Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 218: What motivates Bela Lugosi's character in Plan 9?

Never is a long time, as Bela Lugosi proves in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).

When I think about the movies I've seen the most times, a few titles come immediately to mind, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), This is Spinal Tap (1984), and The Big Lebowski (1998). Among Ed Wood's movies, however, the clear winner is Plan 9 from Outer Space aka Graverobbers from Outer Space (1957). I first sat through this notorious sci-fi horror chiller in October 1992 as part of a four-film Ed Wood marathon in Flint, Michigan. Since then, I've probably seen Plan 9 theatrically about a half-dozen more times. At home—through VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming—I've screened it dozens of times in whole or in part, often while doing research for this series.

In short, I've spent many hours of my life with this odd little film. And yet, all these decades later, it may still have things to teach me. I'll give you an example.

Critic Harry Medved, who helped give both Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space some measure of immortality with his book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), recently devoted an episode of his PBS documentary series Locationland to the making of Plan 9. Among the filming sites Medved visited was 15129 Lakewood St. in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles. Back in the 1950s, this charming domicile was the residence of actor-wrestler Tor Johnson, who played Inspector Daniel Clay in the film. Johnson allowed Ed Wood to use the site as the home of Bela Lugosi's unnamed character, generally referred to as Old Man or Ghoul Man. In Plan 9, we see a grief-stricken Lugosi—still reeling from the death of his young wife (Vampira)—smelling the roses outside the house before wandering into traffic and getting run over.

"Confused by his great loss," intones narrator Criswell, "the old man left that home, never to return again."

Except Lugosi totally returns again just 23 minutes later, as proven by that aforementioned episode of Locationland. When Harry Medved visited the house in Sylmar, the owner graciously let him film the outside. But Medved and his guest, comedian and writer Dana Gould, wanted to film the back porch of the house as well, because this is where Ed Wood shot the scene in which Bela's character, having been resurrected from the grave as a zombie, enters his former home, now owned by pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) and his wife Paula (Mona McKinnon). Jeff's away when Bela arrives, so Paula is all by herself and quite vulnerable when this strange figure suddenly appears in her bedroom.

Even though I've been watching Plan 9 for decades, it took Locationland to make me realize that the Trents are living in Lugosi's character's former home and must have moved into the place shortly after he died. Jeff's coworker, sassy stewardess Edie (Norma McCarty), comments that the house is too close to the local cemetery, "I tried to get you kids to not buy too near one of those things," she opines. "We get there soon enough as it is." She also says Jeff's house is "quiet alright, like a tomb." Jeff is rightfully concerned that the police keep showing up at the cemetery for unknown reasons. What exactly is going on there?

We soon find out what's happening at that cemetery, and it's more bizarre than we could have possibly guessed. Aliens from a faraway planet, represented by the arrogant Eros (Dudley Manlove) and the more pragmatic Tanna (Joanna Lee), are using their "electrode guns" to resurrect some recently deceased earthlings, including both Lugosi and Lugosi's wife. This is all part of a larger campaign to strike fear in the hearts of the human race and thus deter us from creating a weapon called "Solaronite" that will destroy the entire universe. Got all that? 

The aliens' plan is quite convoluted and doesn't come close to working. But they do manage to bring Lugosi back to "simulated life" for a short while. Once resurrected, he is more like a traditional obedient "voodoo zombie" rather than the cannibalistic, aggressive zombies we know from the George Romero films, starting with Night of the Living Dead (1968). Eros and Tanna can control the zombies to some extent, but Lugosi is apparently allowed to explore the world on his own for a while when he's revived. And where does he choose to go first? Right back to his old house.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Ed Wood and the Vampire"

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.

A disappointment to Ed.

By 1958, a new actor from England named Christopher Lee is portraying the famous bloodsucker, so Eddie travels to Milwaukee to attend the premiere of Hammer's Horror of Dracula. Unfortunately, none of the actors from the film is in attendance that night. In New York, at a gala showing of the film, Eddie is unable to get anywhere near Christopher Lee, but he still determines that Lee is not a real vampire. Too healthy looking. Ed's wife Kathy also thinks this quest is foolish, but Eddie is more driven than ever.

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. 

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "Exotic Loves of the Vampire" (1972)

Is that Dracula or Batman?

