This Week in Rixflix #14: June 9-15, 2017

Going into this week, there was just one film on my mind: the new Universal version of The Mummy. I had a sense going in that it was probably not going to be great, and in a way that is quite unusual for me, I did not prepare for the film by watching a marathon of the original Universal Mummy flicks (all six of them, including the Abbott and Costello one), nor did I wade into the later Universal Mummy series with Brendan Fraser. (And don't even get me started on The Scorpion King spin-off series... to be fully honest, I am no fan of the Fraser films either.) Instead, I concentrated on other films and just waited for The Mummy to arrive. Jen had no interest in all with it and told me to "go see your buddy Tom" (a running gag that I must explain fully at some point in the future).

And yeah, the result was rather tepid. I did manage to have fun enjoying the film as a straight ahead monster flick, and enjoyed some of the character and set design. But I am so confused as to why Universal dropped the Universal Monsters label they had been pitching and keeping alive (like the truly undead) for so many decades. Now I can't, officially, say that I am going to the latest Universal Monsters picture, and am instead told that this is the first film of their – big fucking yawn – DARK UNIVERSE series, a title that has already supposedly been co-opted by Warner Brothers and DC Comics for their adaptation of Justice League Dark, which I guess is their own stupid move to not burning out the Justice League brand (even though they put out a comic and an animated film (this year nonetheless!) called Justice League Dark (which I will get to next week). So, now instead of a Universal Monsters series and Justice League Dark live-action, we have two stupid things called Dark Universe from different studios, neither of which has anything to do with the other except for shared elements of basic horror.

I have so much more to gripe about how Universal is screwing up the use of their monster franchises, especially at their theme parks. (You know how annoying it is to walk through Universal Studios in Hollywood and not find a single Dracula shirt in their gift shops? And yet, you can walk straight past the Universal store in CityWalk and go to Things from Another World and find scores of monster t-shirts. The company itself, though, doesn't care for selling its own creations.) Once I saw the new Mummy, apart from watching Svengoolie have fun with The Mummy's Tomb on his show the next day, Universal went away almost immediately in my mind. The film did not propel me into maintaining the mood because there was no real mood to maintain. (Honestly, the films it really reminded me of were Van Helsing and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, both huge disappointments in my book. I thought the new version of The Mummy was much better than both of them however.) 

I instead spent the week concentrating on classic western films. Five such films to be precise, starting with Stagecoach, and then plowing through They Died with Their Boots On, Red River, Winchester '73, and High Noon throughout the remainder of the week. The reason? An online course on the History of the Western that I found while signing up for TCM's upcoming course on Alfred Hitchcock. I decided to take the Western course to see if I would enjoy and benefit from the experience, and while I still have a few last items to complete, I have passed all of my tests and found it to be great fun. (I still have to watch Fort Apache this weekend, which I don't own anymore but is showing on TCM; Turner Classic Movies isn't hosting this particular online course, so it is complete coincidence that it is airing.) Mostly, I enjoyed simply watching each of these films again, even the one that I don't like all that much (the Custer one starring Errol Flynn).

Next week, you will notice that the aftermath of taking this course has done something the new Mummy movie couldn't. It inspired me to do an immersion in a bunch of westerns over a couple of days, including one this morning (the day of this writing). I have more lined up for this weekend, including two more John Wayne films, that should be the 86th and 87th films of his that I have seen in my lifetime. (Just writing that last part exhausted me...) I may not enjoy the western genre as much as I do classic horror or film noir, but I have always had more than a quiet appreciation for the genre, and taking this course has truly made me remember my roots in film, having watched a great number of western films and shows growing up in the '70s. 

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 24; 13 first-time viewings and 11 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: Red River (1948), Stagecoach (1939), Out of the Past (1948), Winchester '73 (1950), High Noon (1952), and The Lost Weekend (1945) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Island of Lost Women (1959) – 4/9
Average films per day in June so far: 2.86
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.02
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 184

The Reviews:

Becoming Bond (2016) Dir.: Josh Greenbaum – Riding to physical therapy on the bus towards Riverside, I looked out the window at one of the bus stops and saw the smirking face of George Lazenby staring back at me. I was absolutely not expecting it, and in my half-awake daze, I started to wonder if I had really seen the poster that I had or if I had some strange daydream in which Lazenby popped in for a non-sequitur cameo. Riding on the bus back, I managed to look across the several lanes and see the poster at that stop. Then I started wondering if it was a film playing at a theatre at the mall next to that bus stop. Looking up the Jurupa Valley theatre there, I found no such reference to such a film as Becoming Bond. Riding the bus two days later (once again to PT), I took a longer look at the sign as we stopped to pick up a couple of passengers. Ah, so it is a Hulu documentary! The second that I got home, I fired up the Hulu page and found myself watching a most surprising and entertaining look at the most unlikely and oddball career of the guy who played James Bond once and lived to tell about it... almost 50 years later. And it is hard, even with it being so entertaining (or especially because of that) to believe many of the stories that spill out the corners of Lazenby's still charming, wide, handsome smile. 

This film may contain some of the best and most imaginative dramatic reenactments that I have ever seen in a supposed documentary, and the use of prime cameos by the likes of Jeff Garlin, Jake Johnson, Jane Seymour, and especially Dana Carvey (doing a full-size Johnny Carson impression) make this film a bouncy, fun trifle. Some names do get changed to keep off the lawsuit monsters, and so those not already aware at least lightly about Lazenby's story coming in may be confused about who is who behind the scenes on his single Bond effort, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It is no secret that OHMSS is my personal favorite of the entire Bond series, so I had no problems. In fact, this film goes down so smoothly, I don't care at all if ol' Georgie Boy is stretching the truth a little bit here and there. You know, just like the best spies do...  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Phantom Lady (1944) Dir.: Robert Siodmak – One of the joys of watching TCM's Noir Alley show on Sunday mornings is not necessarily discovering obscure film noir gems but actually speeding up the inevitability that I will get to each of these films on my own naturally. I am so attuned to tracking down as many of these films that I can that I really begin to surprise myself more and more when I watch a truly incredible example that has largely slipped by my notice to this point in time. Such is the case of the truly insane drumming scene by Elisha Cook, Jr. midway through this film as he practically drools over the prospect of an evening spent with the admittedly smoking hot Ella Raines. Cook bashes the drums in a sweat-filled jazz room in such an increasingly rabid manner that you swear he is going to collapse in post-orgasmic exhaustion. In the words of Doug Stanhope: "Blort!!!" (Raines is definitely blort-worthy, and is she ever gorgeous throughout this film.) Phantom Lady is soaked in noir atmosphere, and boy, is the villain (I won't say who) an utter creep every second he is onscreen (and they give it away fairly early anyway). I am not so big on the set-up of the film involving the lady in the outrageous hat who becomes the catalyst to the mystery, but I believe a viewing down the road may relieve me of my initial reluctance to accept this film wholeheartedly. With noir, familiarity only breeds greater obsession. Once you are in, you can never get out... – TC4P Rating: 7/9

