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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 8 |
 MEET THE NEW DRACULA...MARC WARREN ...Does PBS intend to use him on pledge breaks? |
new rendition of 'Dracula'
of TheColumnists.com
Let's start with this thought: Did we really need a new version of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" for another millenium or so? I really don't think so--and yet here he is, popping up once more on Feb. 11, in the most unlikely of places: PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre."
The working rule used to be: Don't remake a classic until a new generation arrives. They won't have seen the last version, so they'll look at it as something fresh and new.
Well, home video, cable TV and all those Halloween recycle festivals of ancient "Creature Features" on regular TV have burnt that rule to blackened smithereens. If there's anybody out there who hasn't seen somebody's rendition of "Dracula" by now, he must be wearing a loincloth and wandering through the Amazon rain forest, looking for somewhere to plug in his portable DVD player.
To be sure, some makers of new "Dracula" movies or TV shows have gone to considerable extremes to give the character a new spin since Bela Lugosi reprised his London and Broadway stage version on the screen in 1931 and thought he owned the role permanently.
The first Christopher Lee version, which reached America in 1958 under the title "The Horror of Dracula," courtesy of England's Hammer Films, added an oversexed quality Lugosi never quite generated--and lots of blood in full color. William Marshall's 1972 version was black, which is why they called him "Blacula." There have been lady Draculas, elderly Draculas and even gay Draculas--and in 1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," Gary Oldman played an ugly, rodent-faced Dracula not even a vampire's mother could love, even if she grew up reading "Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Each new wrinkle has, in my opinion, only served to prove that once a venerable story gets into the public domain and everybody can have a go at it, the world is pretty tired of the whole thing and wants to cry "No Mas!," as boxer Roberto Duran did when he finally realized there was no future in staying upright only to be punched silly by a guy he no longer could beat--Sugar Ray Leonard.
And yet I have seen my beloved "Masterpiece Theatre" bring lots of tired old stories to life and get them really sparking--sort of like Dr. Frankenstein used to do with those reassembled stiffs he'd zap with lightning bolts and turn into monsters.
Well, nice try, PBS, but this "Dracula" sucks. This time you went to the well and what came up in your bucket isn't very drinkable.
For starters, your Dracula (Marc Warren) is neither sexy nor scary. In fact, once he drinks a little blood and fills out, this Dracula looks exactly like Harry Houdini, the renowned escape artist of the 1920s. For those who never saw any footage of the real Houdini, let me explain that he was rather short, somewhat plump and altogether not very imposing. He hasn't much of a Transylvanian accent either.
His first female victim, the lovely Lucy (Sophia Myles), also generates little sympathy. Actress Myles looks like a stand-in for Kate Winslett, but doesn't generate any of the heat Kate is capable of bringing to her characters. Stephanie Leonidas, who plays Dracula female quarry #2, also seems, shall we say, dispensable.
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...hot blood for Dracula? |
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The only other characters from the Bram Stoker novel worth caring about are Renfield, the vampire's first English disciple, who goes bonkers and winds up in an asylum, eating spiders and whining about getting together with his "master" ASAP--and, of course, Prof. Van Helsing, the great foe of Count Dracula, who goes after the ancient vampire with a vengeance--and a wooden stake.
Well, Renfield never gets into this version of "Dracula" and Van Helsing, though played by one of England's finest actors, David "Poirot" Suchet, comes across as an addled old fartinski who doesn't look strong enough to hammer a stake through a pound of warm butter, let alone a vampire's heart.
As you may have guessed by now, the main problem with the new "Dracula" is the approach taken by writer Stewart Harcourt, who tosses much of the Dracula lore into a mixmaster and shakes it all up to no good effect. He gives Lucy's one true love a bad case of syphillis, which keeps the honorable chap from ever consumating his marriage to her. Somehow he gets perhaps history's worst-ever bad medical advice and decides to take "the cure" -- a blood transfusion from Count Dracula!
Right. I, too, was groaning by then--and that's not even halfway through the 90-minute movie! I won't complain about the fact that Dracula walks around in daytime in the early part of the movie yet, later on, we're told he has to be in his coffin during the daytime. By now, I've seen the basic "vampire rules" violated by so many different writers of Dracula movies that I've concluded nobody cares anymore.
Instead, I think I'll vow to give up watching
any forthcoming "Dracula" versions. If "Masterpiece
Theatre" can't get it right, nobody can.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The photos are courtesy of WGBH Boston, Granada Television and the BBC. This column first posted Feb. 5, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist,
the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series, and a co-author
of "Masterpiece Theatre," official companion book to
that PBS series. He currently writes about television mysteries
for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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