HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Thanks for showing up for the fun. I couldn’t think of any great grand finale so instead I’m copping out a bit and reposting all of this month’s shares in one list for your browsing convenience.

• Anything Can Happen on Halloween: The Gill Man’s Halloween Party Mix Vol.1
• Screamin’ & Dyin’: The Gill Man’s Halloween Party Mix Vol.2
• Disney’s Chilling Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House
• Disney’s Haunted Mansion Audio Files
• Disney’s Haunted Mansion Video Files
• Marvel & Power Records Presents Dracula: “Terror in the Snow”
• Edgar Allan Poe Readings by Karloff, Vincent Price, and More
• Monster Shindig with Super Snooper & Blabber Mouse
• Orson Wells’ Mercury Theater Radio Performances of “War of the Worlds” and “Dracula”
• General Mills’ Monster Cereals Music and Stories with Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry
• Famous Monsters Speak with Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster
• Power Records’ A Story of Dracula, The Wolfman & Frankenstein (this link is fixed)
• Spooky Shortwave “Number Stations” Recordings
• Boris Karloff Collection with “Tales of the Frightened” and “An Evening with Boris Karloff and His Friends”

It turns out I saved these Boris Karloff shares for the best day possible. If you’re happening upon this post on the day it’s posted, you may want to step away from your computer for a moment and set your DVR to pick up Turner Classic Movie’s entire line-up today: All Karloff, all day long! …and not the titles you’ve seen countless times.

Here are some great shares that seem to pop up every Halloween. If you haven’t discovered them before, take advantage of this opportunity. Included in the zip file you’ll find two complete LPs-worth of Karloff spinning Twilight Zone-style yarns of suspense — the made-for-kids Tales of the Frightened volumes 1 and 2. Additionally, I’ve included An Evening with Boris Karloff and His Friends which features Karloff describing, discussing, and introducing clips from Universal’s most popular golden-age horror movies.

I can’t take credit for ripping these titles (so, credit where it’s due) but that shouldn’t stop you from getting your hands on them.

DOWNLOAD THE BLOG LAGOON’S BORIS KARLOFF COLLECTION (MEGAUPLOAD)

You do NOT want to make fun of the kids on THIS short bus.

TRICK ‘R TREAT (2007) Reviewed
In some ways, Trick ‘r Treat is the Halloween movie I’ve always hoped for. You might have noticed that with the exception of the obvious John Carpenter classic, the holiday doesn’t get as much play as one might expect in horror movies. I can only think of a handful of horror flicks that make Halloween their narrative centerpiece. (Incidentally, you’ll not want to confuse Trick ‘r Treat with the silly “metal”-themed horror flick Trick or Treat.) And of the movies that do play with Halloween, so few of them do much to capture the actual FEEL of the holiday. (This, to me, was one of the biggest downfalls of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake–it felt like it could be happening on any night of the year.)

Trick ‘r Treat DOES tap into everything that makes Halloween great, from seasonal tradition, to scary costumes, to urban legends. Its four anthology-style, darkly-comic horror stories easily find that beautiful elusive balance between good scares and sharp wit. Though it’s doubtful there’s much in TrT to give you nightmares, the “horror” element remains intact with fresh-feeling takes on traditional Halloween iconography. Witches, werewolves, serial killers, zombies, demons and vampires are all woven into the interconnected stories and not one of them leaves you with a “been there, done that” aftertaste.

The individual plot threads hinge on Twilight-Zone-style surprise twists, which prevents me from revealing too much in the way of story details. SO briefly: One tale, features Dylan Baker as a sinister science teacher who has strong feelings about upholding Halloween’s traditions and is up to no good at all on this particular night. Another tale (my favorite), revolves around a group of suburban trick or treaters who spend Halloween night learning the truth about a local urban legend referred to as “The Halloween School Bus Massacre.” Anna Paquin stars in the third story, as a virginal Red Riding Hood with a big surprise for any would-be wolves. The fourth and final story revolves around Trick ‘r Treat’s poster boy, Sam, who appeared here in an earlier October post. The less I reveal about Sam, the better.

I’ve read TrT referred to as feeling a little like Pulp Fiction crossed with Creepshow –and it’s not an easy comparison to dismiss. It has a lot in common with Creepshow, particularly its tone, gross-out gags and sense of humor. Like PF, the separate tales do cross paths with one another several times, and writer/director Michael Dougherty seems to have lots of fun by jerking us back and forth across the narrative timeline. It all works pretty seamlessly, and makes repeat viewings rewarding. 