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

Lucy and Mina in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The story: "Exotic Loves of the Vampire" (aka "The Exotic Loves of Dracula"), originally published in Ecstasy, vol. 4, no. 2, July/August 1972. Credited to "Ann Gora."

Synopsis: A young woman named Mina writes to her lover Jonathan, who is away on a long trip to Transylvania. She misses him dreadfully and is starting to hear strange, frightening noises in the spooky mansion where she lives. One stormy night, she sees her best friend Lucy talking to a mysterious man with a long black cape. He disappears, seemingly replaced by a human-like bat with blood-drenched fangs, and Lucy tells Mina it was only a bat that had killed a cow. Mina confesses to Jonathan that she and Lucy have entered into an intense sexual relationship, even though Mina still loves Jonathan. She says she noticed that Lucy has strange bite marks on her neck and that she thinks she spotted the man in the black cape outside her window.

Wood trademarks: Dracula (cf. "Dracula Revisited," Necromania); thunder and lightning (cf. Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda); groin (cf. "The Movie Queen"); "go out of my mind" (cf. Glen or Glenda); nightgown (cf. "The Movie Queen"); the color pink (cf. "2 X Double"); satin (cf. "Blood Drains Easily," "The Last Void"); "pubic region" (cf. "The Responsibility Game," "Gore in the Alley").

Excerpt: "Without a doubt the body was that of a black, gigantic bat with a tremendous wing span. The wings stretched further than both sides of the window and the upright part of the body went from the top to far below the bottom frame. And the face was chalk white… almost human… but again that must have been my imagination… the horror of the situation. But I could not have imagined the blood-red lips and the teeth which were still dripping blood."

Reflections: Back in January 2016, Greg Dziawer debunked the longstanding rumor that Ed Wood had ghostwritten the 1970 Calga Press novel The Adult Version of Dracula, insisting that Hal Kantor was the true author of that volume. Because of that article, I've never really even bothered with the Calga book. I'll leave it to someone else to review Hal Kantor's work. I've got more genuine Wood books and stories ahead of me than I'll ever be able to read.

But that doesn't change the fact that Bram Stoker's 1897 novel and its famous 1931 film adaptation with Bela Lugosi were crucial influences on Eddie's career. Lugosi's characters in Bride of the Monster (1955), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) are all Dracula-esque to one degree or another. As late as Necromania (1970), Ed's characters were making direct references to Count Dracula. And then there's this story, which may be Ed's boldest use of Bram Stoker's source material. Several characters from the novel—Mina, Lucy, and Jonathan—turn up here, even though Drac himself is never mentioned by name. "Exotic Loves of the Vampire" is pretty much what I imagined The Adult Version of Dracula to be, i.e. the Dracula story spiced up with explicit sex scenes.

It's interesting how Eddie diverts from his usual style and writes this story in the first person, formatting it as a letter that a confused, heartsick Mina is penning to Jonathan. That idea must have come to Ed midway through the creative process, though, since at the beginning of the story, Mina is talking about Jonathan in the third person. (My first guess was that this was a diary entry.) Midway through, she starts addressing Jonathan directly, as if this were a letter. Sure, most writers would have gone back and fixed the earlier paragraphs to make the story consistent, but that really wasn't Ed Wood's way of doing things.

Next: "Howl of the Werewolf" (1973)

Ed Wood's BLOOD SPLATTERS QUICKLY: 'Dracula Revisited' (1971)

Ed Wood returned to one of his very earliest sources of inspiration with the 1971 story "Dracula Revisited."

NOTE: This article is part of my ongoing coverage of Blood Splatters Quickly: The Collected Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Dracula, Visited.

The story: "Dracula Revisited," originally appeared in Wild Couples magazine, vol. 3, no. 3., March 3, 1971, Gallery.

Synopsis: A modern-day traveler describes his terrifying experiences as he visits the remains of the decaying Castle Dracula in the mountains of Transylvania. His goal is to discover the truth behind the legend. The locals will not venture near the location, which continues to claim the lives of nearly all who cross its threshold. 

After a frightening carriage ride, during which there is lightning and thunder but no accompanying storm, the traveler finally arrives at his destination and sees that the horse-drawn vehicle which has taken him there has no driver. Nevertheless, he enters the castle, begins to explore its rooms, and is overtaken by feelings of dread. 

