SO DAMNED GOOD! Happy Halloween

SO DAMNED GOOD!

Happy Halloween

Blood & Roses

Blood & Roses

Blood and Roses

At last a German DVD issue has offered us the chance to finally see this Euro-vampire movie denied many of us for so many many years I dread to count them! And as though rewarding us the wait this is the longer 85 minute continental version with German and French soundtracks but also with English subtitles. Its a treat and possibly the best release we'll get to see... who knows? - In celebration I am borrowing a review from Cinefantastique. Also check out a recent issue of Sight & Sound magazine (July 2014), Blood and Roses is reviewed therein:

Blood and Roses: From Cinefantastique

By Dennis Fischer(2010) 

I didn’t see BLOOD AND ROSES when it was originally released; I first encountered it while reading early books on genre films, where it was mentioned very favorably, and I was particularly haunted by the image of a man in a bat-mask with spread wings bending over a beautiful woman, which appeared in the bookThe Seal of Dracula. The director was Roger Vadim, a French filmmaker whose work I would come to know well, both for its positive attributes (Vadim specialized in featuring the most beautiful women in Europe, and his work tended to have a lush look) and for its failings (consistently, he was an awkward storyteller with threadbare characters and not much substance). For those who view films for their storytelling, Vadim consistently disappoints, but for those who view movies for their indelible imagery, his work has many delights, and BLOOD AND ROSES remains one of his strongest features.
There follows a few set pieces that BLOOD AND ROSES is most famous for. During a rainstorm, Georgia confronts Carmilla, telling her that she knows Carmilla is in love with Leopoldo. Carmilla tells her that she’s wrong as Carmilla is dead. Georgia gives Carmilla a red rose and promises to always be her friend. A thorn of the rose pricks Georgia’s lip and Carmilla kisses the blood away, thinking, “One drop is not enough. I must have more, much more.” (How much more is probably part of what was excised from the American release). Per vampire legend, the rose quickly loses its color once Carmilla touches it.
As in Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, near the end a doctor offers a rational explanation of what has been transpiring. He says that Carmilla has been sick for some time now and, given the impossibility of her love for Leopoldo, retreated into a world of fantasy, living like a child in a dream where she could take Georgia’s place and have Leopoldo all to herself. Overhearing the explanation, Carmilla wanders off toward the abbey, where the army is detonating remaining explosives, and she is killed, with blood dripping down her blouse as in the dream when her body lands on some barbed wire.
BLOOD AND ROSES (Et Mourir de Plasir["To Die with Pleasure], 1960). Directed by Roger Vadim. Screenplay by Claude Brule, adaptation and dialogue by Roger Vadim and Roger Vailland; based on “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan LeFanu. Cast: Mel Ferrer, Elsa Martinelli, Annette Vadim, Rene-Jean Chauffard, marc Allegret, Alberto Bonucci, Serge Marquand, Gabriella Farinon, Renato Speziali, Edith Peters, Giovanni Di Benedetto.While BLOOD AND ROSES was lensed in Technicolor and the Technirama widescreen process, thus far Paramount has seen fit to release only a faded pan & scan presentation on VHS in the ep mode, and then only in its dubbed and shortened American version. Now if only dedicated cultists could convince Paramount that this rarely screened classic deserves to be seen on video in this country in its original and complete form.

I was not impressed by Vadim’s othercinefantastique offerings (the first — and worst — part of SPIRITS OF THE DEAD and the Jane Fonda vehicle, BARBARELLA). Though BLOOD AND ROSES shares the same pros and cons, it is by far the best of Vadim’s genre films, and it is significant and important in its own right. Once more, the words are often stilted, the characters underdeveloped, and the plot barely coherent, but this film has images that will haunt you and become part of our collective consciousness.

Vadim’s original title for the film was ET MOURIR DE PLASIR, which translates as “To Die With Pleasure,” and the European version was 13 minutes longer than the 74-minute re-edit that made it to U.S. shores . Still, to see Americanized BLOOD AND ROSES is to see the origin of  so-called Eurotrash horror; much of the basic imagery would be mined in that particular sub-genre for decades to come, including the pioneering effort to feature a lesbian subtext.

