Consuming Culture in Sinners

I may have a horror blog, but I rarely catch new films in the cinema. There’s just too much to stay on top of it all, and let’s face it, not everything that comes out is exactly great (plus, movie tickets are expensive and life is short). Past that, I don’t feel like it’s my job – I don’t fancy myself a journalist – I don’t imagine that most readers come here for up to date movie reviews – or if they do, they probably leave disappointed. But every once in a while, something new gets on my radar and I manage to seek it out, and I’m so glad that happened with this week’s movie cause I left Ryan Coogler’s Sinners just buzzing. Since then, it’s come to streaming and I’ve watched it two more times and, while it doesn’t, on subsequent viewings, give me quite the same electrical charge, I do believe it holds up as a great movie: rich in character and cultural detail, excitingly filmed, gorgeously shot, with a fun and thrilling vampire siege and a moving, loving portrayal of a group of people trying to make something of their own, high on the power of music and culture and community, and ready to fight to protect it all. It is an emotional movie, a beautiful movie, even a thematically challenging movie, but as this is a horror blog, it must be said that in spite of its vampires, it isn’t a “scary” movie – so don’t go to it for that or you may be let down (honestly, the same can be said of many a vampire flick). So, that said, let’s get into Sinners… I figure this is a very available film, so there will be spoilers.

Sinners (2025)

Off the bat, it must be said that this movie is a hit, a huge box office success, meaning that people have seen it and people have written about it. This is no obscure gem to sing the praises of. Rather, this is a Imax released blockbuster, which developed tons of hype (without which, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it while it was still new), and inevitably, tons of counter-hype – people writing about how they don’t get what all the excitement is about (which I must say I understand, as I’m often allergic to hype – I don’t even know why it was different in this case). That said, knowing that it has been widely reviewed, I will endeavor to focus less on detailing its qualities (or weaknesses), and rather attempt to dig into what I think is most interesting about it as a whole.

In short, set in a Black community in Mississippi in 1932, Ryan Coogler’s story (which he wrote and directed) follows “Preacherboy,” Sammie, a young aspiring blues musician whose pastor father is trying to pull him back from a life of sin in illicit nightclubs to walk the straight and narrow with him in the Church. His cousins, Smoke and Stack, twin gangsters who left town years ago (I guess they fought in WWI and then stayed gone) have just returned after years of involvement in Chicago organized crime, with a truck full of stolen booze (prohibition is still on, so it’s quite a haul) and a dream of opening their own juke joint nightclub. The first third of the movie consists of Sammie riding around with them as they get the old gang back together so they can open tonight on very short notice. Following that, the next leg of the movie simply consists of the joint itself as it opens and the people come. There are interpersonal dramas along the way (who left whom years ago and why) and conflicts about financials (can they accept company scrip from the poor sharecropper clientele – which supports community, but won’t be economically sustainable?), but overwhelmingly, the feeling of the first half or more of the movie is one of joy and excitement.

There’s that old sense of “come on gang – let’s put on a show,” there’s a Blues Brother-esque camaraderie in “getting the band back together,” and there is such energy and passion in the music making itself (I just love when Stack is driving Sammie to town and has him play for him – Sammie starts with a simple blues riff – ok, but when he opens his mouth to sing, Stack lights up – damn, this kid has a voice – and it is unique and his own and glorious – he exclaims that they are “gon’ make some money!” But you know it’s more than that).

But on top of it all, there is the palpable intoxication that comes with knowing they are making something of their own, with their own hands, their own power, their own music, their history and love and pain. That is what freedom feels like. At one point, the old blues man, Slim, says to Sammie, “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought that with us from home. It’s magic what we do. It’s sacred… and big.” And he’s right.

Around the halfway point, Sammie plays at the juke and just burns the place down (Coogler literally filming that as a striking visual metaphor), and in what has to be the most famous sequence in the film, we see musical ghosts of the past and the future summoned by his song – images of African dancers and a George Clinton-esque Afro-futurist guitarist and hip hop kids and Chinese Opera singers and Ballet dancers drift through the electrified crowd. People carry their histories and their futures. And music brings it to life, gives it all expression, tears a hole in the world and lets all the feeling and possibility pour through – pain, yes, but also joy and lust and pride and glory. But something that powerful casts a bright light and can garner unwanted attention, in this case, from Remmick, the primary vampiric threat.

Before getting into what he brings to the story, I think it is interesting that he could have been excised and this still would have been a powerful flick. Had there been no supernatural danger, this could be a great period drama about community and music and social issues and antagonisms (the KKK very much still being a thing), full of well-researched cultural detail and standout performances (Michael B. Jordan delivers as the twins, Miles Caton’s Sammie really does have a hell of a voice, and I really appreciated little nuances like the role of the Chinese couple who can operate their grocery stores on both the White and the Black sides of the street). The first time I saw the movie, for all that I had genuinely loved it, I read it as a big glorious mess, kitchen sink filmmaking – just throwing in every idea that came to Coogler’s mind that he felt would be fun or moving or exciting, with little care to whether it entirely tracked or was exactly “necessary.” It didn’t need to be a vampire movie, but vampires are cool, siege films are thrilling, and raising stakes (boom, tish) makes for heightened drama. Just put it all in and then make it work (and some of the best parts of the movie do feel like just barely controlled chaos – notably the sequence when Pearline is singing “Pale, Pale Moon” as Smoke deals with the card cheat and the newly vamped Mary lures Stack into the back room to turn him – it is all frenetic and tight and tense and wild).

But the more I thought about it, the more important vampirism became to the story, and the more I felt the influence of a larger theme which I find both engaging and even, as I wrote above, personally challenging. The impression is that Remmick is particularly drawn to the juke this night precisely because of Sammie’s talent, because as an interpretation of the ‘soulessness’ of a vampire, Remmick is cut off from his ancestry, and Sammie’s power can be a bridge to that which he has lost. The music is so soulful that it inspires a voracious hunger and hence, the events of the latter half of the film.

Remmick shows up with two recently turned companions, all presenting as local musicians who have come to join in the party, spend some money, eat some food, drink some booze, and play some music. They audition at the door with a prettified rendition of an old blues song, “Pick Poor Robin Clean.” As I’ve come to read, this is one of the oldest known blues recordings, and has a very rough bluesy sound (as well as a second verse full of racial epithets – but they don’t get to sing that long). The three White musicians (two of whom we come to learn are (former?) Klan members) deliver it in such clean, “old-timey” tones. Their smiles are just a little too bright. Their promise that they only believe in “fellowship and love” and that they hope that for one night, they can all just be one big, happy family just feels a bit too earnest – something is clearly off. Plus, the old song, which is about, I think, cheating someone out of all their money, coming out of their mouths (which we, the viewers, know to be full of fangs), takes on real cannibalistic overtones (“I picked his head, I picked his feet, I woulda picked his body, but he wasn’t fit to eat”).

The twins turn them away, saying that there are many White joints in town where they could play and eat and drink if that’s what they’re after. The vamps challenge this exclusion, seemingly disappointed at being discriminated against for the color of their skin, but for the community within the joint, besides them being creepy, there is a real historical cause for concern. They live in the segregated south. The main street of their town clearly has a White side and a Black side and they really look like completely different worlds. If a White person were in the juke and some kind of argument started, the hell that could befall the Black community could be cataclysmic. Remmick et al. may talk a good game of progressive ideals, but Smoke and Stack live in a world where lynchings and worse are still common.

But eventually, no matter the precautions taken, things inevitably go south and we move into the final act (not counting two or three epilogues still to come – ala Lord of the Rings, this is a movie that ends at least 3 times) – vampires attack, most of the attendees at the juke get turned, and those that remain do their damnedest to make it through the night, with one suspenseful scene of internal suspicion echoing John Carpenter’s The Thing, as they all must eat a clove of garlic to prove their humanity. And for a long time, Remmick and his growing gang wait outside, knowing that they are certain, sooner or later to take what he’s come for. And while they do, they have a party of their own, a Ceilidh if you will, singing and dancing traditional Irish folk songs – featuring a rousing rendition of “Rocky Road to Dublin” with Remmick high kicking at its center. He may feel cut off from the soul of his people, but his culture and its music is clearly still vitally important to him, and he still carries it. He speaks with an Irish accent and we learn that he was alive when Christianity conquered his island (his description of that fact echoing Slim talking about how “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion”), making him at least 1500 years old.

