally, I read the other day, under the entry for Necromancy ("gaining power or knowledge through spirits of the dead) in The Handbook of the Gothic (this entry was written by Carolyn D. Williams), a list of "eerie manipulations of dead matter and spirit, authentic or faked" that ends - surprisingly, to me - with Jurassic Park.

Hello All, so yesterday afternoon, about 2 p.m. Pacific Time here in US, I watched for the very first time the Langella version of Dracula (1979)

I like it though found little disconcerting when they did things like switching Mina and Lucy names, and playing a bit loosely with the plot. But really enjoyed Langella's great performance. Even my spouse, who doesn't know anything about Dracula, asked me who it was because she recognized Langella's voice.

Spouse asked me a question that off top of my head, I can't remember answer to. In the book, how old are Mina and Lucy?

I guess what brought that on is that spouse noticed how the actress playing Mina (I'm using the correct name for the right character), Jonathan Stewards fiancé, seemed a wee bit older than , say, Winona Ryder. I think actress name is Jan Francis.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0290186/?ref_=tt_cl_t6

I'd to confess that I really didn't know the answer. Would late twenties or early thirties be a good guess?

Though I generally like the film, I still prefer the BBC 1977 version with Louis Jourdan, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075882/

>69 benbrainard8:

The Langella film is based on the stage play (as the Bela Lugosi film was) rather than directly on the novel. Characters are dropped/combined, relationships changed, Lucy and Mina's names swapped over.

In the book, I would guess that Lucy is supposed to be late teens or very early twenties and Mina would be a bit older, but still in her twenties.

IMDb gives the dates of birth for Jan Francis and Kate Nelligan. Ms Francis was already in her thirties when the film was being shot.

Happy 173rd Birthday, Bram!

>71 alaudacorax:
Indeed! Happy birthday to Mr Stoker!

Is it odd that Rupert Bear and Bram Stoker have the same birthday (it's Rupert's 100th today)?

>73 alaudacorax:
Also Julian of Norwich and Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind). I'm struggling to see any deep connections between them, I have to confess.

Still, a good excuse to stick a Dracula film on to see out the weekend.

I chose Dracula A.D. 1972. We get a couple of shots where the titles of books in Lorrimar van Helsing's library are legible.

I've just begun watching the BBC Dracula (2020 TV series) . I was completed unaware that writers Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss were fans of the Louis Jourdan Count Dracula (1977 film). The actor they use in the new series, is Danish actor Claes Bang who does have a physical similarity to Louis Jourdan.

Though the 2020 Dracula TV series is quite different from the book it does have its moments. I'll make a judgement and decide how I rate it after finishing, I'm in middle of the third show.

>79 housefulofpaper:
I'll post here rather than in the "Editions of Dracula" thread, although the discussion there about AbeBooks and eBay would be a neat lead-in.

Also, it was the discussion of Edward Gorey's design for the Dracula stage play's 1970's revival that made me look online at theater playbills/theatre programmes. The Gorey-related items were a bit too pricey for what the are (factoring in postage from the States) but this was only a few pounds:


Quite an interesting cast. Christopher Cazanove turned up in Dynasty in the '80s. Carolyn Seymour starred in Terry Nation's Survivors. Janina Faye, as a child actor, was actually in Hammer's 1958 Dracula (US title Horror of Dracula), although the typed insert evidences that she missed at least one performance. Gawn Grainger has had a long career (looking at IMDb) but the only role I could remember him for was as George Stephenson in a 1985 Doctor Who.


Then there's this. We've learned to be a bit wary of Peter Haining. This book has already screwed up LibraryThing's cataloguing: he had another book of the same title in the '70s (a rather grander affair, it seems), and this book was actually called The Dracula Centenary Book when it was published in (of course) 1987. I presume this reprint was in order to capitalise on the release of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The recycled title just..confuses things (also, this is the least distinguished of the three (or is it two) books' covers).


There are chapters/articles (it has the air of magazine journalism) on Stoker, on the "real life inspirations for Dracula" (Haining cites Vlad Dracul AND Elizabeth Bathory), actors who've played Dracula and van Helsing, etc.

Although he refers to the then-recent find of Stoker's manuscript, Haining makes claims I haven't seen elsewhere - that van Helsing is largely a self-portrait, that Quincy P. Morris is based on somebody he met during one of Henry Irving's US tours (and this is how the manuscript came to be tucked away forgotten in a barn in Pennsylvania), that H. P. Lovecraft(!) knew of a rumour that other hands had had to completely revise the book for publication, and was acquainted with a man who'd been offered the job.

Anyway, here's a couple of pages showing the title page of one of the books Stoker used for research, and a portrait of Dracula by "the Founder-President of the Dracula Society".


I was thinking about how the "Dracula finding the reincarnation of his lost love" plot thread seems to have become accepted now, the norm - it's not canon, but it's true for the character as he has escaped the page and has become folkloric. Is there a word to describe this phenomenon?

Anyway, we had traced it back to the Jack Palance TV Movie, whilst noting that it features heavily in the 1932 The Mummy, which was very evidently patterned on Universal's own Dracula of the previous year. I'd also note that the psychic link between Orlock and Ellen (or Dracula and Mina, depending on the intertitles) in Murnau's Nosferatu is quite a strong parallel and was present in Werner Herzog's remake. It's also there, i think, in Orson Welles' radio version.

It occurred to me recently that there's another work with themes of lost love and reincarnation, and an immortal who is both evil or amoral and attractive. It's also a work close in time to Dracula's original publication. I mean H. Rider Haggard's She.

A similar thing happened to The Phantom of the Opera: make Erik sympathetic (and change his origin - in fact pinch it from The Mystery of the Wax Museum) and it's well on the way to turning into a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast". And I can't mention The Phantom of the Opera without noting that the website for Whitby's Dracula Experience has adopted the title of Andrew LLoyd Webber's musical sequel ("Love Never Dies") as a strapline.

