On March 8, 1967, Rankin-Bass invited us to their “Mad Monster Party!” This stop-motion creature feature features creatures from ho-rror’s creepiest cl-ass-sicks! Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are just a few of the distinguished delinquents at this sinister soirée! Groovy tunes, ghoul gags, and awesome monster designs make this one an all-timer. Eat, drink, and be scary at the “Mad Monster Party!”
On February 22, 1899, the sensationally sinister Dwight Frye was born! Known for his portrayals of madmen and minions, the fearsome Frye often stole the show with his unnerving energy. The Man with the Thousand-Watt Stare robbed graves in “Frankenstein” and ate flies in “Dracula," contributing some eXXXceptional eccentricity to already-odd motion pictures. A true icon of fear, Frye even inspired one of Alice Cooper’s greatest songs. We gotta get outta here!
Are you ready for a history lesson? Then give let Christopher Lee bite… your apple! It’s positively putrid class on the most sanguinary subject of them all, Dracula! Under Prince Lee’s tutelage, you shall learn the shocking secrets of Dracula’s past! (Imagine “Dracula Untold” but good.) Prepare your brains for…
In ho-nor of Black History Month, we are going to present one of the most important vampire pictures ever made, “Blacula.” I’m sure you’ve heard of it: the tit-le has become something of a pop culture punchline, and it would be a lie to say that it’s not a wonderfully ridiculous tit-le. When you hear “Blacula,” you eXXXpect ether a bargain-basement schlock-shocker (watch “Blackenstein” for that) or a provocative parody designed to offend. The second most shocking thing about “Blacula” is that it is neither one of those things. The most shocking? Well, it’s actually a damn good ho-rror film!
“Blacula” tells the tragic tale of Mamuwalde, an African Prince who is bitten by Count Dracula in 1780. The unfortunate Manuwalde is turned into a vampire and locked in a coffin. After many decades of dreamless slumber, Manuwalde is inadvertently released from his coffin in Los Angeles, 1972. Manuwalde soon discovers Tina, the woman he believes to be the reincarnation of his lost wife, Luva. Bloodthirsty and hot-blooded, Manuwalde seeks the love of his afterlife.
While “Blacula” was being developed, William Marshall worked with the producers to give the eponymous neck-biter the dignity a great vampire deserves. Blacula’s real name was changed from “Andrew Brown” to “Mamuwalde,” and his character received the previously recounted backstory. It’s important to note Marshall’s involvement in the creative process because it proves just ho-w invested he was in the part.
Marshall was a Shakespearean actor, and he shaped Blacula into a Shakespearean figure. With his stentorian delivery and eXXXalted bearing, Marshall was simply majestic in a part that could’ve been played for cheap laughs. His Mamuwalde was truly a monarch of the undead; a stately demon with the manners of an angel. In my book, William Marshall is up there with Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. “Blacula” is a silly name (the name given to him by Dracula himself), but Blacula is not a silly monster.
The film itself is an engaging chiller that successfully transfers Hammer histrionics to the groovy ‘70s. Heck, Hammer couldn’t even accomplish that: just give “Dracula A.D. 1972” a watch! Sure, some effects may betray a lack of funds, but the direction and script are worthy of their vampire. We could go on… but we think you ought to just see for yourself! Without any further a-BOO, we proudly present… “Blacula!”
On February 14, 1931, “Dracula” rose from the grave! Tod Browning’s supernatural shocker brought vampire ho-rror to Ho-llywood cinema. Fog-thick atmosphere and Gothic production design make this one a macabre marvel, but Bela Lugosi elevates it to legendary status. With sartorial elegance and haunting charisma, Lugosi became the definitive vampire, inspiring 90 years worth of impressions and Halloween costumes. Even today, this “Dracula” still holds eerie power!
We just LOOOOOOOOVE a love story! Call us “soft,” but we have hearts, too! (We keep ‘em in the freezer.) We mean, love is the ineXXXorable force that drives and propels most ho-rror stories! Without love, the Phantom of the Opera has no reason to stalk. the Mummy remains under wraps, and King Kong would’ve never climbed the Empire State Building. Love’s created more movie monsters than black magic and mad science combined! It’s the secret ingredient that turns a barbarous brute into a tragic figure. Monsters fall in love so very often, but they are destined to have their hearts broken in more ways than one. That makes for great macabre melodrama! And, if you ask us, that makes the average monster movie a love story. Like we said, we love a love story!
With Valentine’s Day here, we figured we’d pay tribute to love with five of our favorite romantic horror/monster movies. Because we don’t want to be too sour for the sweethearts, we’ve even included one in which the creature gets the girl! Snuggle up next your BOIL or GHOUL FIEND, gorge on some chocolate (preferably dark), and watch one of these mad love stories.
1. “Beauty and the Beast” (1946): Tale as old as time… and the skeleton of nearly every creature feature! You just can’t talk about romantic monster stories without at least mentioning the fabulously fantastic French fable. Jean Cocteau’s seminal retelling is pure cinematic bless, rich with indelible imagery and eerie elegance. It has influenced everything from Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” attraction to the 2004 version of “Phantom of the Opera.” My! What a guy, that Cocteau!
2. “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” - “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Ugly” was the tagline for this blacker-than-a-widow comedy that marries Phantom of the Opera (another Phantom reference! Take a swig!) with a uniquely British sense of humour to eXXXcellent effect. Vincent Price plays a disfigured organist who seeks to avenge the death of his beloved by picking off the surgical team behind her ill-fated operation. Love is what motivates the good doctor, and his comic campaign of carnage is just perfect for a vile, violent Valentine’s!