When Sinners finally becomes a vampire movie, it does feel like a big change, but beyond being a good choice for a popular entertainment (exciting action-horror movies can put butts in seats in a way that period dramas may not), I think vampirism is essential to the themes of the story. We’ve already seen a justified need to police the boundaries of a closed space for the protection of the community inside. That is both important for them to be safe, and similarly, for them to feel safe. But this takes it to a larger, more symbolic level.  I don’t remember where I first encountered it, but I read somewhere that “where there’s a monster, there’s a metaphor,” and here I feel the vampire is an embodiment of cultural threat – some amalgamation of cultural appropriation, selling out, and cultural assimilation to the point of losing one’s identity, to the point of disappearance. And, of course, if the bloodsucker isn’t given what he asks for, he will take it by force.

I believe that Remmick honestly loves what Sammie does – he is not disingenuous in his appreciation, but when he says that he “wants his stories,” “wants his songs,” there is a dangerous appetite there – a hunger that could consume until nothing remains, or at least until nothing remains Sammie’s anymore. Is Remmick a bit of a studio executive, here to sign this young artist, offering a better life, in a world where the color of his skin doesn’t matter so much as the color of the money he can make, but who will buy out everything that is uniquely his – and it will all become the property of the label, of the culture at large? In the world of Sinners, when someone is turned, they seem to tap into a bit of vampire hive mind – Remmick knows all of their memories and they know all of his. There is an element that is truly post racial and shared and utopian, but there may also be a horrific loss of personal identity, not to mention the heart of a culture being cut out and put on sale – maybe the real horror is capitalism?

Frankly, this is one bit that I wish were clearer. We have a sense of this endless hunger for culture, for identity, for music; we have a sense of the threat to concept of self; for all that Remmick is charmingly cheeky and fun, he is clearly “the bad guy” and there is little humanizing of the larger vampiric threat – once turned, the vampires seem ‘evil’ and less ‘themselves.’ And yet, when in the mid-credit epilogue, Stack and Mary show up as vampires at Sammie’s blues club in the 90s, they do basically seem like Stack and Mary, albeit wearing painfully early 90s fashion (the 30s look amazing in comparison) – was there actually any danger? Was being a vampire not really that bad? Has it changed them (this question bringing to mind the moment when Smoke stakes his former paramour, Annie, before she can turn, and vamp-Mary cries out in horror – perhaps Mary really saw good in the change and looked forward to the whole gang moving forward together in this new, bloodsucking paradigm)? It wasn’t clear to me. But hey, sometimes things are complicated and it could be better for a work of art for its themes to be a bit blurry around the edges, for there to be questions, to have room to breathe and to be read in different ways. The alternative is polemic, which very rarely, if ever, makes for good art.

And so we have this core fear of culture being stripped away, or of giving it away. This assimilation, this being subsumed feels like more of a preoccupation of the film than the direct assault of the Klansmen who Smoke so effectively dispatches at the end – it is a far more insidious and personal danger. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about all this. I can only come to this discussion as who I am: a White, cis/het, male American. I may never be rich or powerful, but I understand that I benefit from what I was born into and that my culture, such as it is, has traditionally eaten up any other it’s come in contact with. There is a long history of imperialism and theft and exploitation – an endless story of wrongs done, of irreparable harm – some perpetrated out of active cruelty, but much also done out of mere expedience, out of simply wanting and taking and not being all that concerned with how that makes others feel. And yet, even if I understand all that, I have to admit I’ve always bristled at least a little bit at accusations of ‘cultural appropriation’ as if culture is a static thing that can ever be fixed enough to be owned, and thus stolen. I like cultures meeting each other and infecting each other and borrowing from each other. I like cultural exchange. I like cultural cross pollination.

For example, I live in Poland, a country that missed out on the colonialism and imperialism of the 18th and 19th centuries as it was busy being divided up by other European powers at the time (this is not to claim that Poland wouldn’t have liked to have colonies, but they didn’t get to – resulting to some extent in its present homogeneity – it’s generally pretty White, with the vast majority of residents being of Polish heritage – though that is changing as it grows economically and more immigrants – such as myself – show up). But something I think is cool is that there are vibrant communities of people here who study Irish or Scottish Dance, or Blues music, or American Gospel, or Hula, or Kathakali, or Japanese Sumi-e painting, or what have you (without a significant history of communities of Irish, Scottish, Black, Hawaiian, Indian, or Japanese descent). And isn’t that good? Wouldn’t it be restrictive and shuttered if Polish people only practiced “traditional Polish folk” forms (and the same were true for all other nations or sub-groups)? Isn’t that protectionist approach what one expects from racists and nationalists with essentialist views of the unbreakable connection between a given “people,” “race,” “religion,” “nation,” and “culture?” For me, if it comes from a place of respect and appreciation, it’s really difficult to understand how there could be something wrong about a person from one culture meeting, liking, and ultimately picking up forms from another, and in turn making them their own – isn’t that how all art is made? We live in a world, we are influenced by everything we encounter, we process it all inside and put out whatever we are able to – and if we’re very, very lucky, maybe it’s occasionally worth something.

And yet, watching Sinners, I have to say that I can, on some level, understand the discomfort, the hesitance, the fear of what all that could mean, could result in for a person or a people whose ‘cultural product,’ or less abstractly, whose personal expression, is the “form” being “picked up” – how that taking could feel like theft, or at least, could feel disrespectful. If so much of the early joy of this movie is ‘making something of your own,’ then obviously warning flags may shoot up when someone comes along, smiling a bit too wide, making beautiful promises of a loving, open future, who asks you to share that something with him, so that it can also be his. Will it still be yours? Will it even still be, or will it forever be changed by being assimilated into something larger, something more general? It’s easier to dismiss the idea of cultural ownership when yours is the culture taking freely of what all others have to offer, while at the same time, forcing your dominant culture onto them, whether they want it or not.

In Sinners, this is all about the Blues, but I think these are issues that someone from any marginalized group could wrestle with (and it is often out of such groups that new developments of culture spring, whether Black or Queer or representing some specific National Origin or Religion). This isn’t to say that I’ve completely come around to viewing all “appropriation” in a negative light, but the film does, at the very least, challenge me emotionally – it is complicated. I still believe cultural exchange can be a net good but something can clearly be lost in the process, and for those on the losing side, that can be a tragedy. If someone feels harmed, and you ignore that because, at the end of the day, you want what you want, and you value it more than the people who have it, there is a moral cost akin to blood sucking. And what are we, as humans, as art makers, to do with that? I honestly don’t know…it’s hard…

Wow – that all got heavy – wasn’t this supposed to be a fun movie about vampires and stuff? So in closing, I do just want to return to how this movie made me personally feel on first viewing. A lot of the cultural issues came to mind the following day as I went for a long walk to think about it all, but that night, I came out of the cinema electrified, just so excited, so charged with the thrill of creation, art and music and life. It is an earthy movie, filled with lust and sex and laughter and feeling. It is a vampire movie with a cool, charismatic, central bloodsucker. It isn’t a “scary” movie, but it has got plenty of action, intense sequences full of bold panache, and an intriguing vampire mythos. It is an absolutely spectacular movie to look at, to be enveloped by. It made my face hurt from smiling and it made me weep at its beauty. Coogler throws in every idea he can think of (Gangsters, Vampires, Blues, Social Criticism, Sex, Economics, etc.) and pulls it together into a rousing popcorn movie that is, yes, about ‘things,’ but which is also just tons and tons of fun. It lifted me up, but it also left me with stuff to ponder that I could engage with on a very personal level. It was a great night out, and I look forward to seeing what Coogler does next, in the genre or not. If you haven’t seen it yet, well, you probably shouldn’t have read this far – but go give it a chance; it’s widely available.

