100 Years

Last time out, I talked about Edgar Rice Burroughs and my love of his creations, Tarzan and the Warlord of Mars. both of those characters were first published in 1912. A quick pass by the calculator verifies my math... both characters turn 100 years old this year.


There aren't that many characters that have such lengthy pedigrees. I think there are a couple of factors for that. One is the medium. Getting new generations to read a book that you loved in your childhood is much more difficult than getting them to watch a TV show that you're nostalgic about. The medium of our entertainment has changed so drastically in the last 100 years, I have to think that we'll see more and more characters outlasting normal lifespans. And the cycles starting. Properties that were popular in the eighties like GI Joe, Transformers, and Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles are seeing new life now that the kids that enjoyed them so much twenty-five years ago are parents themselves with money to spend and memories to share.

Another factor that can help a character last through the generations is change. I've talked about this before with the saga of Buck Rogers (http://www.doabarneyoldfield.blogspot.com/2012/09/buck-rogers-man-of-future.html) and how change is difficult for that particular character. I've briefly touched on that with Superman.


The change in Superman has been well and thoroughly documented before. But in case you're unaware, let me explain. During his debut in the 1930's, Superman was very anti-establishment and a hero of the poor and suppressed. In the 1940's Superman fought Nazis and war saboteurs. In the 1950's he was very much an establishment figure and a duly deputized member of law enforcement. The 1960's saw slow change for Superman and he suffered for it, quickly gaining a reputation as a tired old hero of former generations. In the 1970's his popularity surged again with the Superman movie. In the 1980's he and his alter-ego Clark Kent were completely rebooted, all their history jettisoned, and they were re-imagined for a 1980's older teen audience. In the 1990's, Superman died, came back, grew a mullet, changed powers, and did absolutely everything to stay relevant.


The point is that the most enduring characters, especially those backed by money making corporations, are always changing. Superman, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man, and more.

I read a line recently (I apologize, but I can't find the original material) that suggested the story of Tarzan only works in 1912. The thought is that in today's day and age with how much our jungles have been explored and with our current technology that the story of Tarzan is just not believable.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen many versions of Dracula that cast him in a modern-day environment. There have been plenty of updated retellings of the story, but most of them cast the character in the era in which he was originally imagined. Nevertheless, the character proves to be too popular to fade away.

I remember seeing Roy Rogers old television show for the first time with my father-in-law. There was a jeep! The famous western cowboy was set in the modern day 1950's! This really surprised me, as I thought of all western characters being from the old west era. Seeing Roy ride Trigger next to his sidekick in a jeep was a little unsettling for me.


In the 1940's, there was a series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and set in the modern day. The first time I saw Sherlock Holmes fighting to stop Nazi plots, I was a little unsettled. It seemed odd and out of place, but ultimately worked. And it was obviously very natural for the audiences of the time.


Part of the reason Superman sees change so much is that he has seen continuous, unbroken publication every month since his first appearance in 1938. Few characters have this advantage and even fewer mediums offer that kind of opportunity. So to comics fans, change in characters is nothing new.

But could you picture Tarzan with an GPS? Dracula being discovered because his image doesn't appear on an iPhone screen? Sherlock Holmes fighting modern day killers and criminals?


Thanks,
DCD

P.S. And yes, I know all those things have happened. That's part of the point.

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

Horror of Dracula

As I write this to you, it's the first weekend in October. Stereotypically enough, it's the tail end of a weekend that's been rainy, dark, cold and miserable. It's the first weekend that I haven't been outside in awhile. So yeah... winter is coming. The older I get, the more I dread December and January.

However, there is one big bright spot to the onset of October. It's time to focus on yet another hobby. Horror movies.

I'm home alone with the kids today. And they asked me to put on one of my horror movies. Katie, my eleven year old daughter, asked for Dracula. Alex, my six year old son, asked that it not be the old black-and-white Dracula. He finds that movie terrifying. So I smiled, patted his head in reassurance, and told him I had something even scarier in mind and he better go potty now instead of waiting.