>77 housefulofpaper:

Just looked up the Dracula Society. Still going strong and I get the impression it's quite prestigious. I looked up the two founders and found them to be a couple of those vaguely familiar faces you can never quite put a name or role to. I wonder what they thought about Haining. I'm afraid I'd need some pretty solid corroborating evidence to accept anything Haining had to say about the writing of Dracula—'once bitten' and all that. I suppose Dracula himself has well and truly escaped from Stoker.

Nice point about She. It would be fun to hunt up Rider Haggard's inspirations and who he might have inspired. Also, Stoker seemed to have some ... um ... interesting feelings about strong women, which I couldn't quite pin down, and which I seem to remember were echoed in Rider Haggard; bearing in mind it must be decades since I read him, though I put a 'collected' on my Kindle not long back. And having written that, I had a look at RH's bibliography and I'm damned if I can remember which of his novels I've read, though I know I read a stack of them long ago. There are one or two interestingly odd scenes in The Mystery of the Sea, though, and, of course, all that business of the good guy squad practically pledging themselves to Mina Harkness like mediæval knight-errants.

There's a very faithful and complete comic book adaptation of Dracula from about a decade ago, and I read it in collected graphic novel form recently. The adaptation is by Leah Moore and John Reppion (Alan Moore's daughter and son-in-law).

They include some notes at the back, about the technicalities of adaptation, the justification for some artistic/editorial choices (such as reinstating "Dracula's Guest"as the opening of the story, and softening Van Helsing's idiosyncratic English), and so on.

One interesting point they make in these notes is that, in the course of analysing the story and writing their comic version, they came to see Dracula's assault on Mina as a purely tactical move. She is clearly the most intelligent, capable and clear-sighted of the band opposing Dracula, and it's imperative that he puts her out of action.

That's quite striking, when thinking about the evolution of the "lost love" motif I talked about in >77 housefulofpaper:, as well as when considering Stoker's views on strong women. (It could well be accidental that Stoker gave Dracula this clever move. I can imagine that at a conscious level he was focused on putting the heroine in peril, and setting up the means of tracking Dracula back to his castle via psychic link).

>79 housefulofpaper:

I'm due a reread—it's been a while. I have a tendency to think of Mina as the central character, while I'm not sure that is really justified. Is she more 'intelligent, capable and clear-sighted' than Van Helsing? As I said, really need a reread.

>80 alaudacorax:
Well, here are some of the relevant observations from Moore and Reppion's endnotes.

Here are some comic book versions of Dracula. Firstly Marvel's version that commenced in 1972, drawn by Gene Colan. Colan based his Dracula on the actor Jack Palance, before he played the role in the TV movie directed by Dan Curtis.

Then a Dracula origin story that appeared in Marvel's black and white Dracula magazine.This episode was drawn by Neal Adams.

Finally, the 1984 Dracula strip that featured in British weekly comic Scream. This was drawn by Eric Bradbury. The "Dracula deals with muggers" scene is something seen over and over again in 1970s Dracula and vampire films.

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Art, in the American production-line way of thirty years ago, is by Mike Mignola in pencil and inked over by John Nyberg.

>82 housefulofpaper:

AAARRRGH!

Cool. Back in the day, all this stuff completely passed me by—completely unaware of it. Do they have a strong female lead in that first one? Or is she just a passing casualty?

>83 housefulofpaper:

Hell's bells! Is it thirty years since Coppola's Dracula?! Time flies ...

When I was checking IMDb for Coppola's dates for >84 alaudacorax: the search results threw up a Dracula TV movie with David 'Poirot' Suchet. Yet another I've never heard of ... or is it so poor I've completely forgotten it—they are giving it 5.2/10 at the time of writing? Anyone seen it?

Suchet, as you might expect, is Van Helsing. Marc Warren—don't know whether to say 'intriguingly' or 'surprisingly'—is Count Dracula. One Bill Eagles is the director.

ETA - I should have said, IMDb sort of gives away part of the plot, I think. Not sure about that, not having seen it.

>85 alaudacorax:
It was one of the least successful versions of Dracula I've seen, and I'm broadly in agreement with the reviews posted on IMDB.

I'm sure this film's been mentioned on here already. I think I said that I could see the rationale for changing the story, otherwise you have a thriller where the audience already know what's going to happen and how it's going to end. And having read about Dracula I had an inkling of where the changes came from - ideas that Stoker had but abandoned in earlier drafts, speculation about the sources of his ideas, things "in the air" in late 19th Century British culture. But even taking that on board, the story the film told wasn't as compelling as the book, the issues with clarity of storytelling and pace that some of the reviewers talk about are things I noticed too, and Marc Warren's Dracula wasn't as powerful as I, as a viewer, wanted hm to be (a lot of that was down to the script).

>84 alaudacorax:
It's weird how present Dracula was, in the culture I was exposed to, or actively consuming as a child and then an adolescent, in the '70s and '80s.

The Marvel comic was presumably pitched at an older teenage/college-age audience, whereas the black and white reprints I had access to were on sale alongside the likes of the Beano on the newsagents' shelves. I asked a couple of my nieces if they knew who Dracula was and if they had seen him in anything. After a bit of thought they only cited Hotel Transylvania. A "de-fanged" Count!

Do they have a strong female lead in that first one? Or is she just a passing casualty?
The initial set up for Marvel's Dracula storyline was that Frank Drake (an American descendant of Dracula) has inherited Castle Dracula. The story opens with him, his girl, and his best friend (who is not to be trusted) arriving in Transylvania (which is somehow the Eastern Europe of the Universal films cycle and not Soviet-era Romania). In short order the friend (whose thought balloons let us know that he intends to defraud Frank out of the Castle and steal his girl) finds Dracula's remains, accidentally resurrects him, and becomes the Renfield of the tale. The girl gets vampirised and (minor spoiler) is destroyed, setting Frank on a course of revenge against Dracula (an example of the "Fridging" trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge).