Rollin on with Lips of Blood

For years of being a horror fan, I’d been loosely aware of Jean Rollin and his whole vibe, but I had never ventured in to check it out. Happily, with this blog compelling me to follow my completionist urge to better know my genre of choice, a few years back, I finally took in my first of his films, The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), and I was immediately struck. Weird, artsy, bold, idiosyncratic, surreal, and clearly deeply personal and deeply felt, he was an auteur with a very specific individual imprint. Since that time, I’ve gone on to watch quite a few of his other works, at least from the first half of his career (later films, not having the budget, were shot on video, and I fear it didn’t well serve his aesthetic), many of which I’ve written about here (such as Grapes of Death, Living Dead Girl, and Requiem for a Vampire), and I must say, I’m a fan. I may not always be in the mood for what he has to offer (slow, dreamy, artful), but when I am, it can be a warm, hypnotic pleasure. That said, I think many of his films feel less like horror movies than avant-garde forays into the fantastique (this is certainly true for the film under consideration today), but there are sufficient horror markers (vampires, crumbling castles, blood and death and flesh) and well as rich, haunting atmosphere and an exploration of themes invested in the stuff of horror (need, loss, death, sex, decay, persistence, obsession, madness) to earn his oeuvre a place of honor on this here blog.

Sometimes I want the comforting glee of horny teenagers getting creatively picked off at a summer camp and sometimes I want a wistful exploration of doubted memories at the nexus of Eros-Thanatos life-death drives.

And that’s just what we’ve got today! As always, spoilers abound, but while there is actually, believe it or not, a coherent story here, this film, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is not focused primarily on narrative, so it really doesn’t matter. Read on, and then maybe go seek out the singular, beautiful, iconic work that is:

Lips of Blood (1975)

To write about this, I watched the film twice, separated by about two weeks, and I find it interesting that I had quite a different read the second time through. After my first viewing, in my notes, I jotted down, “Dreamy, gorgeous, barely narrative, evocative.” I’d loved it, but I’d also needed a couple of strong cups of coffee to stay focused throughout. But on second viewing, while it was no less dreamy, gorgeous, or evocative, I realized that the story was actually surprisingly clear and straightforward – but the oneiric qualities had simply dominated to such a degree that the narrative felt more dreamlike, situation sliding into situation, context and character in a constant state of flux. It’s kinda striking to watch it again and feel that wasn’t actually entirely true.

In short, the film follows Frédéric, who sees a photograph of a ruined castle in the poster of a perfume advertisement at a party (“scents are like memories – the person evaporates, but the memory remains”) and it unlocks a forgotten memory of his childhood in which he’d met a ghostlike girl at that castle and slept the night within its walls before returning to his mother. Once remembered, the memory haunts him – he doesn’t recall his early years at all, and he feels that something is being kept from him. His mother councils him to let it go – that she gave him the best life she could after they lost his father – he should stop asking about this castle, this girl, and live his life.

But he can’t. A vision of the girl keeps appearing to him, and he is pulled into the night to find her and the ruined chateau of his youth. He finds the photographer of the poster and she promises to tell him the location he seeks, but she’s assassinated before she has a chance. The assassin chases Frédéric to eliminate any witnesses, but he is saved by the bevy of half-naked vampire girls he’d inadvertently freed from their tomb earlier in the night. He’s approached by some woman who claims to be the girl of his memories (all grown up, with a pet frog), but she’s clearly lying – then the vampires eat her. He confronts his mother who has him locked up in an asylum, but it turns out that the nurses are the same vampire girls and they set him free. Finally, the vision of the forgotten girl leads him to a blind postcard seller, from whom he learns the name of the castle and he immediately boards a train.

At the castle, Frédéric’s mother reveals that they used to house a teen girl who was actually a vampire terrorizing the countryside, turning other local girls into bloodsuckers – and she also killed his father. The mother begs him to finish what she couldn’t, behead the vampire, and be done with this all. But the sweet longing is too strong – he lies about killing the girl, sends his mother away, gets bitten, and in the end, Frédéric and the girl climb naked into a casket on the beach and are pulled away by the roaring tide. Like you do.

But like I said, this isn’t about story. It’s much more quiet, more tender than that. While the narrative tracks (clearly the mother has paid people to cover up the past to protect her son from being pulled back into it), this is not a movie where we wait in suspense to find out what is going to happen next. And yet, there is a compelling, if slow, forward momentum. As in a dream, both we and Frédéric feel the urge to move ever steadily forward, to scratch the itch, to satisfy a curiosity (about what, we don’t even know).

Hanging over everything is a mood of the erotic and the romantic, but specifically defined. “Erotic” here, for all that there is plenty of naked flesh, rarely feels particularly “sexual” (that would imply “heat” and everything here is more of a lingering, alluring, magnetic “coolness”), and there is a lot of nudity without feeling very titillating. But there is a quiet, almost private pleasure in the body, and in being-in-an-environment (empty Parisian streets at night, a crumbling chateau, an aquarium after hours). This is typified by an early scene with the photographer. She’s introduced taking pictures of a nude model. The model poses in one way and another, perhaps having trouble settling on a natural state to relax into.

And then, slowly, she begins to touch herself. The photographer doesn’t react at all. The model smiles and relaxes – seemingly having a kind of private moment. Still, the photographer continues to snap photos, neither asking for more of this or guiding the girl back to less explicit material. Finally, the doorbell rings (it’s Frédéric, here to inquire about the picture of the castle), the photographer lets the girl know that they’ve finished, and she gets dressed and leaves. This intimacy was given space to exist, and nothing was pushed. The moment was explicit, and yet so gentle and light. The photographer is warm with Frédéric and before long, she’s disrobed and is embracing him – but that embrace is just that – it doesn’t feel like sex, per se – but it is intimate and warm and longing – as is the whole film.

The other illustrative scene in this vein (ah, vampire movies and unavoidable puns…) is the final one with Frédéric and the girl (who does have a name – I should start using it: Jennifer) – and this brings me to the term “Romantic,” but I use it not in the sense of Valentine’s day, but rather the 19th century artistic movement. There is a transcendent presentation of nature into which the self is subsumed. At the end, after so much silence in the film, when Frédéric has freed Jennifer and there is no concern that any will return to again entomb her, there is a moment when she is on the cliffs by the sea in silence and she shouts out, “Music!” Suddenly the sound of the sea and the wind and the gulls fills the soundtrack in an exuberant burst of chaos. Frédéric and Jennifer embrace, naked as the noise washes everything else out and there is an erasure of ego, a surrender to the natural. In this new nudity, again the sexual is lacking – it feels rather innocent, a kind of undead garden of Eden.

They speak of the idyllic days and years to come – they will be carried in their shared coffin (it matters not how long it takes to get there – they have infinite time) to a small island where they will, together, lure sailors to their doom.

They climb into the casket together, with warm care, Frédéric guides on the lid, and the waves pull it out to sea. For a time we see it crashing in the surf and then the water is peaceful and we see them no longer. Have they been dragged below? Will they reach their destination? These questions don’t seem to matter – reunited, together they have given themselves over to the white noise of the waves, to the immensity of the ocean, to time and water and salt and flesh and decay and the tender static of oblivion.

It’s not a happy ending – but it’s not sad either. There is a sense of completion, gently spiced with a pang of what? Loss? Wistfulness?

For years Jennifer had been lying in her tomb, waiting to be remembered. The perfume ad triggered a sense memory, teasing something long forgotten back into the edge of Frédéric’s mind. Half remembered – misremembered – invented – an uncanny fantastique that cannot be fixed as real or unreal, it fascinates, there is a steady obsession that can’t be turned away from. Something he is compelled to pursue – something without which he could not feel complete, could never be satisfied.

