• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Who is the best Dracula?

  • Bela Lugosi

    Votes: 7 17.5%
  • Christopher Lee

    Votes: 19 47.5%
  • Frank Langella

    Votes: 3 7.5%
  • Jack Palance

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Louis Jordain

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • Gary Oldman

    Votes: 3 7.5%
  • David Niven

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Udo Kier

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • George Hamilton

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • Somebody not on this list

    Votes: 5 12.5%

  • Total voters
    40
mindalai said:
Coincidentally I'd just re-read Dracula a few days before this was on TV so it was all quite fresh in my mind. It was AWFUL. It was nothing like the book, which I could forgive if they'd come up with some intelligent new interpretation of the legend but they didn't. They just seemed to want to shoehorn as many new stories into the film as possible. ...
My theory? The BBC put out a really decent adaptation of the Victorian 'penny dreadful,' serial, Sweeney Todd: Or, A string of Pearls, last year, starring Ray Winstone. Perhaps someone came up with the idea of doing a version of another penny dreadful, Varney the Vampire: Or, The Feast of Blood, for this year.

varney.jpg

http://www.unicorngarden.com/varney.htm

Marc Warren really would have been ideal for Varney. Maybe they got the stars and funding, then some executive berk said, "What's all this 'Varney the Vampire' rubbish on BBC1? Far too abstruse! The Great Unwashed won't go for that. Give them Dracula. That's the only Victorian vampire they know, or want. Best not to take too many risks with the Christmas schedule, what?"

Great missed opportunities N° 1224. :roll:
 
C'mon Vampire fans: lets bite back against the zombies.

Spate of Living Dead Flicks May Prove Dracula’s Lost his Bite

Are zombies the new vampires? Not exactly, but they could be the country’s monster crush du jour, says Texas Tech University pop-culture guru Rob Weiner.


Not that horror buffs don’t still love spending quality time with Nosferatu’s spawn; it’s just that vampires have gone glam in recent decades, given a sexy makeover by the likes of Stephanie Meyer – author of the popular Twighlight series – and Francis Ford Coppola. They’re more sex than scare anymore.

To put it simply, Dracula’s lost a bit of his bite.

Meanwhile, America’s zombies are faster and angrier than ever, thanks to movies such as “28 Days Later” and the 2004 remake of George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.”

So, in an era where moviegoers are craving darker themes and plotlines, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s been more brain eating and less blood sucking in theatres.

“Vampires have been portrayed as being sensual and sexy – appealing,” Weiner said. “They’ve lost a bit of their edge. But zombies? I can’t think of anything more terrifying.”

Whether born of voodoo, radiation or a leaked virus, these swarms of mindless eating machines may symbolize deep-seated fears of mob mentality or impending apocalypse. After all, they can sniff out the outcasts hiding in their midst while their very bite perpetuates their infection.

Yet Weiner, who describes himself as a “slow zombie” man, notes that this current crop of more gruesome flicks is nothing new.

The Italians have been doing it since the ‘80s, re-envisioning the living dead just as Sergio Leone did the western. He points to such bloody thrillers as “Seven Doors of Death” and “Zombie Holocaust” as examples.

“What the Italians did, they took an American genre and turned it on its head. They made it better,” Weiner said. “The movies were darker, grittier. It’s much the same thing that happened with the Spaghetti Westerns.”

Weiner is a Texas Tech author, librarian and instructor with expertise on topics ranging from the Grateful Dead to American presidents in film.

He can speak about horror in movies, literature and comic books – his forthcoming book about Captain America actually has an essay on zombies in Marvel Comics and Colonel America, which is the zombie version of the star-spangled hero.

He can also discuss on a range of Halloween-themed topics including Alfred Hitchcock and the sinister imagery employed by metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden.

Provided by Texas Tech University

http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=141926717
 
The book is worth a read. Iinteresting take on the vampire tale.
 
I blame Anne Rice for making vampires less scary. If being a vampire sucks that much just sit on the park bench and wait for the sun to come up.
 
FORTEAN-TIMES-02-10-Many-Lives-of-Dracula-Bloodsuckers.jpg


The cover illustration, colours used and the layout reminded me of the Hamlyn Books of Horror/Monsters from over twenty years ago, rekindling my joy at these garishly delicious reference books! Thankyou FT!
 
