Word: undead
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...reason Dracula remains forever undead is that no amount of cinematic miscalculation can entirely loosen his grip on our imaginations. Now he has proved that even an excess of good taste cannot entirely ground him. Not permitted to parody romantic menace as he was able to do on the stage, Langella shows himself capable of playing it straight and slightly melancholic. Kate Nelligan, as Lucy, the young woman who enthralls him and is herself enthralled, is superbly spirited. In the film's early scenes, she plays the part as a liberated lady, turn-of-the-century variety. Once Dracula...
Count Dracula has always been something of a romantic. Given his undead state and his all too literal bloodthirstiness, his problem has ever been to find a socially (not to say legally) acceptable way of expressing his sweeter side. It is the funny premise of this movie that it required the intervention of the U.S. (circa 1970-79) to make the count begin to look good, despite his obvious kinks, to a lady...
...modern inability to make a genuine commitment. He, it turns out, is a descendant of Dr. Van Helsing, Dracula's old nemesis from the book, play and sequels. The analyst perceives his beloved's peril (three bites from the count and you go over to the undead). But since the setting is New York now, he has some difficulty persuading anyone to care about one well-mannered vampire, whose depredations seem mild compared with all the other forms of urban chaos. In point of fact, the count's passion for Cindy is obviously good for her, just...
EVERYONE KNOWS the story of Dracula: an "undead" creature refuses to lie still in the grave, sustaining himself, between sunset and sunrise, on the blood of innocent mortals. This Anti-Christ dooms his victims to flock in his unearthly host forever; they become "flesh of his flesh." Only herbs or holy objects can ward him off, and only a stake through his heart can end his lecherous career. The story is terrifically titillating: all that sacrilege and perverse sexuality to relish...
Meanwhile, back at the castle, werewolves and vampires had taken over. In 1897, a London theatrical manager named Bram Stoker published a book called Dracula. It became the most popular story of the supernatural ever written. Uninformed about vampires, Stoker baldly invented his own lore of the undead-how a vampire changes at will into a wolf or a bat, cringes in terror at the sight of a Christian cross, and lives forever unless a wooden stake is driven through its heart...