Soon, he is confronted by four ghostly, floating figures whose faces resemble skulls. He follows them as they lead him down the stairs into the catacombs. There, he discovers a simple pine wood coffin occupied by Dracula himself. As the vampire rises from the grave, the narrator's thoughts become disoriented, and the story cuts off abruptly.

Wood trademarks: Dracula (Wood saw Lugosi version in 1931 and became permanently obsessed; Lugosi repeatedly played similar roles for Wood; direct references to Dracula in Necromania, The Vampire's Tomb, and Night of the Ghouls); thunder and lightning; Gothic setting; references to coffins, death, and rotting bodies; anguished inner monologue (cf. Final Curtain, The Night the Banshee Cried); descent into madness; investigating old legends (cf. Orgy of the Dead); sound of wolf howling (compare to Orgy line: "It is said on clear nights, beneath the cold light of the moon, howl the dog and the wolf, and creeping things crawl out of the slime."); man compelled ever closer to coffin (Necromania, Final Curtain, Meatcleaver Massacre).

Excerpt: "The legend had been dispelled as a legend. The realness of reality had to leave my mind. There was no longer any reason for being. The dead arose from his coffin. His funeral suit was as it had always been described. His lips were red. His teeth were those of the wolf. His blue eyes were mirrors..."

Stoker's novel

Reflections: Universal's Dracula, whose enormous success during the Great Depression surprised even its studio, plays an inordinately large role in the legend of Edward Davis Wood, Jr. According to the index of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy, the film is mentioned at least ten times in that book. Grey records that Wood saw the film at the age of seven in Poughkeepsie, during its initial theatrical run, and it permanently changed the course of his life. 

I've often thought of director Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill, Carrie) as someone who saw Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) in his youth and never got over it. The same can basically be said of Ed Wood and Dracula. Not only did Wood befriend and repeatedly hire Dracula star Bela Lugosi, but echoes of Dracula recur throughout the Wood canon, even after Lugosi's death. 

While revisiting Stoker's 1897 novel and Tod Browning's 1931 film in preparation for this article, I came upon a line delivered by Lugosi's Dracula to Edward Van Sloan's Van Helsing: "For one who has not even lived a single lifetime, you are a wise man, Van Helsing." Twenty-two years later, in Glen or Glenda?, Wood gave Lugosi's seemingly eternal puppet master character a similar sentiment, again used to compliment a man of science: "Dr. Alton, a young man though he is, speaks the words of the all-wise."

In his own motion picture productions with Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood never had anything close to the budget to even attempt a true Gothic horror in the Stoker/Browning tradition. Many scenes in Plan 9, Glenda, and Bride of the Monster, therefore, take place in humdrum kitchens, living rooms, and offices. One of Wood's post-Lugosi films, Necromania (1971), is supposed to have a Gothic feel, but the budget simply didn't allow for it. Though the film's setting is supposed to be a creepy mansion, Rene Bond and Ric Lutze often look like they're creeping through a quite-average apartment. 

As a writer of prose fiction, Ed Wood can finally be free to tell a story with real production value, one which would require massive sets and clever special effects if it were adapted for the screen. A memorable scene in both the Stoker novel and the Browning film, for instance, is the initial carriage ride to Castle Dracula, a perilous voyage undertaken by solicitor Jonathan Harker (in the book) or Renfield (in the movie). So iconic is this passage that it's even parodied at the beginning of Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). Eddie would never have been able to recreate such a scene in one of his movies, but he can do so easily in a short story. The typewriter can go places where the camera simply cannot.

In all, Wood proves himself an able imitator of Bram Stoker's style with "Dracula Revisited." Interestingly, it's the first story in Blood Splatters Quickly to be written in the first-person. While the other stories did explore the thoughts and feelings of their characters, they were told from the perspective of an omniscient third-person narrator. 

There's a reason Wood shifts into first gear, to speak, when following Bram Stoker. The corresponding early passages of Stoker's 1897 novel are presented as Jonathan Harker's diary entries. Harker goes increasingly mad (one is tempted to say "batty") while being held a virtual prisoner in Dracula's eerie, dungeon-like abode. This affords Eddie the chance to write what is essentially a lengthy, loony monologue by a disturbed man. Incidentally, though "Dracula Revisited" finds Eddie getting back to his horror roots, its abrupt ending reminded me of a film which became popular 20 years after the director's death: the pseudo-documentary The Blair Witch Project (1999). That movie was also about people investigating the truth behind a legend and ended on a similarly vague note.