Since BLOOD AND ROSES is difficult to see, I will provide some details concerning its plot and characters. The film is narrated by the spirit of Millarca, a member of the Karnstein family, who kept a villa in Italy and were rumored to be vampires. Though set in what was then contemporary times, Millarca identifies with the world of the spirit, which she says is the Old World. She begins relating the story of her current incarnation.

At Karnstein Castle, Carmilla Karnstein (Elsa Martinelli) from Austria has come to visit her beloved cousin Leopoldo (Mel Ferrer) before his wedding to Georgia (Annette Vadim). Leopoldo has hired a premier pyrotechnician Carlo Ruggieri (Alberto Bonucci) to put on a fireworks display for the engagement party, which he intends to set up at the site of a ruined abbey nearby, along with its adjacent cemetery.

Gradually we discover that Carmilla has fallen deeply in love with her cousin Leopoldo and has become bipolar — one minute deliriously happy and the next hopelessly depressed. Ruggieri’s fireworks set off a hidden cache of German explosives, frightening the crowd and loosening Millarca’s sepulcher. Dressed in a white wedding dress, Carmilla wanders through the smoke-drenched abbey, drawn by the presence of Millarca, who takes possession of her body.

The next morning Carmilla walks back to the castle and falls asleep on a bed, where Leopoldo and Georgia find her. Georgia watches as Leopoldo takes Carmilla to her room, observing, “I ought to be jealous of her, but I’m not.” Later, Georgia bends over Carmilla only for Carmilla to suddenly grab her by the wrist with an ice-cold hand. This bit of entrapment becomes linked to a subsequent scene in which groundskeeper Guiseppe (Serge Marquand) has captured a fox and put it on a leash for Georgia, only for it to break away from her at the approach of Carmilla.

BLOOD AND ROSES then delights in giving hints that Carmilla has become a vampire, as when Georgia asks her if she likes the sun, and Carmilla replies, “No, it burns.” There is a dream-like scene of Guiseppe standing next to a fire, and through the flames we see the approaching figure of Carmilla in a white dress, only for her to appear on the other side of him, moving away. Carmilla recalls the abdication of the Hapsburgs as if it were a recent event, and suddenly knows how to dance to classical music, connecting her to another time. Once a talented equestrienne, Carmilla now finds horses start and shy away in her presence.

Millarca, having taken possession of Carmilla, announces that she has to return to her grave and that she needs “nourishment — blood!” as she eyes Lisa (Gabriella Farinon), the family’s servant girl who lives in a cottage nearby. Carmilla pursues her, and Lisa is later found dead by two young girls who tend the sheep. The doctor who examines the body pronounces her death an accident, though Guiseppe tells the girls that a vampire is to blame, and the girls later take to wearing garlands of garlic.

Complicating matters, Leopoldo invites Carmilla to join them on their honeymoon to the Caribbean, but when Carmilla sees herself in a mirror, she sees a spreading bloodstain on her white blouse near her heart — the stain only visible in the mirror image. This panics her, causing her to flee to her bedroom and rend her dress. Concerned, Leopoldo comes to her and begins kissing her on her bed.

The final great setpiece is a dream sequence reminiscent of the work of Cocteau. The dream is Georgia’s and is presented in black and white with color vividly intruding in two instances. The first is of Carmilla with a white scarf around her neck from which spurts crimson blood. The dead Lisa swims by the window and Georgia follows her by opening the window and diving into the water – wandering past dancers at the estate, a gateway to the real world (with color and a man on a horse carrying a woman), a corridor with many women, and finally two nurses escorting her to an operating room with all the nurses wearing bright ruby gloves. There she sees Millarca as the surgeon and Carmilla as the patient on the operating table. The two women seem to embrace and spin as Georgia wakes up screaming.

