Happy Birthday Mr. Stoker (2009)

Happy Birthday Mr. Stoker.

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847–20 April 1912) was
an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his
1897 Gothic novel Dracula.



Fonts: Wikipedia

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

Dracula's Daughter is a 1936 vampire horror film produced
by Universal Studios, a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula.



Directed by Lambert Hillyer from a screenplay by Garrett Fort,
the film stars Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill
and, as the only cast member to return from the original,
Edward Van Sloan. Dracula's Daughter tells the story of
Countess Marya Zaleska, the daughter of Count Dracula and
herself a vampire. Following Dracula's death, she believes
that by destroying his body she will be free of his influence
and can live as a human. When this fails, she turns to
psychiatry and Dr. Jeffrey Garth. When his efforts fail, she
kidnaps Janet, the woman Jeffrey loves, and flees with her to
Transylvania in an attempt to bind Jeffrey to her. She is foiled
and destroyed when her jealous manservant shoots her with
an arrow.



Ostensibly based on a short story titled "Dracula's Guest" by
Bram Stoker, the film bears little or no resemblance to the
original source material. David O. Selznick initially purchased
the rights to the story for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Selznick,
probably knowing he could not legally make the film because
of Universal's copyright on the original film, sold the rights to
Universal. After first assigning the picture to James Whale,
Universal production head Carl Laemmle, Jr. finally put Hillyer
in the director's chair.



Upon its release, Dracula's Daughter was not as successful as
the original, although it was generally well-reviewed. In the
intervening decades, criticism has been deeply divided.
Modern critics and scholars have noted the strong lesbian
overtones of the film, overtones that Universal acknowledged
from the start of filming and which they exploited in some
early advertising.



>>Plot:

Dracula's Daughter begins a few moments after Dracula ends.
Count Dracula has just been destroyed by Professor Von Helsing
(Edward Van Sloan). Von Helsing is taken by police to Scotland
Yard, where he explains that he indeed did destroy Count
Dracula, but because he had already been dead for over 500 years,
it cannot be considered murder. Instead of hiring a lawyer, he
enlists the aid of a psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger),
who was once one of his star students. Meanwhile, Dracula's
daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), with the aid
of her manservant, Sandor (Irving Pichel), steals Dracula’s body
from Scotland Yard and ritualistically burns it, hoping to break her
curse of vampirism. However, Sandor soon makes her realize that
her thirst for blood has not been quenched and that all that is in
her eyes is "Death". The Countess resumes her hunting,
mesmerizing her victims with her exotic jeweled ring. After a
chance meeting with Dr. Garth at a society party, the Countess
asks him to help her overcome the influence she feels from
beyond the grave. The doctor advises her to defeat her cravings
by confronting them and the Countess becomes hopeful that her
will plus Dr. Garth's science will be strong enough to overcome
Dracula's malevolence.



The Countess sends Sandor to fetch her a model to paint; he
returns with Lili (Nan Grey). Countess Zaleska initially resists her
urges but succumbs and attacks Lili. Although the girl survives
the attack, when Dr. Garth tries to hypnotize her to learn what
happened, she suffers heart failure and dies. As the Countess
comes to accept that a cure is not possible — and the doctor
discovers the truth about her condition — she lures him to
Transylvania by kidnapping Janet (Marguerite Churchill), the
woman he loves. She intends to transform him into a vampire to
be her eternal companion; Dr. Garth agrees to exchange his life
for Janet's. Before he can be transformed, Countess Zaleska is
destroyed when Sandor shoots her through the heart with an
arrow as revenge for her breaking her promise to make him
immortal. He takes aim at Dr. Garth but is shot dead by a
policeman.



>>Cast:

-Otto Kruger as Dr. Jeffrey Garth
-Gloria Holden as Countess Marya Zaleska - Dracula's Daughter
-Marguerite Churchill as Janet
-Edward Van Sloan as Professor Von Helsing
-Gilbert Emery as Sir Basil Humphrey, Scotland Yard
-Irving Pichel as Sandor
-Halliwell Hobbes as Hawkins
-Billy Bevan as Albert
-Nan Grey as Lili
-Hedda Hopper as Lady Esme Hammond
-Claud Allister as Sir Aubrey
-Edgar Norton as Hobbs
-E. E. Clive as Sergeant Wilkes



>>Production:

Universal originally did not hold the rights to "Dracula's Guest",
a chapter supposedly excised from Bram Stoker's original novel
and the purported source material for the film. The story includes
an encounter between a man (presumed by some to be Jonathan
Harker although the character is not identified as such) and a
female vampire. The story does not establish a filial relationship
between the female vampire and Dracula. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
executive David O. Selznick negotiated a contract in 1933 with
Stoker's widow, Florence, to buy the rights to the chapter for an
advance of $500 against a purchase price of $5,000. M-G-M's
lawyers and executives were worried about the use of the word
"Dracula" in the film's title, fearing that Universal would take legal
action, although Selzick's contract with Stoker explicitly listed
"Dracula's Daughter" as a possible alternate title. The project was
code-named "Tarantula" in correspondence.



Selznick hired John L. Balderston, who had previously worked on
the 1931 Dracula and Frankenstein, to write the screenplay.
Balderston's screenplay involved tying up loose ends from the
original film. In it, Von Helsing returns to Transylvania to destroy
the three vampire brides seen in Dracula but overlooks a fourth
tomb concealing Dracula's daughter. She follows him back to
London and operates under the name "Countess Szekelsky".



She attacks a young aristocrat and Von Helsing and the aristocrat's
fiancée track her back to Transylvania and destroy her. The script
included scenes that implied that Dracula's daughter enjoyed
torturing her male victims and that while under her control the men
liked it too. Also included were shots of the Countess's chambers
being stocked with whips and straps, which she would never use
on-screen but whose uses the audience could imagine. Regardless
of any objections that the Production Code Administration (PCA)
would have raised to many aspects of the scenario, Balderston's
script could never have been filmed because Selznick's contract
with Stoker expressly barred him from using any Bram Stoker
characters that did not appear in "Dracula's Guest".



Selznick re-sold the rights to "Dracula's Guest" to Universal in
September 1935 for $12,500, which included the rights to
Balderston's scenario. Horror film scholar David J. Skal theorizes
that this was Selznick's actual motivation in buying the rights in
the first place, to profit from Universal's desire for a sequel by
tying up the only obvious source material.

>>Director:


Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Universal studio head Carl Laemmle, Jr. (nicknamed "Junior")
wanted James Whale, fresh from his great success with Bride
of Frankenstein, to direct Dracula's Daughter. Whale was idle,
waiting for Irene Dunne to finish work on Magnificent
Obsession so she could begin work on Whale's Show Boat.
Wary of directing two horror films in a row, Whale instead
convinced Laemmle to buy the rights to a mystery novel called
The Hangover Murders. Laemmle agreed only after extracting a
promise from Whale that he would direct Dracula's Daughter
next.


James Whale

Whale completed work on the film, titled Remember Last Night? for
release, on September 14, 1935. Magnificent Obsession completed
filming on October 29. With Dunne freed up, Whale went to work on
Show Boat. Laemmle replaced him with A. Edward Sutherland, who
was best known for his work on comedies. Sutherland had as little
interest in Dracula's Daughter as Whale and soon left the studio,
and Hillyer came on to direct.

>>Reception and influence:

The New York Times gave Dracula's Daughter a solid, albeit
somewhat tongue-in-cheek, review upon its release, citing the
film's "blood-curdling events" and noting that "Gloria Holden is a
remarkably convincing bat-woman" in concluding that the film is
both "quite terrifying" and "a cute little horror picture." Variety also
praised the production and Holden's performance in particular.
Despite critical approval, Dracula's Daughter was unable to
duplicate the box office success of the original.



Recent reviews of Dracula's Daughter are sharply split.
Entertainment Weekly, reviewing the film following its video
release, called it "one of the most satisfying vampire pictures
ever made". Describing director Hillyer's visuals as "lush,
evocative, and suffused with just the right gothic chiaroscuro"
and noting that "Gloria Holden, as the reluctant vampire
protagonist, absolutely drips patrician eroticism", EW
concludes that this film is better than Lugosi's original
Dracula.



Ryan Cracknell of Apollo Movie Guide, while echoing the praise
for Holden's performance, nonetheless found that the film
"doesn't hold up so well today". Citing what he sees as slow
pacing and "long bouts of over-the-top dialogue", Cracknell
compares the film to "reading a textbook – not the most exciting
thing in the world, but it does provide insights into and
perspectives on the foundation of early horror movies and how
many similarities carry over into movies half a century and more
later." Michael W. Phillips, Jr. concurs, calling the film "a marked
improvement on the original film [but] still a bit of a snooze,
relying too much on forced comedy and not enough on suspense
or fright."Phillips again praises Holden's performance and also
Pichel's portrayal of Sandor, but finds the rest of the cast weak.



