Disco Dracula

Earlier this month I wrote about the Hammer film Horror of Dracula and Christopher Lee’s interpretation of the king of the vampires. In that post, I bashed the 1979 Dracula film starring Frank Langella and called it “Disco Dracula”.

Then I felt guilty.

Then my head wouldn’t leave it alone.



I am not a fan of loudly expressed, drastically uninformed opinions. I feel like the internet has plenty of that already covered. So why add to it? I rented the 1979 Dracula movie from Netflix and, almost apologetically, watched it with Lorie and my two older kids. And yes… I ended up loving it.



The settings were lavishly beautiful and spooky. The re-telling was faithful and yet still had twists. There were definitely some scary scenes, as my daughter can profess. And the hair… was magnificent. The soundtrack really had me, so much so that I had to look up the composer. John Williams. It was John Williams, of course. In the year between Superman (1978) and Empire Strikes Back (1980).






I’m much more familiar with Frank Langella’s work today. So seeing him on screen as Dracula was a little unsettling. His hair is magnificent. Langella’s performance is perfect and he crafts Dracula to be the type of flawless movie character in the same vein as James Bond. You just can’t picture them doing normal, everyday things. Langella’s take on Dracula is deadly serious and brings a lot of weight to the role. He’s extremely charismatic and very controlled. He’s obviously very comfortable with the character, as I just learned he was famous during the time for playing Dracula in a lengthy Broadway performance.

That being said, there are still moments like this:





As with all forms of entertainment, there are certain elements of the film that will forever mark it as something produced in the 1970’s, for audiences of the 1970’s. As much as I’ve come to love and respect this movie, it’s still Disco Dracula. Your mileage may vary. At this point in my life I’m very aware that I’m unable to remove myself from my assessment of movies, comics or books and I’ll never have the completely impartial judgment.





See? This is Jonathon Harker? Secondary hero of the film! He’s sporting the part down the middle and 70’s porn ‘stache.



My favorite scene of the movie, one of many favorite scenes, is when Professor Van Helsing is searching for his daughter, Mina. A character that at this point in the film has been turned into a vampire. He and Dr. Seward find an entrance to a series of underground tunnels while digging up Mina’s coffin, which gives us one of the truly spine-tingling scary scenes of the movie.


I was chasing my daughter around the house quoting this scene and doing vampire fingers.






One of the things that I don’t like about modern storytelling is the feeling that the creators are embarrassed by the original source material. It’s the feeling I get when I see science fiction stories done with a gritty, realistic take. I’ve talked about this before, with posts on Falling Skies and my comparison of modern werewolves with Curse of the Werewolf (http://www.doabarneyoldfield.blogspot.com/2012/10/curse-of-werewolf.html). I absolutely feel this way when I find vampire stories that shy away from the traditional weakness and strengths of the vampire. Things such as vulnerability to religious expression like crosses and Holy Water, vulnerability to sunlight, the ability to change shape into a mist or a wolf. There are several modern day examples of creators who shy away from these elements of the vampire mythology. I’m not a fan of that. Maybe this is my OCD overruling me and getting in the way, but if you’re going to tell a story about vampires please embrace the source material. Be inspired by our past, not embarrassed by it. I feel that Dracula does this. In the 1970’s, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula had been around for forty years and was a tired old cliché. Lugosi himself played Dracula in Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein. The vampire lord had strayed into a parody of himself and our culture at the time had a hard time taking the character seriously anymore. Indeed, the movie Love at First Bite with George Hamilton was also released in 1979, parodying the vampire.



Even though this movie has scenes where it comes off as ‘Disco Dracula’, I think one of its greatest strengths is that it takes the source material very seriously.





Thanks,
DCD