The cinematography is by Claude Renoir, who worked with Renoir on THE GOLDEN COACH and THE RIVER, and later shot SPIRITS OF THE DEAD and BARBARELLA for Vadim, as well as the James Bond adventure THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. The great costumes, including that haunting bat mask, are by Marcel Escoffier, and Juan Andre and Robert Guisgand handled the memorable production design.

However, Millarca gets the last word: as Leopoldo and Georgia return from their honeymoon and travel from Paris to Rome by plane, Leopoldo fails to notice that the rose he gives to Georgia suddenly fades at her touch. Millarca has finally claimed her elusive lover by possessing yet another victim.

Though talky and slow at the start, BLOOD AND ROSES features ripe imagery that would keep other filmmakers such as Mario Bava and Roger Corman very busy over the rest of the decade, doing their own variations of the tropes Vadim presents here.

SO DAMNED GOOD!

SO DAMNED GOOD!

SO DAMNED GOOD!

SO DAMNED GOOD!

THE NEW GOTHIC

Pop-Surrealism, Lowbrow, Suggestivism... call it what you will, the New Gothic is here to stay and distinctly a matter of Doe-Eyed Manga Girls meet Edgar Allan Poe (with a little bit of Alice, Wednesday Addams, Balthus and Edward Gorey thrown into the mix!)...  Check out this wonderful artwork from France, Italy, the USA....

CHECK OUT THESE SHAKERS & MOVERS: 

Benjamin Lacombe, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Mark Ryden, Lori Earley, Jasmine Becket-Griffith.... 

-OOOOO-

EVERYONE'S

EVERYONE'S 

FAVOURITE FEATURE

CREATURE :

THE ANTI-HERO

ENDURES

The menacing dark sardonic “fatal nobleman” that Mario Praz (in his The Romantic Agony) traced to Milton, found its perfect form in 1897 in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The potency of the character defies the passing of time. Theatre, film, television, novels, comic books, bubble gum cards, toys, games, trinkets and souvenirs, and even modern dance and music have guaranteed the longevity of this prince of the undead. Dracula as everyone knows, is the prince of all vampires, the Prince of Darkness, and as with 007 everyone has his or her favourite Dracula (invariably Christopher Lee).

It seems that the retelling of the Dracula ‘myth’ is a necessity in our modern age, that oh so familiar battle between good and evil. It is now firmly part of our culture. One small theatre company brings 'Dracula' to my local open-air theatre this very month (August 2013) adapted for Stage by David Kerby Kelly and directed by Peter Mimmack.

"Heartbreak Productions are 
delighted to present a brand-new 
adaptation of the legendary 
Bram Stoker classic Dracula..."

"The story of Dracula has been the basis for 
numerous films and plays. Stoker himself wrote the first theatrical adaptation, which was presented at the Lyceum Theatre under the title Dracula, or The Undead shortly before the novel's publication and performed only once. Popular films include Dracula (1931), Dracula (alternative title: The Horror of Dracula) (1958), and Dracula (also known as Bram Stoker's Dracula) (1992). Dracula was also adapted asNosferatu (1922), a film directed by the German director F. W. Murnau, without permission from Stoker's widow; the filmmakers attempted to avoid copyright problems by altering many of the details, including changing the name of the villain to "Count Orlok"...... As of 2009, an estimated 217 films feature Dracula in a major role." (Wikipedia)

Max Schreck
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, 1922

"Count Orlok is a far cry from the gorgeous vampires of our days, but his rodent teeth, bald head, pointy ears and long claws are unforgettable. And to think this amazing silent film nearly didn't make it to our day because of the law suit between Florence Stoker and the production house! Lucky for us that not all the prints were destroyed." (Night's Creatures Blog)

Dracula 1931 (Bela Lugosi)

Dracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosias the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston

Drácula is a 1931 American Spanish-language horror film directed by George Melford. It is an adaptation of the 1897 novel of the same name by Bram Stoker and was filmed at night on the same sets that were being used during the day for the 1931 English-language film of the same name.