P.S. There's an odd but interesting postscript to this story. A reader named Klaus Haisch contacted me recently to ask about the story's strange final line: "It about tell to live I and..." I couldn't decipher it, unfortunately, but Klaus eventually did! Reverse the order of the words and it becomes "And I live to tell about it!" Neat, huh? Just goes to show, there are always new things to discover in the world of Ed Wood!

Next: "The Night the Banshee Cried" (1971)

Blank Like Me: The Invisible Man Looks Back

"This'll kill ya. We're workin' up a Beatle medley for the act."

Well, naturally, the act has evolved over the years. For business reasons, mainly. I mean, you've gotta change with the times or the crowds go elsewhere. And in a town like Vegas, there's plenty of elsewhere for them to go.

So I've been adding new gimmicks to the act, new twists, new cast members. When I started at the Sahara, it was just me. That was enough for 'em in the beginning. Hell, half the act was Q&A with the audience. Now we've got, what, forty people in the cast -- dancers, backup singers, et cetera. Not to mention the pyrotechnics, the lighting. It's quite a production now. A circus. And all of this costs money. I should know that better than anyone, since it comes outta my bottom line. But my manager, Doug, keeps giving me the old "spend money to make money" routine.

Where is Doug, anyway? He's never around when I need him. I'm the Invisible Man, and he's the Invisible Manager. Heh. Probably off snorting more of my money up that big schnoz of his. Don't print that.

Listen, while you're up, pour me a drink, will ya? Scotch and soda. Thanks. Woah, easy! Easy! I gotta show to do in 20 minutes. There you go. You can take your hand away. I got it. No, really. I got it. Thanks again, kid.

Eating and drinking has been a part of my act since the beginning. It still gets 'em -- watchin' the food float in the air and then magically disappear. It's very simple, but very effective. Through trial and error, we've found that brightly-colored stuff tends to "read" best from the audience's perspective. You'll see me onstage, drinking what looks like blue Kool-Aid or somethin'. Lemme tell ya, that used to be vodka with food coloring. But I was a younger man then, and eventually my doc told me I had to cool it or my liver was going to file for divorce, citing spousal abuse.

So now it's just water. Heh. Killjoy. I guess it was for the best. I used to get pretty hammered onstage back then, but now, what with all the added fireworks, I gotta stay relatively sober. I usually have a quick belt before the show, but it's just one. I could really get hurt up there, y'know? One false move and KABLAMMO!

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah, the beginning. It's 1970 now, so that was, let's see here, fifteen years ago. Fifteen years! Jesus Christmas! When I started, there was nothing on the Strip like it. I was the first of the old time movie monsters to come to Vegas, and I emphasize the F-I-R-S-T. Now, ya got Dracula doing three shows a night at the Torquemada. Godzilla's packin' 'em in at the Sunspot. Even the Creature from the Black Lagoon has put together some kinda act at the, uh... at the...

HEY, RANDY! YOU'D KNOW THIS! WHERE'S THE CREACH PERFORMING THESE DAYS? 

That's right! The Cucaracha Club. Poor Creach, playin' a dive like that. No wonder he drinks like the fish he is. Don't print that either. Nice guy once you get to know him, though I'm not sure what his "act" consists of. He's like Esther Williams. Wet, he's a star. Dry, he ain't much. Maybe he brings a tank with him onstage. I dunno. I haven't made time to catch his act. Maybe I should.

But, anyway, getting back to my point. There are a lot of monsters in town these days. Frankie, Wolfie, Drac, they're ALL here 'cause that's where the dinero is! And those bastards you can see! I gotta convince some dumb tourist from Bumblefuck, Iowa that he should spend his dime and his time on me instead of them. Hence the lighting and the effects and the songs. You know, I still do an hour a day of vocal training and an hour a day of dance rehearsal. Still! At my age yet! That's in addition to the million and one other things I gotta do during the course of a day.