Horror author Anne Rice has named Dracula's Daughter as a direct
inspiration for her own homoerotic vampire fiction. She named a bar
in her novel Queen of the Damned "Dracula's Daughter" in honor of
the film. Author Ramsey Campbell, under the pseudonym "Carl
Dreadstone", wrote a novelization of the film also entitled Dracula's
Daughter that was published in 1977. A juvenile fiction version,
written by Carl R. Green, William R. Sanford and Howard Schroeder,
was published in 1985. Some observers have suggested that the film
served as an inspiration for Sunset Blvd., noting similarities between
the outlines of each film. Michael Almereyda's 1994 film Nadja has
been described as an "unofficial remake" of Dracula's Daughter.

>>Lesbian implications:

The lesbian vampire has been a trope in literature dating back
to Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's 1872 novella "Carmilla". Dracula's
Daughter, however, marked the first time that the trope was
incorporated into a film. The lesbian implications of Dracula's
Daughter were obvious from the start and were of great concern
to the Production Code Administration. PCA head Breen took
special notice of the scene between the Countess and her model,
Lili, writing, "This will need very careful handling to avoid any
questionable flavor." The day before the scene was to be shot,
Universal's Harry Zehner asked Breen to read a draft of
the scene. In response, Breen wrote:

"The present suggestion that...Lili poses in the nude will be
changed. She will be posing her neck and shoulders, and there
will be no suggestion that she undresses, and there will be no
exposure of her person. It was also stated that the present
incomplete sequence will be followed by a scene in which Lili
is taken to a hospital and there it will be definitely established
that she has been attacked by a vampire.


"Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!"
Countess Zaleska seduces Lili.

The whole sequence will be treated in such a way as to avoid
any suggestion of perverse sexual desire on the part of Marya
or of an attempted sexual attack by her upon Lili."

Gay film historian Vito Russo noted in his book The Celluloid
Closet that Universal highlighted Countess Zaleska's attraction
to women in some of its original advertising for the film, using
the tag line "Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!"
He further cited Countess Zaleska as an example of the
presentation of the "essence of homosexuality as a predatory
weakness". Some reviewers of the day picked up on and
condemned the lesbian content, including the New York World-
Telegram which noted the Countess's tendency to wander around
"giving the eye to sweet young girls".

Other reviews missed it entirely, including the aforementioned
New York Times which advised "Be sure to bring the kiddies."
Entertainment Weekly describes the encounter between the
Countess and Lili as "so hot it's impossible to imagine how it
ever got past '30s censors" whereas Time Out London finds
only a "subtle suggestion" of lesbianism. Horror scholar Skal
notes that the scene has come to be seen as a "classic 'lesbian'
sequence, although of a decidedly negative stripe". The scene
between Countess Zaleska and Lili was included in the 1995
documentary film adaptation of Russo's book.

Another lesbian-tinged scene which has received less critical
attention comes when the Countess is holding Janet captive.
Described as "the longest kiss never filmed", Countess Zaleska
"hovers lovingly over Janet...hovers...and hovers...slowly
descending to kiss the recumbent Janet..." until interrupted
by the arrival of Dr. Garth.



Bright Lights Film Journal, after noting that "Gloria Holden in the
title role almost singlehandedly redefined the '20s movie vamp as
an impressive Euro-butch dyke bloodsucker", draws an implicit
comparison between Countess Zaleska's seeking to cure her
vampirism through psychiatry and the former position of
mainstream psychiatry of homosexuality as a mental illness
(a view still held by a minority in the profession).

Zaleska's cruising the streets of London is seen as parallel to
cruising for sex (although that tends to be a gay male activity)
and as suggesting "society's image of the lesbian as soulless
predator" but the conclusion is that "Holden's striking, masklike
face and haunting, luminous eyes [are] the intoxicating essence
of transgressive lesbian power."

Fonts: Wikipedia

Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons

OVER ONE THOUSAND CARTOONS SPANNING
50 YEARS OF A LEGENDARY CAREER.