A few issue on we meet a new generation of Dracula hunters, headed by an elderly Quincy Harker and including a Van Helsing - the lady with the crossbow. I don't know how big a role she plays in the narrative going forward, but I suspect she may be eclipsed for a couple of reasons.Firstly the introduction of a new vampire hunter, Blade (as in the character played by Wesley Snipes in the films) and the fact that the focus of the story is starting to pivot so Dracula is more central and almost the somewhat sympathetic anti-hero, rather than the antagonist.

Bought specially for this thread!

>88 LolaWalser:

I knew blood oranges was the punchline to the joke "what's Dracula's favourite fruit" before I knew they were an actual thing. Weirdly (to me) the internet says the punchline is "NECK-terines". Because this brand makes it such an obvious answer it stops being funny, perhaps. I've never seen them in the UK, only blood oranges from Spain.

This is the time of year to look for Dracula-related food, though. Time to go shopping!

This year's the first time I see these, too. I appreciate the ghoulish pains they took with the dripping blood on "BLOOD". :)

Dracula-related food: poor Renfield comes to mind, with his insect scavenging...

Ha! I like your Sweeney Todd backdrop too.

Reminds me to look for my DVD; I meant to watch it in honour of Angela Lansbury...

Oh well, I don't know that I'll hunt out those comics (>87 housefulofpaper:), but I'm definitely going to check out my local Marks and Sparks for those crumpets. Haven't had crumpets in years ...

>92 LolaWalser:
It's a tea towel from the British Library's Gothic exhibition. Exit through the gift shop, of course.

I've got the original Broadway production on CD, but I think any viewing in honour of Angela Lansbury will be between The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bedknobs and Broomsticks...

>94 housefulofpaper:
My reading of The String of Pearls led me to the conclusion that Sweeney Todd, as portrayed in the book, is one of the purist anti-heroes; he does not have a single saving grace but is pure evil. All the screen adaptations have muddled things and fudged issues to give the character some form of dispensation or reason for his behaviour.

>95 pgmcc:
My memory of Tod Slaughter's Sweeney Todd doesn't include a tragic back story or any redeeming features. Time for a rewatch, perhaps? (even better, get around to reading The String of Pearls for the first time. I've managed to accrue two paperback copies but neither's been cracked open).

Dracula's "historical biomolecules":

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/11/dracula-vlad-the-impaler-letter-pr...

>97 housefulofpaper:

Two thoughts in my mind, reading that.

First of all, he had quite beautiful hand-writing.

Second, how do they know it was himself and not a scribe who was doing the actual writing?

Oh, and a third was a slight niggle about that hat, crown or whatever. If those were real pearls and it's not some later artist's fantasy, what must have been the value of that thing?! Not to mention the big stone at the front. Um ... I'm going to look that up.

ETA ... no good, keep getting distracted. How can you run searches on Vlad Dracul's headware and end up reading about rock stars' misbehaviour?

I've just been posting over on the 'Frankenstein' thread - https://www.librarything.com/topic/334725#8116216. I've just discovered that—looking at the sample given on Amazon—the Puffin Clothbound Classics edition apparently isn't Stoker's text. Opening lines:

My name is Jonathan Harker. I am a lawyer and I live in London. About seven years ago, some strange and terrible things happened to me.

BUT, "We are showing a sample of the Paperback edition (2018) because a sample of the Hardcover edition (2019) from Puffin Classics that you selected is not available." BUT, the sample they are showing doesn't have the same cover design as the Puffin Classics paperback, and I'm not sure Amazon hasn't cocked-up somewhere.

Okay, looked on US Amazon (I'm in the UK), and the sample on there is Stoker's text.

I'm a little dubious, still, Puffin is known as a children's imprint, after all. On the other hand, there is nothing on Amazon or on the Puffin website to say it's not Stoker's text. On the third hand(!), I'm quite unable to track down the imprint UK Amazon is giving the sample of. Hang on, there's an ISBN on the bottom of the page. Here's an odd thing, according to my online searching, that book only exists on Amazon UK. Hmm ... 'Independently published' ... a phrase that usually makes me shy off.

Oh well, if you see this imprint, check it out thoroughly because it doesn't seem to be Stoker's text: And now I can't get the bloody picture to work ... nope ... finally!



ETA - It's ISBN 9781976847165, by the way.

Incidentally, in my rambles to get my last post written, I came upon this rather intriguing blog post:

https://toothpickings.medium.com/youve-been-reading-the-wrong-dracula-a4446551d1...

ETA - Read right to the end; it's the last third or so where it gets really fascinating.

The Swedish version, if I recall from an article in the newspaper a couple of years ago, is broadly similar to the Icelandic, but definitely a third thing.

>99 alaudacorax:
It's influriating when Amazon links to an entirely different edition. The link from the Puffin clothbound classic Frankenstein goes to something "Abridged and condensed by Mars Starship publishing".

I'll try to find the actual books on the shelves in Waterstones and have a look at their copyright pages.

>100 alaudacorax:

I did see some news stories about the Icelandic Dracula, when the English translation was published, but with a lot less information than was in that blog.

I was left with the impression that it was a newspaper adaptation of the novel with a questionable amount of input from Bram Stoker. And that it was a lopsided production, very rushed at the end (it was the nature of these things even into the 1980s - a lot of fanfare at the start and a rushed conclusion (if you even got one) to wrap it all up by the end of the week). So I decided not to bother getting the translation.

However, then Centipede Press started pre-publication for an English translation of the Swedish version, to be published as Powers of Darkness: the First Dracula. What's happened with Centipede Press (from my UK perspective) since I discovered it over 10 years ago makes buying books difficult but also not something one can mull over: most titles sell out instantly; sterling's fall against the dollar makes each purchase much more expensive; the postage from the US is extortionate. That said, I DID buy this one, but I haven't read it yet. The book has over 800 pages, the first 70 or so being introductions etc. I started skimming through the introduction and the translator's opinion is that the Icelandic version is a severely truncated version of this Swedish one.

No doubt there is more in the introduction, although I don't think it's been discovered how ideas and characters from earlier drafts and story notes made it into the Swedish version.

>102 housefulofpaper:

Just for curiosity, where did you find that bit about Mars Starship? Though don't waste time on it if you don't have the info easily to hand.

