"I don t drink...wine."- The Dracula Thread

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  • Posts: 5,994
    And not entirely unexpectedly, there were the only ones (AFAIK) who got a movie adaptation.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Gerard wrote: »
    And not entirely unexpectedly, there were the only ones (AFAIK) who got a movie adaptation.

    I did not know that. Has anyone seen any of those?
  • Posts: 5,994
    Seen The Lair of the White Worm. Amanda Donohoe was smoking.

    91Y%2B3oRK7SL._SX342_.jpg

    Didn't see any of the four adaptations of Jewel of the Seven Stars, though.

  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    I see Sammy Davis is in it. Is that Jr.?
  • Posts: 5,994
    I see Sammy Davis is in it. Is that Jr.?

    Nope :

    1h6J7f0AZBGtn1kmfoipQVFZBaQ.jpg

    https://themoviedb.org/person/3122-sammi-davis
  • Posts: 2,918
    Wow, senior and junior look nothing alike.
  • Posts: 15,125
    ... And a young unknown Hugh Grant.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    I noticed that, too.

    Bram Stoker also published a few short story collections.

    UNDER THE SUNSET (1881)

    contents:

    "Under the Sunset"
    "The Rose Prince"
    "The Invisible Giant"
    "The Shadow Builder"
    "How 7 Went Mad"
    "Lies and Lilies"
    "The Castle of the King"
    "The Wondrous Child"


    SNOWBOUND (1908)

    contents:

    "The Occasion"
    "A Lesson in Pets"
    "Coggins's Property"
    "The Slim Syrens"
    "A New Departure in Art"
    "Mick the Devil"
    "In Fear of Death"
    "At Last"
    "Chin Music"
    "A Deputy Waiter"
    "Work'us"
    "A Corner in Dwarfs"
    "A Criminal Star"
    "A Star Trap" aka DEATH IN THE WINGS
    "A Moon-Light Effect"

    DRACULA S GUEST AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES (1914)

    contents:

    "Dracula's Guest"
    "The Judge's House"
    "The Squaw"
    "The Secret of the Growing Gold"
    "A Gipsy Prophecy"
    "The Coming of Abel Behenna"
    "The Burial of the Rats"
    "A Dream of Red Hands"
    "Crooken Sands"


    06abel2.jpg

    In addition, there are these uncollected short stories

    1872 "The Crystal Cup"
    1875 "Buried Treasures"
    1875 "The Chain of Destiny"
    1885 "Our New House"
    1886 "The Dualitists"
    1893 "Old Hoggen: A Mystery"
    1894 "The Man from Shorrox'"
    1894 "When the Sky Rains Gold"
    1894 "The Red Stockade"
    1898 "Bengal Roses"
    1899 "A Young Widow"
    1899 "A Yellow Duster"
    1900 "Lucky Escapes of Sir Henry Irving"
    1908 "To the Rescue"
    1908 "The 'Eroes of the Thames"
    1909 "The Way of Peace"
    1914 "Greater Love"
  • Posts: 15,125
    I've read Dracula's Guest (in my theory an early draft of Dracula when the story was still supposed to be set in Austria), The Squaw and The Judge's House.

    Bram Stoker was a good horror writer, but he was not an Oscar Wilde or a Conan Doyle. Heck, he was not the Victorian Stephen King either. He was a civil servant who got fairly successful as a part-time writer. Dracula truly was lightning in a bottle, but Stoker never saw his character becoming the cultural phenomenon he became. If I remember correctly from his interview with Churchill, he was surprised that Churchill remembered Dracula (and loved the novel enough to say it was one of the reasons why he accepted the interview in the first place).
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    @Ludovico, Stoker s wife said at the time of publication that Dracula s Guest was a segment that had been cut out from the original draft of the novel.
  • Posts: 15,125
    @Ludovico, Stoker s wife said at the time of publication that Dracula s Guest was a segment that had been cut out from the original draft of the novel.

    I don't think that's true. She either was mistaken or she made it up. Elizabeth Miller did write about it I believe. Too many discrepancies, too many things that don't add up. It was a draft, not a fully formed chapter excised from the novel.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    She said in a preface to the short story collection published after his death that it was excised from the book due to the length, but you may be right that she did make a mistake. Having not read it myself, I cannot judge.Dracula s Guest is the one story in the collection that was added by her, the rest of them were planned and collected by her husband a few months before he passed away.
  • Posts: 15,125
    I think she took a draft, knowing or not it was a draft, and sold it as a short story because of name recognition. Added to the novel it makes little sense. The narrator does not seem to be Harker, he becomes aware of the supernatural and vampires very early on, the date of the events of DG (Walpurgis Night) does not fit the dates in Dracula, etc.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Stoker also wrote poetry. Most of it never published except for a few.