Fifty-one, to be exact, but let’s not quibble. Gahan Wilson
is among the most popular, widely-read, and beloved
cartoonists in the history of the medium, whose career spans
the 2nd half of the 20th century, and all of the 21st. His work
has been seen by millions —no, hundreds of millions— in the
pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National
Lampoon, and many other magazines; there is no telling, really,
how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is
revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood,
men, women, and monsters. His brand of humor makes you
laugh until you cry. And it’s about time that a collection of his
cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.

When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefner’s office in 1957, he
sat down as Hefner was on the phone, gently rejecting a
submission to his new gentlemen’s magazine: “I think it’s very
well-written and I liked it very much,” Hefner reportedly said,
“but it’s anti-sin. And I’m afraid we’re pro-sin.” Wilson knew,
at that moment, that he had found a kin- dred spirit and a
potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson
appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957
issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful, successful,
and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a
magazine, ever.



Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only
every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy, but all his prose fiction
that has appeared in that magazine as well, from his first story
in the June, 1962 issue, “Horror Trio,” to such classics as
“Dracula Country” (September 1978). It also includes the text-
and-art features he drew for Playboy, such as his look at Madame
Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his take on our country’s “pathology of
violence,” and his appreciation of “transplant surgery.”

Wilson’s notoriously black sense of comedy is on display
throughout the book, leaving no sacred cow unturned (an
image curiously absent in the book), ridiculing everything
from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of
the nouveau rich, from teenage dating to police line-ups,
with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is
known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life,
this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth
of his range — from illustrating private angst we never knew we
had (when you eat a steak, just whom are you eating?) to the
ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological
disaster, nuclear destruction anyone?).

Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of
modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerv- ing
cartoons, assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies.
This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniest —
and wickedly disturbing — cartoonists alive.



Gahan Wilson (born February 18, 1930) is an author, cartoonist,
and illustrator in the United States. His cartoons and illustrations
are drawn in a playfully grotesque style and have a dark humor
reminiscent of Charles Addams.

He was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1930. His cartoons and
prose-fiction work has appeared regularly in Playboy, Collier's
Weekly, The New Yorker and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction. For the last he also wrote some movie and book reviews.
He has been a book-review columnist for The Twilight Zone
Magazine and Realms of Fantasy magazine.

His comic strip Nuts, which appeared in National Lampoon, was a
reaction against the saccharine view of childhood in strips like
Peanuts. His hero The Kid sees the world as a dark, dangerous
and unfair place, but just occasionally a fun one too.

Wilson also wrote and illustrated a short story for Harlan Ellison's
anthology Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). The "title" is a black
blob, and the story is about an ominous black blob that appears
on the page, growing at an alarming rate, until...

Fonts:
Gahan Wilson
Fantagraphics
Wikipedia

Horror of Dracula (1958)

Dracula is a 1958 British horror film, and the first of a
series of Hammer Horror films inspired by the Bram
Stoker novel Dracula. It was directed by Terence Fisher,
and stars Peter Cushing, John Van Eyssen and Christopher
Lee. In the United States, the film was retitled Horror of
Dracula to avoid confusion with the Tod Browning-directed
Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi.



Production began at Bray Studios on the 17 November 1957
with an investment of £81,000.



>>Plot:

Jonathan Harker arrives at the castle of Count Dracula near
Klausenberg, posing as a librarian. He is startled inside the
castle by a young woman begging for help, claiming to be a
prisoner. Dracula then greets Harker and guides him to his
room, where he locks him in. Jonathan starts to write in his
diary, and his true intentions are revealed: he has come to
kill Dracula.



Freed sometime later, Harker again is confronted by the
desperate woman. She begs him for help but then bites his
neck. Just as she does, Dracula arrives and yanks her away.
When he awakens in daylight, Harker finds the bite mark.



He hides his journal in a Virgin Mary grotto outside the
castle and descends into the crypts, where he finds Dracula
and the unnamed woman in their coffins. Armed with a stake,
he impales the woman. But when he turns to kill Dracula, the
count has already awakened and is waiting for him.



Dr. Van Helsing then arrives in Klausenberg, looking for Harker.
The frightened townsfolk give him Harker's journal. When he
arrives at the castle, it is deserted; a hearse carriage speeds by
with a coffin in it. In the crypt, Van Helsing is horrified to
discover Harker lying in a coffin as a vampire. Staking Harker,
he leaves to deliver the veiled news of Harker's death in person
to a wary Arthur Holmwood and his wife Mina, brother and
sister-in-law of Harker's fiancée Lucy Holmwood. Lucy is ill,
so the news is kept from her. But, when night falls, Lucy opens
the doors to her terrace and lays bare her neck — already, it
bares the mark of a vampire bite. And soon Dracula arrives
and bites her again.



