Monster Serial: DAN CURTIS' DRACULA

By PATRICK McCRAY

"You know what keeps me coming back?  The air.  Smell that?  Just like lemons.  This is real air.  Nature’s air.”  

Those were not the words I was expecting to hear from the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the misunderstood title character from Jack Arnold’s smear campaign.  I resisted mentioning fish out of water. He was bitter about the film at one time.  But now...?

That smile of his says everything. It’s a real smile. Nature’s smile.

“Come in. Patrick, right?  Can I get you some tea?”

Herb Gillman, during his Hollywood years.

Herb Gillman, DDS (retired), extends a webbed hand and welcomes me to Tao House, Eugene O’Neill’s home in Danville, California, which he’s recently restored with the help of Roger Davis.

“I’ll open it back up to the public in a bit.  But for now?  It’s my little slice of Zen.”

The green tea is hot.  I know I’ll have to enjoy it while the air is still chill, before the California sun begins to slow roast all of us.  I’m intrigued by Herb’s remark about Zen.  Not exactly Tao.

“Zen, Tao, Scientology.  It’s all connected and connections.  But I don’t know from religions, kid.  I’m just a cranky old dentist who made it big.  I’d trade it all for beautiful sunset and a beautiful woman who flossed.”

“So, you’re not dating now?”

“Oh, I’m never not dating.  But a man reaches a certain age, and his priorities change.  It’s not like it was.  But it never was like it was.”

He hisses wistfully and glances at a painting of a beguiling woman with decadent, bee-stung lips and endless eyes.  He looks down at his cup.

“Pretty,” I remark.

“One of mine.”

“The model or the art?”

“Yes to both and no to both.”

A cat rubs its nose against the trousers of Herb’s white, linen suit.  He smiles.  I know that I can push the issue.

“Seriously, who was she?”

“Fiona Lewis.”

“Oh, the actress!  She’s great. I loved her in THE FURY and LISTZOMANIA and INNERSPACE.  She’s like Diana Rigg with fizz.”

“Fizz,” Herb chuckles. “I like that that.  I’ll tell her you said that.  Fiona, not Diana.”

Fizz!

“She’s English. Just friends?”

“Very much. There was a time when it was more and there was a time when it was a lot, lot less.”
“How’d you meet?”

“Golfing buddy of mine was shooting a movie of the week of DRACULA.  He asked me to come along as ‘technical advisor.’ That’s code for ‘Jack Palance’s dialect coach.’”

“This was the Dan Curtis version... 1974?”

“Well, it was supposed to be ‘73, but Nixon preempted the whole thing for Angew’s resignation. You know, if you rearrange the letters in Spiro Agnew’s name, you get ‘grow a penis’?  Emmis. Where was I?”

“I have no idea.”

Jack Palance as Dracula.

“DRACULA for Dan Curtis. Yeah, you know, Dracula was always the best out of all of us at Universal.”

“Really?”

“Look at the competition. I don’t even count.  This Creature is a victim of circumstance.”

He’d slipped into a dead on impression of Curley Howard for the last part.

“That was good.  Okay, the rest of your Universal rat pack?”

Herb counts off on his claws.

“What’s the Mummy’s story again? Who cares?  It’s basically Dracula’s. Frankenstein’s Monster is the Red Skelton of the lot ... a sad clown trawling for sympathy. I can do that myself.  And the Wolfman? Oatmeal north of the eyebrows. He’s just a weird animal or something.  When he’s a man, he just talks about wanting to be dead.  What kind of character is that?”

“Point taken,” I say.  Herb’s on a roll.

“So, that leaves Dracula.  He can think.  He can plan.  He knows what he’s doing.  Best character, and they have yet to give him a really good movie.”

“Those are bold words.”

“Yeah, well, I’m too old for anything else.  See, the book’s the problem.  All of these letters and things.  And Vlad’s totally unmotivated to move to Carfax Abbey.  The best stuff is in the beginning.  I could go on, but Vlad gets the shaft.  Dick Matheson did the best he could, adapting it for Dan Curtis.”

“So, how did it break down?”

“Well, you got Jack Palance as Dracula.  Inspired casting.  And they almost never let him talk after the first reel.  When he has a conversation with Nigel Davenport’s Van Helsing, it makes you realize what a sister act we all missed out on with those two.  Palance went Method.  Savage, feral performance.  He went there.  I mean, he wasn’t sleeping in a coffin, but he got into the part.  Very intense.  And if there was one guy who didn’t need to get more intense off-camera, it was Palance. That explains the walking.”

“The what?”  Herb’s got me.

“Walking.  Dracula’s always walking in the picture.  It’s like he spends half the movie walking.  I would have liked some more action, but it calmed Palance down. Between us, I think Dan was just filming it on a golf course. And then he did some day-for-night to disguise it all. But what do I know?”

“Does it follow the book?  Maybe Dracula walks a lot in the book....”