The Strawberry Blonde (1941) Dir.: Raoul Walsh – When I saw this title pop up on TCM one afternoon, it was a total impulse watch for me. Deep in my movie history is the knowledge that The Strawberry Blonde was the very first film featuring James Cagney that I ever saw as a kid, and I had not really sat down to watch it since then. The real coincidence though comes from the fact that this film was directed by Raoul Walsh in the same year in which he lensed They Died with Their Boots On, one of the six classic westerns I watched this week for the Western Film History course. On a personal level, I enjoyed this film much more, especially as a showcase for Olivia de Havilland, who may play second fiddle to Rita Hayworth as the titular character, but who is (eventually) first in the heart of the film's main character. Cagney's tough guy dentist is by turns blustery and amusing, and well matched by de Havilland's slightly more intentionally modern (and shocking to others) version of a female at the turn of the 20th century. The film is caked thick in nostalgia for a bygone era but also is just spry enough to know that wallowing in it too long is no good for anyone. Cagney's dentist realizes he must move forward and so must the viewer. A far more rewarding return to this film for me than I expected. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Girl of the Port (1930) Dir.: Bert Glennon – A guy wallowing in self-pity and clearly suffering from PTSD from his World War I experience loses himself in the Fiji Islands. He falls in love with a barmaid who works in the saloon where he has chosen to drink himself to death, but he doesn't let on that he is a British lord who is hiding out from his family and peers. And it is an appropriate thing that his war scars are embodied by a crippling fear of fire (from being surrounded by enemy flamethrowers) because the natives of the island practice the art of fire-walking. Eventually, all of this is going to work out exactly as you suspect from the start, and the film is fairly creaky as it glides by rather mechanically. But Sally O'Neil is pretty charismatic as the love interest, and the war scenes are well sketched (if not nearly on the same battlefield as All Quiet on the Western Front artistically). Intriguing enough for a quickie talkie but no more. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

The Boy (2016) Dir.: William Brent Bell – There are just so many of these types of horror films today that it becomes hard to recall which ones one has seen or not. Luckily, the inclusion of Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) was pretty much the only catalyst I needed to allow this one into my life. We have here another creepy doll movie, and I must say that this is not my favorite subgenre of horror. Fine with the Chucky series and a few other examples of the ventriloquist dummy variety, but I just really don't clamor for them when we start talking porcelain or baby dolls. Sure, I find them equally creepy -- all dolls are that way naturally -- but the films using those types usually are too far out of my disbelief range. The doll here is a boy who may or may not contain the black-hearted soul of an elderly English couple's son, who died mysteriously decades earlier. The couple insist on treating the doll like their dead son, Cohan is hired as an au pair to spell them for a short vacation, and all sorts of madness begins. The film had me until about halfway, until coincidence and logic refused to play together nicely any longer. Cohan is good in the role, though, as is Rupert Evans as the local delivery grocer who develops a more than slight interest in Cohan's well-being and other parts. Overall, the film is well filmed with an interesting score by Bear McCreary, but I can only give it a TC4P Rating: 5/9.

Growl and Glow in the Dark: Universal Monster Toys

The Phantom of the Opera
[click on any image to enlarge]

It's time for a short, rather incomplete profile of yet another Universal Monsters set, and one where I definitely wish that I had the other figures in the set. These figures are from a set put out in 1990 by a company called Uncle Milton. The two pictured here – the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame _ are the only two that I was able to snag, or even find, in my neck of the woods (that being Anchorage, Alaska at the time, where I was born). 

I do not remember which store it was that I bought them, though Kay-Bee or Woolworth's are as likely suspects as any. I just remember that any time that I looked for the other figures, I could only ever find these two characters, as if the other bigger monsters were short-packed in the cases (which is a possibility, or the others just sold better). It's a scenario that I used to run into a lot in Anchorage back in the day, where even when a toy line was new to a store, they would only have a couple of the characters, and never the full set. You could make requests (which I would in many cases), but of course, the people working the toy counter don't give a rat's ass if the weird, nerdy guy who should really just grow up already that hangs out in the action figure section ever gets what he wants.

The Hunchback of
Notre Dame

There are six figures in the set overall, the other four being the Frankenstein Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon (quite angry about never finding that one, mostly because he is my favorite Universal Monster, and partly because the mold is really cool), the Mummy, and the Wolf Man. Once more, we have a Universal Monsters set missing one of its primary figures, that of Count Dracula, which was largely due to the estate of Bela Lugosi pushing Universal Studios hard for royalties in order to use the likeness of their namesake. This situation has reversed itself in recent years for the most part, but it does mean that there are numerous Universal toy sets and other series (trading cards, books, etc.) out there where Dracula seems to have been forgotten altogether because of this insane back-and-forth battle.

From the slim information that I have been able to gather, the molds used for these figures are the exact ones used by the Marx Toy Company in the 1960s when they released their Universal Monster sets, which were exceedingly popular in the day. Growing up in the '70s, I knew kids who either owned or had inherited these figures, and was also roundly jealous whenever I saw them or (once in a while) got a chance to play with them. (I was the same way around Mego figures; never had any of my own, but went crazy when I had the opportunity.)

Because the Marx versions were in more varied colors and not meant to glow in the dark, you could make out the details a lot better on those than on these, including the names on the plates near their bases. 

While the lightness in color does make it hard to really make out many details, close-up views do reveal the fine sculpting and care used in creating these figures. 

I didn't really have time to get these puppies charged up and ready for a glow shot, nor did I have a photo of the entire set (since I don't own all of them), but a glance at eBay found a pretty groovy image of the whole crowd gathered for a glow in the dark group portrait.