He finds satisfaction, but that also brings a kind of death, a warm oblivion, a loving sadness. I am no expert – I’ve seen like seven of his films, but this bundle of themes just feels so very Jean Rollin. Gorgeous and artful and cheap and shabby (for an auteur filmmaker that returned to the well of vampires time and time again, it feels like the fangs could be bought for 2 dollars in a joke shop and he was never interested in scares or gore), it feels like both an exploitation flick and high art.

And along the way, there are so many other surreal elements and images that feel like symbols – but ones that need not impose a hard meaning. Much of the film takes place in Paris, and it is so often entirely, impossibly empty and monumental – in haunting fashion – a looming dream labyrinth. The other vampires (particularly the twins, Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castle, who are in a number of Rollin’s films), their characteristically diaphanous gowns fluttering in the night wind, feel less like characters than alluring personifications of seductively available femininity and hauntingly attractive death in life – offering an invitation to disappear into something beautiful – dangerous and self-destructive, but nonetheless attractive, soft, yielding, accepting.

Which does bring me to one element of note – this identification of ‘nature’ / ‘death’ / ‘fascination’ with the “feminine” does feel, let’s say thematically dated. It’s hardly a “feminist” project, this male protagonist, an obvious stand-in for the filmmaker, chasing these girlish symbols of the ineffable into the night, giving himself over to them, having them thrust upon him, those figures more symbols than three dimensional characters. And yet, I still find it all rather lovely.

This feels like it comes strongly from one individual artist, who, even if he’s leaning on the kinds of tropes at which one could roll their eyes, in this case, it is so heartfelt, carried out with an earnestness that feels anything but artistically cheap. I could imagine one deriding it as naiveté (which I’m sure occurred in his native France – I understand French critics had little love for Rollin’s obsessions with genre, just as American critics could deride his art-house inclinations), but I can’t imagine being that hard-hearted myself.

Also, on the gender politics of it all, it is interesting to me that this seems to be just about the only work in Rollin’s early filmography with a male protagonist – he almost always focused on women (though that didn’t necessarily make them more characters and less symbols). This is probably a facile reading, but I somehow have the impression that, in doing this, he was rather centering himself for a change.

Apparently, it crushed him that this was such a financial failure – losing so much money that to recoup expenses, the producer forced him to film additional inserts and recut it as a hardcore porn film, Suce-moi vampire (“Suck me, vampire”), with an entirely different story. Fortunately, over time, the film found its audience who have given it no small measure of artistic respect – in that sweet spot between sexploitation, B-movie grindhouse and haute-culture, niche viewership arthouse.

It really is something special, though it won’t be for everyone. Maybe it’s for you though – if you can find it, check it out (as of today, in the States, it’s on Kanopy). Some will be put to sleep. Some will sigh in exasperation. But some will fall in love.

The Lost Boys – eternal youth, actually youthful

I have been a bit indulgent this summer – not publishing nearly as much as I’d ordinarily like, and not exactly challenging myself with particularly heady, analytical projects. Rather, it is summer, and life can be quite hard enough, thank you very much – so I’m just focusing on some comfort food that feels like summer to me. Last time, it was the camp-set and quite camp-y Sleepaway Camp, and this post, as I spent my summer working at an amusement park in a beach town (among doing other things), I’d like to hit the boardwalk for the tawdry glitz and seductive thrill of one of my favorite movies of any genre, Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys.

I’m sure spoilers will abound, so I do recommend that if you haven’t seen it before, you go do so now. Reading about most plot details wouldn’t ruin your enjoyment of the flick, but there are at least one or two moments that it would be a shame to spoil. I rented it on Prime and rewatched it on Tubi, so it’s out there. Go watch it as I don’t think I’m even going to summarize the plot (a single mother and her two teen sons relocate to a beach town full of vampires – good times ensue).

The Lost Boys (1987)

There are probably few movies that I’ve watched as many times; this is one of those true comfort food flicks that I can put on in the background while doing some arts and crafts project, or I can play to cheer myself up on a crummy day. But you know, something funny about that is that I haven’t really watched it in quite some time (as I’m often doing something else simultaneously, mouthing my favorite lines or singing along with the soundtrack, one which I spin with great regularity). Thus, it was quite a pleasure to actually sit down and take it in with no other plan than to enjoy it (on subsequent viewings, I might take notes, but the first watch for the blog, I just try to watch a film on its own terms).

I am absolutely biased, but it might just be a perfect movie. It is so tight and tidy without feeling manufactured. The writing is crisp and fun and loveable (for which I understand much of the credit should go to Jeffrey Boam, who reworked the screenplay at Schumacher’s behest, but also to Janice Fischer and James Jeremias, who’d penned the original script). The performances are great across the board. I get pulled into the allure of Michael’s story (sex, blood, and rock n roll) just as I do with Sam’s adventure (help – my brother is a vampire). The relationships feel grounded and real – I buy the sometimes antagonistic love between the brothers; I really sympathize with the single mother trying to start over and hold it all together; I get such a kick out of the ornery old grampa (who gets all of the best lines); the initial attraction between Michael and Star is sexy and exciting (even if we don’t really do much with it after that initial moment); and of course the tense chemistry between Michael and the vampire David is rich as David lures him over to the dark side.

And then there are the vampires – ah the vampires. It is a movie about vampires after all. As I understand it, this was the first presentation of vampires in this young, hip, modern mode. There’s nothing of the gothic – no capes or brooding or old world ennui – no one is tortured by the existential anguish of life without end (and don’t get me wrong – I can eat that stuff up, but this is really refreshing). They are young and punky and having a blast. I watched the movie a third time this summer the other night with some friends and one commented how, with the subtitles on, the lost boys are always “hooting and laughing,” and they are. The tag line of the movie was “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.” I guess it is. All abandon and freedom from responsibility, from the weight of growing up, but all while being old enough to do anything you want. Child of Lestat, parent to Spike – the teen vampire is born.

So much of the allure of vampirism is often sold as ‘eternal youth’ and yet, that so rarely seems on offer in filmic presentations. Rather, the vampire is usually a haunted, world weary figure, who has lived too long and seen too much, caught in an eternal struggle against entropy, hanging on to old loves, old lives, icons and detritus of the past. But in this case, the vampires really feel young. They are teenagers, out to raise hell and have a blast. Now, to be fair, as a teen, I don’t think I would have really enjoyed the way they spend their time: riding their motorbikes on the beach, being mouthy to security guards (and bitey), and chomping down on skulls (as mentioned last post, I was the kind of kid who preferred indoor fun) – but regardless, their simple joy in it is really infectious. If you stop and think about it too much, it can get silly, but in the moment, it feels sooo cooool.

And that youth suffuses the film – not necessarily realistically, but nonetheless effectively. Consider the early scene at the concert on the beach where Michael first catches a glimpse of Star. Look at how much fun everyone is having watching the incomparable Tim Capello, muscled and oiled, blowing on his sax. The two in the front head banging at each other behind the blazing barrel. The exuberance of the crowd. The preponderance of balloons for some reason. Capello himself, belting out how he ‘still believes.’ It’s not a realistic presentation of youth culture (Are teens ever really this unguarded and joyful? Do beach punks spend a lot of time riding the Merry Go Round or reading stolen funny comic books?), but it feels true, if not real. And it sets the stage for the immediate chemistry between the two young romantic leads.

Star seems to float through the crowd, flowing against the driving current, and Michael’s stillness pops amongst the throng, so fixed he is on her ethereal sensuality. It works. I don’t think the film does much with them after this point (I mean, they hook up, but I think the film and the viewer get more interested in other elements), but in this scene, there is a spark – it is exciting, and it is sexy – and there is an eternal promise of youth – of a physical attraction that needs no details – the body recognizes what it wants – and is recognized in turn.