I am fascinated with the discussion on the Icelandic edition of Dracula. There is a collector in Dublin who has an enormous collection of Stoker memorabilia, including a first edition of the Icelandic edition. He also collected a first edition of the original Dracula with a handwritten inscription to Hommy-Beg and dated the day before the publication date. He found this one in The Isle of Man. The owner had no idea of the significance of the book and its hand written inscription.

Through his researches he discovered that Hommy-Beg had a publishing friend from Iceland visiting around the time he received the book. He recommend his friend get the publishing rights for the book in Icelandic. The friend followed up on this resulting in the Icelandic edition being the first non-English version of Dracula. Apparently Hommy-Beg and Stoker were good friends, so it would not be beyond the realms of possibility that the publisher was in contact with Stoker which would support the hypothesis in the blog about Stoker having some input to the Icelandic edition.

I am writing this on my phone, so am not confident enough to leave this page to check Hommy-Beg’s real name. You are probably well aware of it and know he published works that had initial runs of 30,000 compared to the 3,000 initial print of Dracula. He lived on The Isle of Man and was a big name at the times.

>105 pgmcc:

Hall Caine!

Thank you for all this extra information. There may be more explanation in Powers of Darkness: the First Dracula than I found late last night, but there does seem to be a problem with reconciling the Hall Caine/Iceland connection with the theory that the Icelandic Dracula is an abridgement of the Swedish Dracula.

>104 alaudacorax:

It was on the first page of the online edition that popped up when I tried so "see inside" the Puffin Clothbound Frankenstein. A little note or colophon just below the portrait of the Karloff/Universal creature.

>106 housefulofpaper:
I noticed that inconsistency. I must investigate to find the source of the Caine / Iceland connection. Currently enjoying seven weeks in the Loire valley, so it will not be today or tomorrow when I will be following up on that. I am new to retirement and am finding it quite pleasant.

>108 pgmcc:
What a splendid way to begin what I hope will be a long and happy retirement!

>102 housefulofpaper:
A quick visit to Watersone's this morning. I found the Puffin Clothbound Dracula this morning but not Frankenstein. I couldn't spend too long checking the text, but it looked to be Stoker's full original text, from the dedication to "Hommy-Beg" to the chapter titles to random bits of the text. It's certainly a stout little hardback (624 pages, says the Penguin website).

It does feel like a children's book in that it's surprisingly light (lower quality card for the boards?) and quite a large point size for the text. Those things might be pluses rather than minuses, as one gets older!

>109 housefulofpaper:
Thank you! It is only six weeks at this stage, but they have been happy weeks. :-)

I forgot that Sounds of Cinema (Radio Three, Saturday afternoons) devoted a programme to Dracula soundtracks a couple of weeks ago, a tie-in to the release of the film Renfield.

It's still available online (for another 18 days).

Updating this thread with a small handful of things. Firstly, the second "Marvel Materworks" collection of The Tomb of Dracula comic from (my goodness) half a century ago. These stories were reprinted in a black and white UK weekly comic barely a couple of years after their initial appearance in the States (the only Marvel comic that my parents wouldn't let me buy!). I recently read online that the UK demand for these stories kept the US parent comic book commercially viable.



I looked in a box of CDs and rediscovered these. I don't think I've uploaded photos of them already. They are, the soundtrack album of Coppola's 1992 film, Orson Welles' radio adaptation, and the score that Philip Glass composed for a re-release of Tod Browning's 1931 film.



In 2020 a restored version of John Badham's 1979 film (starring Frank Langella as Dracula) was released on Blu-ray in the States. It included lots of extras but the most exciting thing was that it had two versions of the film. There had been plans to release a very desaturated print of the film, almost black and white, but it was eventually issued looking like a normal late-70's film (if anything, with the colour saturation pushed up to look closer to classic Hollywood Technicolor) (or was it initially released in the desaturated version but that was pulled and a "normal" version released instead? I can't recall exactly). There is now a digitally desaturated version with more control over, particularly, keeping flesh tones while making the background almost monochrome. Both the theatrical release (but digitally restored) and the digitally desaturated versions were on the Blu-ray.

I've been patiently waiting for a UK version. In fact, Indicator films have been teasing this for over a year but with no actual release date. I saw the disc below on Amazon UK and, well, now I own it.

It's a German release, obviously, so it's the same region as the UK and plays perfectly fine, after some puzzling over how to lose the German subtitles (start the film, then call up the pop-up menu, and only then turn the subtitles off. And go back to the start of the film).

It seems to be a cut-down version of the US Blu-ray. There is only one version - the desaturated version - of the film on the Blu-ray. The bonus features (apparently a mix of features from the Blu-ray and from the 20+ year-old DVD release) are on a bonus DVD.

I'm at the point now where I know enough to want to argue with some of the statements from the director, and the writer, and from Frank Langella. You say this is a different, romantic Dracula, but wasn't the original Broadway production's successful largely down to Bela Lugosi's magnetism and his effect on women in the audience? Aren't you downplaying Edward Gorey's influence in the production design? You even seem to have slightly modernised it into his favourite time period. Keeping the location limited to Whitby and the asylum isn't all that innovative - it was done in the TV version starring Denholm Elliot and I assumed it goes back to the stage play...and so on.

You've reminded me that I still haven't got round to a reread from the point of view of >79 housefulofpaper:, >81 housefulofpaper:. It's not easy to get a good idea of Stoker's attitudes to women. If you read him more widely you come across some intriguing oddities. In, I think it was, The Mystery of the Sea he actually has the hero physically worshipping the heroine—as in down on his knees, sort of thing (hope I'm not misremembering that or Freudians could have a field day). He seems to have known and employed some women who, by the standards of his day, were pretty emancipated. But whether he tended to put women on pedestals, respect them as equals, or whatever, eludes me. Anyway, another reread can't hurt ...

>114 alaudacorax:

And that's reminded me that I still haven't got round to Ellen Terry's biography autobiography. Fair play, I've only had it eight years. I'm going to be a bit cheesed-off if she never mentions Stoker.