Full group GITD shot ["juicyfinds4u" on eBay]

Seeing that shot just makes me even more covetous of one day having a full set, not just of the Uncle Milton remolds, but of getting a couple of different color variations or so of the original Marx releases. A fella can dream, can't he?
RTJ

[Except for the glow in the dark pic from eBay (noted), all of the images of toys in this article are from my personal collection. Feel free to copy and use as you wish, but if you repost on your website, please credit The Cinema 4 Pylon.]

Bay It, Don't Spray It, Wolfie!!!

Sure, you might recognize these two good fellows, but you may not believe the form in which they arrive. Yes, it is quite clearly the Wolf Man and his on again/off again pal, the Frankenstein's Monster, and they are most definitely in some degree of officially licensed Universal Monsters design here in these pretty nifty toys that I obtained in 1991.

But what are they? Well, take a look at the corner of Frankie's mouth (my favorite part of the sculpt is that sneer he has) and what looks like an odd gap in Wolfie's teeth. These guys are nothing more than water squirters (or really, they will squirt whatever weird thing you want them to squirt, you sickos...) released by a company called Happiness Express, Inc. ("H.E.I." on the bottom of the toys). Also on the bottom is a matching 1991 copyright date for Universal ("U.C.S.").

Honestly, these were fun for a few days, but you could only squirt so many people with them  – back and forth – or pull pranks on the unknowing, before the game got old. I suppose others might have used them for other liquids (and therefore, other types of games) beyond water, but just like with plastic squirt guns, you start to wonder if you should really be drinking out of painted rubber in any amount.

It is remarkably hard to find much in the way of information about these toys. I found someone selling the Wolf Man on eBay, but they had no extra information. I did find someone online in a monster forum who mentioned these were manufactured exclusively for Woolworth's

Since Anchorage, Alaska still had a Woolworth's downtown (barely hanging on, like everywhere) in 1991, it is very likely that I purchased mine there. Woolworth's closed its doors everywhere in the world (there was still one in Fairbanks, Alaska at that point too) in 1997, but I remember finding a lot of unique baseball card sets branded with the company's name at the Anchorage store, and I used to find many cool toys, costume ideas, and music bargains in those too crowded shelves and pathways. (My fondest memory of the place was a little diner area at the front where I used to always buy a grilled cheese sandwich, fries, and a Dr. Pepper, but it was cleared out a few years prior to the store's ultimate closure. The place is now a gift shop, I believe.)

Found on eBay this morning.
Don't know about other
characters.

I did find someone selling an official Dracula squirter head from the same 1991 Happiness Express series on eBay (it was going for just under twenty bucks), but as to other characters in the series, I do not know. I really hope that there is a Creature from the Black Lagoon head out there somewhere, since he was heavily promoted along with these guys by Universal in that period (as he should). A Bride of Frankenstein would be really great to see too.

RTJ

[The pics of the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster are of my own toys. Feel free to repost as you wish, but please credit this blog.]

Taking Comfort in a Pilgrimage to Dracula (or Drácula... Take Your Choice)

My life of the past few months has been one of redefining the borders of my personal comfort zone. Since losing my job in February, still battling a depressive state even while being weaned from the medication that was helping me through the darkest portion of it, and with my ego taking a very confused beating in searching for new employment, that comfort zone has been decidedly compromised.

Not finding employment in the areas in which I have experience now has me kicking through the doors of that comfort zone and applying for positions at places I never thought I would. Embarrassment has been swallowed through absolute necessity, and the longer this drought continues, I will likely have to become even more used to the taste of it.

The outside perimeter of that bubble of personal comfort may have been battered by recent events. It might have fluctuated greatly as I adjusted to whatever was confronting me at the time. But it has also proven to be a little too stalwart from the opposite direction: from the inside out. I sometimes rely on it too much to protect me from the outside world. Moving into a new home in a new town and into a living situation that I do not like much of the time has me withdrawing more and more inside myself. As I stated a few posts back, diving back into writing -- on whatever subject -- has allowed me to decrease the pressure and get some of my mojo back. But writing does not get me outside. It does not get me out in public, where I can meet people, shake hands, find employment, or just get comfortable again with society away from the small office in my home where I spend 90% of my time now in an effort to be away from the rest of the household as much as possible.

When I moved to California a decade ago, on my third day here, and not being a driver (nor ever having a license), I took a nine-mile walk. I was in a strange new town (Anaheim -- not so strange, pretty generic for the area, but completely unknown to me apart from that Mouse Park), and I took it upon myself to immediately attempt to gain my bearings and figure out what was up and what was down in the place. Four and a half miles down the road from where we lived, and four and a half miles back. I noted street names, businesses, restaurants, and bus stops. From the start, I established some knowledge of the environs and then took short bus excursions over the next couple of weeks to broaden that geographical "comfort zone".

Until yesterday, I hadn't done that in Eastvale. I am in a different county, and while I had learned the names of the surrounding towns (Corona, Mira Loma, Ontario, etc.) and the major roadways about us, I had done nothing to establish a base for myself. Apart from the shopping center exactly a mile down the road from us where I have taken in numerous mainstream movies, I knew nothing about the area. While I had stared intently at one of the local transit authority buses and told myself that I really should get on one of those and head to parts unfamiliar to get a better feel for the place, after six months living here, I had yet to ride the bus. And a large part of this was because of how withdrawn I have become since the move.

Enter Dracula. It's funny how it takes the undead to prompt myself to get out amongst the living again, but I will have to attribute it to Count Dracula. Over the last few weeks, my eye kept catching commercials and online adverts for upcoming Fathom Events theatrical showings of the original 1931 Universal Studios production of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Even more enticing was the chance to watch the film in tandem with Universal's Spanish language version of the story, which used the same screenplay and was filmed on the same sets at night when the English version wrapped each day. I do like to take the opportunity to see older films on the big screen whenever I get a good chance, and here I could see one of my favorites. And right before Halloween.

There was one problem. How was I going to get there?

