Dracula by Bram Stoker

This isn't the first time I've read this novel but, well, I was a pre-teen back in the early '90s, and I'm in my late forties now. This, shall we say, was a very different experience.

This is, I suppose, the main text, if not quite the first,
to properly introduce and popularise the legends of the vampire to late Victorian society, both in this country and across the West. And it does this very well indeed; the Count is a superb villain, odd though it is that we see so much of him in the opening chapters, with poor Jonathan Harker trapped in his castle, yet thereafter he is spoken of more often than he is seen, with the character of Van Helsing there throughout to impress upon him his many, many powers. Indeed, Dracula's powers are immense, far beyond those we usually associate with vampires, and his nightly presence feels ever-present. His slow, horrible killing of Lucy is deeply effective, and gives us a real sense of threat for the back half of the novel.

And then there's the scene where he has Mina imbibe his own blood, damning her by ensuring she will become like him, unless he dies soon. And that chilling sentence "This is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!" Brrr...

And yet, despite the novel working well in terms of structure and effective horror- some say the bits with Lucy slowly being drained to death drag, but I certainly don't- the novel has little deeper to offer. Yes, we can comment on how the novel reveals the anxieties of its time, but that is incidental, and largely unintentional. The characters are all very much stock types, with no real depth. The prose may sing at times, but for an epistolary novel this gives us very little in terms of real interiority. These characters have no real depth, they are characters in a grand guignol. And the speech patterns of Van Helsing, in particular, become annoying very quickly.

A mixed bag of a novel, then. But it's a fascinating artifact in the history of the vampire trope, and an entertaining read. 

Dracula (1979)

“Oh, I loved to be frightened..”

This was the last of the famous Dracula films I’d seen and, while it doesn’t rival the recent BBC TV series, it’s easily the best cinematic version of the original novel, excellent though some of the others have been.

This film is, strictly speaking, based on the play written in the years after the novel was published but, despite skipping the famous Transylvanian bit, and with those inevitable lines "I never drink wine" and "Children of the night, what (sad music they make" present and correct, this is broadly very faithful to the original epistolary novel- not without changes but preserving the core of the story, namely Dracula coming through the window to threaten first Mina and then Lucy.

There's no downplaying the original sexual subtext of Dracula drinking Lucy's blood, either: the film is very well-shot throughout but the main scene of Dracula feeding from Lucy is directed in an abstract but obviously sexual way. Plus, of course, Frank Langella gices us a charming and deeply erotic version of the Count, with charisma enough almost to rival the great Christopher Lee.


Laurence Olivier is, perhaps, hamming it up as Van Helsing, although Larry hamming it up is worth a strong performance from a lesser actor. But it's a real stroke of genius to cast Trevor Eve as an appropriately chippy Jonathan Harker, somewhat pissed off at Dracula for nicking his fiancee.

It's also nice to hear Hollywood acknowledging that Whitby is in face in Yorkshire and not the Home Counties, with the not-posh characters having accents to match. It's a nice but crucial detail that is so often forgotten. It may or may not be the best Dracula film, but it's easily the best cinematic version of the novel Bram Stoker wrote.

Dracula: The Dark Compass

“I knew the future would bring wonders. I did not know it would make them ordinary.”

Wow. Well, I suspect that won't have pleased everyone as much as it pleased me. Moffat's clever structural games and Gatiss' fondness of allusion don't appeal to everyone as much as they do to me. Personally my only concern is that a programme broadcast on the first three days of January could plausibly end up as the best thing on telly in 2020. The episode, and the series, really are that good. And it's not all clever plotting, or smirking when we hear good old Bela echoed in "Children of the night- what music they make". It's also horror, and real, effective horror at that. And heart. Lots of heart. For the record, the end made Mrs Llamastrangler cry.

It's a bold move to properly resolve the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode at the start of the third. It is, though, perhaps even bolder to invite comparisons to Sherlock by fast forwarding to the present day. It's lovely to have, though, after the initial excitement with the helicopters, some time to breathe, and to allow Dracula to acclimatise himself to the twentieth century, a time of wonders for him, where even a poor household has access to untold wonders, and even to chide us on how we take all this for granted.

