Dracula

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knitwit45
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Re: Dracula

Post by knitwit45 »

Kev, that's the scariest avatar yet....Boris looks like he really enjoys being a girl....... :shock: :shock: :shock: :lol:
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CineMaven
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Re: Dracula

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MichiganJ wrote:Yes, it plays fine. Thanks for the link. Even out of context, the scene is sexy and creepy.
Whew! I'm glad 'cuz it didn't load up properly for me at first. And creepy? Hmmm...I wasn't creeped out in the least.
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MichiganJ
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Re: Dracula

Post by MichiganJ »

CineMaven wrote:Whew! I'm glad 'cuz it didn't load up properly for me at first. And creepy? Hmmm...I wasn't creeped out in the least.
One of the most interesting things for me about Dracula's Daughter, is that, at least for classic horror, this is one time where a female is the "monster", and it allows me to, at least somewhat, understand the push-me pull-you attraction that the ladies had (have) for Bela and other vampires. Even with that stare (creepy, to me, at least), I'd have a hard time not offering up my neck to Gloria.

It's too bad that the "victim" is still female in the film (I'm thinking about the kidnapped secretary), but that fits with the homoerotic theme. Remember how nonchalant Gloria was dispatching the dude. He was just dinner. Lili, well, she was dessert.
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Re: Dracula

Post by CineMaven »

[b][u]MichiganJ[/u][/b] wrote:Maven...At the moment, I'm focusing on Dracula films in particular, but a new Vampire Films thread sounds good to me. I've watched a couple of really unusual vampire films recently.
Image
CATHERINE DENEUVE in "THE HUNGER"

If I might beg your indulgence for a moment, might I offer up Catherine Deneuve in "The Hunger" if you do start a VAMPIRE thread. I went to the movies with a bunch of friends up in Massachusetts (brothers and sister, husband and wives) when the movie came out...and to a person, we all said we'd forego death for an etermity with Deneuve. Of course, never dying can be a problem when you're 4,500 years old and decrepit. All her victims had to be put to pasture (in coffins) as they were too aged to feed. Oh, and they were never dying...
One of the most interesting things for me about Dracula's Daughter, is that, at least for classic horror, this is one time where a female is the "monster", and it allows me to, at least somewhat, understand the push-me pull-you attraction that the ladies had (have) for Bela and other vampires. Even with that stare (creepy, to me, at least), I'd have a hard time not offering up my neck to Gloria.
Aaaah! As you should.

Would you unequivocably say that this is the first time a woman IS the monster in Movies?

Image Image
DRACULA's BRAM STOKER BELA LUGOSI, DRACULA

I've never read Bram Stoker's novel...but I wonder if he created the vampire as a substitute for accommodating the sexual urge; as a way of talking about it. This was a a Victorian gothic novel...and he is a contemporary of Freud's. Wouldn't this be a safe way for appetites to be depicted and satisfied (whether vampire male or helpless victim, female). Of course the vampire's got to be a handsome devil for women to be attracted to him. (Can you see Abe Vigoda as "Dracula"? Naaaah, that doesn't work for my fantasy). The sexual hypnosis...it's such an intimate thing, being close enough to draw blood...draw the life out of a person. Aaaah, the female vampire's (creepy) stare...she can't afford to blink. She's got to keep an eye on you guys.
It's too bad that the "victim" is still female in the film (I'm thinking about the kidnapped secretary), but that fits with the homoerotic theme. Remember how nonchalant Gloria was dispatching the dude. He was just dinner. Lili, well, she was dessert.
Whaddya gonna do? A man wrote the story of Dracula. There's probably some anxiety putting men in a position of weakness especially if the Vampire is a woman. She's still "just a woman." (Please read that with a facetious inflection, thankyouverymuch!) As for the victim still being female...well I suspect this is a way for those Victorian ladies reading this novel, to "submit" without feeling guilt or being stigmatized back in 1897. I've got "DRACULA's DAUGHTER" on order at Barnes & Noble. I'll bring it to my local bar on Friday nite in honor of Halloween. The crowd won't be into a black and white movie, so if I'm about to be tarred and feathered...I'll have Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA (they like color) waiting in the wings.

Here is my (crackpot) theory of a family tree for Count Dracula DRACULA's SISTER - DRACULA's OLDER DAUGHTER - DRACULA's YOUNGER DAUGHTER

Image Image Image
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MichiganJ
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Re: Dracula

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CineMaven wrote:If I might beg your indulgence for a moment, might I offer up Catherine Deneuve in "The Hunger" if you do start a VAMPIRE thread.
The Hunger is a particular favorite of mine and I would gladly be the Renfield to Deneuve's vampire. (Trivia: The Hunger is Bessie Love's--star of the original The Lost World--final film.)
CineMaven wrote:Would you unequivocably say that this is the first time a woman IS the monster in Movies?
I try not to say anything is unequivably first in regards to film. Usually I try to qualify the thoughts by saying "one of the first", which I did earlier in the brief review of the film.

Of course, as with all things, semantics comes into play, so one would need to define "monster", which in this case, I was thinking more of something supernatural, rather than, say, Theda Bara in A Fool There Was (where she portrays one of the first on-screen Vamps, driving men to suicide.) I suppose the robot Maria in Lang's Metropolis can count as a supernatural monster, as can Lancaster's Bride, so Holden is not exactly first, but she may be one of the first lead monsters.
CineMaven wrote:Of course the vampire's got to be a handsome devil for women to be attracted to him. (Can you see Abe Vigoda as "Dracula"? Naaaah, that doesn't work for my fantasy)
Stoker's description of Dracula (via Harker's Journal):
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.