Now, this had originally been planned as more of a Goonies style kids movie, with the vampires aged much younger, ala their Peter Pan namesakes, but when Schumacher came on board, he wanted to make it sexier and aged them up to older teens, opening the door to the motorbikes, smoldering looks, sexy times, and the general MTV of it all – a kind of unattainable platonic ideal of teenage wildness. But we still have the kids’ adventure in Sam and the Frog brothers – much easier to identify with both as a kid and an adult – because of course I wasn’t out there in the night causing trouble, hanging off train tracks, and flirting with the night – I was reading comic books, obsessing over the mastery of lore and endless minutia. Sam is enough of an outsider (a proud comic book geek and also quite queer coded), while also being sharp and funny, and loyal, to serve as an appealing audience surrogate for us to ride along with. He is brave enough to accompany the Frog brothers into the depths of the cave to stake a vampire to save his brother (getting coated with surprisingly glittery blood), but he’s not so cool that he won’t constantly be freaking out about the cobwebs and the insects and the gross of it all (just as I would – and I suspect most people would – few of us are as fearless as we might like to think).

With Sam and the Frog brothers, we get one of the essential 80s ‘kids-on-bikes-fighting-monsters’ movies, and I don’t know how a person could resist the thrill of the montage of them riding around town, filling their water guns with holy water, practicing archery, and bashing cloves of garlic in preparation for the coming showdown with the undead. I’m a sucker for that stuff. Again, it could be cheesy, but in its earnestness, it is never embarrassed by its own enthusiasm – it is never too cool for school, and I get to adopt the same posture as a viewer, and unabashedly enjoy myself.

The “hooting and laughing” is perhaps lacking the nuanced specificity of naturalism (Émile Zola, this is not), but it is in earnest. David’s pitch to Michael of never growing old and never dying and keeping the party going forever isn’t sustainable (you can’t just hoot and laugh forever – it would get pretty boring), but it also feels earnest; it feels true as he utters it (and Keifer Sutherland brings real charm to the part, each smirk a provocation and an invitation). Finally, the love among the family (Sam, Michael, Lucy, Grampa, and Nanook the dog) feels solid and lived in. I believe them as brothers – they have an emotional and physical intimacy – loving but also confrontational – irritating each other but still supportive.

I appreciate the sardonic warmth between Lucy and her father (what a lovably cantankerous old coot), just as I love her moving attempts to keep connecting with her sons, even as they grow apart from her. When Michael comes home in the morning, ragged after a night of vampire drama and Dianne Wiest’s Lucy asks if they’re still friends, and if so, if they can act like it, I ache for her. She really is a good mom, doing everything she can, and life is hard, and this distance hurts. Across the board, there are so many elements that could come off as a kind of dated kitsch or 80s excess, and yet, for me, it never does. My heart runneth over with joy, with glee, with love.

The teenage urge to run away into the night and be forever free has a power and a seductive allure, but so does the familial connection, the love that binds, that ties one down; that is not freedom, but it is worth it. I’ve barely published on this blog this summer because I’ve been dealing with my own adult responsibilities, and in that, there is a weight, and sometimes it would feel good to be able to run away from adulthood and duty and ‘the real world,’ but love is a thing. And it ultimately feels better to be able to fulfill those responsibilities than it would to ride around, hooting and laughing. I guess to keep breathing, a person needs at least a taste of both, and this film offers that.

Is this a scary movie? Certainly not. Is it even a horror movie? I guess, maybe? It is definitely a great vampire movie, and vampires are monsters, and monsters are in horror movies, so let’s say sure. Given its mild degrees of violence, sex, and naughty words, I don’t quite know how it earned an R rating back in the day, but that said, it doesn’t feel at all de-fanged – it isn’t a little kids’ vampire movie. It just isn’t that focused on the scares or the gross outs (though there are some cool sequences and ideas – the vamps hanging upside down by their toes like bats, implosions, explosions, the bloody plumbing, death by stereo). But it’s got the vibes, and the laughs, and the good times, and a great soundtrack and an awesome look. And on top of all that, for my money, it’s got the greatest last line in any movie, ever.

So that’s The Lost Boys. This was a shorter post than usual, and perhaps less detailed than I often go, but I hope that’s ok – I’ve been trying to sit down to write it for almost the last two months (I know I’ve mentioned this once or twice, but it really has been a long summer), and in the end, I just felt like praising some of the things I so enjoy in this bit of comfort food entertainment. If you’ve never seen the movie, I doubt this sufficiently described it to you. But if you’ve read the whole thing, maybe you’ll be interested to go check it out. I think you should.

Three Universal Draculas

Is there a character in the horror landscape that looms as large as Dracula? My whole life, from long before I was at all into horror, I’ve known him. Simple plastic Halloween masks, Scooby Doo cartoons, funny characters that reference him (the Count on Sesame Street, Count Floyd on SCTV, Count Chocula on cereal boxes), The Monster Squad – he was everywhere. And he was one of the only characters so omnipresent as to warrant an indefinite article – you might see a little kid on Halloween with a widows peak, a medallion, and a cape, and if you ask who or what they are, there was a good chance they might say “a Dracula” – like being a tiger or a princess – he wasn’t just a particular vampire from a particular story – he was his own thing – on one level, synonymous with “vampire,” but also having totally specific traits and markers – and of course all of those characteristics were based on one and only one portrayal, and it wasn’t Christopher Lee (though he’s great), Gary Oldman (I love his performance, but it hadn’t been filmed yet when I was little), or Udo Kier (no way I would have watched Blood for Dracula as a child – too obscure and not exactly kid appropriate – Kier’s most famous line being “The blood of these whores is killing me” after vomiting blood into a bathtub for what feels like 15 minutes because none of the nubile Italian girls he’s feeding on are virgins); of course it was all Bela Lugosi.

So I thought this week, it would be an interesting project to dip back into the 1931 root of this image, this icon (of course the true origins begin much earlier than that). But first I had to reckon with my own expectations of his eponymous film. The last time I watched it was in the late 90s and at the time, while I could kind of appreciate its historical significance, I don’t think I particularly enjoyed it. I remembered it being slow and stately. I remembered it had been made before scoring talkies became common and that the absence of music made it really drag. I remembered, if anything, that some things looked cool, but that it hadn’t blown me away – at least not like the other Universal monster movies I’d seen from the likes of James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Old Dark House – all favorites of mine); other films I’d seen from its director, Tod Browning, such as Freaks (1932) or, more recently, The Unknown (1927); or Murnau’s granddaddy of vampire cinema, Nosferatu (1922).

So, yeah, I didn’t come to it this time particularly as a fan, but I did come with interest. Furthermore, I thought it could add perspective to look at Browning’s film in comparison with a couple of other Draculas with which it shares strong similarities, specifically, George Melford’s Dracula (1931) which was filmed in Spanish for the Latin American market at night, based on the same script, on the same sets, using many of the same shots, and generally with the same costumes as Browning’s, and also John Badham’s Dracula (1979), starring Frank Langella in the titular role. All three films came from the same studio – Universal Pictures, and all three were based on the same source material, by which I don’t mean Bram Stoker’s novel, though of course that’s there, but rather Hamilton Dean and John Balderston’s drawing room thriller theatrical adaptation first produced in England in 1922 (and actually licensed by Stoker’s widow, Florence, unlike Nosferatu), revived on Broadway in 1927 (starring Bela Lugosi), and further revived on Broadway in 1977 (starring Frank Langella).

Far from identical, all three do share much of the same structure, as well as a lot of dialogue and character choices and therefore, I feel looking at them next to each other helps bring their respective qualities into starker contrast. Primarily I will be examining the two films from 1931 as one of them has really left a shadow over the last century of culture and awareness of the other is helpful in understanding why. At the end, I plan to discuss the 1979 film just a bit – it’s fine, and is a historical-cinematic curiosity with some praiseworthy elements, but ultimately, I don’t feel it’s had the same kind of impact.