TrT is one of those rare movies that makes me wonder “how could anyone NOT like this?” After Warner Brothers yanked its plans for a theatrical release (tragedy, really), it’s been quick to win a gushing cult following with people like me on board to sing its praises to anyone who stands still long enough to listen. Forget Paranormal Activity as the official Halloween movie of 2009. This is the movie you SHOULD be buzzing about…and watching TONIGHT!
*** 1/2

Watch the trailer now: (Don’t worry — it doesn’t give too much away.)

Speaking of Creepshow, you can watch it on YouTube:

The "little ghost boy" photo from "The Amityville Horror." (Note the face peeking through the door at the far left.)

One more day of true-life-inspired thrills and chills. Yesterday was for spooky audio, and today I offer freaky phantasmic photography.

Is there anything creepier than the long-dormant tradition of Victorian death photography? Probably not. It’s a phenomenon I first remember learning about via one of my favorite Hollywood haunted house movies: The Others. If you’ve not seen The Others — why the hell not? There are very few effective haunted house movies out there (Poltergeist, (the original) The Haunting, and Burnt Offerings are the only ones that readily come to mind. I’ll save discussion of ultra-hyped now-playing Paranormal Activity for another time).

Without delving into a full on review, suffice to say that The Others is a bloodless, atmospheric, classic haunted house movie in the grand tradition of the best of Hammer horror (but without the cleavage and orange blood). One particular spooky scene revolves around the discovery of a locked room full of antique photography. Closer examination of the photography reveals that it’s a collection of photos of…dead people.

Watch the trailer for The Others:

At the turn of the century, death photography was all the rage and while it’s considered wildly morbid  today, back then, it was viewed as a fitting way to honor dead loved ones. Some collectors have made it their job to track down and compile a photographic history of this tradition and what they’ve found walks the line between poignant and hard to look at. Wanna give yourself a guaranteed case of the heebeejeebees? Browse through these two collections I dug up. For compounded spookiness, flip through these pictures while playing some of yesterday’s number station recordings in the background. It’s guaranteed to make you at least consider leaving the lights on when you go to bed tonight.
Victorian Death Photography on Flickr
A web collection dedicated  to Victorian Death Photography at Thanatos.net

Less legitimate, but always good for a few generic scares, is spirit photography. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to be creeped out by some of the examples of crude manufactured ghost pics from the earliest years of commercial photography. Many a charlatan medium made it their business to offer spirit portraiture for those in mourning; “magic” photography, in which your dead loved one reveals themselves in photos taken of the bereaved living. Even though they’re obviously fake, there’s something about antiquated photography that is just inherently frightening. I’ve compiled a gallery of some of my favorite examples and included a handful of “modern” ghost pictures from a variety of sources. Any kid that scoured their local public library’s shelves for anything related to the paranormal, will probably see a few familiar images here.  Some are silly, some are artistic, some are just odd — but all feature their own brand of unnerving morbidity.

BROWSE THE GHOST PICS AND SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY

Ghost stories don’t scare me much anymore, mostly because I just don’t believe in ghosts or any grand afterlife options other than your basic “ashes to ashes” endgame. But OH BOY was I ever a believer as a kid. And any kid that grew up a child of the 80s probably has at least ONE repressed memory related to The Amityville Horror. Whether you snuck a read of Mom’s dog-eared paperback, caught it on the (let’s be honest: REALLY bad) movie adaptation, or just had enough peripheral exposure to activate your easily kindertraumatized imagination, The Amityville Horror forced you to wonder how you’d react if say, you noticed that your happy home’s walls had begun to bleed or there were disembodied pig heads floating outside your window. For me, one episode of the early 80’s, primetime TV magazine That’s Incredible! was enough to stir my young noggin’s toxic cauldron of nightmares.

Convinced, once again, that if it exists at all, it can be found online, I was able to dig up the actual That’s Incredible! segment that scarred my youth with images of red rooms, demonic voices, unexplained fly swarms and James Brolin’s unkempt facial hair. Imagine my surprise to find that the segment’s premise was to debunk the whole hoaxy Amityville affair with interviews of the (then current) residents of the haunted house in question. If anything, it should have helped me sleep BETTER at night. But perhaps I was too preoccupied with the tenor of the report; the eerie background music, the short clips from the film shown, and the entire “but what if they’re wrong!?” possibilities. John Davidson and Cathy Lee Crosby weren’t exactly crack investigative journalists, after all.