Right now -- this'll kill ya -- we're workin' up a Beatle medley for the act. Get this. We open with "Nowhere Man" then segue into "I'm Looking Through You" and finish with "You Won't See Me." Nah, it ain't ready yet. We gotta have costumes -- at least the gals do. I, of course, do the whole show au natural, except maybe for a top hat and tap shoes. And if you think that didn't take some gettin' used to... Brother, you don't know from stage fright until you've appeared in front of a packed house with your invisible dong flapping in the breeze. Sorry, I don't mean to be so vulgar. Don't mind me, kid. That formula's done screwy things to my brain.

Totie Fields almost crushed him.

Anyhow, for a new number like the Beatle thing, we gotta have costumes, choreography, the whole schmear. The whole thing is storyboarded. Plus we gotta secure the rights to the songs. Doug handles that shit, thank the Lord. Or at least he would if he'd keep the spoon outta his nose for five seconds.

No, no. I bust Doug's chops, but he's a good guy. Saved my life once. Totie Fields almost sat on me one night at the Trocadero, but Doug knew where I was and tackled her to the ground. He was like a Secret Service agent. I tell ya, if Doug had been in Dallas with JFK in '63... well, who knows? The whole world might've been different.

Retire? Me? With three ex-wives and six semi-visible kids to support? No, sir, it'll be a long time before this Invisible Man fades from view.

Well, you know what I mean.

Thoughts on 'Blood For Dracula' and its brilliant title sequence

An assortment of foreign posters advertising Blood For Dracula.

By some accounts, there are more films about Dracula than about any other fictional character. The Guinness people say he's been portrayed in a staggering 272 films, even more than Sherlock Holmes (who's been portrayed a mere 254 times). 

Of all these cinematic incarnations of the famous bloodsucker, perhaps none have affected me as deeply as Paul Morrissey's 1974 horror-comedy opus, Blood For Dracula (a.k.a. Andy Warhol's Dracula, after its world-famous producer). In this bizarre and hilarious film, a companion piece to Morrissey's Flesh For Frankenstein, the famous vampire is portrayed by the eccentric and beloved German thespian Udo Kier as a frail, weak creature who barely has the strength to walk and who is bossed around by his own manservant, Anton (Arno Jeuring). 

In desperate need of virgin blood but scorned by the people of his own country, Dracula makes a last-ditch journey to Italy in search of fresh victims and winds up as a house guest in the crumbling home of the Di Fiores, a fading aristocratic family with four comely daughters. Morrissey deconstructs the Dracula legend and uses it as a platform to satirize morality, class warfare, and even politics. The film is set shortly after the Russian Revolution, and the Di Fiores' gardener (a never-better Joe Dallesandro) is a bolshevik who views the Count as a relic of a bygone era.

What really gives the film its kick, however, is Udo Kier's performance in the title role. This is a Dracula unlike any I've seen in motion picture history: frail and vulnerable, a shadow of his former self. Paul Morrissey introduces us to this unconventional Dracula with an astonishing opening sequence, all done in one take and set to the melancholy, nostalgic music of Claudio Gizzi. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to walk you through this sequence step by step. Keep in mind that the image directly below is the very first thing you see in the film.

The face of Dracula: pale, haunted, vulnerable.

He begins to add makeup, starting with greasepaint eyebrows.

He adds color to his lips. For the first time, we see his fangs.

Dracula paints on his famous black hair. In reality, it is white.

Though he has no reflection, he has been looking in a mirror.

The chair pulls back, seemingly of its own accord.

Dracula exits the room in shadow. All this has been one shot.

For a low-budget film shot quickly and written as it was being made, Blood For Dracula is remarkably accomplished and compelling, telling a story which is thought-provoking, disturbing, amusing, and arousing. The opening sequence perfectly encapsulates Morrissey's particular take on the familiar character, and it's all achieved with careful framing, evocative music, and a pitch-perfect performance by Kier, whose eyes and facial expression communicate so much without one word being spoken.

Hollywood's Greatest Monsters... And Their Crummy Personal Websites : An Expose!

Wolfie, Frankie and Drac: Internet failures all.

Remember that Internet gold rush of the 1990s, when everybody was scrambling to buy up any potentially lucrative URLs just as quickly as possible? Yeah, well, that's over. Know how I know? Because horror's three greatest names -- Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man -- have utterly failed to become desirable Internet addresses. Go ahead and add a .com to any of their hallowed names, and you know what you get? A whole lotta nothing, that's what!