Mina seeks out Van Helsing's aid in treating Lucy's worsened
health, but Lucy defeats his anti-vampire prescription, and
Lucy dies. Van Helsing turns over Harker's journal and reveals
the truth. Vampire Lucy lures away a young niece, but the girl
is saved by Van Helsing and Arthur. Arthur refuses to use Lucy
as a means to find Dracula, so Van Helsing stakes Lucy in her
coffin.



Van Helsing and Arthur travel to the customs house in Ingstadt
to track down the destination of Dracula's coffin (which Van
Helsing saw carried away when he arrived at Dracula's castle).



Meanwhile, Mina is called away from home by a message telling
her to meet Arthur at an address in Karlstadt — the same
address Arthur and Van Helsing are told the coffin was bound
for — and Dracula is indeed waiting for her.



The next morning, Arthur and Van Helsing find Mina in a strange
state. They leave for the address they were given, an undertaker's,
but find the coffin missing. When the decide to set off again,
Arthur tries to give Mina a cross to wear, but it burns her.



During the night, Van Helsing and Arthur guard Mina's windows
outside against a return of Dracula, but Dracula nonetheless
appears inside the house and bites her. A remark by the maid
leads Van Helsing to the coffin's location: the cellar of the
Holmwoods' own house. But Dracula is not in the coffin and
instead escapes into the night with Mina.



A chase then begins as Dracula rushes to return to his castle
near Klausenberg before sunrise. He attempts to bury Mina
alive outside the crypts but is caught by Van Helsing and Arthur.



Inside the castle, Van Helsing and Dracula struggle. Van Helsing
tears open the curtain to let in the sunlight and, forming a cross
of candlesticks, he forces Dracula into it. Dracula crumbles into
dust as Van Helsing watches in horror. Mina recovers, the
cross-shaped scar fading from her hand as Dracula's ashes
blow away and leave only a ring behind.



>>Cast:

-Peter Cushing-Doctor Van Helsing
-Christopher Lee-Count Dracula
-Michael Gough-Arthur
-Melissa Stribling-Mina
-Carol Marsh-Lucy
-Olga Dickie-Gerda
-John Van Eyssen-Jonathan
-Valerie Gaunt-Vampire Woman
-Janina Faye-Tania (as Janine Faye)
-Barbara Archer-Inga
-Charles Lloyd Pack-Doctor Seward
-George Merritt-Policeman
-George Woodbridge-Landlord
-George Benson-Official
-Miles Malleson-Undertaker









>>Production:

*Screenplay and its Differences from the Novel:

This film adaptation made several deviations from the original
novel and 1931 film, and drew inspiration from the stageplay.

The location of the Count's castle at Klausenburg is only a short
distance (and customs checkpoint) from the city inhabited by the
Holmwood family, which appears to be in Germany. The sea
voyage from Transylvania to England does not appear in the film
and consequently Dracula never takes up residence in his English
home, Carfax Abbey neighboring an insane asylum.



Jonathan Harker is a librarian and vampire hunter, having come to
Dracula's castle to destroy him, rather than an unwitting solicitor.
He also becomes a vampire and is dispatched by his friend Van
Helsing.

-Mina is Arthur Holmwood's wife, while Lucy is his sister and
Jonathan's fiancée.

-The characters of R. M. Renfield and Quincey Morris are omitted.

-Doctor John Seward only appears twice, in two brief scenes as the
family doctor, and is completely unaware of the supernatural
goings-on.

-Count Dracula has only one Bride (there are three in the novel), and
she is destroyed by Jonathan Harker, not Van Helsing. She ages upon
her true "death".

-Only one coffin is transported to the city.

-Count Dracula does not grow younger, nor can he shapeshift.

-The Count has not mastered the art of magic.

-Count Dracula is destroyed by sunlight, whereas his powers are
merely limited by daylight in the novel.



*Special effects:

The filming of Dracula's destruction included a shot in which Dracula
appears to peel away his decaying skin. This was accomplished by
putting a layer of red makeup on Christopher Lee's face, and then
covering his entire face with a thin coating of mortician's wax, which
was then made up to conform to his normal skin tone. When he raked
his fingers across the wax, it revealed the "raw" marks underneath.



Still photos of this startling shot exist, but it was cut out of the
disintegration sequence in the film.