Night and Day: The Two 1931 Draculas

Given how much they share in common (sets, costumes, props, animals, shots, source text), it is striking how different these movies are, really playing differently, with different pacing, a different style, and ultimately a different lasting effect. Browning filmed during the day with his cast and crew and apparently, Melford got to watch Browning’s dailies, recreating what he liked and adjusting what he felt he could improve on before shooting with his cast at night. This resulted in two films with many of the same strengths as well as many of the same technical limitations, but they really do diverge strikingly – it is fascinating to compare them.

Interestingly, on first viewing, I enjoyed Melford’s film much more. It is more dynamic, more naturalistic, and benefits from greater narrative flow and a lively energy. Nevertheless, it is Browning’s film which has really stayed with since I watched them both last week, and which I expect will continue to linger in my memory. In a way, each excels where the other falters.

This is from Browning’s film, but the castle is the same in both.

In both cases, as was done for the play, the story has been greatly condensed (it was not a short book), and characters, settings, and events have been reduced to bare essentials, mostly playing out on the grounds of Dr. Seward’s Sanatorium where Renfield is a patient, Mina is Seward’s daughter, and the mysterious count has just moved in next door. This is, of course, after a brief first act in which Renfield travels to Transylvania to meet the Count and arrange for his land purchases in England, and it must be said that the production design is uniformly gorgeous. Kicking off Carl Laemmle Jr.’s cycle of gothic horror films for Universal, it is all spooky, decrepit castles, cobwebs, dark shadows, dramatic lighting, and incongruously placed animals (the castle features possums and armadillos, neither of which were native to Transylvania – I’ve read that the possums were used because censors at the time didn’t approve of rats, and it was assumed that most viewers outside the American southwest had never seen an armadillo and that they just look weird enough to live in a vampire’s castle).

Generally, throughout the post, the English version will be on the left and the Spanish on the right.

Off the bat (whoops), there are differences. While there was notable moving cinematography in Browning’s version, Melford utilized a far more mobile camera and found some very striking shots. Still, though it was more static (and this does affect its pacing), Browning filmed every moment as if intentionally creating an icon, resulting in lasting images that really have staying power. He also absolutely benefitted from Lugosi. Carlos Villarias, who played the Count in the Spanish language version is more active, more natural, and somehow therefore sadly more silly. He plays it big, and is fully committed, but somehow doesn’t rise above being a guy in a cape. On the other hand, Lugosi brings a weight and a weirdness that just lands. Every moment he is on screen, he’s magnetic, holding the eye with a kind of fascination. I think there’s a clear difference in the first few times we see both actors: freshly risen for the night from the coffin, as the coach driver, and staring through magnetic eyes. Villarias does his best, but Lugosi is a special effect that never fails to wow.

The coachman

Still, while his Dracula doesn’t bring the same power, Melford found striking ways to film certain moments. Below, on the left, you can see Lugosi’s Dracula staring down Renfield with his hypnotic gaze. The shot is relatively straight on, with Browning highlighting the eyes with focused hard lighting. On the right, you can see how Melford handles the same moment – a tight close up at a sharper angle – it’s a great shot and very effective, but for my money, Lugosi’s performance delivers the scene – we feel his hunger in the moment, his unsettling urgency to have his business matters dealt with before he takes this man for himself.

Which brings us to our two Renfields. Dwight Fry (in English) and Pablo Alvarez Rubio (in Spanish) are both highlights of their respective films, but they play the character in quite different ways, embodying first his cautious fear and, later, his madness quite contrastingly. Again, there is an issue of naturalism, with Rubio bringing a far more manic, unhinged performance that feels more like a gibbering lunatic and Fry delivering something a bit more stagey, more stylized, but no less effective. Fry’s performance feels quite chosen, quite controlled, even mannered, but when he goes mad, it is all the more chilling. Also, while Rubio feels more “realistic,” I think Fry brings a greater degree of nuance to these first interactions with the vampire in question. There is a tautness to their scenes, a sustained tension. Renfield has come such a long way to find such a strange man in such a creepy place, and he constantly seems to cycle between unsettled, temporarily comforted, fascinated by his charming, off-putting host, and totally weirded out by him. Is it terror or possibly attraction? Either way, it’s richer than Rubio’s well played, but less intriguing histrionics.

On the differences between the films, there are a few illustrative moments after Dracula has left Renfield for the night and the vampiric brides come for him. First of all, I think Melford clearly wins the composition here (there’s a benefit in going second). Whereas Browning has the three ethereal ladies simply enter a doorway and come for him, Melford sets up the shot such that we see them first lurking in the doorway in the distance as a terrified Renfield enters the foreground looking for a means of escape, the audience seeing their approach while, oblivious in his fear, he does not. It is a great, creepy moment.

I had trouble catching a still that does justice to Melford’s shot – in this one, you can barely see Renfield in the lower right corner. Trust me, it works when it’s moving.
Here is the Spanish version moving.

But then, Browning delivers a significant moment from the book lacking in the Spanish version. In Melford’s film, we see the brides bend to feast on the poor man, but in Browning’s the Count returns and sends them away, taking Renfield for himself.

As noted on the Shudder docuseries, Queer For Fear, this moment in the novel seems to have been particularly significant to Stoker, and in his original manuscript, he’d repeated the line, “This man is mine!” over and over again. It’s easy and obvious to conflate the vampire’s predation with sexuality – the hunger for another’s body, the ‘taking’ of the victim, and while the Spanish version restricts Dracula’s diet to one of lovely ladies, Browning shows us a figure with a less exclusive thirst. One could approach this with a simple queer reading, but for me it goes deeper – he is more and less than human and beyond such taboos and/or identifications. This kind of pansexual lust for blood and body was present in core texts such as Stoker’s Dracula and Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and it comes down, perhaps through this iconic moment, to later works, such as the novels of Anne Rice or films like The Hunger (1983).

So why does Melford excise the moment? Is it just that he is streamlining the scene and felt having Dracula return, stop the brides in their tracks and feed himself slowed things down? It’s possible – Browning’s scene is certainly slow and silent (both films suffer from the fact that scoring talkies had not yet become standard and there is a lot of silence in both – but it feels more present somehow in Browning’s film). Did he just want to give the brides something more to do? They are cool and mysterious, and it’s a shame we see so little of them. Is it instead a hunch that something that might be read as gay coded wouldn’t play so well in a more machismo oriented market? Who knows? But the absence is notable.

In either case, the next time we see him aboard the Vesta (I have no idea why it was changed from “The Demeter”), Renfield has gone round the bend, respectively with Rubio’s howling, maniacal cackle, or with Dwight Fry’s slow, haunting, vibrato laugh. Again, Rubio feels more like a real crazy person (or what you might expect from the representation of a “real crazy person” in the 30s – mental illness not being well understood yet – as if it is now), but Fry’s laugh is one of the best things in either movie, or any other movie from the decade for that matter. Troubled and troubling, it resonates with an eerie off-ness – suffering and threatening in equal measure. It really is something special.

Also, the image of the dead captain, strapped to the wheel is chilling. Again, this is Browning’s shot, but it repeats in Melford’s film.

And so, Dracula comes to England and high society. This, I think is one of the lasting influences of Bela’s performance, and of the presentation of Dracula spearheaded by the play. In Stoker, Dracula is royal in appearance, but far from handsome:

“His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth.

These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.”

Valentino on the left and Schreck on the right.