Above: Dracula is a fondly remembered British video-taped television play adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, part of the TV series Mystery and Imagination. Denholm Elliott played Count Dracula with Susan George as Lucy Weston. Mystery and Imagination was a British television anthology series of classic horror and supernatural dramas. Five series were broadcast from 1966 to 1970 by the ITV network 

Count Dracula is a British television adaptation of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It first aired 22 December 1977. It is among the more faithful of the many adaptations of the original book. Louis Jourdan played the title role.

Above: Count Dracula released in Italy as Il conte Dracula, in Spain as El Conde Drácula and in France as Les Nuits de Dracula, is a 1969 Spanish-Italian-German horror film (released in 1970), directed by Jesús Franco and starring Christopher Lee

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American erotic horror film directed and produced byFrancis Ford Coppola, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula

"Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola's amazing Oscar-winning adaptation has become the
face of our fin de siecle Count. Coppola's lavish sets and costumes and eye for detail make this one of the all-time Dracula favourites. One of the most romantic vampire movies of our time."
(Night's Creatures Blog)

"The second of the 1979 Dracula movies, Werner Herzog'sNosferatu takes us back
to the bald head and rodent teeth in this remake of Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu. This time, since the novel's copyright had expired, Herzog could use the original names of the characters, something that Murnau had been unable to do." (Night's Creatures Blog)

Vampire in Venice (Original title: Nosferatu a Venezia),is a 1988 Italian horror film directed by Augusto Caminito and starring Klaus Kinski

Dracula is a marvelous1979 British/American film version of Stoker
starring Frank Langella as Count Dracula directed by John Badham

Bram Stoker's Dracula, (1973) a TV adaptation with Jack Palance

(Francis Ford Coppola and Columbia Pictures purchased the rights to that title in the early 1990's)

Blood for Dracula, also known as Andy Warhol's Dracula, is a 1974 black comedy horror film written and directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol, Andrew Braunsberg, and Jean Yanne. It stars Udo Kier.

Howard Vernon in Franco's Dracula: Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972)

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) The role of Dracula is played by John Forbes-Robertson (though the actor's voice is dubbed by David de Keyser).

The unmistakable John Carradine played Count Dracula
 multiple times in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

DANCE: Dracula Pages from a Virgin's Diary: a 2002 horror film directed
by Guy Maddin, with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet adapting Bram Stoker's novel 

Ballet: David Nixon's Dracula had its European Première at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in September, 2005. The Northern Ballet's Philip Feeney scored Dracula (Ballet in 3 Acts - the first ever British dance version of Dracula)  was conceived by Christopher Gable, NBT's late director, to mark the centenary of Bram Stoker's novel in 1996. The film-maker Ken Russell, a friend of Gable's, had advised him that "in 100 years, Dracula has never once failed the box office".

Above: ‘Dracula’s Curse’ is a two part TV adaptation of Stoker’s

classic novel set in modern day Budapest – well worth a look.

Van Helsing is a 2004 American action film directed by Stephen Sommers: 
Richard Roxburgh features as Count Vladislaus Dracula

Fangs in 3D? - no thanks! Argento's Dracula (2012) (Thomas Kretschmann)

MUSIC: The Kronos Quartet perform Philip Glass's Dracula in front of the 1931 film 

Why Does Dracula Wear a Tuxedo?
The Origins of Bram Stoker’s Timeless Vampire:
this is from Smithsonian.com

"A few weeks ago, I attended a panel on the origin and evolution of the famous blood sucker. Speakers included Dacre C. Stoker, the great-grandnephew and biographer of Bram; and John Edgar Browning, a professor at SUNY Buffalo with expertise in Dracula and gothic literature. Dacre Stoker presented a sort of deconstruction of Dracula, reverse-engineering the text to reveal what he called its “semi-autobiographical” origins, the product of a “perfect storm” of events that started when Stoker was just a sickly boy from a family of medical professionals who likely practiced bloodletting on the unfortunate youth. In this trauma, Dacre speculates, are the origins of Dracula. There are other parallels between Stoker’s life and the book. For instance, while the author was vacationing in Whitby, a wrecked ship, the Dmitri, washed ashore. In Dracula, the “Demeter” wrecks, its crew ravaged by Dracula. Of course, all authors draw from their life experience, but Stoker’s very biography seems infused into the text, which was published in 1897.

