BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)

Subject: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: RangerSteve
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 02:41 PM

After decades of really good TV from Great Britain, I was happy to see that Dracula was going to be shown last night. If you haven't seen it, don't bother. It was only vaguely related to Bram Stoker's novel. The story has been done to death, and this was just another stake in it's heart. Jonathan Herker was killed off early. There were two major characters that weren't in the book. Lucy survived until almost the end of the film. No Renfield (possibly one of the most satisfying rolls an actor can play). An unnecessary sub-plot about Satan worshippers. David Souchet's Van Helsing was well done, but he was reduced to a secondary character. Dracula's death was rushed in at the last minute and was over almost before it happened. It was the least satisfying death scene possible. And then, it turns out he's not dead. Is there going to be a sequel? I hope not. There have been too many of those. Oh, and it wasn't the slightest bit scary. Francis Ford Coppola's version was better. Someday, maybe someone will a version that follows the book faithfully.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: fat B****rd
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 02:45 PM

With you there, Ranger Steve. I was looking forward to a nice bit of Gothic. Turned it off after about 10 minutes. Suchet's always pretty good, mind you.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Alec
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 02:47 PM

It was broadcast in the U.K. at Christmas & yes you're right it sucks. A pity in many respects because it had an excellent cast.
The B.B.C. did an excellent series approximately 30 years ago which was very faithful to Stoker but sadly, to the best of my knowledge, this has never been repeated.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Alec
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 02:49 PM

Umm...Dracula sucks... unintentional. Honest.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: DougR
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 02:51 PM

I agree with all three fo you. What a disappointment. I think the BBC usually turns a a very good product and this one was not up to their usual standard.

Two series my wife and I have enjoyed very much which were produced by the BBC were:"Monarch of the Glen", and "Ballykissangel." Both are a bit on the soap opera side but the scenery alone iw worth a watch.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 03:04 PM

I was really excited to see Marc Warren acting as Dracula, I liked him so much in Hustle, but when I started to watch, last night, I was really disappointed. Agree with all of the above!

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Den
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 03:13 PM

I seem to remember a BBC production of Dracula that starred Louis Jourdan. It was quite good I thought. I'm not sure how faithful it was to Stoker's book though as I haven't read it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 03:35 PM

Den - that's the series that Alec alluded to, I remember watching it and it was good, close to the book and beautifully shot.

I didn't find this new chap Warren particularly fascinating... not a great deal of sex appeal for me, but I was warped by Christopher Lee a long time ago!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: RangerSteve
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 05:16 PM

Doug R - I've been watching Mof the G on DVD. Sure, it's light weight stuff, but it's still intelligently written and a lot of fun. Only saw one season of ballykissangel, but I liked that too. Like I said, the BBC is usually top notch, but they seriously messed up with the latest Dracula. I vaguely remember the Louis Jourdain version. I'll have to look it up and see if it's available on DVD.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 07:14 PM

Mark Warren made a much better Mr Teatime in Sky's 'Hogfather'. Would have made a wonderful crossover don't you think? Terry Pratchetts Dracula...

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 07:21 PM

I gather you are not referring to the movie of the same title with Winona Ryder in it...

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: SINSULL
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 07:28 PM

And where did the syphilis come from? Weird but not in a good way. A total disappointment.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 07:45 PM

Yeah! That was REALLY strange, huh, Sins?!

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 07:47 PM

Also gave up. Dull and plodding.
A whole new story, certainly not Bram Stoker.

Seems to me there was an earlier British effort in which Dracula entered England as an illegal immigrant. I remember parts of it, so it must have caught my interest.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: SINSULL
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 08:34 PM

Back in the 70s I read a book (not Interview With A Vampire) which starts in a car. A decendent of Stoker is riding in a car when a decendent of Dracula appears in his rearview mirror. His big complaint is that the blood transfusions in the original Dracula were not typed. Hence the physician killed the patient not the vampire. Anyone recognize the story? I would love to read it again.

I keep waiting for a vampire story with AIDS as the central fiend who kills both mortals and vampires. Or should I keep that story line to myself?

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 08:59 PM

Since it was shown on Masterpiece Theatre, I had high hopes.

But there was an hour and a half of my life that I'll never get back again. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: GUEST,William Shatner
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 09:07 PM

Their key error was in not approaching me for the role of Van Helsing. That would have made all the difference.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 09:11 PM

Go for it SINS!