Jen had to work on both days on which the showings were to occur (the 25th and 28th), and even if she didn't, horror films (even fun, classic ones) are not in her wheelhouse. I couldn't go to the one on the 28th due to previous Halloween plans (which will be revealed later this week), and so the 25th was my one shot. It was showing locally at two relatively close theatrical complexes, but still 15-22 minute drives by car, and I don't enjoy asking others to drive me to places if there are alternate ways to get there, such as buses, trains, or walking. It had come to this... If I wanted to see Bela Lugosi on a big screen and disappear inside the Universal Monsters universe for a few hours (always a pleasurable experience for me), then I was going to have to kick the doors open on that comfort zone once more.

And so I caught a bus for the first time since moving to Riverside County. How weird it seemed to me, even though I have spent most of my life using public transport. My father even spent twenty-plus years driving buses around Anchorage, Alaska until his retirement, so they have been instrumental within our family as well. I have also employed them to great effect when visiting places such as Seattle, San Francisco, or Orlando. So, my six-month period of ignoring them here in Eastvale is definitely an aberration, especially considering I have been back in the Anaheim area several times since and just hopped onto buses without even thinking. Again, it is based on what and where you are comfortable, and how willing you are to push boundaries if you must.

I pushed those boundaries yesterday, that is for sure. I strode out from our house in the late morning air and marched straight to the bus stop, just down the street and around the corner, where I could have easily caught it many times before if I had only tried. My day-trip was going to take just under two hours to get from here to the Tyler Galleria in Riverside, with a transfer first to another route at the Corona Transit Center. I had previously seen the places to which I was traveling, but learning exactly which roads and side-streets to traverse in getting to them is a different matter. 

In the case of the smaller bus that was heading to the transfer point -- a very bouncy trip indeed -- while much of the trip went in linear fashion down the boulevard off of which our neighborhood lies, the route really uses that boulevard as a center point, and the bus veers off to the left and to the right for sideswipes into surrounding neighborhoods before finally settling back onto the boulevard for a final straight shot through Norco and into Corona. As I was intent on using the trip to get further accustomed to the area, I made mental notes of each street and the businesses upon them, and figured out which direction I would need to get home should I find myself stuck in each area. As I said before, I not only had seen my destination points before, but noticed a great many businesses along the way that we had frequented in the months in this area. Now, because of breaking free of the house, I figured out how I could easily access these places on my own with a simple bus trip.

The transit center in Corona was also not unknown to me. We had passed it numerous times when we were first in the area looking at homes. What I was not prepared for was just how uninhabited it could be on a Sunday morning. Just two other people were on the platform with me while I was there waiting for my connection, and one of those two came off the same bus as me. I only had to wait ten minutes before my next bus came, which turned out to be the normal size of bus to which I was accustomed, and good thing too because it was nearly two-thirds full when it arrived. The more crowded second route went through some much skeevier areas than the first, and I was certain I had never seen any of it before, and really had no intent of stopping anywhere else along the way but for my ultimate destination. After roughly 35 minutes we pulled up to the Tyler Galleria, and one of the first things I could see were the giant AMC letters atop the highest point of the complex, directing me to the movie theatres where I would be watching Dracula.

Pushing boundaries doesn't just include getting out where you have never been, but also learning to get accustomed to those places. Because I was unsure of the efficiency of the bus system in this area, or if I would make my connection in the first place, I left earlier than I normally would have for such an event. As a result, I had two hours to kill before my movies started. After picking up my movie ticket which I had bought in advance from the box office, I made to get acquainted with the mall, figure out if there were any stores worth revisiting in the future, and get the general lay of things in the area. The movie theatres are actually across the parking lot from the rest of the Galleria, and are connected to several other restaurants and a parking garage instead. So I took the opportunity to figure out where things were (with one major exception, which I shall get to later), and took a walk around the mall itself.

A Sunday morning farmer's market was just starting to close down in the parking area in front of the Barnes & Noble on one end of the lot. I strolled through to look over the produce for the tables that were still set up, though it looked like about 75% of the participants had already or were in the process of breaking down for the day. I then made a short visit to the bookstore to pick up the latest issue of Fangoria (with Elvira on the cover) and a couple of small Moleskine notebooks for future outings. Then I headed to the mall itself. While malls fascinated me in my youth (as they tend to do), I no longer get much out of being inside one. This one was pretty generic by today's standard, with the requisite mix of jewelry, fashion, children's, and shoe stores. The internet has pretty much killed my reasons for ever going to a mall, which were movies, music, and books. That the one store that contains all of these items existed in its own box-store outside and across the lot pretty much lessened my chances to ever step inside the actual mall itself again.

But I did stop by the food court long enough to convince the Philly cheesesteak place to lettuce-wrap one of their sandwiches for me. This proved to be a difficult accomplishment for them, and if I ever ate there again (the sandwich was serviceable enough), I would ask instead for a pile of their steak, peppers, onions, and cheese component along with a couple of leaves of lettuce so I could just make my own wraps. It would probably have worked a little better, and might have been a little less messy, not that I minded. Once you commit to the fact that most of your burgers and sandwiches in public places will likely be wrapped in lettuce from here on out, then you get used to making a mess of things. I hated being that messy at first, but have grown to accept and even sometimes enjoy it.

Finally, the time arrived for me to go to the theatre and get my seat (middle seat, row with the bar where you can rest your feet). I sat down (with a Lime Coke... yay, AMC, for those machines with a thousand choices) with twenty minutes to go before the film, and I was the only one in the theatre. Thirty seconds later, in walk two couples -- they were together in a group, so I could have said quartet, but they were definitely coupled off -- who proceeded to sit in the row directly behind me. I said to them, "And here I was wondering if I would be the only here for this," to which one of the ladies replied, "Oh no... you're not the only one with good taste." This said to me that if I wasn't in the presence of horror movie fans, they were at least classic movie ones. 

Eleven more people, including a family of five with a prodigiously oversized child (had to be a teenager) wearing half pajamas and carrying a very large, well-worn Pooh bear, took seats before the show began. So, while the theatre was not necessarily all that full, it was far more than I expected, and gave the viewing a cozy feeling. Though no separate entity talked to another group through the course of the showing, everyone was there outside of the normal bounds of moviegoing, and so it was like an unspoken bond of shared love of classic cinema (at least for the adults who made up the majority of the patrons).