Watch the TI! segment that scared a young Gill Man silly, and then, for contrast, watch the far more naive, and therefore, far more frightening segment from Leonard Nimoy’s In Search of… TV show which aired at the height of The Amityville Horror’s popularity, before rumors of a hoax had begun to gain traction in the press.

The That’s Incredible! gang investigate The Amityville Horror:
 

In Search of…The Amityville Horror, narrated by Leonard Nimoy:

Today we’ll veer just slightly off the pop culture path in search of true-life Halloween scares. If you find yourself disappointed that the horror genre has sacrificed scares, suspense and fear for gore, shock and violence, you might find it worth your while to seek thrills from less conventional sources. One eerie based-in-reality source of chills I discovered comes to us in the form of shortwave radio broadcasts, commonly referred to as “number stations.”

Imagine you’re an amateur short-wave HAM radiophile, up late one night scanning the dial for any signs of life and suddenly out of the static and darkness you hear something odd: a child’s music box melody plays for a while before coming to an abrupt stop only to be followed by a child’s voice, speaking in monotone, reciting a coded message. What language is that? What is she saying? Is she counting? Is she speaking in code? What’s it all about? A shiver runs down your spine as you realize you’re hearing a broadcast not meant for public consumption. This is something else. Something mysterious…maybe sinister. But what?

That’s the cool creepy thing about the number stations phenomenon. No one knows exactly what they are, why they exist, or where their broadcasts originate from. There are some probable explanations, but no hard facts and no authorities willing to cop to their existence. Just a long string of non-denial denials and cryptic warnings that they are best left ignored and none of your damn business. Intrigued? Take it away Wikipedia!:

Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, though sometimes male or children’s voices are used.
It has been reported that the United States uses numbers stations to communicate encoded information to persons in other countries.
Numbers stations appear and disappear over time (although some follow regular schedules), and their overall activity has increased slightly since the early 1990s. This increase suggests that, as spy-related phenomena, they were not unique to the Cold War.
According to the notes of The Conet Project, numbers stations have been reported since World War I. If accurate, this would make numbers stations among the earliest radio broadcasts.  It has long been speculated, and was argued in court in one case, that these stations operate as a simple and foolproof method for government agencies to communicate with spies working undercover.

…that’s the elementary overview, but there is so much to discover about this barely reported phenomenon that has existed in some form or another for ages. The true explanation is certainly not supernatural or extraterrestrial in nature, but it’s the air of mystery that surrounds number stations and the authorities refusal to acknowledge most of them that really tempts conspiracy theorists and basement-dwelling short-wave geeks. Some people, like the obsessive detectives at the Conet Project, treat these broadcasts as found art and that makes sense to me. You can buy a four-disc collection of the oddest and most intriguing examples of number station recordings put out by the Conet Project and it’s worth a listen if you can get your hands on a copy.

My introduction to the concept of number stations occurred when I stumbled upon a blog review of the Conet Project’s collection. The writer had first been exposed to the bizarre recording while driving around at night listening to a college radio station that played all four discs uninterrupted without explanation. The writer, who was chilled to the core by his discovery, thought he’d stumbled upon alien transmissions, and after you give them a listen, you’ll understand why.

While I won’t offer the Conet Project’s full collection, I have put together a “favorite cuts” collection of my own which features a few unlabeled tracks from the CDs mixed in with miscellaneous number station files I’ve dug up from other obscure sources. I dare you to download them, turn out the lights, and settle in for a listen. I drove the girlfriend crazy with these recordings when I first started getting into them a few months ago. I guess what’s thrilling to one person is unnerving to another. But there’s a devious side of me that has a barely-restrainable urge to wake someone in the dead of night with one of these recordings playing at full volume from somewhere in their home. Does that make me evil?

DOWNLOAD THE BLOG LAGOON’S NUMBER STATIONS COMPILATION FILES (MEGAUPLOAD)

Here are a few video clips put together by amateur videographers, who’ve put number station recordings to their own artistic use in moody, atmospheric videos. There’s nothing too remarkable here, but whenever you put these sounds to any visuals, the visuals are sure to be tainted with a kind of dread normally triggered by half-remembered nightmares.

Listen to samples.
Learn more.
Visit the Conet Project.