It really should be an obvious, tired cliche to have Zoe Helsing be a great grand-niece of Agatha who happens also to be played by Dolly Wells, but it somehow isn't, because blood is lives, everyone is drinking each others' blood, and we can be poetically ambiguous about which Van Helsing is which. Likewise, the conceit of having the Jonathan Harker Foundation (nice bit of misdirection with Jack's phone) wanting Dracula for his blood is only really there for characters to meet each other so the plot can happen, but it allows us to meet this version Renfield, played with comical panache by Gatiss, yet again getting away with cheekily writing himself a fun character to play. And it's clever how we see Dracula scoff at the notion of rights- he's a vampire aristocrat, so he's all about blood; he and the probably-going-to-be-reshuffled Jacob Rees Mogg should get on well- only for Renfield to use his legal rights to get him freed.

Alongside Claes Bang, though, the other star is Lydia West as this version of Lucy Westenwra. She may have been bloody good in Years and Years but she's bloody extraordinary in this, perfectly playing the nihilistic charm of the bored, beautiful hedonist. Her dialogue tempts fate, of course- "I'll sleep when I'm dead" and "everyone smiles when you're pretty" are both dead giveaways if you're paying attention. And Dracula soon ends up giving her a regular thrill be feeding off her in at least a bit of a gesture towards Bram Stoker's novel. And yes, of course the feeding is a not-very-subtle metaphor for sex. We expect no less.

But the horror of this conception of the undead is present too, with Dracula calmly informing Lucy that exactly nine occupants of the graveyard are "suffering" in their coffins- and one horrific undead child has managed to get out. The reveal of what it looks like is superbly done.

But the real horror is for Lucy- not her rather erotic and cheerfully longed-for death; not the existential horror of being undead; not even the unimaginable torture of being cremated while conscious. No; it's the fact that she's disfigured, and simply cannot live without being beautiful.

But the ending is not hers; it belongs to Agatha/Zoe, who ends by confronting Dracula over his fear of facing death, the common thread that binds together his weaknesses. I'm not sure this quite works if you look too closely, but it's so artfully done that we don't particularly care. And that final scene of Dracula and Agatha dying together, erotically, with death and orgasm literally metaphors for each other... that's romantic, and perfect. Because the reason why this is sublime, and Twilight is shite, is not that vampires shouldn't be romantic. They absolutely should. But the romance must always be twisted, never vanilla.

Dracula: Blood Vessel

“The sophistication of a gentleman, Agatha, is always a veneer...”

Ah. It's good to get another Moffat/Gatiss season to binge on, or savour, as one's lifestyle permits- these episodes are bloody ninety minutes long, you know.  But this is another good one. Not as good as the opening episode, granted, but it wouldn't be; middle episodes rarely are.

What this episode manages to do is take the somewhat claustrophobic premise of Dracula's long sea voyage from the Balkans to Whitby and construct a taut little thriller which, for those of you reading this who are Doctor Who fans (and I suspect many of you are), tends to evoke the mood of Horror of Fang Rock, except with more blood. Much more blood. I don't recall this aspect of Stoker's novel being so heavily focused on in any previous screen version, although the brief scenes in Nosferatu are certainly iconic.

It is, of course, a relatively cheap episode but one full of wit, incident,  scares, suspense and (thank whatever gods may happen to exist) Dolly Wells once more as the supremely quotable Sister Agatha. It's also full of a splendid cast which, as many of us are indeed Doctor Who fans, includes both Catherine Schell (still a beautiful woman, probably) and Sacha Dhawan, who is having quite the month.

The mystery of Cabin 9 is nicely handled, and the various passengers all have their little secrets and peccadilloes. The plot is awfully clever but, again, is restrained; this isn't Sherlock and there are more jump scares than narrative tricks. The narrative tricks are there nevertheless, though, and we get a superb twist at the end, as Sister Agatha manages to bury Dracula beneath the waves (shades of the Angel season four finale) for longer than he thought...

A rare vintage indeed. To be savoured.

Dracula: The Rules of the Beast

“I’m undead. I’m not unreasonable...”

Well, obviously, this is going to be clever, awesome and very literate indeed; it’s written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. You don’t go into a first episode from them and expect it to be rubbish- and it certainly isn’t. I’ve only seen the first episode thus far, but it’s a superlative but of telly without a doubt. Yet it wasn’t quite what I expected.

I’m not saying the structure of the story isn’t clever. I’m not saying the dialogue isn’t witty. But both, while masterfully done, are notably restrained. This isn't Sherlock, it's horror. It's jump scares, horrific concepts (Here, some people just randomly become undead when they die, some become vampires, and only a select few retain their sentience after a while. Most just scratch at their coffins. And this is a secret known to gravediggers around the world. Shiver.) at a Dracula, in Claes Bang, who may very possibility be the very best screen Count ever. And yes: I'm saying this in a world where Christopher Lee once walked, and realise what I'm saying. Bang is that good.