“What is he?  Dr. Detroit?  No, he walks in this version more than he does anything else.  Or he uses dogs.  Lotta dogs in the movie.  Scary as hell.  I hate dogs.  Dan?  Loved ‘em.  He’d yell, ‘It’s not spooky enough!  I want more dogs, goddammit!’ And he got them.

Jonathan Frid in HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, 1970.

“As for the rest of the book, again, what’s to follow?  There’s no there, there.  So, Dan did what he does best: adapt! This time, from himself.  It’s just HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS all over again.  Babe — this time, Fiona Lewis instead of Nancy Barrett —in the catacombs.  Same camera angles for staking.  A music box.  And the whole maghilla with the vampire being motivated by a reincarnation of a lost love.”

“That was Dan Curtis?”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t Stoker.  Nah, Dan invented that with Barnabas Collins.  And every vampire story after it just ripped it off.  With his version of DRACULA, at least he’s refining his own source material.”

“So, it has highlights?”

“Tons.  The sets were all very modern.  You know, Dracula’s a regular guy.  Why would he be wandering around in a dump like we see him in every other movie when he could be in a palace.  And that’s what we found.  Great art design because it really was authentic, 1897 decadence.  And such great acting.  Simon Ward.  I thought he was great as Buckingham in Dick Lester’s MUSKETEERS movies....”

“Not to mention, Supergirl’s dad,” I say, jumping in.

“You beat me to the punch.  He’s great in SUPERGIRL.  Most authentic Kryptonian dialect ever. Better than Sarah Douglas’ accent, and she’s also in the movie as one of Dracula’s brides. Sheesh. Don’t leave home without her.  But back to Simon. In DRACULA, he nails it as Arthur Holmwood, who’s just a bunch of those suitors from the book rolled into one guy.

Sarah Douglas, kicking Superman's ass in 1980.

“And I gotta be fair, kid.  It’s as good as an adaptation of that book can get.  The source material is the classic glass ceiling, keeping the bat on the ground.  Dan’s work on DARK SHADOWS was the biggest favor that Dracula ever got.  He kinda went full circle with the whole vampire mythos jazz.  You know?”

I smile.  What else could you say?

“Paddy, me lad, I have no idea what we were supposed to talk about.  But,” he checks his watch and stands, “I am about to be late for rehearsal.”

“You’re back in the game?”

“Never left it. LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. James Tyrone, at last!  God bless the Pasadena Playhouse for letting this cranky old fish stick on the boards.  We open in three weeks.  How do they expect me to remember all of those lines in that time?  Crazy.”

“It’s a crazy business.”

He laughs.

“Ain’t it, though?  But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

We part as warm friends.

It was only later that I remember.  LONG DAY’S JOURNEY was written by Eugene O’Neill.  In whose home we’d spent the morning.

“It’s all connected and connections,” Herb had said.

Emmis.

Patrick McCray is a comic book author residing in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: DRACULA vs FRANKENSTEIN

By HERB GILLMAN

DRACULA vs FRANKENSTEIN.

Words to thrill the inner five year-old in all of us.  And for the five year-old, I think it delivers.
Do the two giants meet?  Yes.  Do they fight?  Yes.  Extended grappling.  Decapitation of Frankenstein, as I seem to recall.

And here is a fine point of order.

With the intense emotional regression living in director Al Adamson’s vision, he is not “the creature,” or “the monster,” or “Frankenstein’s monster.”

This film is made by and for all those who simply call the creature, Frankenstein, and they know a Frankenstein when they see one, goddammit, so don’t tell me it’s “Frankenstein’s Monster!” It’s Frankenstein.

If you approach the film from that perspective, you’ll be fine.

Dr. (okay, now we’re getting correct) Frankenstein’s descendent, Dr. Duryea, labors in a lab under a Venice Beach spook show.  He’s brought back the Creature.  He’s making deals with Dracula to do science stuff while a comet passes over.  He’s using injections to turn a non-speaking Lon Chaney, Jr. into a murdering mutant, killin’ gals under the boardwalk. I’ve seen it several times and the details of it go in one eye and out the other.

A showgirl goes in search of her missing sister (a victim of Duryea’s), only to find companionship in adventure and social release with a middle-aged, bead-wearing “observer,” who oversees a commune of white, suburban, immaculately bathed hippies.  He’s great ... like Ron Burgundy’s uncle.  He can talk about his feelings, make a woman feel whole, but still has a mellow sense of authority that rolls off him like the scent of bourbon Borkum Riff over a Moscow Mule.  When he needs to Help Investigate, Mike Howard is on the scene, yinging and yanging his way through the shit, man. Through the shit.

And arguably, there is a lot of it here.

The two of them are the foci for occasional revisitation for the film as it comes up with stuff to happen between when it starts and when it ends.

That’s pretty much what it feels like.

By all fair measure, it is a Bad Movie.  On a Ron and June Ormond level.  It doesn’t have the blood and bosoms of an HG Lewis movie nor the ascetic indulgence of an Ed Wood opus, but it still works.  Yes, bad movies can work, and it’s actually making me uncomfortable to use the phrase “bad movie.”

Because I don’t believe in the “good” bad movie.

