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| Vampire! Vampire! Lemon! So close and yet... |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).
The story: "Ed Wood and the Vampire" by Danielle DeVor
Synopsis: It is 1955, and director Ed Wood is on a years-long quest to make a movie starring an actual vampire. He once thought actor Bela Lugosi made such a convincing onscreen Dracula because he was the genuine article, but Bela proved to be all too human. So Ed's quest continues. Ed's girlfriend Dolores says this is all a waste of time and storms out on him. Undeterred, Ed continues to make notes in his little green book. He's determined to keep track of every prominent actor to play Count Dracula in the hopes that one of them will be a genuine vampire.
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| A disappointment to Ed. |
In 1966, Eddie reluctantly attends a screening of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula to see John Carradine as the count. To his disappointment, the film is a "farce," and Carradine is clearly no vampire. The pickings get slim until 1974 when Jack Palance portrays Dracula in a made-for-TV movie. By this time, Eddie's personal fortunes have dwindled, forcing him to live in a "grimy" apartment. That same year, Ed Wood attends a screening of Blood for Dracula starring Udo Kier in the title role. This film, however, is mere pornography. Three years later, Louis Jourdan stars in another made-for-TV adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel. Despite the faithfulness to the source material, Eddie is far from convinced that Jourdan is a vampire.
The story ends in late 1978. Ed Wood has been evicted from his Yucca Street apartment. (His death goes unmentioned.) A disgruntled landlord throws Eddie's possessions into the trash, including that green notebook Ed had been keeping since the '50s. It is picked up by a genuine vampire who happens to be passing by.
Excerpt:
He'd looked for clues far and wide, and soon, there had been buzz about a new vampire on the block. One from England. As soon as he spied Christopher Lee, he had that feeling again. Could this be a real vampire hiding in plain sight? There was presence. Pizazz. Kathy thought he was nuts for travelling all the way to Milwaukee for the premiere, but he couldn't let this go.
Reflections: Some of the authors who contributed stories to Warm Angora Wishes are people I already knew well from the Ed Wood fan community, but many are writers I've never heard of until right now. One example of the latter is authoress Danielle DeVor, who has written numerous fantasy and horror novels, including some romances, but has been off my radar thus far. I'm not certain if she'd been an Ed Wood fan before this project or if the editor approached her because of her other, similarly-themed books.
Either way, DeVor brings a perspective to this material that I don't think I've seen from other authors. The Ed Wood in this story is not one I fully recognized, so it was almost like having a new character to play with. The story's chief conceit is that Eddie is seeking a real vampire in order to make a movie with him. Over the course of two decades, this quest takes over—and even defines—his life. He's like some Bizarro World version of Van Helsing who seeks to glorify, rather than kill, Dracula.
DeVor's Ed Wood seems to have a different set of aesthetic standards than the Ed I know. This one turns up his nose at Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) and later scoffs at the idea of Western actor Jack Palance playing the character on TV. "What was this about cowboys and vampires?" DeVor writes. "This was some type of weird obsession with some people he didn't understand." In real life, Eddie was as obsessed with cowboy films as he was with horror films and famously tried and failed to get a Western/horror hybrid called The Ghoul Goes West made. And the idea of pairing Dracula with Billy the Kid is one I think would have appealed to Ed quite a bit.
Then, in 1974, Ed Wood attends a screening of Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula (1974)—which I assume was still being marketed as Andy Warhol's Dracula back then—and has this puzzling reaction:
He shouldn’t have wasted his time or the money. He didn’t expect to see a porn instead of a horror film. Not that he was against porn at all, but it surprised him. He’d never thought of meshing Dracula with pornography, but it would work. And it did, in an odd kind of way.
I've heard that the world has become more prudish in recent years, but I didn't think I'd see the day when Blood for Dracula was described as "porn." Yes, it has a few nude scenes and a smattering of simulated sex, but that accounts for a relatively small percentage of its run time. Is that what people think porn is nowadays? Anything with nudity or onscreen sex? Is Don't Look Now (1973) porn? How about Something Wild (1986) or Body Heat (1981)? How did TV series like True Blood (2008-2014) and Game of Thrones (2011-2019) sneak by us without getting labeled "porn"? They're both much more explicit than Morrissey's film. Besides, Ed Wood worked extensively in both softcore and hardcore pornography in the 1960s and '70s. By his standards, Blood for Dracula could be considered almost Victorian in its restraint.
As for "meshing Dracula with pornography," that phrase neatly summarizes much of Ed's fiction. In his novels and short stories, he combined horror and erotica over and over again—often in ways that are much more graphic than Blood for Dracula. Ed Wood is so closely identified with erotic horror that the novel The Adult Version of Dracula (1970) has commonly been attributed to him. Whether the attribution is correct is a matter of debate, but Ed was the kind of writer who conceivably could have written such a book. Eddie even went out of his way to mention both Bela Lugosi and Dracula in his pornographic feature film Necromania (1971).
It's possible that the Ed Wood in this story is not the Ed Wood we know from history, just a fictional character with the same name and a vaguely similar career path. The one in this story doesn't seem to be a cross-dresser, nor is he a prolific writer. He makes films and hunts Dracula. That's it. In fact, DeVor's character spends more time chasing after vampires than he does making movies. Speaking of which, none of Eddie's films is named in this story, and neither Dolores nor Kathy is given a last name. While I assume they're Dolores Fuller and Kathy Wood, I can't say that with 100% certainty.
The Ed Wood in this story seems to be on a downward career path and ends up being evicted from his Yucca St. apartment in the late '70s, all of which happened to the real Ed Wood. DeVor's Ed Wood also drinks a bit, but he's not a late-stage alcoholic shuffling down to the liquor store to cash his meager paycheck the way the real Eddie was. DeVor's character even drinks Wild Turkey, which probably would have been out of the real Ed Wood's price range. Compared to the real man with whom he shares a name, the Ed Wood of this story is living in luxury.
P.S. If this story appeals to you, I highly recommend this Cinemassacre video that compares all the screen versions of Bram Stoker's Dracula.