This was my first experience with a theatrical Fathom Event produced in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies, and I must remark on how it appeared to me. I was anticipating an introduction from either Robert Osborne or Ben Mankiewicz (though holding out hope it would be Alec Baldwin), and we ended up with Ben (which is not a bad thing). His introduction was fine if not generic, but it was clear to me that the introduction seemed to have been filmed with television in mind, and came out somewhat fuzzy on the bigger screen. I don't know if this were the actual case, but when matched against the sharpness of the first image of the Lugosi Dracula soon to follow, the difference in quality is remarkable.

However, while I was thrilled to see both of these movies on a bigger screen, I knew that I was really just paying to watch TCM inside a theatre, a network for which we are already paying through the nose on our cable bill at home. Knowing also that there was not a marvelous old print (or even a newly struck and remastered one) spinning its way through a projector back and above our heads took some of the thrill out of the endeavor. Even worse, knowing that a pimply teenager was probably just selecting the film with a remote control off a computer screen took some more off the cool factor. But it was still Dracula on a big screen, the remastered image was brilliant, and Lugosi was fantastic to watch as large as possible in front of our eyes.

Everything worked for this small audience and I: the hypnotic style employed by old Bela; the bat-on-a-string special effects; the cinematic sleight of hand in the scene when Dwight Frye's not yet crazed Renfield finds his path blocked by massive cobwebs where the Count walked just moments before; the humorous asides of sanitarium attendant Martin; Edward Van Sloan's committed explanations of vampirism and how to combat the dread disease ... everything. The film moved so swiftly and deftly on the screen that it was over just as we seemed to be settling in to it. And maybe there actually was one part that didn't sit well, but I only noticed it because someone made note of it out loud, and that was the sudden ending with the offscreen staking of Dracula. "Well, that was over quick," someone remarked behind me, and I had been thinking it too. I wasn't sure if their disapproval was over how suddenly everything gets righted in the film's world, or if they, like myself, were just disappointed that the fun of seeing that particular film onscreen was over too soon.

We shed half of our audience when the lights came up, which I didn't understand since the cost of the ticket was for both films. This happened when Grindhouse came out, and loads of people missed the Tarantino half. I think it is a combination of people not reading the fine print and of no longer being used to double features. (They were the standard when I was a kid.) After a merciful ten-minute intermission (with intermittent counter) for a much-needed bathroom break -- during which two ladies from the family unit in the audience were doing an impression of Dwight Frye's affected, maniacal laugh as they plopped their way down the stairs -- at last, TCM Ben came back to introduce the Spanish language version. He mentioned that some people consider this version to be more atmospheric and often better than the Tod Browning one we just saw. For me, it is debatable, but no contest. Yes, the Spanish one has some interesting camera placements that run parallel to what Browning did, and there are many moments where it does have more atmosphere.

But it is also laden with a less-than-Lugosi performance as Conde Drácula by Carlos Villarías, which means he is good, but has none of the menacing flair that Lugosi perfected on the stage for several years. For some of the audience, some of Villarías' campier mannerisms and movements made them laugh out loud; for me, some of the looks he gave reminded me of Jim Nabors playing Gomer Pyle, and while I restrained myself from chuckling openly, I couldn't help but imagine Nabors playing the role on the dinner theatre circuit in Florida somewhere. The performance I really liked in the Spanish version was that of Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield. I thought his turn in the role was marked by a greater ease with the arc of the character, and a little more subtlety and range on the "crazy" end of the scale, where his Renfield seems to go from zero to sixty and back again in some scenes, as he reacts to the chaos around him. I had seen this version of the film on DVD three times previously, but this is the first time I really noticed how much I enjoyed his take on everyone's favorite madman.

One of the remaining audience members did create some open laughter from the rest of us, as a big guy with a trucker cap and a huge red beard fell asleep not long into the Spanish version (reading makes him tired, I guess). Tucked into his corner of the theatre, Big Guy snored long and loudly through about 45 minutes in the middle of the film. I treat movie snoozers like sleepwalkers. I feel it is more dangerous for them and us if you awakened, especially in the middle of a movie-wrought dream. And so no one shushed or bothered him through his nap time, and at a certain point, he quite noticeably snored himself awake, and when some of us turned to look at him, he acted very embarrassed and quickly took a slug on his soda, and cleared his throat. 

With both films over, it was time for the return trip to the transit center. I mentioned that I had made a big error when surveying this new playground when I arrived, and it almost saw me getting abandoned in the place. I forgot to ascertain where the bus stop for the return would be, and when I got out of the movies (I will admit that I worried about it through much of the second film), I panicked a bit. I assumed the bus would return down Magnolia across the street from where I jumped off at the mall, but when I went over there, there wasn't a bus stop in sight. 

Rather than being caught staring at my phone whilst the next bus that I needed came whipping by, I opted for the "just walk to the next bus stop you find" rule. For me, this is an exceedingly easy plan due to the speed at which I walk, and it wasn't long, near the end of the Galleria area, before I found that next bus stop. But it was covered by a bag on top of the pole, with a green sign reading "This bus stop closed until further notice." So, I flew to the next stop, where I was greeted by yet another bag and yet another sign. Finally, a third stop appeared, about three-quarters of a mile down from where I started, and it seemed to be live, a suspicion confirmed when another lady strode up to wait for the bus as well. I found it just in time, as the #1 bus pulled up to us about two minutes later, and we were on our way.

GoogleMaps may have its benefits, but I'll be damned if I recognized that on this return trip, because it failed me utterly. Sitting on the bus, I consulted the application because I wanted to find out the next #3 bus from the transit center in Corona to my home. The app told me 6:14, and so another panic grew inside me over whether we would make it in time. During a normal weekday, this would not have been a worry, as buses run much later. But this was a Sunday, with the buses cutting off in the 7:00-8:00 range, and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss the last one. Jen's mom texted me all along to see if she could pick me up instead, but I was determined to finish my crawl the trip the way I started it, or else all confidence would be lost. As we neared the transit center at 6:06 p.m., I was excited because clearly we were going to make it in time for me to transfer. Then we arrived, and I was disheartened to find out that there was no 6:14 #3 bus. The time didn't appear on the giant schedule mounted at the terminal, and in fact, it disappeared from my GoogleMaps app as well. Now it was telling me the same time that the bus schedule was: 6:53, more than 40 minutes away at that point.

