Dracula Gets Killed A Lot, But Never the Right Way    Part One

As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.

But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart.

It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.

I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.   

–Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Final chapter. 

This is the death of Dracula, from Bram Stoker’s novel.   Every time I read this passage, I’m affected by the fury, wonder and, ultimately, the peace these few words give, and so compact is the imagery that it takes moments to look at and hours to consider.   The book is a classic penny-dreadful. 

No movie has ever filmed this ending as written, and I can’t imagine why.  

The PBS Dracula with Louis Jourdan came close with a sunset confrontation (although it was Van Helsing using a stake, no knives, and there was no shot of the vampire after death), but no one has ever filmed Dracula’s end as the author intended.  It’s as if somebody made numerous movies of Moby Dick, and in one the whale rolls belly-up, in one he is beached and in one he winds up in a tank with Shamu, fighting for females. 

Consider the most famous version still, the Bela Lugosi 1931 version.   For its climax in Carfax Abbey, Jonathan Harker (David Manners, God help us) and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan, scowling and ever-lastingly brusque) find Dracula’s casket (Quincey Morris never appears in the film).   Harker runs to find and comfort Mina, and Dracula dies like this:

The sound of a casket being opened (offscreen). 

The sound of a stake being hit (into wood, not flesh) (offscreen).

A groan. 

Aaaaaaand that’s it. 

It practically defines the word “anti-climax,” but producer Carl Laemmle Jr. may have been nervous; this tame, nearly music-bare, stagebound movie is actually on the list of the Forbidden (see *Dawn Sova’s marvelous work Forbidden Films for a splendid article on it), having been condemned by the PTA, the DAR and even the father of the studio head!   Sr. told Jr. he shouldn’t release a picture with an offscreen groan for a death.  Talk about father issues.  

Fast forward to l958: Christopher Lee as Dracula pops up in Hammer Films joyau de l’cinema gothique, and boy, is that picture a doozy.   Mood, atmosphere, classy actors, ravishing color, fonts of blood and a magnificent dissolution at the end, all in 82 minutes (the length of a Universal horror film; sadly, Hammer would never be this compact again). 

 

A very different ending here—Jonathan Harker is long dead (still no Quincey Morris anywhere), and only Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, ubiquitous and eternal) is left to pursue the vampire into Castle Dracula in a furious race through the castle halls (a neat sound effect—Dracula’s footfalls make no noise).  The two confront each other in the library, there’s a great near-strangulation and then Van Helsing makes a Douglas Fairbanks run to the curtains and pulls them down. 

Dracula, caught in the sunlight, howls as his foot disintegrates; Van Helsing seizes two candlesticks as a makeshift crucifix and pushes the vampire into the rays.   The monster mutates into a dusty skeleton and, gurgling grotesquely, dies, his chest literally collapsing. 

This was all the special effects handiwork of Syd Pearson and Les Bowie, who rigged an extraordinarily effective dummy skeleton for the final shots.  Most everyone knows as well about the ongoing controversy about an incomplete Japanese print discovered with extra footage, including Lee peeling his face off—!!—before his reduction to ashes; Hammer apparently made a separate version, considerably more bloodthirsty, for Japan.  It is still lost, although supposedly unprojectable segments of the disintegration scene exist. 

It's all fast, furious, muscular and a great use of inexpensive effects.  The entire sequence is still remarkable, over 50 years later.  And it still was not faithful to the ending of Stoker’s novel (published May 26, Peter Cushing’s birthday). 

This version is a lot more forgivable than the Lugosi one, what with all the blood and thunder they added, and Lee is the most physical vampire ever seen up to that time. 

And he was sexy, without even trying, with a cold, aristocratic mien that treated the women in his life (vampires or no) with utter contempt.   Damned if they didn’t want him even more. 

But they never once got his death scene right.

Next time, we’ll look at the finale from the bloodiest and in some ways least fortunate of any version of Dracula—Francis Ford Coppola’s.  Coppola really didn’t get it right. 

READ THIS: 

*Sova, Dawn B.  Forbidden Films.  New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. 

SEE THIS:  Chris Lee’s sun-transfixed death:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBRe2XMljg