It’s either bad because it doesn’t entertain me, or it’s good because it does.
 
Look at the films of Ed Wood. They are tight, bizarre tales of strange urgency and poetic fervor. They almost feel like Medieval morality plays with strange masques and choruses pronouncing odd cant and shamanic portents.

No, I’m not kidding.

Cinema, prior to video games, was our newest art form and a medium younger than many of the artists still exploring it.  Certain (not all) movies don’t conform to the rules and conventions we’ve agreed upon as acceptable filmmaking.  That doesn’t make them bad.

Bad means, well, bad.  You wanna talk “bad”?  Let’s talk UNDERWORLD or CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE or BALLS OF FURY.  These are films that made me angry over the time I’d wasted on them.  They are “bad” as in, “I would never watch them again.”

I’d originally begun this review as a comedy review for Herb (the Creature from the Black Lagoon) Gillman to review in first-person.  I couldn’t get it off the ground, although for fun, I include the beginning below ...

As I told my patient, Steve Sondheim over something we drank out of a skull at Trader Vic’s, in a quote he downright pilfered from me, “Art isn’t easy.”

Truer words, my friend.  Truer words.

Hello, my name is Dr. Herb Gillman.  Most people around Cocoa Beach know me as the “so gentle it’s mental” dentist, but a few peer a little deeper, and still recognize me as the eponymous “Creature” of Universal’s notorious mockumentaries.  Guilty as charged… but only of being one of the last of my kind.  That’s it.  I had been goaded into appearing in three “Creature from the Black Lagoon” documentaries before catching wise to Universal’s exploitation of me.

Universal liked to obscure the truth.  Why?  I don’t know.  Director Al Adamson and I were both well into our cups at the Riverside premier of SATAN’S SADISTS a year earlier.  The subject came up.  We agreed to change things for the better.

Sometimes a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it.

Sometimes it falls and it sounds like a majestic tree-thing that has fallen in a tragic, arboreal manner.
Sometimes it sounds like the mighty oak is hitting my sister, Carol Channing.

All are good, noble sounds.

We made none of them.

Instead, we made DRACULA VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN.

I liked that beginning a lot.  I think it was going to be an attempt at an exposé gone horribly awry.  Maybe Herb was going to be the choreographer of the deliciously wretched, Vegastastic, Ann-Margaret-by-way-of-Big-Lots opening musical number, performed (not sure about sung) by Regina Carroll, the director’s wife.

But, dammit.  I enjoyed watching the strange, haphazard, wooden movie.  It’s just thrilled with the illusion of its absent panache, and there is a perverse enthusiasm in that.  I remember the days when having a video camera (or a computer) was considered tantamount to having a platinum plated Trapper Keeper. (Or a Kenner Millennium Falcon in its first year of production.)  The idea of being able to make a movie at all was a fantasy as distant as a milkshake date with the indescribably sublime Lisa Welchel.  I can feel the giddiness that Al Adamson, roughhewn though he may be, was out to make a Monster Movie, by gum, and his friend Forrest J. Ackerman would be on hand as technical advisor to see that things went right.  The enthusiasm is palpable.

The ridiculousness of the film is piled higher than a sandwich from Canter’s.  You want a money-eating littler person, it’s there.  You want hilarious and nonsensical circular logic in the movie’s attempts at deep dialogue?  Say no more; they will.  Russ Tamblyn?  Yes. We have Tamblyn.  Lon Chaney never speaks, but cradles a puppy in a bizarre homage to OF MICE AND MEN.  (Yes, Chaney in that boozy state is sad, but he was still working and getting a check.  There are worse fates for an actor.  And he looks far less miserable than I know he was during his Mummy stint.)  Heck, we even see the actual electric props from FRANKENSTEIN and a zillion other Universal classics… in full color and going strong!

This essay is one of dozens featured in our new
book, "Taste the Blood of Monster Serial."

I watched the film for a second time with a friend, and we found it imminently quotable and enjoyable.  In all of this, I am not saying to throw critical standards out the window.  Nor am I saying that we merely take ghoulish delight in bad films the way that some treat three-car pileups.  No.  I’m just suggesting that the phrase “so bad it’s good” go the way of “some of my best friends are…” in the lexicon.  It’s an interesting mental exercise.  Take the phrase out, but defend a movie you used to just slather with that bit of rhetoric.  I think you’ll find very quickly why you actually like it.  And it’s not just because it’s “bad.”  Maybe it’s shamelessly overwrought.  Maybe it’s drunk on its own theatricality… which is better than having no theatricality at all.  Or maybe it’s just fun.  Fun is not anathema in cinema.  Even serious films have a jolt of it.  Imagine saying that a film was “so joyless that it was fun”?  Hard to pull off.  Possible, Henry Jaglom, but rare.

Let’s hear it for Al Adamson and fun.

Compare that to the sinking feeling you probably get today as one lugubrious trailer unspools after another at your multiplex.  Zach Snyder could use a little Al Adamson.  Or maybe more than a little.

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HERB GILLMAN is the alter-ego of Patrick McCray, a comic book author residing in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.