Not a problem, except the bus stop on a Sunday evening was as devoid of life as it was that morning. And it was getting dark. Fast. Next to railroad tracks and overpasses. Gully cats and queen snakes were sure to be on the rise next. There was me and one other guy who got off my bus, and he left in five minutes on another route. And it was getting darker, and the transit center seemed more and more desolate with every passing minute. A speeding train came whipping by and would have made me jump out of my socks had I been wearing them. As I checked the schedule one more time (with a half hour to go), the sudden appearance of human voice sent a chill up my spine.

"What bus are you catching?" I backed up from the sign and hurriedly looked around it. It was a security officer making his rounds. He seemed bored but genuine in his attempt to make small talk as he told me at which bay I needed to wait for the #3 bus (which I knew, but I was the only one there and had been pacing relentlessly, so he probably was sincerely wondering). We chatted for a few minutes before he shoved off to the other end of the center, but it was good to know there was someone else down here in a very secluded area off the road, surrounded by shadows. As I said, I am not generally afraid of the dark, but in someplace where you have little knowledge, it can rev up the adrenaline to ridiculous levels.

The time passed as time does; a little slower if you pay too much attention to it, and a little quicker the more you ignore it. I found a happy medium that saw the #3 bus arriving on schedule and speeding me off on my way home. Then I found out the kicker from the bus driver: the bus would not return me all the way to the bus stop where I picked it up down the street from our house. The route officially ended for the driver at a stop about a mile from that point, at the same shopping area that we frequent. But it worked out perfectly, because Jen was off work and home by then, and was able to meet me at the last stop. Then we picked up Chipotle there for dinner as well. Win-win.

And so ended my pilgrimage to unknown lands to see an ancient undead friend of mine (and his not so carbon copy). I had broken out of my comfort zone just enough to get me out of the house and traveling someplace new, to try and figure out this new county in which I live, and to gain some measure of confidence moving about on my own once more. And except for a slight hiccup in returning, I came back none the worse for wear, and definitely wiser. 

Now, I just have to return from one of these trips with a new job in tow, and everyone will be happy.

I Wouldn't Trade This Memory for Any Other...

It's 1973 and my brother Mark and I are on a Halloween spree. It's dark, cold, and snowy in our mountainside neighborhood in Eagle River, Alaska, and we have largely completed our October 31st rounds, collecting as much free candy as we can from the houses of our neighbors. I am nine years old, and already a veteran of several Halloween campaigns; my brother Mark is still two months away from turning five, and this may or may not have been his first trip around the neighborhood. What is important is that it is the oldest Halloween memory I still possess.

Because it is small town Alaska in the winter, our Halloween route is completed by motorized vehicle instead of foot, especially in a neighborhood where the houses are spaced at least one or two acres apart, if not more. Practically every kid celebrating the holiday used his parents in this way to collect their Halloween tribute as they wound around the gravel roads covered in snow and ice. The upside is that there is considerably less wear and tear on costumes when you only have to climb out of the car and back into it, instead of wandering about from house to house getting into all kinds of residual Halloween mischief with your friends. The downside is that you miss out on that residual Halloween mischief, which is why I always wished I grew up in a regular town with normal, paved streets.

I don't recall what Ben Nye-branded costumes we were wearing that year. The truth is that I don't remember any of my costumes when I was a kid, just that they were the kind you got in a box, had a plastic face mask of a cartoon or comic strip character, had a rubber-band stapled to the sides of the face mask to hold it on your head, and a flame-retardant outfit that was often more of a theme design featuring the character rather than the character's outfit itself. What I remember most solidly, however, is the moment that I discovered monster trading cards.

I was not yet the avid baseball card collector I would become. That would start up in two summers, though it would only be one more year before I watched the World Series with any interest (the A's versus the Dodgers in 1974) and actually became a baseball fan. And that was only after playing it miserably in Little League for the first time. I would also play it miserably the rest of the time. I am not a natural athlete. Or an athlete at all. 

When I got rolling with the hobby in the summer of 1975 (the year our local Proctors' store carried the 10-cent Topps baseball packs with the mini-cards, which are worth twice as much as the regular cards today, and I still have all of mine), it would stick with me until the mid-'90s. That was when I finally got fed up with the speculators and card shop owners that were ruining the hobby for me (part of my job at the time was as a wholesale seller of new trading cards to those same assholes), and I didn't really look at my sports cards again until a couple of months ago. But that is a story worth fleshing out at another time.

I never gave up on my monster cards, however. I also still remember the exact house we visited where Mark and I each received several packs of Topps Creature Feature Trading Cards. I don't recall who lived there (I think their daughter was a friend of mine, but I can't bring her to my mind), but I can even now get on GoogleMaps and point to precisely where their house was. They lived at the end of the same street as our babysitter, right in front of an empty lot that was used by us for years for pickup baseball games. And I also still recall being very nervous about knocking on their door, even though I had been there before. I did not like the dark of the Eagle River night in those days (with the only illumination coming from porch lights -- no street lights at all), and was always looking out for Bigfoot and werewolves in the woods that surrounded all of the houses in our neighborhood. (We weren't concerned at all about the actual bears that strolled through every now and then.)

I have a very clear memory that has never left me when I got in the car. I looked in my bag at one of the packs of cards, picked it up, and said "What are these?" In those days, like most little kids, I wanted candy. It was until I got home, when we went through our stash that I got a really good look at them. And I fell in instant love. (Didn't forget about the candy though...)

The Topps Creature Feature Trading Cards set from 1973 [see accompanying pictures] was comprised of cards with white front borders framing a black and white photo from mostly old Universal horror films (with some other studios like AIP, Hammer, Toho, etc. thrown into the mix). I did not know they were old Universal horror films at the time; I had not yet begun my deep dive into the studio's offerings. That was still a few years away. In some cases, these pictures were my first encounter with many of these monsters, such as the Mole People and the Metalluna Mutant from This Island Earth. I just knew that these were the coolest things I had in my possession at the time. These had monsters all over them, and they were mine, all mine! Mwah-hah-hah-hah!!

The purple and grey backs of the cards were another story altogether. The top of each back had the words "You'll Die Laughing" emblazoned on it; for years, because I threw away the wrapper (who knew to keep them in those days?), I thought "You'll Die Laughing" was the name of the card set (and so do many other people). The bottom two-thirds of each card was made up of text relating some of the most terrible jokes ever proffered on the card buying public. "Why is it useless to send letters to Washington?" "Because he's dead." You get the picture.