Dacre Stoker presented excerpts from his great-granduncle’s journal, showing page after page of notes on mysticism and mesmerism and many possible “rules” for Dracula, including his lack of reflection, his superhuman strength, and his ability to take different forms. One page even includes an alternate name for Count Dracula, “Count Wampyr.” The name Dracula only came later, suggesting that the links between Dracula and the historic Vlad Dracul (aka “Vlad the Impaler”) are superficial at best. Bram’s book notes were drawn from the mythologies of dozens of cultures, but his journal also featured ostensibly banal diary entries, as well as extensive train and ship schedules.

As both a lawyer and theatrical manager, Stoker travelled often, methodically documenting and scheduling everything. He used this information to make his book seem as real as possible; to ensure nothing would jar the reader out of the story. The journal includes thousands of “memos” that Stoker would write to himself –memos that closely resembled Jonathan Harker’s own missives– as well as extensive notes written by Stoker’s brother, an experimental surgeon. His brother was likely the influence for the character Abraham Van Helsing, which helped ensure that every medical procedure described in Dracula would be as technically accurate as possible.
But what of Dracula himself? In the text, the dreaded Count is described only vaguely, first as an old man:

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.

And later, as he magically de-ages, a young man:

a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard….His face was not a good face. It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.

Dacre Sucre believed it was possible that Bram’s portrayal of Dracula a charming devil was inspired by Irving’s portrayal of Mephistopheles in Faust. But little is said about Dracula’s attire. So where does the populist imaginary of Dracula come from? How do we explain the incredible consistency of Dracula Halloween costumes? 

The tuxedo. The cape. The medallion. The aristocratic demeanor. These are the tropes we have come to associate with Count Dracula. However, according to John Browning’s NYCC crash course in the visual representation of Dracula, they are a far cry from the first appearance of Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire.
In the early 1920s, two cinematic versions of Dracula were released: the Hungarian film Dracula’s Death and the German Nosferatu. These were the first visual representations of Dracula in history and they presented a very different vampire from the one we know and fear today. Dracula’s Death has the honor of being the first adaptation –a very, very loose adaptation– of Stoker’s Dracula that has, unfortunately, been lost to history. Nosferatu, however, is a classic, thanks in part to a 1979 remake by Werner Herzog. The vampire in Nosferatu is a horrible monster dressed in drab Eastern European clothing – a far cry from the populist Dracula of Halloween costumes. Though not as celebrated as later interpretations of Dracula, the legacy of the pale, monstrous Nosferatu continues in contemporary popular culture, as evidenced by the super-vampire known as The Master in Joss Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

In 1924, Dracula premiered on stage in London, adapted by Irish actor and playwright Hamilton Deane. This production introduced the world to the charming, well-coifed, tuxedo-clad Count Dracula, as portrayed by Raymond Huntley (who allegedly provided his own costume). Without the subtleties a novel provides, Count Dracula’s sophisticated demeanour and seductive nature was communicated more explicitly for the stage.
This is the origin of the Halloween Dracula. When the play was brought to America in the late 1920s, Bela Lugosi played the title role, a role he would make famous in the 1931 Universal film. If the stage show invented the image of Dracula, the Universal movie cemented it. Lugosi contributed his own flair to Dracula’s costume with the mysterious addition of an ornamental medal worn on his chest that, depending on who you ask, may or may not have been his own personal possession."

Below: Playwright and early stage Dracula Hamilton Dean

from the extraordinary blog Vampire Over London, the Bela Lugosi Blog

Hamilton Deane

1880–October 25, 1958

An Irish actor/manager, playwright and director, Deane created the popular image of Dracula clad in evening dress and flowing cloak with a stand-up collar when he wrote the first official adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel. From the play’s premiere in 1924, he played the role of Dr. Van Helsing both in the West End and in many touring productions. In 1939 he took on the role of the Count himself.