Dracula begins the novel as an old man (maybe not Abe Vigoda old, though) and becomes younger with the more blood he drinks. (Dracula is one of my favorite novels and I revisit it regularly. It's a fast read, and I heartily (!) recommend it.) There is a lot of Freud.
CineMaven wrote:Whaddya gonna do? A man wrote the story of Dracula. There's probably some anxiety putting men in a position of weakness especially if the Vampire is a woman. She's still "just a woman." (Please read that with a facetious inflection, thankyouverymuch!) As for the victim still being female...well I suspect this is a way for those Victorian ladies reading this novel, to "submit" without feeling guilt or being stigmatized back in 1897. I've got "DRACULA's DAUGHTER" on order at Barnes & Noble. I'll bring it to my local bar on Friday nite in honor of Halloween. The crowd won't be into a black and white movie, so if I'm about to be tarred and feathered...I'll have Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA (they like color) waiting in the wings.
While allegedly based on a chapter that was left out of the novel and later released as the short story, "Dracula's Guest", Dracula's Daughter is really more of an invention of the various screenplay writers at Universal and kept many of the conventions that are original to the various plays based on Dracula, rather than the novel itself. All, indeed, written by men.

Good luck at the bar with the film. I can't even get my wife to watch it with me.
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MichiganJ
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Re: Dracula

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knitwit45 wrote:Kev, that's the scariest avatar yet....Boris looks like he really enjoys being a girl....... :shock: :shock: :shock: :lol:
Thanks Nancy. It's a test that makeup artist Jack Pierce was working on for the proposed sequel to The Bride of Frankenstein called The Revenge of Frankenstein's Mother-in-Law. Karloff was supposed to play both the monster and Clementine, his mother-in law.

Breen nixed the idea even before a script was written; the title alone being way too horrific.
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Re: Dracula

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:shock: :roll: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: Dracula

Post by Rita Hayworth »

MichiganJ's new AVATAR

One part Creepy, One part Scary, and one part ZOMBIE; and most unusual avatar that I ever seen in Silver Screen Oasis :!:
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Re: Dracula

Post by knitwit45 »

aw, hang around for a while, and you'll see all kinds of faces/places/'stuff' around here. 8)
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Re: Dracula

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MichiganJ wrote:It's a test that makeup artist Jack Pierce was working on for the proposed sequel to The Bride of Frankenstein called The Revenge of Frankenstein's Mother-in-Law. Karloff was supposed to play both the monster and Clementine, his mother-in law.
kingme wrote:One part Creepy, One part Scary, and one part ZOMBIE;
Universal was hoping to start a new franchise with Clementine Frankenstein, sort of a sinister Ma & Pa Kettle series, and none other than Orson Welles was eager to direct. But Welles wanted to rewrite the screenplay and for some reason insisted on making the Monster Mexican.
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Re: Dracula

Post by Mr. Arkadin »

CineMaven wrote:...[/b] if you do start a VAMPIRE thread.
Whadd'ya mean? There's one right here:

http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/vie ... =24&t=1106

Some shlep even mentions The Hunger. 8)


P.S. I've seen a lot more vampire films since 2007.
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Re: Dracula

Post by MikeBSG »

Perhaps she's often overlooked because the movie is called "Son of Dracula," but I've always thought that Lois Allbritton is pretty creepy as the woman who wants to become a vampire (and becomes one.)

I have some trouble with Chaney as the vampire. He is frightening at moments, but at times his voice is all wrong, but the rest of the film is very good, particularly Allbritton's performance.

(Supposedly Chaney broke director Robert Siodmak's jaw at one point during the filming.)
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Re: Dracula

Post by MichiganJ »

It is Chaney's voice. It has a melancholy to it that works magnificently for Lawrence Talbot but not so much as Dracula.

I like Allbritton, too; although as a vampire, she's still quite a bit human and has human motivations. The quandary she puts fiancé Frank Stanley in is interesting (and kinda noir-ish), and leads to that surprise and satisfyingly downbeat ending. One of the first for a Universal horror film.

I'd read that Chaney hit Siodmak over the head with a flower pot or something. Don't think they got along very well.
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Re: Dracula

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...if you do start a VAMPIRE thread.
Mr. Arkadin wrote:Whadd'ya mean? There's one right here: http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/vie ... =24&t=1106. Some shlep even mentions The Hunger. 8)
P.S. I've seen a lot more vampire films since 2007.
Whoaaaa...okay. I'll go and check it out.
...Blood and Roses (1961) was a film that had similar origins to Vampyr, (the novel Carmilla), but is much truer to the book. The Hunger (1983) is an interesting film along similar female lines, but in my opinion the best thing about that film is David Bowie's performance (which is astounding!) when he leaves the film I usually turn it off.
I see it. Okay. Interesting. Bowie was great in "The Hunger." I liked when he was waiting to see Sarandon in her office. She said she'd be right back, but she kept him waiting...and he started to age right then and there. I liked his reaction to her when she finally came back. But you turn it off after he's gone? Naaaaah. Deneuve and Sarandon carry the movie.

Thanx for citing the thread, Mr. A.
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Re: Dracula

Post by Mr. Arkadin »

Perhaps it's just the fact that I've always found Sarandon's acting style annoying, but it was even more glaring when contrasted with Bowie's incredible performance. Deneuve is always a class act and played the part well, I just felt the film started to unravel after Bowie's exit.
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