Rudolph Valentino he was not. Rather, Max Schreck’s rat-like visage in Nosferatu seems a rather faithful representation. Now, Bela Lugosi’s Count, in his impeccably-tailored tailcoat and vest and his elegant cape is an entirely different creature. Stoker’s vampire was not without charisma or even seductive power, but he also elicited a shudder of revulsion. Lugosi brings a movie star charm to the role. He has the exotic accent and he moves with peculiar mannerisms, but he makes the Count attractive, even sexy for the first time, and this is a quality that would stick. These days it is a rarity to see a Dracula who isn’t a charmer. And, at the same time, Lugosi still retained an element of the monstrous. His Dracula is no tragic romantic figure, chasing lost love and doomed to an eternity of isolation – he is always a predator: a rapacious, dignified, bewitching predator. Whether he is padding through the streets of London to prey on a poor girl selling flowers or hypnotizing an usherette at the opera so that he might better make the acquaintance of his new neighbors, this Dracula never ceases to both captivate and unsettle. He is a beast, but he’s never not the most interesting person in the room. It is a terrible shame that Lon Chaney was cut down so early by cancer (he’d been the first choice for the role), but it is a gift to our culture that Bela got the chance to bring to the screen what he had been doing on stage (which he begged to do, drastically undercutting his earnings in the process). By contrast, Villarias’s Count can wear the cape, but he doesn’t exactly fill it out, and at the worst, he can even come off a bit goofy – forecasting the fate of many a “Dracula” costume wearer in the future – unsurprisingly, you can paint on a widow’s peak and still fail to look cool.

Another striking feature of this Dracula (and I believe this comes down to the play as it is featured in all three versions) is how little he seems to care if people know what he is. In modern times, one is accustomed to blood suckers who feel the need to hide their true nature, but he is apparently wholly unconcerned, and that makes him come off as all the more powerful. The first time he meets the main cast (Lucy, Mina, Jonathan Harker, and Dr. Seward) at the opera, he speaks like one who has lived an unnaturally long life, with lines like,”To die – to be really dead, that must be glorious!” or “There are far worse things awaiting man…than death.” Um, ok, nice to meet you, Mr. Dracula, was it? Care to come around for tea?

Browning’s is better lit, but I like how Melford has the unreflected Count kiss her hand farewell.

Or, later, when Van Helsing has discovered his vampiric nature having glimpsed his lack of reflection in a mirror, Dracula responds, “For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you are a wise man Van Helsing.” In that moment, Dracula knows that he knows, but while irked at being discovered, he ultimately doesn’t care. He apologizes to his host, Dr. Seward, for reacting so violently (either swatting away the mirrored cigarette case in English in a short burst of rage, or explosively lashing out and destroying the case in Spanish), and exits, telling Seward that his friend, Van Helsing, will explain. He then doesn’t try to run away, knowing that they know he’s a blood sucker – instead, he immediately lures Mina outside to drink her blood under his sexy cape. He is really, really not worried.

Lugosi explodes for the briefest of moments before composing himself, but when he does, you can see how much hatred has been tightly wound within. By contrast, Vallarias bugs out his eyes and throws a tantrum.

The other players are the next significant field of difference. The English speaking cast is good, and their performances seem appropriate to the Victorian origins of the text. They are all proper gentlemen and ladies, a bit staid and respectable, their genteel English world invaded by this bold outsider, this royal figure from beyond their understanding of society or reality, undaunted by conventions of propriety – all qualities that make him both appealing and disruptive. They are all also, kind of boring (on one of the commentary tracks, I think, it was said that the role of Renfield was increased because everyone knew what a drag Jonathan Harker was). Browning thus dully plays up Renfield for all he can, allowing him a far creepier moment at one point when the camera cuts away just as he has finished crawling over to a nurse who has fainted – in the Spanish version, we see him snap out of it and laugh/cry away the notion that he might have hurt her – in the English version, her fate is unknown and we can only assume the worst.

On the other hand, the Spanish speaking cast is consistently less tightly bound, and comes across as far stronger emotionally. While the English version may be more fitting to the social conventions of 1897 when Dracula was written, I’ve got to say that the Spanish speaking cast is far more compelling, and I was more engaged with their trials and tribulations as they are targeted and try to fight back against this threat. Helen Chandler’s Mina looks lovely while she turns from her lover knowing that only unlife awaits her, but Lupita Tovar’s Eva sheds real tears and breaks down in a way that can really tug on your heart strings.

The English version has the better still, but the Spanish version has the better scene.

This is one way that the Spanish version excels. In general, it seems a bit more free, and it also seems less burdened by concerns over what the censor might think (I don’t know much about what could be shown in cinemas in Latin America in the early 30s, but it doesn’t seem crazy to expect that the English speaking market of America and Britain would be more prudish). This can be seen in small things like Tovar’s almost see-through night gown vs Chandler’s shiny silver nightdress.

Plus, Tovar’s exuberance is infectious.

It is evident in acting choices like the English language Van Helsing’s easy, reclining power as he holds the cross vs the Spanish Van Helsing’s dramatic bombast.

Or in the bite marks on Lucy’s neck, shown in Spanish, but only talked about in English.

It comes across in significant plot details that are glossed over in the English language version. For example, we see Harker and Van Helsing come out of a cemetery, but we don’t know why – whereas in the Spanish version, Van Helsing talks about how terrible it was to stake Lucy in the heart, but in doing this terrible deed, they have saved her soul (however, in both versions, Lucy dies so suddenly and isn’t much discussed or mourned afterwards – it’s odd…). Furthermore, there is a strong Catholic religiosity in the Spanish version utterly absent in the English. As far as I can tell, this is both an issue of targeting a very Catholic market (Latin America) and avoiding running afoul of censors who might disapprove of anything that could be seen as sacrilegious. To some extent, this is just a matter of local flavor, but in at least one case, it really changes a key moment, resulting in the Spanish version having a much stronger finish.

As the Spanish version is concerned more with the fates of the souls of those under Darcula’s thrall, it contains a meaningful exchange, the absence of which renders the ending of the English version quite wanting. In both versions, there are many scenes of Seward and Van Helsing dealing with Renfield, who constantly vacillates between devotedly serving his dark master, fearing him, pitying himself, mocking the others, and just trying to eat as many bugs as he can. At one point, in Spanish, when the others are discussing Lucy’s sad end and how they may have to do the same for Mina, Renfield plaintively asks Van Helsing if, even though he is a sad lunatic, he would also do this act for him. This comes back significantly in the final reel after Dracula kills Renfield, either causing him to fall down the curved staircase in English, or, more brutally, directly pushing him off the staircase in Spanish.

At the climax, after Van Helsing has hammered a stake (off camera in both versions) into Dracula’s chest and Mina/Eva have sympathetically felt the pain of the wood piercing their own hearts before finally being freed from the vampire’s dark spell,

Jonathan/Juan and Mina/Eva are about to leave and they ask Van Helsing if he’s coming with them. In the English version, he just says, no, he’ll come later. That’s odd? Why not now? Maybe he needs to pee or something? Ah well, the young couple walk up the stairs in a wide shot and leave. Sometimes older movies end quite abruptly and this is one of those. I was quite surprised to suddenly see the spinning Universal globe and the cursive text of “The End.” In the Spanish version, it all makes more sense and ends with more of an emotional punch.

Browning’s ending

As in Browning’s, the young couple asks if Van Helsing will come with them and he says no, but this time, he goes on to explain that he has to keep his promise to Renfield. The next shot is from the top of the stairs, looking down on the romantic leads as they climb into the light of day, into a more hopeful future, the nightmare finally over, but then Melford cuts to a wide shot in which we see them nearing the top of the stairs as we also see Van Helsing approaching poor Renfield’s corpse, ready to mutilate his body that his soul might survive. It lands with a sting and is, by far, the stronger ending. Personally, I’m not a fan of religiosity in my horror, but it is nice when scenes make sense and deliver on the emotion.

Melford’s ending

Across the board, I would say that Melford’s film in Spanish is consistently more engaging – I felt more of a sense of narrative drive, I enjoyed watching it more (sometimes in Browning’s, I got sleepy), I was more invested in the fates of the characters; by many counts, you might call it the better movie (and some do). And yet, and this is weird, I don’t think it actually is.