A couple of decades back, I belonged to a weekly writer's group. A young woman in the group was into Stephen King type stuff and was particularly into vampires (this was before Anne Rice became all that well known). She was working on a novel about a small group of vampires (an endangered species) who had discovered to their horror (!!) that they were particularly susceptible to HIV tainted blood.

Interesting premise. I don't know what ever became of her or her story, though.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: alison
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 11:47 PM

another vote for the Louis Jordan BBC version - it was excellent. It has been realeased on DVD here

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 03:37 AM

Thinking it through logically, as vampires are the Undead (or 'dead but won't lie down'), they are not susceptible to blood bourne diseases. Therefore things like septicaemia, haemophilia and HiV would have no effect on them. They may pass the HiV on to those they bite but do not kill, but once you're dead, you're dead, you can't die of another disease.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: gnu
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 06:31 AM

I like the Bugs Bunny version. "Rest is goo for the blood.... asleep yet?"

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Grab
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 09:25 AM

Not Bram Stoker, but I remember a good series called "Ultraviolet" back in the mid/late 90s about vampire hunters. It was one of the first TV series (and probably film too) to do a scientific approach to vampire-hunting. So carbon bullets, garlic CS gas grenades, TV sights on guns to check who's a vampire (you can see them with your eyes but they don't show up on cameras), and a "cold-storage" place to stash the mortal remains of vampires because there's no known way of killing them permanently. Internally consistent, and fairly well acted too.

And since it did a decent job of the whole thing, predictably it went on late on Channel 4, never got any publicity, never got a second series and never got repeated. :-(

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 03:22 PM

Gotta vote with Doug on this one (how often does that happen, Doug?). "Monarch of the Glen." Barbara and I have been getting the series one DVD at a time from NetFlix. May be slightly "soapish," but the scenery is fantastic and the characters are well-drawn and interesting, and there are some intriguing elements to the fundamental story line. How do you manage a centuries-old estate with ancient traditions in this modern age of computers and real estate development?

Heck, you don't even have to have a story line. I'm game to just watch Susan Hampshire breathe. So she's not real young anymore. But she's still got it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 04:02 PM

Politically incorrect vampire joke. I got it in a Hutterite Colony in Alberta.

A crocodile got lost and was swimming in a canal in Venice. He paused to get his bearings near a bridge.
The vampires were having their annual get-together in Venice that year.
After a while, the alligator began singing:
"Drained Wops keep falling on my head..."



Apologies to most everybody.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 04:31 PM

*groan*....**bg**

LOVE MOTG, too! An,d Hammish Mc/MacBeth (can't remember which way it is.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 05:53 PM

LOL! Ha! Ha! Ha! What a groaner.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: RangerSteve
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 06:18 PM

The best Dracula that I ever saw was the Broadway version, revived a few years ago, directed and with scenery by Edward Gorey. Close to 30 years later I can still picture the scenery. Too bad it was never captured on film.

As for M of the G, yeah, Susan Hampshire is still a babe, but I'd settle for Lexie, or even more, the schoolteacher who was Archies love interest in the first season. And I love Scottish accents. I could listen to those people talk forever. If they had filmed this latest Dracula in Scotland, I wouldn't have even started this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 07:09 PM

Well, if I go back about three generations, it's in my genes, but. . . .

A few months ago I heard The Corries for the first time on YouTube and started learning a bunch of the songs they do. Then we started getting the "Monarch of the Glen" DVDs from NetFlix.

And lately, I think I'm talking kinda funny. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Amergin
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 10:45 PM

Ultraviolet is a fabulous show. I got it on dvd....the black guy is played Stringer Bell an inner city gangster on the HBO show The Wire....he played it so well, most people don't realise he's not American.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 11:42 PM

RangerSteve, it looks as though it was captured on film, according to the notes for this video: CLICK HERE. Now you've got my curiosity up; we all love Gorey's art.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 12:11 AM

Hey, that looks like a good one, Kat. Sir Laurence, Pleasance, Nelligan and Langella.
But I doubt that they copied the stage scenery designed by Gorey in this film from Universal.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: fat B****rd
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 04:54 AM