John Hefferman is ideal as Jonathan Harker, too, but the other standout performance is from Dolly Wells as the drily witty Sister Agatha- the hero, I suspect, of the series; her surname at least gives strong indications. She is, I suppose, our Peter Cushing- a deliciously quotable nun who has, perhaps, lost her faith but who is determined to understand, and combat, the undead.

It's 1897- the year Bram Stoker's novel was written, although not when it was set. The action is split between Transylvania and Budapest, both still part of a Habsburg Hungary. This is literally a tale of the Gothic- Dracula is an ancient horror from an old, labyrinthine castle in the wild east of Austria-Hungary, planning to move to the more "modern" England to kill, feast and be replete.  The episode is, I think, set up for this- an origin story of sorts, loosely following the early parts of the novel.

The plot begins with nods to past iterations- the scene where Harker and Dracula meet is very Bela Lugosi, right down to the "I never drink... wine". But we soon depart from this to a narrative with twists and turns which satisfyingly surprise us without ever becoming overly labyrinthine; we shall leave that to the castle's architecture. We have suspense, scares and just one little Doctor Who in-joke; we are introduced to our new Count and his world, and is good. Mrs Llamastrangler and I are hooked.

That cliffhanger, though....I don't care about Mina, but please let Sister Agatha live.

Dracula (1931)

“Listen to them: children of the night! What music they make!”

I wasn’t too impressed with this one. It’s slow, stilted, and awkward- a far cry from the style and humour of Universal’s own Frankenstein from the same year. Still, there’s a significant redeeming feature in Bela Lugosi, who is simply fantastic.

The opening scenes are well done, building up the suspense and giving us the context before we meet Dracula. The first line is spoken by Carl Laemmle’s daughter Carla, who is still alive and will be 102 this month, but we then move to a lot of ominous mutterings by local peasants towards Renfield. Interestingly, the setting seems to be firmly established as Transylvania, with all the signs in Hungarian, rather than the vague Mittel-European setting of the later Hammers.

There’s a certain style to the lighting of Lugosi’s face at some points, I suppose, but the direction is strangely lacklustre. Lugosi aside, the performances are not too good, either. The initial scenes with Renfield (conflated here with Jonathan Harker) at Castle Dracula only work to the extent they do because of Lugosi’s performance, although I like the presence of the various animals. I’m not sure there are too many armadillos in Transylvania, though.

The scene soon shifts to England, and becomes oddly and claustrophobically studio-bound for the rest of the film. Dracula is seen to carry out a few murders, but there are rather too many scenes of him politely conversing to Mina, “John” Harker and Van Helsing to be plausible, in spite of the fact that Van Helsing has his measure from the start. All the working-class characters speak a kind of absurd Dick Van Dyke cockney, too, and keep pronouncing the word “crazy” in a most peculiar fashion.

The plot proceeds in a way which owes rather more to the novel than the later Hammer film would. Lucy doesn’t have much screen time before abruptly dying, though, and the plot thread of her killing lots of people as a “woman in white” seems to just trail off. The rest of the film consists of Dracula gradually drinking Mina’s blood at night while she spends her days being patronised by the men who surround her. The sexual subtext is barely there at all, except for Mina’s scenes with John towards the end of the film.

Interestingly, the tropes of vampirism are rather different from those we know. Wolfsbane is used instead of garlic, and Dracula is able to turn, off-screen, into (unseen) wolves as well as ridiculously unconvincing bats. He presents very little sense of threat, though, for all his charisma, giving no indication of violence or strength in his interaction with the characters.

The film just ends with no real dramatic tension; Van Helsing simply stakes Dracula, with no confrontation of any kind beforehand. The whole thing simply falls flat, with no flair, dramatic tension, narrative clarity or humour. My overall impression was disappointment, although my expectations had not been high. Still, at least I can now say I’ve seen it.

Dracula (1958)

“Sleep well, Mr Harker…”

We get a statement of intent very early on, with some blood spattering on to a coffin- these early Hammer horror films certainly like their bright Technicolor red blood!

We're in some vague part of Horror Film Mittel-Europa in 1885. As with Curse of Frankenstein, this is a stylised and intentionally vague setting.  Jonathan Harker is heading to Castle Dracula and, in a slight nod to the epistolatory nature of the novel, this part of the plot is narrated through his diary. The inside of the castle is at the same time luxurious and bleak, with the large rooms marked by harsh straight lines and a total absence of carpets or any hint of softness.