I think Langella's Dracula, like Palance's earlier, is different to Lugosi's in that the vampire himself is explicitly romantically motivated, which is not the case for any previous movie adaptations (AFAIK?) Lugosi did make the vampire glamorous and was read as "sexy" but he's still just a predator.

Although, I suppose the book's Dracula's fixation on Lucy (or is it Mina, I forget) could be spun out into something "special". Seeing how he moves countries to prey on her and all.

> 116

I skim-read the opening chapters of Dracula. I didn't find a scene where Dracula sees Mina's picture in a locket or similar.

I think this bit of plot business originates, curiously enough, with Nosferatu. There's a very strong connection with "Ellen" (or Mina - I think it depends on the intertitles used. I gather this film was legimately released in various places with the names from the novel, or with "Graf Orlock", "Hutter", etc. But as always I haven't made notes and am relying on memory). Orlok is by far the least Romantic Dracula, but is arguably the most occult or folkloric, and Ellen/Mina captures him like a virgin capturing a unicorn.

I suppose the ground is laid for this in the second half of the novel, after Dracula has infected Mina and they have the psychic link that allows the vampire hunters to track the Count's retreat to his castle. Stepping outside the world of the novel, this could be seen simply as a plot device to ramp up the stakes for the vampire hunters and the reader. Within its world, a distinctly non-romantic motive (as put forward in the John Reppion/Leah Moore graphic novel adaptation) was that Dracula needed to neutralise the vampire hunters' best strategist.

The vampire's hypnotic powers were used for seductive purposes - but predatory, of course: to reel in a meal or make a person a slave - from the start, with the character of Renfield in the novel). The presentation of it as a sexual experience for the victim was Hammer Films' innovation I think, and although Christopher Lee's Count is still very much a predator, I think this was definitely intended to be titillating for a section of the audience (I'm also remenbering the scenes from the '40s when John Carradine played the Count, and his seduction of a female character would take place while she was playing the piano. At the start of the scene she would be playing something gentle but by the end it was spiky tempestuous Late-Romantic stuff. Is this how they sneak her loss of virginity past the Hays Code? Also, I realised a little while ago that this scene originates with Dracula's Daughter - where it signalled a lesbian seduction.

More to follow, but I'll post this now, in case it disappears...

All of which is to say, that the road to making a Romantic Dracula starts with the hypnotic Dracula of the novel, and the increasingly sexy-for-the audience predator Dracula of the screen.

Another thing to mention is the attitude of the victims. They are (reportedly) grateful to be free of him in the novel (even if it means death - "One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever"). The first note of ambivalence there, that I know of, is in Orson Welles' radio version.

I've just read my previous posts from last summer and I see I've gone over old ground, so apologies for that.

I've mentioned before that Dark Shadows created a sympathetic vampire in Barbabas Collins with a lost love who is seemingly resurrected in the present day. The some plot idea was used in the film Blacula (a better film that the title might suggest), and in the 1974 TV Movie version of Dracula (the first film to be called Bram Stoker's Dracula), which was produced by Dan Curtis, who had also produced Dark Shadows. Marvel Comics also added a tragically lost love to Dracula's origin and brought in romance elements as their monthly title went on - this was all from the late '60s to the early to mid '70s, so all well before the 1979 film.

>118 housefulofpaper:

A lot seems to be built on that—if I'm remembering correctly—single line in the novel during the episode with Dracula's women in the castle. As far as I remember ... hang on, I'll look it up ...

In answer to one of the women's taunts, "Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?"

I've never made much sense of that in the context of the novel, but I'm absolutely certain that a lot of writers and directors (post-Tod Browning) have seized on that and run with it.

I've started a reread, by the way, following what I said in >114 alaudacorax:. I'm not sure my memories fully support the text snips in >81 housefulofpaper:, and it will be fun to read through again and make up my own mind on it (I was actually thinking of rereading one of the Frankenstein editions—some current activity over on that thread—but now I've been violently sidetracked!)

>117 housefulofpaper:

I've forgotten all about the book I guess... why did Dracula cross the road? :)

This is nitpicky, but I wouldn't say Hammer innovated, rather that they made (more) explicit what was (mostly) implicit in the Lugosi movies. Where the early ones flirted with "wait a sec, is this about sex?"; Hammer goes blaring "this is 100% about sex!"

>119 alaudacorax:

It seems to be part of being a cursed creature, that "I too have loved..." I wonder how much of the "romance" of the staged and filmed versions derives simply from Dracula's aristocratic status. After all, why is Lugosi sporting flowing capes and evening wear and not dungarees? Coz he's playing a count, not a swineherd. And with that, instant glamour. Add passably good looks (at least a trim figure) and the "romance" practically writes itself.

>119 alaudacorax:
I'd forgotten that line, and it does seem quite throwaway, but you're right, it's something that future adapters and continuators of the story could latch on to.

We've just seen Dracula being initially friendly to Harker but quickly turning controllng and dangerous. One can imagine him as a kind of "love-bombing" seducer who doesn't love 'em and leave 'em as such, but keeps 'em in his vampire harem instead. Given that love-bombing is a recognised method of recruitment by cults I'm now thinking of the "vampire cult" backstory that Hammer created for their films.

Maybe the reason this doesn't seem to make sense or go anywhere, is that Dracula doesn't make any special effort to seduce Mina or Lucy through any what you might call conventional methods - not in the novel, at any rate.

>121 LolaWalser:
I agree, and that's why, when I recalled them, I mentioned the earlier John Carradine scenes.

I would like to factor in the impact that the Hammer films had on contemporary audiences, which was that they thought they were seeing something shockingly new and innovative.

Maybe they just had short memories, but there's an analogy I've used before when thinking about how we view things from the past as opposed to how people saw them at the time. Possibly I've used it before to make this very point, if so I apologise but here goes (again).