"Bela Lugosi’s 1951 British revival tour of Dracula was written-off as a complete disaster, supposedly closing after a few disastrous performances, by Lugosi “historians” for 50 years until my friend Andi Brooks published the true story in “Vampire Over England: Bela Lugosi in Britain.” The play toured for 24 weeks and received many rave reviews. I should know because I played Renfield opposite Bela Lugosi throughout the tour." Eric Lindsay

Dracula 1970s Stage Revival

Dracula is a 1924 stage play adapted by Hamilton Deane from the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker, and substantially revised by John L. Balderston in 1927. It was the first adaptation of the novel authorised by Stoker’s widow, and has influenced many subsequent adaptations.

The original production starred Raymond Huntley as Dracula; Deane had originally intended to play the title role himself, but in the event opted for the role of Van Helsing. This production toured England for three years before settling in London.

In 1927 the play was brought to Broadway by Horace Liveright, who hired John L. Balderston to revise the script for American audiences. The American production starred Bela Lugosi in his first major English-speaking role, with Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing; both actors reprised their roles in the 1931 film version, which drew on the Deane-Balderston play.

In addition to radically compressing the plot, the play reduced the number of significant characters, combining Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray into a single character, making John Seward this Lucy’s father, and disposing of Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood.

The play was revived in 1977, in a production featuring set and costume designs by Edward Gorey and starring Frank Langella as Dracula. The production won Tony Awards for Best Revival and Best Costume Design, and was nominated for Best Scenic Design and Best Leading Actor in a Play (Langella). Langella, like Lugosi, went on to reprise the role in the 1979 film version. Subsequent actors in the title role for the Broadway revival included David Dukes, Raul Julia and Jean LeClerc, while the London production starred Terence Stamp and American touring companies starred Martin Landau and Jeremy Brett.

Left: Jeremy Brett hams it up as Dracula & Above: Langella on stage

Shaftesbury Theatre, London, UK, 1978
Cast:  TERENCE STAMP, Derek Godfrey, Nickolas Grace, Rosalind Ayres,
Rupert Frazer, Marilyn Galsworthy, Shaun Curry, Barrie Cookson
Sets designed by Edward Gorey

THE PASSION OF DRACULA

There must have been something in the air in 1978 (bats perhaps?), and in 1979, when no less than three new Dracula movies hit the big screen. Theatre-wise, not only did Terence Stamp grace the stage as Dracula at the Shaftesbury Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, from September 13th 1978 (performances nightly at 8.30 - tickets from £1 to £5 - based on the original Hamilton Deane/ John L. Balderston play) but a few weeks earlier (from 23 August) George Chakiris could be seen swirling the Count's black cape down the road at the Queen's Theatre in The Passion of Dracula. The Passion was directed by Clifford Williams from the pen of Bob Hall and David Richmond. It also starred Richard Vernon, Roy Dotrice, Geraldine James and James Villiers.

The London Evening Standard reported (Out For The Count), "Two Draculas within the space of a fortnight could give vampires a bloody name. There is a limit to the amount of blood transfusions an audience can take..." both productions were expected a short run, with Passion seen as parody and the Edward Gorey designed Dracula  seen as "relatively straight" but lacking in enthusiasm. The Gorey sets claimed my vote! I remember them well.

The Passion of Dracula first appeared at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City on September 28, 1977 and continues to find new audiences around the world.

Interesting end-note:

" The original 541-page manuscript of Dracula, believed to have been lost, was found in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania during the early 1980s. It included the typed manuscript with many corrections, and handwritten on the title page was "THE UN-DEAD." The author's name was shown at the bottom as Bram Stoker. Author Robert Latham notes, "the most famous horror novel ever published, its title changed at the last minute.". The manuscript was purchased by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. "

Blogging: Just a small stash of Dracabelia these days...