Dracula Unearthed

 

To celebrate a hundred years since the release of Nosferatu in 1922, Sky Arts and 3DD productions brought us the definitive story of the origins of Dracula on screen. Except in this first outing for the Count, he could not be called Dracula for copyright problems. Abraham (Bram) Stoker published his book in 1897 and the only way to keep ownership of the rights was to have a theatrical reading at the Lyceum Theatre where he was the manager. So came the first film version in the guise of Nosferatu.

The programme was presented by Ian Nathan with narration by Ryan Mandrake and contributions from Neil Norman, Stephen Armstrong and horror aficionado Kim Newman. We hear about the author's early days, born in Dublin. attending university at Trinity College, Dublin, and becoming a theatre critic. That led him to meeting Henry Irving and the management of the Lyceum Theatre in London.  Here he was thinking about writing a gothic novel about the vampire myth. His sources included Lenore, an old poem by Edgar Allan Poe and Carmilla, a female vampire in an Irish story. He also visited Whitby which inspired part of the book.

When Dracula was published in 1897 it was set in a fictional version of Transylvania. Stoker had never visited the country. The three brides of Dracula were straight from the witches in Macbeth. We were told of the seminal book called "In search of Dracula" by Raymond T McNally. There is all the stuff about Vlad the Impaler. 

At last we were on to the movies. Neil Norman called Nosferatu a masterpiece. After her husband died and left his wife poor,  Florence Stoker was angry that she was denied any film rights. She wanted all the prints destroyed, but the producers had gone bust. In 1931 came the first film with the title Dracula, and it was called the most famous version of all with Bela Lugosi. Films with sound and speech had only been going for four years and it was Universal that bought the rights to the play. Lugosi had already played the part in the theatre and the rest of that cast also appear in the film version. Stephen Armstrong tells us that at the time there was no history of horror on film. It became the template for all that followed.

But it was not until 1958 that the count reappears in Hammer Films' Horror of Dracula when the studio bought the UK rights. It stars Christopher Lee in the title role and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. Stephen Armstrong told us about Lee's background and how the two same actors appear in the next Hammer production The Curse of Frankenstein. Neil Norman shows us the lurid colour and how it became a franchise with Dracula, Prince of Darkness and The Scars of Dracula from 1970. These were all so popular it created a world wide phenonium. Jack Palance appears in 1973's Dracula and in 1974 Andy Warhol presented Blood of Dracula. The 1977 film Count Dracula brought the story back to that in the novel.

Then in 1979's big hit,  Frank Langella played the count in Dracula with Laurence Olivier as Van Helsing! George Hamilton plays a comedy version in Love at first bite. Verner Herzog made a critically acclaimed remake of Nosferatu adding colour and sound to the original version. In 1992 Francis Ford Coppola made Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman looking nothing like anyone who had played him before. Neil Norman said he did have the voice for the part but it was pretty well over the top. Ian Nathan called it an origin story. John Malkovich and Willem Defoe play the leads in 2000's Shadow of the Vampire where Neil Norman says it is actually about making a Dracula movie. He and Stephen Armstrong agree it is a really fun film. It's left to Ian Nathan to conclude how the legend of Dracula has endured over the whole world. Kim Newman had said he had thought he had seen every version, but found there were lots he had missed in South America and Mexico so the list goes on and on.