The jokes on the front of the cards weren't much better, but I am very fond of many of them. My friends and I took to appropriating many of the jokes and slogans in our own stupid games, often involving monsters, regardless of whether we understood them or not. My personal favorite were the ones that involved references to actual products used in the home, because it made things easier when riffing off of them. One of my faves is the one with Oliver Reed from Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf, playing the titular monster in a ragged shirt, and who just has to be odiferous, asking desperately while raising one seemingly sweaty, fur-laden arm, "Who took my Right Guard?"

There is a very odd thing about the set that I noticed even without having seen the films yet. It was a mystery to me for years until the internet age. In several of the cards, the faces of the non-monster characters, i.e. the humans, don't exactly match the bodies and clothes of the figures on which they appear. The rumor I have seen stated in several places, esp. on many card sites, is that Topps replaced the heads of the human characters with those of employees at the Topps Trading Card Company. I don't know the reason for this, except possibly Topps had the rights to only use the monster images but not the photos of the regular actors, or maybe it was just a fun prank on the part of the card company.

There are a few good examples of this within this article. If you compare the photo in card #8 featuring the 1925 Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney, the woman to his right looks nothing like Mary Philbin, the actress who played Christine Daaé in the movie. [See below...]

I am unsure, but I think the same woman appears in the card featuring a scene from Universal's The Mole People (1956) [card #2, the third one featured in this article]. So, the same woman in photos from films 31 years apart without losing her looks? Is she a vampire?

Even more lovingly egregious is the head that is several sizes too big for the woman's body in a card featuring Lon Chaney, Jr.'s famous Wolf Man. Just look at the size of her noggin!...

Or maybe his breath caused her head to puff up as he knocked her out with it?

It was all good, stupid fun; no more idiotic than the goony jokes my friends and I loved in MAD Magazine or Cracked. They were actually closer to the jokes in Cracked; even as kids, we knew the difference in quality. We also understood that MAD skewed just a bit older in its humor, which had tremendous appeal to us even when, once again, we may not have gotten much of what was being mocked. Within the year, I would see my first of the latter issues of the original run of Famous Monsters of Filmland, whose wise-cracking, pun-filled pages went hand in hand with the Topps Creature Feature cards, and would also allow me to learn more about the movies featured on the cards.

Following Halloween, I managed to find a few more packs of the cards at the store, and also supplemented my new collection via a series of small trades with my friends and brother. There was one more trick involved in maintaining my pile of Creature Feature cards: keeping it.

Over those early years, I recall a couple of times where some of my brother's cards needed to be rescued from the trash, and also a conversation between my parents about whether the cards were appropriate for me. There is nothing gory or bloody about the set. Aside from the outright monsters, which I was already considering to be friends rather than something to be feared, the most shocking thing to the tender-hearted would be some fairly gruesome posed skeletal remains. But even those are just there to tell goofy jokes. [See the "reducing pill" skeleton below.] There are a few girls in nightgowns, so that may have been a concern, though there is nothing featuring outrageous amounts of cleavage. It is a fairly tame set overall. If anything, there is a small amount of misogyny and political incorrectness in some of the jokes, but that would not have registered much in the mid-1970s.

Whatever the conversation between my parents, I won out and got to keep my cards. I never completed the 128-card set (there were two series, one with 62 cards, and the second with 66), and to this day, I still have exactly 70 monster cards from that Halloween season kept neatly in an individual notebook that resides by my desk alongside some of my movie guides (and not with the rest of my huge card collection). The cards are fairly easy and relatively cheap to get, so perhaps I will one day make an attempt to complete it. But I still have the ones that I first loved, and that is the most important part to me.

And finally, one of my favorite cards...

[All of the images of cards in this article were scanned from my personal collection. I will be posting images of numerous cards on Twitter and Facebook through the remainder of the Halloween season. Feel free to copy and use as you wish. Share in the silliness.]

Visiting and Revisiting: John Badham's Dracula (1979) Pt. 1

Welcome to the first edition of a new shared column by The Cinema 4 Pylon (Rik Tod Johnson) and Working Dead Productions (Aaron Lowe) called Visiting and Revisiting. 

The focus of this column, intended to be a semi-regular feature on both our sites, is to review films that one of us has already seen, possibly even multiple times, but the other has somehow put off watching over the years. Sometimes we get surprised when one or the other has not seen a fairly well known film, so we felt this was a good way to not only give the film either a fresh or updated viewing, but also to allow us to discuss the film at length afterwards.

Rik: The film we have at hand today is the 1979 version of Dracula, starring Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier, Kate Nelligan, and Donald Pleasence, and directed by John Badham. A little background is probably necessary before we begin. 

The 1977 Broadway version of Dracula with Langella was a revival of the original play adapted from Bram Stoker’s 1896 novel by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, and used most famously for the 1931 adaptation with Bela Lugosi. The sets were even designed by the wonderfully ghoulish artist, Edward Gorey. The show only received mixed reviews, but it was the very definition of a monster hit, and Langella would be nominated for a Tony Award as Lead Actor in a Play. Talk turned eventually to a film version, but Langella had misgivings, and would only do it if they promised to work by his own guidelines for the character. Once Langella was on board to play the Count again in a new Universal film version, the play was given a nearly complete rewrite by W.D. Richter (who would go on to write and direct The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, co-write Big Trouble in Little China, and direct Late for Dinner, three favorites of mine). The director, John Badham, was on fire in Hollywood at the time of this film, having previously directed the Oscar-nominated Saturday Night Fever. After Dracula, he would be best known for WarGames (1983), Blue Thunder (also 1983), Short Circuit (1986), and Stakeout (1987). On a side note, his younger sister, Mary, played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Aaron, you have never seen this film before. I generally assume you have seen most of the major horror films that have been released. Any solid reasons why this one slipped by you?