About five years ago, I found out about the Hammer horror films. Hammer was a British studio that reached the pinnacle of it's popularity in the 1960's. They were most famous for their horror movies, putting out a line of Dracula movies starring Christopher Lee as Dracula. They did a line of Frankenstein movies, Mummy movies, and only one Werewolf movie. Hammer studios excelled in creating atmosphere. Creepy old mansions, castles, villages, dark countrysides, beautiful backdrops for their creepy stories to take place. When I 'found' the Hammer horror movies, it was like stumbling onto a hidden treasure that you didn't know you were looking for. There were times when it didn't even matter if the movie was good! The sets were so beautiful that the movie was a visual treat regardless.



One of their better films was the Horror of Dracula. The movie was released in 1958 in full color. As I mentioned, it starred Christopher Lee as Dracula. Which was magnificent enough. But to top that off the movie casts Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing. A perfect match up in casting.


The interpretation is an interesting one. The story doesn't strictly follow Bram Stoker's novel, but it's close enough to feel like you're slipping on an old shoe. Usually I write about how a character is portrayed differently through the ages. Dracula has the same comparison with some slight differences. The biggest being that his story almost always takes place in the same time frame. It's only the production that moves between eras. So the Dracula we get from Bela Lugosi in 1931 is different from Christopher Lee's Dracula in 1958, Gary Oldman's Dracula in 1992, and (Heaven help us) Frank Langella's groovy Dracula of 1979. We can learn things about what was considered scary and entertaining for the audiences of the different decades.

... or maybe it's age.

As an adult, I don't find Hammer's Horror of Dracula particularly scary. I love the movie and I can see why it was popular or considered scary for it's time. But I've seen much worse. However, for my son Alex, it's easily the scariest thing he's ever seen. As Universal's Dracula was before it. There were moments when Alex refused to even look at the screen.


So is it a jaded contemporary culture that needs more blood and gore for the scare with each decade? Is it up to the individual and what entertainment they've experienced before that makes it scary? Or rather, is it the horror movies themselves? Having seen the 1931 Dracula, it's lost it's bite. So time to try to scare a new decade of movie-goers that have seen the horror movies of the past. Hollywood stuck in a never-ending cycle of trying to top it's last scary outing.


Horror of Dracula sets itself apart from it's predecessor through the use of color. Where the 1931 Dracula film evokes strong mood and gothic atmosphere with it's black and white medium, the Horror of Dracula specializes in shocking the viewer with bright, bright red blood. Clearly unnaturally bright red blood. The effect is starting, even to my 2012 brain. The opening scene of the movie is a shot zooming in on the coffin of Dracula, which suddenly gets splattered with blood from above. We never see the source of the blood, but I imagine the effect on 1958 audiences, used to black and white features, was dramatic.


The other striking difference between the two Dracula's is the actor himself. As a kid, when I thought of Dracula I thought of something tall, dark, lean, and angular. I don't know where I developed that impression, unless it was from Frank Langella (gasp!) But the reality of Bela Lugosi is quite different. Short, with a round face and an odd shape, Lugosi doesn't really seem built to play the character as I've described. Where Lugosi puts it over the top is accent, acting, the way he held his hands, and the intensity of his eyes.



Christopher Lee is different from Bela Lugosi in almost every way. While Lee was probably a more accomplished actor than Lugosi by the end of their careers, Lee's performance still seemed less 'crafted' than Lugosi's. Lee was tall, slim, angular, striking, imposing, threatening, and just darn impressive. A shot of Lugosi as Dracula standing at a distance from the viewer evokes in you a sense of weirdness about the character and what's to happen next. When you see Lee standing there in the black cape, you just want to run.





Langella? I confess I don't remember much. But I do remember thinking he was Disco Dracula.


The kids loved the movie, by the way. And they've given the Hammer horror films, what few they've seen, the thumbs up. It'll be awhile before I let them see Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman, though.

Maybe I should pull out the Frank Langella?


This is Ashton at probably around five.



Katie at about age three.


Ashton's first real Halloween, just over a year old.


Thanks,
DCD