My example is Rock 'n' Roll. Rock 'n' Roll was supposedly an incredible watershed in society and popular culture: the music was new; the behaviour of the fans was new. It was all absolutely unprecedented. You have to believe that people who lived through that believed it. And yet, from a perspective of nearly seven decades distance, the music doesn't seem all that different from R & B of a few years earlier - some of it is, if anything, a bit staid in comparison. Similarly, there were bobby soxers in the 40s going crazy over the likes of Frank Sinatra just like rock and pop fans later on.

How fictional representations of aristocracy were received by an early-mid 20th century US audience would be an interesting subject in its own right. I think I can hazard a guess at how the UK audience saw it - if it's not the British aristocracy it's not quite the real thing (despite the origins of the current Royal Family).

Lugosi, when he was playing the part on stage, apparently had sufficent magnetism to give a significant portion of the audience quite a thrill...

I haven't even got to writing specifically about the '79 film yet...

The 1979 film was apparently made because of the success of the revival of the Hamilton Deane/John L. Balderston stage version, and because Universal realised that they still had rights to film an adaptation of it.

I hadn't ever sought out the playscript or, as far as I can remember, even read a detailed synopsis. I assumed I knew the play in broad terms because I'd seen the 1931 film.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for the play with synposes of the original version and Balderston's rewrite for the American stage. The two versions are really quite different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_(1924_play)

W D Richter and John Badham both say that they went back to the novel but in fact there is a great deal of the revised Balderston version of the play in the 1979 film.

The action starts at, and is almost completely restricted to, Whitby (Cornwall location filming stands in for Yorkshire).

As in the play, the characters Lucy and Mina swap first names, so Mina (Jan Francis) dies and Lucy (Kate Nelligan) lives. Dr Seward is aged up and becomes Lucy’s father. An innovation of this version is to make Mina Van Helsing’s daughter. He is called in after her death.

In this version, the action starts with the wreck of the Demeter and Dracula (the only "survivor") being introduced into the small social circle based around Dr Seward's sanitorium. Dracula learns of Mina and Lucy for the first time on his arrival at Whitby.

>116 LolaWalser:
Viewing the extras on the disc, it is abundantly clear that the film-makers were intentionally making a Romantic Dracula film. As you say, Langella's Count is romantically motivated - he falls in love with Kate Nelligan's Lucy. The publicity at the time sold the film on this angle: "Throughout history he has filled the hearts of men with terror and the hearts of women with desire" - from the film poster. They talk about the romantic sparring of Dracula and Lucy, the enigmatic smile on her face at the end of the film (we are, apparently, to infer that she believes he's survived and will return for her, and also that she might be carrying his child - that would be a disappointment for the commentators who viewed the laser-show sex scene as depicting "the perfect non-penetrative lover" (I can't remember the exact quote, but that's the gist of it - it's included in the Norton Critical Edition of the novel).

Okay, but I think there are two problems. The first is that this simply isn't as innovative as they thought. As you've pointed out, the Dan Curtis/Jack Palance already gave us a Dracula motivated by love, and with the other examples I noted in >118 housefulofpaper: the idea of a lovelorn or motivated by love vampire was just in the air. As further evidence, the comedy Love at First Bite (deeply tanned George Hamilton wooing Susan Saint James) and Werner Herzog's Nosferatu:Phantom der Nacht (with Klaus Kinski as a very pitiable Goth anti-hero vampire) both also released in 1979. (This is off the point I'm trying to make, but Herzog's film also remade the popular image of the Count, something the Frank Langella film never managed to do).

The second problem is only a problem if the viewer is unable to view Dracula as the (anti-)hero of the film because he is still carrying out the action of the novel: he turns Renfield into his slave then he later kills him. He vampirises Mina (and the vampirised Mina is not a "bloofer lady" but a really horrible baby-killing revenant). There's also some ambiguity around Lucy's seduction by the Count. Has she freely entered into a relationship of equals or has her mind been supernaturally taken over like the Count's other victims? The ambiguity would be fine, I suppose, and the publicity could be dismissed as vulgar hucksterism, if i didn't know that Richter, Badham, Frank Langella, all were of te opinion that this is a love story. About a supernatural mass murderer.

This isn't about the 1979 film, but looking back at the 1960s and 1970s I realise how Dracula was everywhere in popular culture - even culture aimed at or at least visible to children. The "Dracula's Deadly Secret" ice lolly (still available today in Spanish supermarkets' freezer cabinets, apparently); cartoons, comics; immediately identifiable in comedy sketch shows and cartoons in daily newspapers (a parallel world of chained-up prisoners in dungeons, South American firing squads, people marooned on tiny tropical islands, aliens addressing petrol pumps "take me to your leader", bank hold-ups, and marital strife - it seems so strange that we accepted it all as normal!), and the then-new revelation that Dracula was a "real person" (the "revelation" that he was Vlad the Impaler).

I didn't think it was the same today but what do I know? I'm old now. I asked a couple of my nieces and after some thought they said "oh yes, Hotel Transylvania...in other words, the rising generation's Dracula is Adam Sandler.

I really don't know what to do with that information...

Adam who? *Old lady strikes back* *No, seriously, I heard the name but have no idea what an Adam Sandler looks or sounds like...*

And have they forgotten Twilight too? In each generation a new vampire idol is born, I guess.

Re: Rock 'n' Roll was supposedly an incredible watershed in society and popular culture: the music was new; the behaviour of the fans was new.

I'm not sure, it's sort of yes and no? History, as they say, may not repeat but it rhymes. The sixties were distinctive but something very similar to them happened in the twenties, including the revolution in the sexual mores and a new music obnoxious to the olds.

Also, I can't help recalling the even earlier phenomenon of fan madness caused by the Romantics, Beethoven and Chopin, say (to begin with), that reached highest peaks with Liszt and the many pianist (also some fiddler) virtuosi who rose in his wake. Panties had been flung there, to be sure! (Digression: Arthur Rubinstein's amazingly frank My young years captures the last of that particular craze--highly recommended!)

What made the sixties rock craze special was, I think, mainly the reflection of the demographic burst of masses of young people onto the scene. (The babies of the 1920s postwar, "jazz" generation were decimated by the WWII.) Not in a while had the world been so young and able to impose its own appetites on the public.