    1885 "One Thing Needful"
    1890 "The Member for the Strand"
    1892 "The Wrongs of Grosvenor Square"

    All first published in papers or magazines, the two latter also in bookform in 2012, in THE FORGOTTEN WRITINGS OF BRAM STOKER, containg fiction, poetry and journalistic pieces.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Nonfictional books by Stoker:

    1872 University of Dublin. College Historical Society. Address
    1879 The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland
    1886 A Glimpse of America
    1906 Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving
    1910 Famous Impostors


    In addition, he wrote several articles, many of his speeches have been preserved, and he had several interviews printed, both by him and with him.
    Among the famous people he interviewed, we find Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill, both in 1907.
  • Posts: 15,125
    His interview with Churchill brings a lot of light on how Stoker saw his most famous novel and how it was perceived at the time. Stoker reminds the reader that it was a vampire novel he wrote "some years ago". Obviously Churchill remembered it fondly. So Dracula had its readership, but it was not a bestseller and Stoker was vaguely conscious at best of its potential significance in the horror genre.

    Regarding Dracula's Guest, I read somewhere the hypothesis that it may not have been written by Bram Stoker at all but by a continuator, based on his early notes. I don't think this is the case, but I do think there is a fairly good body of evidence that it is an early draft that might have been polished by someone to turn it into a short story. It is an odd piece: as a short story it does not stand on its own very well and the name Dracula seems tacked in without any explanation, yet there are too many discrepancies and omissions to be this excised chapter Stoker’s widow claimed it to be.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Ludovico wrote: »
    His interview with Churchill brings a lot of light on how Stoker saw his most famous novel and how it was perceived at the time. Stoker reminds the reader that it was a vampire novel he wrote "some years ago". Obviously Churchill remembered it fondly. So Dracula had its readership, but it was not a bestseller and Stoker was vaguely conscious at best of its potential significance in the horror genre.

    Regarding Dracula's Guest, I read somewhere the hypothesis that it may not have been written by Bram Stoker at all but by a continuator, based on his early notes. I don't think this is the case, but I do think there is a fairly good body of evidence that it is an early draft that might have been polished by someone to turn it into a short story. It is an odd piece: as a short story it does not stand on its own very well and the name Dracula seems tacked in without any explanation, yet there are too many discrepancies and omissions to be this excised chapter Stoker’s widow claimed it to be.

    Probably excised from an earlier draft, then.
  • Posts: 15,125
    Ludovico wrote: »
    His interview with Churchill brings a lot of light on how Stoker saw his most famous novel and how it was perceived at the time. Stoker reminds the reader that it was a vampire novel he wrote "some years ago". Obviously Churchill remembered it fondly. So Dracula had its readership, but it was not a bestseller and Stoker was vaguely conscious at best of its potential significance in the horror genre.

    Regarding Dracula's Guest, I read somewhere the hypothesis that it may not have been written by Bram Stoker at all but by a continuator, based on his early notes. I don't think this is the case, but I do think there is a fairly good body of evidence that it is an early draft that might have been polished by someone to turn it into a short story. It is an odd piece: as a short story it does not stand on its own very well and the name Dracula seems tacked in without any explanation, yet there are too many discrepancies and omissions to be this excised chapter Stoker’s widow claimed it to be.

    Probably excised from an earlier draft, then.

    Technically I guess. Discarted altogether from a time when the story was still meant to be set in Austria most likely. So before Bram Stoker even knew about Dracula's name (pretty much all he knew about the historical Dracula was his nickname) and that Count Wampyr was still the name of his villain. It's not impossible that Dracula was added when his widow discovered the papers.
  • edited March 2019 Posts: 5,994
    Well, technically, the story, at the time it was written, happened in Austria, or rather in Hungaria, which was part of the Austrian empire by then. Transylvania became part of Romania after WW I.
  • Posts: 15,125
    Gerard wrote: »
    Well, technically, the story, at the time it was written, happened in Austria, or rather in Hungaria, which was part of the Austrian empire by then. Transylvania became part of Romania after WW I.