Is it in bad taste to resurrect the image of dead child star, Heather O’Rourke (and Craig T. Nelson’s hair) to sell DirecTV? Probably. But I love this ad anyway:

Speaking of Carol Anne, here’s a made-to-order painting I did a few years ago for my sister. Last I checked she actually hung this creepy shit in her apartment.

"They're Here..."

Halloween safety is a drag. Here’s a slice of 70’s trick or treating nostalgia from the Centron Corporation — the Lawrence, KS outfit that brought us Carnival of Souls. Read about it in this great post from the sadly defunct Scarstuff blog.

PART 2

Watch Art of Bleeding’s hilarious/terrifying remix.

Watch Centron’s 1985 Halloween Safety 2nd Edition:

Monsters love to get together and party. You see it every Halloween. There are dozens of kids’ records, books, movies, cartoons and TV specials that throw the most recognizable monsters together for a shindig of some sort. Whether it’s Rankin and Bass’ Mad Monster Party?, an episode of the old Groovie Goolies cartoon, or the lyrics to the Monster Mash — it ain’t hard to find vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, and any number of ghouls voiced by Peter Lorre imitators, coming together to sing, dance, and tell bad jokes. Here’s a brief run-down of my favorite all-monster house parties.

Dracula and Francesca in "Mad Monster Party?"

MAD MONSTER PARTY? (1967)
Mad Monster Party? is the prototypical monster bash. This theatrical feature from Rankin and Bass (creators of those OTHER holiday, stop-motion classics) was a big ol’ bomb when it came out in ‘67, but time has been good to it and it’s now considered a Halloween cult classic. A mad doctor type (voiced by Boris Karloff himself) is gathering all of the monsters together for a bash to celebrate his retirement and the passing of the mad doctor torch to his drug store soda jerk nephew. Of course, there are plenty of ghouls who think they should be the mad doctor’s worthy successor, including his “finest creation yet,” the stacked and sexy piece o’ redheaded stop-motion hawtness, Francesca (Gale Garnett). The songs are silly and the pacing is terrible, but MMP? is some serious Halloween eye-candy. With its Batman-era pop art 60s aesthetic and the participation of the great Phyllis Diller (as “the Monster’s Mate”), MMP? is brightly-colored, punny, Halloween awesomeness. The “special edition” DVD ain’t all that damn special, with a serious shortage of extras, but worth the mere $10 you’d need to drop to pick it up just about anywhere this time of year.

MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY (1965)
A clean-cut group of 60s college guys decide to prank a game group of nightie-clad  girls who’ve opted to spend the night in a creepy ol’ house, but are beat to the punch when a (you guessed it) Mad Doctor releases his monsters to wreak havoc. He wants to steal the girls and turn them into monster gorillas or some such nonsense, as a weird  pre=”weird “>poorly-costumed Asian Vampira clone unenthusiastically looks on. MCtPP is considered one of the last of the old-school “spook shows” — gimmicky low-budget quickies that were screened with live-action participants that run through the audience at pivotal moments in the movie in scary costumes (or in this case, gorilla suits) with the intention of scaring girls and eliciting some cheap screams. There’s not much to MCtPP, but monsters it’s got, and it’s a nice little pop time capsule of the nearly forgotten spook-show phenom. It’s available on a pretty amazing Something Weird spook-show comp with all kinds of other rare Halloween goodies.

MONSTER SHINDIG WITH SUPER-SNOOPER AND BLABBER MOUSE (LP-1966?)
This is one of a dozen or so Hannah Barbara LPs released in the 60s, that featured popular H&B characters in original stories that were broken up by consistently cheesy original songs. The popularity of Super Snooper, a wise-cracking feline detective, is debatable, and I’m pretty sure that the voice characterization here is not the original voice from the show, but the cast does feature the great June Foray (that’s Rocket J. Squirrel, Natasha Fatale and a host of others to you, bub!) essaying the voice of Blabber Mouse and more. The monsters here are the  pre=”the “>Gruesomes, an Adams Family-type clan who first appeared in an episode or two of the Flintstones. The requisite Peter Lorre voice imitation is here, and Foray’s voice for Creepella is nearly identical to the one she affects for Natasha. There’s a Dracula, a Frankenstein, a Wolf Man and lots and lots of bad Hanna-Barbara caliber corniness. In other words: a must have. 
DOWNLOAD MONSTER SHINDIG HERE (Megaupload)