After a brief and disturbing encounter with a woman whom Dracula is apparently taken prisoner, Harker finally meets Christopher Lee’s Count who, although sinister, appears polite enough, to the point of complimenting a picture of Harker’s fiancée, Lucy Holmwood. It seems Harker, a scholar, is to work as his librarian, but it soon becomes apparent that Dracula is only available during the hours of darkness, and that Harker’s door is locked during the night.

But Harker, we learn, has ulterior motives, and is here to kill the notorious Count, who from this point on ceases to be a character and just becomes a monster, never speaking another line for the rest of the film. But poor Harker is doomed; he agrees to help the temptress he met earlier, and gets bitten in the course of a vamp-fight between her and the, er, vampire. Both she and Drac look great, and there’s lots and lots of blood.

Harker, himself doomed to become undead, manages to make it to the crypt before sundown, but chooses to stake the woman before the Count himself. WHY?

The inevitable happens, and we cut to Peter Cushing in one of those Hammer inns where all the locals stop talking as soon as a stranger enters. Still, armed with Harker’s diary, he’s soon delivering the news of Harker’s death to Arthur Holmwood (played by Michael Gough, later to play the Celestial Toymaker in Doctor Who and Alfred in Tim Burton’s Batman), brother of Harker’s fiancée, and his wife Mina, future star of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s splendid The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He receives a frosty reception, however, and Lucy can’t be told the news as she’s very ill with anaemia.

We soon see the reasons for this, however; Lucy is delivering her windows open at night and removing her crucifix, allowing Dracula to come in and bite her, night after Night. The erotic charge is so electric here that I’d be tempted to say “get a room, you two” except… they have. For the first time in the film we have the obvious use of vampirism as a metaphor for sex, and as we’ll see this tells us quite a lot about the sexual mores of late Victorian times as opposed to the late 1950s. On the surface this is an unhealthily puritanical message about sex but I don’t think the film is quite playing this straight. Like Curse of Frankenstein there’s something camply humorous about this film, even if it’s played very, very deadpan.

It’s a bit jolting to see Van Helsing listening to audio recordings of himself, even if it is from an ancient-looking gramophone and even though his butler seems to be amazed. There are plenty of audio recordings from the 1880s on Youtube (look for Gladstone and a very drunk Robert Browning!) but none of them have anything approaching this sound quality.

Van Helsing uses this rather obvious expository device to inform us that vampire bites are addictive and that this eventually results in death through loss of blood. Consulted by Mina, he soon discovers that this is what is happening to Lucy. He orders the windows to be closed and Lucy’s bed to be surrounded by garlic, but this is not adhered to and the girl dies.

Van Helsing now has no choice but to let Arthur into his confidence, especially as the undead Lucy is now walking the grounds of the house, threatening their daughter Tania. Arthur catches the undead Lucy the following night, and is only saved from being bitten by Van Helsing. These scenes are atmospheric, effective, and really bring home how this film is set in a dreamlike, stylised world of cemeteries, castles, inns, sleepy border guards and nothing else, which feels culturally German, Slavic and Romanian all at once, and vaguely evokes the cultural mix of Habsburg Austria, yet is full of characters with English names.

Lucy is stakes, and Van Helsing and Arthur have a bit of a chat in some comfy chairs with some brandy, as gents in Hammer films are wont to do. It seems that vampires cannot in fact turn into bats; evidently the budget won’t stretch that far. But, just as our heroes are beginning to get a grip, Mina is lured to Dracula’s base of operations, and from that point onwards is under his spell. Again, there’s a sexual subtext here, and in this case it’s a rather emasculating one for poor old Arthur; apparently he’s not satisfying her. Actually, given the blatant eroticism of what can only be described as the sex scene between Dracula and Mina, I’m not sure the word “subtext” is entirely appropriate…

Arthur’s implied emasculation is even more tragic as he’s clearly a decent and loving husband, as we see him selflessly donating an alarming amount of blood to save his wife, who presumably shares the same blood group. Understandably, he’s a little sapped after this, but Van Helsing has some sound medical advice: “Now, you need plenty of fluid. Tea, coffee or, better still, wine.” Yes, that’s right, Van H. Wine isn’t in any way dehydrating, is it?

We finish with a chase, incorporating a bit of comic relief at the border, and Dracula’s final gruesome death by sunlight. An excellent film, this- atmospheric, just erotic enough, just gory enough and very well-acted indeed.