>125 LolaWalser:

Well, it's only his voice. The Hotel Transylvania films are animated. And I have never seen a whole Adam Sandler film, just seen bits as I've channel surfed through the TV stations. What do I know? I would recongise him, I know he was a Saturday Night Live cast member, he's done a load of fairly low-brow comedies, but also in recent years had some critical success with straight dramatic roles.

That's food for thought about the long history of fandom. Thanks for pushing my thinking beyond one cultural moment. And, confession time, when you were leading up to My Young Years, I thought it was going to be Ken Russell's Lizstomania.

>125 LolaWalser: - ... the demographic burst of masses of young people onto the scene. (The babies of the 1920s postwar, "jazz" generation were decimated by the WWII.

That's an interesting angle. I don't think I'd really taken that on board. The effect of sheer numbers ...

Books, films, comics ... Dracula has emancipated himself from them all ... slippery fellow to keep a grip on ...

I don't know if this YouTube video has been linked here before, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3rvcZOPnCE. It's a lecture.

Most of us will know most of what he has to say from our researches. However, he gives some fascinating facts and figures towards the beginning (you can usefully skip the three-minute introduction ...) There were also one or two little facts on Stoker's life that were new to me.

>129 alaudacorax:

Spoilers I can't resist. Currently (the video is four years old) 150 novels in publication featuring Dracula and there have been more than 200 films made—continually at least two made a year—since Nosferatu, the first.

>130 alaudacorax:

Oh, and one more ... Dracula is 'the overall most portrayed literary character with 272 screen credits'—compared to the second-most, Sherlock Holmes, with only 75.

>131 alaudacorax: I was stunned to read this online, sounds accurate? :

"Most portrayed literary character in film. As of August 2015, Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula has been portrayed in a total of 538 films (both cinema releases and TV films) – more than any other literary character."

This is from Guinness World Record online.

I thinking of re-watching the recent Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffatt written Dracula on Netflix,

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9139220/

I admire what they admire: the 1977 BBC version that has Louis Jourdan, and I enjoy watching the similarities and differences between the portrayals.

Though I hastily add--- many people have said the Gatiss/Moffatt version is stolen by the Nun ! (and yes, of course we should wonder aloud---heh, I don't remember any nuns in Dracula).

>132 benbrainard8:

Ouch! Absolutely crunching play on words on the IMDb page, 'The legend gets some fresh blood'! I remember watching that series and I think we discussed it here at some point.

Which 'The Nun' would that be, Ben? A quick search is finding a whole convent of 'em and nun seem to have anything to do with Dracula ...

>129 alaudacorax:

Social media can be so insidious (not meaning LibraryThing, of course). I have a stack of films here to watch and a towering pile of 'Currently reading' and yet on the strength of that lecture I ended up spending the rest of yesterday evening and well through the night watching YouTube recommendations on either Dracula or the Gothic in general ... without learning anything else new ...

From memory, they took the incident from the novel where Jonathan Harker is nursed back to health in a hospital staffed by nuns, or an abbey that provides medical services, and created their female van Helsing as one of the nuns there

>135 housefulofpaper: ok , that explains quite a bit. I guess I really need to reread Dracula, admittedly, it's been years. I've been remembering now that there is indeed an abbey where the medical services are being provided. Isn't this where Dr. John 'Jack' Seward works, too? Hope I'm not mixing up the characters in my head.

In the Gatiss/Moffat version one of those nuns becomes a central character in an entire episode. Many folks lauded the performances/acting. I'm assuming anyone reading this thread has read Dracula}, and I don't have to give any spoiler alerts to this Guardian review of the Gatiss/Moffat version:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jan/01/dracula-review-bbc1-steven-...

This next month I'll be perusing a bookstore that I remember has a beautiful version of Dracula, I'm going to get it. Let's call it an early Christmas present.

>136 benbrainard8:
In the novel, Jack Seward’s sanatorium is on the outskirts of London and next door to Carfax Abbey, newly purchased by Count Dracula. Some adaptations (for example the 1979 film) relocate them to Whitby, so that the wreck of the Demeter delivers Dracula practically to the other main characters’ doorstep.

>136 benbrainard8:
Talking of editions of Dracula, British illustrator John Coulthart produced ilustrations for a Spanish edition, and he reproduced them here:
https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2018/06/01/illustrating-dracula/

He had previously illustrated Frankenstein for the same publisher, and I've seen them used in an English language edition of the novel, from Union Square & Co publishing (it's the 1931 text, by the way), so maybe an edition of Dracula will follow.

There's another comic book adaptation of Dracula. It's so new that only one issue has been published so far. As the little "Universal Monsters" logo attests, this series adapts the 1931 film, but is seems to be a fairly loose adaptation. The first issue centres around Renfield.

I haven't seen any previous work from either the writer or the artist, but to my eyes it's very reminiscient of the early graphic novels by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (Violent Cases etc.)

This above reminds me of some of the drawings/comics found in Metal Hurlant, quite impressive.

The version I'm thinking of purchasing is "Dracula: Collector's Special Edition (Deluxe Illustrated Classics) Hardcover – November 23, 2021". Below are some of the online notes:

A collector's edition of the most famous vampire novel of all time, illustrated with the artwork of Edward Gorey.

This collector’s edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is illustrated with artwork that Edward Gorey created for his stage designs for the novel’s Broadway stage adaptation. The book also features an introduction and appendices by renowned fantasy editor Marvin Kaye.

>140 benbrainard8:

I think I talked about that edition last year, in the 'Editions of "Dracula"' Thread. I bought another copy as a gift for one of my nieces.

These scholarly YouTube videos about the early history of the vampire myth may be of interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF9FIPSLMeM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnWPBDWUuvs&t=29s

Okay, we know he does the bats, wolves, rats and the big, sea-going dog, but did you know there was a Dracula Parrot?