3. “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”: The Bela Lugosi “Dracula” may have been released on Valentine’s Day, but no version of the venerable vampire tale is more appropriate for the holiday than Francis Ford Coppola’s take from 1992. Dracula was given a Mummy-esque romance with the reincarnation of a long-lost love. Dazzling filmic techniques and operatic theatrics are what gave this adaptation the fresh blood it needed. Recommended for love-fools and blood-suckers alike.
4. “The Fly” (1986): The gooiest love story ever told! David Cronenberg’s celebrated remake of the 1958 sci-fi favorite is a heartbreaking romance in which one of the lovers is quickly devolving into a hideous insect man. Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum’s onscreen chemistry is absolutely superb, and it gives pathos to the magnificently morbid spectacle on display. Love is the deadliest pesticide of all.
5. “The Shape of Water”:Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning fairytale reimagines the Creature from the Black Lagoon as a storybook prince. Unlike just about every other creature feature, this drama actually ends rather happily. Doug Jones and Sally Hawkins are utterly bewitching as beauty and beast, Del Toro’s direction is incredible, and it is as touching as a movie about a fish monster can be. And they called it “guppy love”…
6. “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925): There’s a reason why we mentioned this in two of the previous entries: it’s THE ho-rror love story. Phantom’s one of the only classic terror tales that is as synonymous with romance as it is with fear. The Phantom himself is a darkly romantic figure who still captures the hearts of pop culture fans to this very day. As a special Valentine’s gift to you crypt-kickers, we have the entire film here for your enjoyment! (It’s better than candy hearts!)
happy halloween! you can now purchase prints of my Recovering the Classics “Dracula” cover via the Creative Action Network!
Recovering the Classics is a crowdsourced collection of original covers for 50 of the greatest works of fiction in the public domain. You can find out more info at RecoveringTheClassics.com.
Stoker wrote Dracula as a direct reactionto the Wilde trials
Many of Dracula’s characteristics actually echo Wilde as described to the trials, and Dracula’s lifestyle resembles an exaggerated version of precautions to hide homosexuality
Stoker is basically the pro-closeted 1890s alternative to Wilde’s flamboyancy, and that comes out in how he portrays Dracula and Jonathan Harker
Like if you look deeper into Stoker’s letters to Whitman, he’s practically obsessed with feeling “naturally secretive” and “reticent”
(Also he and Wilde had some weird personal rivalry going on, since Stoker married Wilde’s definitely-not-straight ex-fiancee, though later they were friendly…there’s a lot to unpack here)
So, arguably, Dracula was Stoker’s way of apologizing for his silence during Wilde’s trials.
Some highlights:
Wilde’s trial had such a profound effect on Stoker precisely because it fed Stoker’s pre-existing obsession with secrecy, making Stoker retrospectively exaggerate the secrecy in his own writings on male love.
It is difficult, Stoker admits, to speak openly about “so private a matter” as desire. In carefully calibrated language, Stoker asks forgiveness from those who might see that his silence is a sin-to those few nameless souls who know his secret affinity with Wilde.
Since Dracula is a dreamlike projection of Wilde’s traumatic trial, Stoker elaborated and distorted the evidence that the prosecutor used to convict Wilde. In particular, the conditions of secrecy necessary for nineteenth-century homosexual life–nocturnal visits, shrouded windows, no servants–become ominous emblems of Count Dracula’s evil.
Dracula…represents not so much Oscar Wilde as the complex of fears, desires, secrecies, repressions, and punishments that Wilde’s name evoked in 1895. Dracula is Wilde-as-threat, a complex cultural construction not to be confused with the historical individual Oscar Wilde.
tl;dr:
Stoker is actually too repressed to function
Oscar Wilde (especially his trials) absolutely influenced Stoker
Dracula gay
Classic vampire lit really was just about exorcising one’s complicated feelings about one’s ex boyfriend huh?
Jonathan Harker: This is my fiancée Mina, and Minas girlfriend Lucy, and Lucy’s Fiancé Arthur, and Arthur’s Boyfriend John Seward, and Seward’s boyfriend Quincey, and
ahhh excellent today’s Daily Dracula chapter is that part mentioned in Shadow of the Vampire, where the very real vampire Count Orlok talks about how terribly sad it made him to see Dracula try to remember the ways of caring for a man.
Dracula hasn’t had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he… that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn’t eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes… when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.
I really do like this scene from Shadow of the Vampire because while we all do joke about how Jonathan has no idea what he’s getting into, he is the only perspective in the novel that we get so far, and the only other perspectives he mentions are those of the peasants who we know deeply fear Dracula as a monster (because, yknow, he’s Dracula). And this is like literally “sympathy for the monster 101” but that this comes directly after the chapter where Dracula is so charming, so fascinating, talking to Jonathan all night, it does give me pause to imagine the profound loneliness of Dracula. He has his plans and predations of course, undoubtedly, but does he also just enjoy Harker’s company? Is it not a relief for after multiple hundreds of years to speak with a man who does not know to fear you instinctvely? Would you not wish to speak to this man all night, even if you also had ulterior motives? Would you not savor the moments between steps in your monstrous plan, the brief time before he solves you, where you get to just…hang out?
jonathan harker watching a strange man with no reflection aggresively steal his mirror and launch it out the window seconds after demonically lunging at his throat: that’s annoying :/
HI I’m crawling out of my Tumblr lurker hole bc I simply have to post these doodles I’ve been drawing with every entry we got so far. Hope to continue as we go on!