My late mother told me she went to see a stage production of Dracula, probably in the 1920s/30s at Sunderland Empire, with Raymond Huntley in the lead. There was a bat on a string as part of the "special effects" and she swore blind the manager of the theatre opened a side-door to let the cold in for "the atmosphere".
The telling of this may have become a little inaccurate over the years but I like to think it's correct.
I'll get me garlic.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: RangerSteve
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 10:43 AM

Kat - I remember that movie, although I didn't see it. It got bad reviews all around and friends of mine that saw it said it made them angry. The only thing they took from the Broadway version was Frank Langella. The Gorey scenery wasn't used. The play was a revival of the one that f B mentioned above.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Alec
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 11:00 AM

I remember a year or two back the B.B.C. broadcast a Canadian Ballet interpretation of the story that had all the suspense & eroticism that the B.B.C.'s most recent botched effort failed to nail.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: The Walrus
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 09:37 PM

Carrying on from the comments on blood borne diseases and vampires.

If a vampire drains a drunk or a 'coked up'drug addict - would they too begin to exibit signs of intoxication?
Would a vamp that fed on, say, heroin addicts risk addiction themselves (if only second hand as it were)?

Very silly thought.

I had this vision of a werewolf (in human forn) being killed and 'turned' by a vampire -
Scene: Turned werewolf (in bat form) flys over pine woods, the full moon emerges from behind thick cloud, flying bat trys to turn into a wolf in mid-air (with all the aerodynamic qualities of a big dog), falls into the wood - So what happens when the vampire/werewolf hybrid finds itself impaled on a tree?

W

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 03:05 PM

He lives on as a werewolf only. A wooden stake through the heart will kill a vampire, but to kill a werewolf, you need a silver bullet.

The Lone Ranger may have had a pathological fear of werewolves.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: GUEST,DocJ
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 05:00 PM

Another vote for the Louis Jordain version: I seem to remember it being very good indeed.
Christopher Lee must be the definitive Dracula but the original film now looks dated; a pity, altho it didn't follow the book.
The Cuppola version I found weak: when we first meet Dracula he looks like an aged countess and later in London like some kind of hippie. Certainly no menace.
Any votes for who would make the best Dracula now? Or Van Helsing?
DocJ

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 07:31 PM

Q, I thought the lineup sounded like a good one, too.

RangerSteve, it's too bad they didn't use Gorey's set. Maybe you could have fun with THIS?*smile*

If he could keep from camping it up, I think Craig Ferguson would be a great Count with Richard Dreyfus as van Helsing!

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: DougR
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 07:54 PM

Don Firth: Yep, it's real nice to know that we can agree on something. My wife and I are have seen all the episodes of Monarch of the Glen available and are looking forward to the release of the balance of the series. We are enjoying Ballykissangel too, but I think MofG is the best of the two. You are right (oh the pain of it!) the scenery in Monarch of the Glen is super. We vacationed for a week not far from where it was filmed and enjoyed that vacation very much. Scotland is beautiful.

Maybe if we stayed off polotics ...nah what would be the fun in that? :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: RangerSteve
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 10:01 PM

Kat - no, it's still not the same, because they can't duplicate the stage lighting, It was all in b&w, with one small bright red object in each set, and at the end, when Drac is killed, the sun rises and everything and everyone is suddenly in color. You had to see it to really appreciate it. But the toy set is kind of cool.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 10:22 PM

It sounds really incredible, RS, wish it had been filmed. Thanks.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: Grab
Date: 16 Feb 07 - 07:23 AM

Van Helsing - I'd like to see Robert Carlyle for that. Or maybe Jean Reno. Someone tough who's not a pretty face and seems not entirely safe to be around, because he needs to be the flip-side of the Dracula coin, if you like. Jack Nicholson might have been able to do it before he became a self-parody.

Dracula - hmm. I think Gary Oldman could have done a better job if Coppolla hadn't stuck him with that script and "look". Or Alan Rickman, naturally.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: GUEST,Otto
Date: 16 Feb 07 - 11:36 AM

Ve do not "suck"; ve pierce ze skin, ja, und zen ve lap ze blood.

Subject: RE: BS: Bram Stoker's Dracula (?)
From: alison
Date: 19 Feb 07 - 01:30 AM

I just picked up a DVD of the Louis Jordan version off ebay.
looking forward to seeing it again

slainte

alison