Aaron: There are probably a couple of major reasons I've never watched the 1979 version of Dracula before today. Despite a fairly serious high school Goth phase that included plenty of Anne Rice novels, I've never been a big vampire fan. I understand the appeal, and yet, I don't find them inherently interesting in the same way I enjoy other monsters. Sure, plenty of good-to-great vampire films exist, and the original Bram Stoker novel is quite enjoyable, but even my favorite vampire films don't enjoy the level of attention in my house as, say, some of the Frankenstein films, or the Invisible Man, or the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

I also had an image in my head of what this film would be like, probably inspired by a less-than-flattering VHS cover in the local video store. I had it in my head that Dracula would be a late ‘70s cheese-fest, full of chintzy sets, histrionic acting, and dated special effects. It turned out, happily, that I was wrong on all counts. Or nearly wrong on all counts, which we'll get to in a minute. Also, the film has a curious lack of reputation. It doesn’t seem to get mentioned a lot, and I never see it in any lists or discussions of vampires in film. The fact that I simply haven’t heard much about it, combined with how much I read about horror movies, led me to assume the film had been a forgettable flop. I was pleasantly surprised by the final results, and am more than a little annoyed I hadn’t sought the film out before now. But that seems to be a theme with this year’s Halloween viewing: seeking out and watching those big titles (or medium titles) that have somehow slipped under my radar.

You have a more extensive history with the film, Rik. Why don’t you tell us a bit of your background with it?

Rik: In early 1979, when I was 14 years old, my attention was caught in a rather significant way by a television advertisement for the upcoming feature film version of Dracula. In the ad, Dr. Van Helsing, played by Sir Laurence Olivier, holds up a Eucharist in order to keep the dread vampire at bay. Count Dracula, played by Frank Langella, hisses a single word, “Sacrilege!” before hightailing it away from Van Helsing.

This commercial played repeatedly over a couple of months, and I loved it. Any time it came on, as soon as Van Helsing would hold aloft his supposedly holy weapon of choice, I would shout, “Sacrilege!” with all the vigor of the man portraying the monster in the film. Then it went beyond the commercial. I do recall riding about with my mother and brothers one afternoon, and when my mom held up a finger to flip me off for saying something in that way that I do, I yelled “Sacrilege!” once more. Her reaction was to ask me, “Do you even know what that word means? Maybe you should know before you run around shouting it.” I did know what the word meant, but she stopped me dead with her response, and I remember it shut me up for a brief time.

I was, at that age, in the throes of a burgeoning interest in horror films, and especially in the Hammer films I was seeing late night on a local show called The World’s Most Terrible Movies. Just a couple of months earlier, my mother had taken me to see George Hamilton as a disco-dancing Dracula in Love at First Bite, which was a huge comedy hit at the time. But this new Dracula was rated “R” and we had not quite moved from Eagle River to Anchorage, where the movie theatres were. To see a film required special effort and a drive 15-odd miles away. Film viewing usually occurred in conjunction with a weekend’s outing for shopping that went beyond supermarket necessities, or when we spent alternate weekends with our father who had moved to Anchorage. Unfortunately, talking him into an R-rated film was impossible unless it had Clint Eastwood in it. Thus, alas, I did not get to see John Badham’s version of Dracula in a theatre in 1979. It would not be until the film came out on VHS that I would get my chance. And I have seen it several times over the years since.

So, Aaron, what were your impressions of this version of Dracula upon watching it?

Aaron: The Dracula story is so ingrained into popular myth that just about everyone could recount the basics of the tale, which is one of the reasons this film is such a surprise. My knowledge of the stage versions of Dracula is almost nonexistent, so I wasn’t able to spot what came from the stage and what was altered. But in this film version, it almost feels like the screenwriters are remixing Bram Stoker more than they are adapting him, taking the familiar elements and shifting them around to tell their own version of the story.

The film completely drops Jonathan Harker’s ill-fated trip to Castle Dracula, opening as Dracula is already en route to London on board the Demeter. Although most of the basics of the story still remain, many of them appear in slightly different configurations. Lucy and Mina seem to have switched names, so that Lucy is Jonathan's beloved, and Mina becomes Dracula's first proper victim, with the added wrinkle that she is now Abraham Van Helsing's daughter. Dr. Jack Seward, instead of being one of Lucy’s multiple suitors, is actually Lucy's father in the film. Quincy and Arthur are nowhere to be seen in this version, but I think they’re usually left out of the screen versions anyway. I'm assuming that many of these alterations are imported from the stage version of Dracula. Either way, it provides for a nice streamlining of events, in order to confine the novel’s multiple perspectives into one singular, linear story.

Rik: In the play, the characters of Mina and Lucy are combined as “Lucy Seward”. There is no Mina. I guess they resurrected her from the dead for the film, and, as you pointed out, switched her part with Lucy. 

What do you think of Langella’s choices for the character, such as no blood on his mouth, not fangs, etc?

Aaron: I think those were absolutely the right choices, and I’m glad he insisted on them. They not only add to the character’s elegance and believability as a menace, they serve to highlight the differences between him and the other few vampires we see in the film. The other, lesser vampires are sickly looking, rotted, with pallid complexions and pitch black eyes. They look marvelous, as ghouls, but also pathetic in a way. Had Langella put in black contacts or a pair of fangs, it would have turned his Dracula from a believable member of ancient aristocracy into a cheap Halloween costume.

Rik: However, if you and I showed up for a Halloween party dressed exactly as Langella’s Count, sans fangs and blood, it would look precisely like the cheapest Halloween costume imaginable.

While I do greatly enjoy the lush romanticism of the film, what I especially love is just how dark Dracula is, not only in the mood and atmosphere, but also in its physicality. The edges of the screen loom around your eyes while you watch it. You know five minutes in that this is not going to be an easy ride and there will be little in the way of comic relief.

My sense of the film to this day is that despite the violence of the storm in which Dracula lands in England, and despite the deaths of the crew that brings him there, that the Count rather improves the place (briefly) with his arrival, simply by his elegance. We are made to believe that the older continent from which he comes and the modern (as in the 1890s), civilized world appear to be equally decrepit. The civilized world is almost entirely showcased within the confines of an insane asylum, and we hear the screams of its manic inhabitants throughout the film, as even greater chaos erupts. Whatever pretense of civilization that exists in the living quarters of Dr. Seward and his family is merely a very thin veneer, and Dracula’s appearance punctures that fabric.

Langella’s Count is the ultimate smooth operator, speaking lowly in a seductive, measured purr and staring deeply but with a hint of softness into women’s eyes. You believe quite easily that he can seduce anyone even without supernatural aid, though that is surely a factor. However, it is lucky for humanity that the males in his presence aren’t buying it, otherwise the film would just be a bloody romance.

[To read Part 2 of Visiting and Revisiting: John Badham's Dracula (1979), click here.]