Read on... if you dare!

The site: Dracula.com

Might as well be Dracula smiling and wearing a backpack.

Yes, dear readers, that uninspiring screenshot shows you what you get when you type dracula.com into your browser's address bar. It's one of those lousy generic placeholder pages. Apparently, the domain name is for sale. At least there are links to "Real Vampire Photos" and "Dracula Games," but there's also a shameful link to "Bratz Girls Games." How embarrassing, Dracula, for a nobleman such as yourself to be dragged down to the level of the slutty-looking proletariat!

The site: Frankenstein.com

Boris Karloff inadvertently shills for a "web production" company.

What you get here is something called Castle Pink Frankenstein, apparently a "web production company." (That exists? That's a thing?) Their awkwardly-worded sales spiel reads like this:

"CPF Web Production has worked with individual artists, small business, non-profits and politicians. Our main goal is to empower it’s clients with a web presence that works for them and to make it easy and affordable to keep the site updated. We deal with customized and integrated Word Press blogs, databases, social networking integration, Content Management Systems, iWeb customization (manage your own site once we build it for you!), eCommerce and of course standard plain old web pages."

The site: Wolfman.com

Note the lack of wolves, were or otherwise.

"This website reflects my Love of Macaws, Wolves, and Dogs." The fact that wolves get second billing in that sentence is a clear, early indication that this site maybe isn't going to be a tribute to Universal's Wolf Man, as played by Lon Chaney, Jr. (In case you're wondering, adding "the" to the name doesn't help. Thewolfman.com is just another domain-for-sale placeholder page, lamer even than Dracula's.) Wolfman.com turns out to be the personal page of someone named Jim Morris. The site's contents seem to consist of pictures of Morris' pets and brief articles about those same pets. So he's a "wolf man" in the sense that he's a man who likes wolves. Just like how so-called "cat people" are not really human-feline hybrids.

So these sites fail to make the grade, horror wise. What if you're opposed to monsters and want to call in the professionals? Your first move might be to type ghostbusters.com into your browser. So what do you get when you do that?

Well, this...

The site: Ghostbusters.com

Still at it after more than a quarter-century. Nice to know.

It's a very fancy, rather thoughtful promotional site for the Ghostbusters franchise. Once you get past the loading screen (above), you're taken to a city street with lots of clickable buildings. Yes, the theme song starts playing after a while. And, yes, the Ecto-1 zooms by occasionally. Slimer and Marshmallow Man put in their expected appearances. Apparently, the first film had a theatrical re-release in October 2011. Did you know about that? I didn't. Anyway, the site's most interesting detail might be something written in small type at the bottom of the screen...

So You Think You Can Ghostbust?

Can you read it? It says "Employment Opportunities." An employment opportunity? With the freakin' Ghostbusters? Ye gods! But hold on, Tex. You might think you're going to be the next Winston Zeddemore, but the link just takes you to the Sony Pictures Entertainment Career Connection, where you'll find such unappetizing employment opportunities as "Client Production Services Manager." So, no, you won't be bustin' any ghosts

Le sigh.

Y is for Yucky (Day 24)

Monsters are yucky.

Okay, okay... so I misspelled "are." I was obviously in a state of artistic frenzy, judging by the bravura depiction of the horror world's own Rat Pack here. We have Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and... uh, The Ghost. Notice the bulbous nose and simpleton expression I've given to both Drac and his ghostly comrade. Frankie appears pretty blissed-out as well. Only the Mummy remains enigmatic, a mystery behind his shapeless blob of bandages. Keep in mind, this was all before The Monster Squad. For all I know, they ripped me off. It can happen! Did you see Big Fat Liar with Frankie Muniz and Paul Giamatti? No? Well, you should. It's actually kind of funny. Better than you'd think.

D is for Dracula (Day 4)

Dracula is a vampire.

The problem with labels is that they're so reductive. I mean, sure, Dracula is a vampire. But does the word "vampire" contain the whole of his being? Can anyone be reduced to a single word? Perhaps Dracula is also a connoisseur of fine wines or an avid cribbage player as well. But you'd never know that from this entry. Oh, well. I'd like to point out the multi-media nature of this mid-1980s project: pencil, crayon, and marker are freely and daringly intermingled.