    If I'm not mistaken it was meant to be Styria. It's only when he saw that footnote in Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia that he switched to Transylvania.
  • Posts: 16,169

    Interesting article. I loved Marvel's TOMB OF DRACULA when I was a kid, and love that his visage was based on Palance.
    I always liked Dracula's look in the comic: that enormous cloak, with the bat ear shaped collar. Or was it supposed to be a hooded cloak? I used to wonder if the blue hued cape was intended to register as black o the comic page, or if the Count was indeed sporting a navy blue cloak.
    I've seen color photos of Denholm Elliot's Dracula in which his cloak was a dark blue.

  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    I would love it if Marvel made a Dracula movie.
  • Posts: 15,125
    I would love it if Marvel made a Dracula movie.

    There was already that stupid animated movie.

    I'd rather see a faithful adaptation of the novel.
  • Posts: 16,169
    Ludovico wrote: »
    I would love it if Marvel made a Dracula movie.

    There was already that stupid animated movie.

    I'd rather see a faithful adaptation of the novel.

    Ugh. That animated movie couldn't even get Gene Colan's Dracula image right.
    Jack Palance himself is long gone now, and my personal expectations for a great Marvel film adaptation of TOMB OF DRACULA would be considerably lower.

    So, I think a faithful adaptation of the novel would be wonderful. One that embraces Stoker's description of the Count without creative license, his characters and plot.

    Something that would make Sir Christopher Lee proud as he himself never got to make the truly faithful version he longed for. In fact he didn't even consider Coppola's film that faithful.
  • Posts: 15,125
    ToTheRight wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    I would love it if Marvel made a Dracula movie.

    There was already that stupid animated movie.

    I'd rather see a faithful adaptation of the novel.

    Ugh. That animated movie couldn't even get Gene Colan's Dracula image right.
    Jack Palance himself is long gone now, and my personal expectations for a great Marvel film adaptation of TOMB OF DRACULA would be considerably lower.

    So, I think a faithful adaptation of the novel would be wonderful. One that embraces Stoker's description of the Count without creative license, his characters and plot.

    Something that would make Sir Christopher Lee proud as he himself never got to make the truly faithful version he longed for. In fact he didn't even consider Coppola's film that faithful.

    And Lee was right.
  • Posts: 5,994
    Ugh. That animated movie couldn't even get Gene Colan's Dracula image right.

    And on the french VHS sleeve, Marv Wolfman became Mary Wolfman, and Gene Colan became Jean Colan. I'm still laughing about that. But of course, that was a cheap edition.
  • Posts: 15,125
    It is Judy Bowker's birthday today. My childhood crush since I saw her playing Princess Andromeda in Clash of the Titans and more to the point on thus thread maybe the best Mina Murray/Harker.

    By the way, why do they so often mess up Mina and Lucy in adaptations? They make them sisters, they make their role interchangeable (Mina the vampire and Lucy the survivor), etc.
  • Posts: 16,169
    Ludovico wrote: »
    It is Judy Bowker's birthday today. My childhood crush since I saw her playing Princess Andromeda in Clash of the Titans and more to the point on thus thread maybe the best Mina Murray/Harker.

    By the way, why do they so often mess up Mina and Lucy in adaptations? They make them sisters, they make their role interchangeable (Mina the vampire and Lucy the survivor), etc.

    So many versions tamper around with Mina and Lucy. I do like Judi Bowker's Mina, though. I thought she had the right look. For some reason I prefer Mina a blonde and Lucy a brunette.
  • Posts: 15,125
    ToTheRight wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    It is Judy Bowker's birthday today. My childhood crush since I saw her playing Princess Andromeda in Clash of the Titans and more to the point on thus thread maybe the best Mina Murray/Harker.

    By the way, why do they so often mess up Mina and Lucy in adaptations? They make them sisters, they make their role interchangeable (Mina the vampire and Lucy the survivor), etc.

    So many versions tamper around with Mina and Lucy. I do like Judi Bowker's Mina, though. I thought she had the right look. For some reason I prefer Mina a blonde and Lucy a brunette.

    Me too. Bowker's Mina looked both pure yet smart, just as the character was in the novel. The old BBC adaptation is very flawed, makes many mistakes, but they got a lot of things right.
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