View attachment 22820The cover illustration, colours used and the layout reminded me of the Hamlyn Books of Horror/Monsters from over twenty years ago, rekindling my joy at these garishly delicious reference books! Thankyou FT!

It looks great (my copy still hasn't arrived, although it might be waiting for me when I get home from work) - it reminded me of the Hammer Horror cover FT did a while ago...
 
A properly gruesome Dracula from Moffat and Gatiss, here's the teaser:

A Christmas treat!
 
Not the first I think of, but Klaus kinski put in about the only genuinely scary performance as Dracula that I remember.
 
The only vampire to scare me was Schreck. Bear in mind that I was very young but they would sneak the odd clip of silent horrors into tv compilations otherwise given over to Chaplin and the Keystone Kops! Suddenly you were confronted with the famous reveal of Chaney's Phantom make-up or Schreck emerging from the hold of the ship . . . :hide:
 
Not the first I think of, but Klaus kinski put in about the only genuinely scary performance as Dracula that I remember.

Klaus Kinski only puts in scary performances, regardless of who or what he's playing.

I've never seen a face of such intensity and barely contained rage.

He could be eating an ice-cream and you'd still half think he might snap if it dripped the wrong way.
 
Klaus Kinski only puts in scary performances, regardless of who or what he's playing.

I've never seen a face of such intensity and barely contained rage.

He could be eating an ice-cream and you'd still half think he might snap if it dripped the wrong way.

When the director gives him no notes or direction:

klaus-gt-660x330.jpg

When the director politely asks him to take half a step to the left:

herzogkinskifeat.jpg
 
He didn't do 'happy' and 'benign' much, did he?
 
Is there a philological link between Kinsky and Kinky? The two terms seem to have come into regular parlance about the same time.
 
Is there a philological link between Kinsky and Kinky? The two terms seem to have come into regular parlance about the same time.

It depends on the allusion intended ... In the sense of "odd; eccentric" the term "kinky" dates back to the mid 19th century. In the narrower sense of "perverted (especially sexually)", it dates back to 1959.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/kinky
 
Frank Langella, I think, has to be mine - because when I first saw him as the Count, I was in my pre-teen/teen years (early 80s) and I just knew he was 'sexy' in a way Bela Lugosi wasn't, the film was sexy in its look and feel. Gary Oldman almost did it for me but the odd baldy+long hair combo plus beardy thing put me right off!



For classic horror points and not-sexy Dracula-ness then Bela Lugosi's early outings win, hands down.
 
Frank Langella, I think, has to be mine - because when I first saw him as the Count, I was in my pre-teen/teen years (early 80s) and I just knew he was 'sexy' in a way Bela Lugosi wasn't, the film was sexy in its look and feel.
Sexy vampires... They start off as cute goths, but you know it will all end in sparkles.
 
Bela Lugosi was regarded as quite the sex symbol in his Dracula role back in 1930, so attraction to the Count is nothing new. He's not very sexy in the book, as far as I recall.
 
Stoker's sexuality has been queried, so to speak, by Frayling and others. His relationship with his boss, theatrical manager, Henry Irving, has been interpreted in submissive/dominant terms. In the standard cinematic adaptations, the homoerotic theme is most developed in the scene where the vampire sucks the blood from a small cut on his young visitor's hand. Kinsky and Schreck linger over the act in a manner which underlines the act as a sexual pass.

The Lugosi film is liable to stretch the patience of modern viewers, its dream-like pace can be seen as an artistic decision but many early sound-films were as slow! The focus is on the hypnotic power of the undead and the ability of the vampire, in the form of the bat, to penetrate female spaces. Eroticism in this case resides, I think, in the paralysis of the will to resist, more than the attractiveness of the attacker.

The Christopher Lee films were explicitly marketed in the US with campaigns referencing love-bites etc. Many considered Lee to be the first handsome Count. In general, however, the films have tended to trade in the erotic potential of women-in-peril, with the opportunity to display a lot of neck and cleavage. Multiplying the female flesh on display led to the tribes of Sapphic vampires who took over in exploitation fare. There was Le Fanu's Carmilla to provide a literary precedent for that but these were very obviously Lesbians tailored for the male gaze. :vamp2:
 
Back
Top