>142 alaudacorax:

I think I did see a photo of one before - it probably popped up on a Google search for Dracula-related things - but it's a very striking bird, and I'm glad to be reminded that such a thing is out there in the world!

>123 housefulofpaper:
Since writing the above, the fact that I hadn't read the Dracula playscript was annoying me. I ended up ordering a copy from Amazon. This is the American version revised by John L. Balderston. I'm couldn't find anything listed on Aamazon or Abe Books that was or clearly included the unrevised Hamilton Deane version.

Reading this version, Dracula's attack on Lucy (a name-swapped Mina, as was repeated in the 1979 film) already carries the seeds of the "Romantic Dracula" idea (and Jonathan Harker's love rival) when Lucy recounts how Dracula said she was his bride, and forcing her to drink his blood (which happens offstage) is "a mystic sacrement".

A bit of business in the third act which I don't think made it to any cinematic versions that were actually based on the play, seems to have suggested the part in Hammer's Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula) where the Count is discovered to have been hiding in the cellar. In the play, there is a vault under Seward's home accesible via a secret passage (or for Dracula in bat form, via the fireplace chinmey) where his last Earth box has been hidden and where he hides during the daylight hours.

Something I write over and over on facebook (not to the same person, of course):

Oops! Belated Happy Birthday for yesterday, Mr. Stoker!

>145 alaudacorax:

Actually, I only know that birthday because I've recently started following LibraryThing on facebook. So I've only just now discovered that Mr. Stoker has his own LibraryThing account. Quite interesting:
https://www.librarything.com/profile/BramStoker

The latest issue of The Green Book (no. 22) from Swan River Press is all about Bram Stoker. There's

The magazine includes relatively little that's directly related to Dracula, but it does reprint four of Stoker's short stories that Swan River Press originally brought out in chapbook or pamphlet form about ten years ago (Four Romances).

>147 housefulofpaper:

Up to 22 already! Tempis wotsit. I've fallen behind ... only got through the first nine.

>148 alaudacorax:
I’ve read up to the current Green Book, but there are a lot of Swan River Press titles still waiting to be read. I do feel quite shamefaced about it because of course I’ve been in personal communication with Brian the publisher.

Apologies if we've discussed this in the past. If so, I can't, offhand, remember it.

A 'Suggested for you' turned up on my facebook account this morning, regarding Stoker and Dracula. It was by someone called 'Cinema Shorthand Society', who/which only seems to exist on facebook. It rehashed pretty usual stuff on S & D, not always accurately, then finished off with this:

About the year 1971, there were plans to make a film on the tumultuous working relationship of Stoker and Irving. Peter Cushing was set to play Stoker and Christopher Lee as Irving. The project was eventually canceled.

Anyone know anything about this? The nearest the account comes to references is 'IMDb/Wikipedia' in brackets and I can't find any mention in a quick search of the likely pages on either site.

I can buy the idea of Lee playing Irving (though I understand Irving had a West Country burr, which would give me pause coming from Lee), but the mind boggles at the idea of Cushing playing Stoker.

>150 alaudacorax:

If you search for "Victim of His Imagination" you'll find a poster for an unmade Hammer film, the mayhem presided over by what's obviously Christopher Lee's Dracula, but with red hair and green skin. I presume it's (like Dracula AD 1972) trying to be psychedelic and Hip, but a bit late to the party.

I'd been led to believe that Victim of His Imagination was the film "on the tumultuous working relationship of Stoker and Irving", from brief mentions in books and magazine articles. However I searched just now and found a forum thread with contributions from screenwriter Ted Newson. He says that the 1970's script was for an Amicus-style portmanteau film using Stoker stories and any Stoker/Irving business would be relegated to the frame narrative. He reworked the idea, he says, and his script had parallel narratives telling the Dracula story and the Stoker/Irving relationship. He wrote a small role for Cushing, as the supposed real-life inspiration for van Helsing, Arminius Vambery. It's very likely that there were multiple scripts or pitches playing around with the basic idea. The usual Hammer method was to start with the poster to drum up interest and finances, after all!

Thinking about actors with a Hammer connection, Andrew Keir or Oliver Reed both had the build and the physical presence to play Stoker.

>151 housefulofpaper:

Ah, right—that would be where they got it. The trouble with these facebook 'Suggested for you's is that most of them are just cobbled together for clickbait without any real interest in the content, and certainly no care for accuracy.

There seem to be so many of them, these days, that it's a job of work to hunt out my friends and family's posts. And no matter how many accounts you block there are always more. And you could waste almost as much time blocking them as reading them. Buzzfeed, for instance, seems to have more facebook accounts than a hedgehog has fleas.

The answer is not to click on them ever, of course, but sometimes, as with that Stoker/Dracula one, you just can't help yourself ...

>152 alaudacorax:

And now there's all that AI-created crap turning up on YouTube ...

Here are some recent Dracula-related acquisitions.

First, a jigsaw. I've seen a whole series of these literary jigsaws in Waterstones.



Individual characters on the edge of the box art:





Inside, there's an article by Roger Luckhurst, on the back of..



...a poster-sized reproduction of the jigsaw.



Next, this is, as it says, a soundtrack to Bram Stoker's novel, made by a mix of contributors. The tracks were initially issued as 7-inch singles.





Red vinyl!



Finally, the latest "Marvel Masterworks" collection of their 1970's Dracula comic book. Although the series gets a critical thumbs-up for it quality and consistency (after the first half-dozen or so issues, it retained the same team of writer, artist (i.e. penciller) and inker. However Marvel did try to wring as much value as possible from the franchise. This edition includes stories from a parallel "giant-size" title made by different writers and artists, and stories about Dracula's daughter, Lilith - an obvious response to Warren magazines Vampirella. The black and white magazines sidestepped the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority (a kind of Hays Code for comics), but were not, usually, noticably more "adult" (quite a lot of material from Marvel's black and white comic magazines was reprinted in the 1970s Marvel UK weekly comics).



Unusually for Marvel, the action in these issues doesn't take place in the US. A lot of it occurs in a (slightly - sometimes more than slightyl - off version of the UK).