Melford’s film plays it straighter, it makes more sense, and I had more fun watching it; however, it also feels less substantial, more superficial, more forgettable. On the other hand, while the camera may be static and the performers stagey, every moment, every element, every choice in Browning’s film feels like it is creating a new icon that will last, that should last. I understand Browning had a very successful career as a director of silent movies (though I’ve only seen one of these, I really loved it), and I have heard the opinion that he shot his Dracula more like a silent movie, not entirely comfortable with dialogue. I don’t know if that’s true, but almost any still from his film could be framed and carry a kind of power. Browning’s lead players: Dracula, Mina, Van Helsing, and Renfield, each speak with an unhurried, chosen steadiness that can slow things down, but they all work their way into the memory. There are reasons that this film, these shots, and these performances have persisted into our culture.

Melford’s film is good (and, having been largely forgotten for many years, it is great that it is now readily available, at least if you’re willing to pick up a physical copy). It is engaging, exciting, and entertaining, but the fact that all of that engagement, excitement, and entertainment somewhat pales in comparison to Browning’s work says something about how significant that work is.

Dracula Tends To Return

In 1977, Frank Langella headlined a revival of Dean and Balderston’s play on Broadway, emphasizing more romantic, sensual readings of the character than had heretofore been dominant. This production was such a success that Universal apparently thought it was time to return to the Dracula well for a new film, still based on the theatrical text, but with a new sensibility.

Directed by John Badham (a director with no other horror credits, but who made many films that I loved as a kid, like Short Circuit and War Games), the 1979 film succeeds in many ways but didn’t exactly blow me away and I probably wouldn’t be writing about it were it not in relation to these other two films. Like those two, it is also rooted in the playscript, and in some ways adapts it more faithfully by setting itself entirely in England, beginning with the Demeter running aground, the crew decimated by an unseen, animalistic force.

Soon Dracula is getting to know the Sewards and the Van Helsings (confusingly, the film switches the names of Lucy and Mina, so now Lucy is the main character and the daughter of Dr. Seward, whereas Mina is the first victim and now the daughter of Van Helsing) and striking up a steamy relationship with Lucy. How these characters and the relationships between them are handled is the greatest strength of the film. From the beginning, we get the sense that Jonathan Harker is pretty much a needy, possessive, petulant jerk and when Lucy (who, we must remember, is the character traditionally known as “Mina”) meets this charismatic, dashing, intriguing man from abroad (with an American accent rather than anything Eastern European), she is drawn to him not because of his dark magics, but because she, as an adult woman with agency and sexual desire, finds him hot.

Thus, the film works best in the first half as they circle each other, falling in love and lust. Dracula does not cast her under a spell, but they mutually fall under each other’s. He can still be dominant, but it feels more like he’s performing a role – speaking dominantly to one who finds that sort of thing attractive, rather than controlling her with magic. This finally culminates in a big lovemaking/blood drinking scene at about the halfway point, after which much of the drive falls out of the movie. I was invested in their flirtation, but once she is thus bonded to him and the focus of the film shifts more to those who would oppose him, it was a bit harder to maintain interest.

Also, while Langella plays the Count successfully as a lonely romantic, I didn’t find him to be much of a monster and he just feels less threatening than one might like when squaring away against Harker, Seward, and Van Helsing. Thus in the second half, I felt a bit adrift as an audience member – Dracula is clearly a bad guy and it’s not like I’m rooting for him, but when there’s no more seducing to be done, he’s not that scary so I don’t really cheer for the people trying to kill him.

But the film has other things in its favor. Set in 1913, it is very attractive and well costumed. It brings back into a Dracula film a few elements from the book that hadn’t made it to screen in the 30s, such as the bit where he climbs down the wall like a lizard or seeing what actually happens to Lucy (even though she’s named Mina here – argh – it’s unnecessarily confusing).

Some moments of vampire business rather work, such as a surprising moment of “Bat!” when it seems Van Helsing may have the upper hand, and some comic moments between Dracula and Renfield. Also, the production design is really fun and over the top – seriously, who designed Carfax Abbey to have a giant Hellmouth in the lobby, a giant Bat as a chandelier of sorts, and how did Dracula find the time to light all those candles? I joke, but it really does look quite cool in a gloriously over the top, gothy kind of way.

Finally, I really got a kick out of Donald Pleasence as Dr. Seward, whose dominant character trait seems to be voraciously, unconcernedly eating while the world around him burns. It’s a fun character, in turns oblivious and helpless, offering pretty poor medicine, such as when he explains to his friend, Van Helsing that of course he’d had his friend’s now dead daughter on the morphine, but laughing away the suggestion that he might give something so harmful to his own daughter (probably right before shoving something else in his mouth).  It’s quite a funny performance – choices were made, and I believed in and enjoyed this odd little man. Also, the degree to which her father, and by extension her home, her whole world, is so banal, small minded, and ridiculous probably underscores Dracula’s exotic appeal for Lucy.

Also, it ends satisfyingly – the boring men come and defeat the big bad vampire, but at the finish, Lucy (Mina) sees his cape fluttering away on the wind and can’t hide a secret smile, relieved that he somehow persists and will continue in the world, maybe even returning to her one day. It’s a more satisfying ending to the love story between them than if it were all just wiped away when he dies, and she felt “freed” from his power. I appreciated that.

However, one aspect that I found difficult was the color timing. I guess Badham had wanted to film in black and white and the studio execs had nixed that idea, releasing the film theatrically in vibrant color. He hated how it looked and when it came to releasing the movie on home video, Badham arranged for it to be a “director’s cut” in which he muted all of the colors.

Ah, a nice day lit exterior. It sure is nice to visit dreary, grey British seaside towns.

Honestly, I found its dinginess just oppressive and deadening and found myself craving some degree of saturation (though exactly what I’d expected did occur – in the middle of the film, when Dracula finally drinks from Lucy, there is a hyper-red artsy sequence which pops all the more for being in the midst of so much grey and beige). But for me, it was not enough to justify just how dull the rest of the movie looked.

So that was difficult. As far as I can tell, most versions available on streaming are the desaturated version (it’s what I saw), though if you want to buy a more recent double disc with both versions, that is for sale. Still, having looked at stills from both versions, I can see why the director disliked the theatrical – the full color doesn’t look great either – and the desaturated version is a bummer. Maybe they should have just let him work in black and white as he’d wanted to – it probably would have had some actual contrast and could have been starkly beautiful.

Also, I must say that I went into this viewing with the wrong expectations. I’d always heard that this was the “sexy Dracula” and had expected something lurid and over the top, perhaps like a Ken Russell flick or maybe like the gloriously pulpy extravagance Francis Ford Coppola would go on to craft in 1992 (a film that holds a special place in my heart). That was the wrong way to approach this film, and it kind of did it a disservice – it is better to say that it focuses on the romance between Dracula and Lucy (which, as described above, it does effectively), but otherwise plays as a more “realistic” period drama, and is in no way sensationalistic. So it is worth watching, but don’t go in looking for a superabundance of sensuality, cause you could be disappointed.

Just Three Draculas?

From The Lost Boys

Of course, there haven’t been only three Draculas – Draculas are everywhere! He’s been in hundreds of films, on loads of TV shows, in comic books and cartoons, and transformed into other characters like Blacula or Bunnicula; the Count gets around. There have been other great performances and also plenty of terrible ones. But I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that most of them are in some way indebted to Browning’s film and to Lugosi’s performance. Almost every gesture Lugosi made, almost every inflection in his voice, every shot, every utterance became a ‘meme’ long before that word was reduced to meaning simply a funny captioned picture on the internet. Rather, a meme is a viral concept – an idea that circulates throughout a culture, replicating itself, planting itself in new hosts from which it can further spread. In Stoker (and in Murnau’s Nosferatu), Dracula was associated with plague – he was a kind of viral illness, a sickness of the blood, a venereal disease that could infect proper, buttoned up, Victorian England. It is only fitting that Lugosi’s iconic persona and Browning’s film should similarly exist as just such an infectious concept.

I gotta say – I started this post admitting that I hadn’t returned to Browning’s film as a fan, but after spending this last week and a half with it, I think I’ve come around. It is iconic for good reason. RIP, Bela. I’m sorry that after gifting our culture something so, so good, you had such a famously hard time of it in the rest of your career.