THE GROOVIE GOOLIES (TV-1971)
The entire Groovie Goolies syndicated cartoon run is available on DVD now and I really need to invest in a copy. This laugh-track heavy cartoon featured Laugh-In inspired jokes and sketches, with lots of musical numbers thrown in. I’ve heard it described as  Scooby Doo without the plots and kids and twice the musical numbers…which really aren’t that bad. I used to watch GG before elementary school…so early it was still dark out. It aired back to back with the syndicated 60s/70s Spider-Man cartoon. I remember being impressed by how they both cheaply recycled animated action shots over and over again. There was a Drac, a Frankie, and Wolfie–not to mention multiple “musical acts” like the Mummies and the Puppies and the Rolling Gravestones(!). Gotta’ love the monster puns. You can watch tons of Groovie Goolies minisodes on YouTube here.
Watch a Groovie Goolies opening theme:

I LOVE MONSTERS (LP-198?)
Can someone, ANYONE, please help me with this one. I owned this record all my life. Mom ordered it for me from a TV ad in the very early 80s and I played it to death but somewhere between my last two apartments, this LP got lost in the shuffle. The album had no liner notes or info of any kind, but every track was monster related. I’ve done a little research and have deduced that the music is performed by a semi-well-known 70s funk saxophonist named Jimmy Castor. He’s black, but there’s a little kid cowering on the cover with “Jimmy C” across his back…and he’s white. So I’m a little confused. Evidently, Jimmy Castor had a few marginal novelty hit with the songs Troglodyte and King Kong — both of which were on this album, though they appeared on other Castor albums more famously. In fact, after tracking down the official Jimmy Castor website, I can find no evidence of I Love Monsters listed in his discography. What gives? I love the cover. I love the funk-tastic monster tunes. I love that not many people seem to have this rare treat — Only problem with that is, how can I replace it?! I checked eBay and lots of other obvious rocks were turned over but I’m still coming up snake eyes. Can YOU help?

KISS ME QUICK (1964)/HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN (1962)
Monster nudies! Both of these soft-core monster movies are available together on one DVD from the great Something Weird Video. Both feature bad corny comedy, monsters, and lots of curvy broads. Both are great Halloween party movies and so charmingly 60s-silly that if not for all the nipples, they’d be practically family friendly. Read my original reviews for KMQ! here and Bare Mountain here.

Finally, here are two more great monster-related shares. The first, is another Power Records story LP featuring Dracula, Frankenstein AND the Wolfman — all wrapped up in one ridiculous, but fun, contrived story. The zip file contains the entire audio track and jpegs of the entire read-along book. The second, is an amazing LP from Famous Monsters magazine, Famous Monsters Speak. Side one is a spoken-word Dracula narrative and side two gives voice to the thoughts of Frankenstein’s monster, fleshing out characterization found in Mary Shelley’s book, but rarely found in other Frankenstein showcases. It’s been out of print for years and is a solid listen all the way around. Enjoy!
DOWNLOAD POWER RECORDS’ A STORY OF  ”>DRACULA, THE WOLFMAN & FRANKENSTEIN HERE (Megaupload)
DOWNLOAD FAMOUS MONSTERS SPEAK HERE (Megaupload)

Self-described “vampire fans” get on my nerves. Why? Mostly because they have no sense of history.  I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with digging vampires. I’ll take bloodsuckers over baseball any day, but if you were to send out a call to organize all of the internet’s nosferatu-philes, chances are you’d hear back from a mass of people made up of two-thirds Twilight fans and one-third girls I went to college with who can trace pop vampirism back to its early roots of …Anne Rice.

Blech.

Sure they might know who Bela Lugosi is but I bet you’d be hard pressed to find too many who’d actually ever seen Universal’s original Dracula.

Today’s vampire fan likes to go on and on about how sexy vampires are, rhapsodizing about the erotic themes and sexual subtext of vampire lore. They think of the modern bodice-busting period pieces, the doomed love of immortal teens and the searing look Gary Oldman gives Winona Ryder in Francis Ford Coppola’s craptastic camp-fest. (Make no mistake, I hate Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula…Fuck it and the bogus accent Keanu Reeves rode in on). They can’t imagine the fires Lugosi stoked in the loins of female filmgoers way back in 1931 or how his stately, gentlemanly behavior, was a creation of Lugosi’s performance, fine-tuned and fleshed out in the original stage production long before the first true filmed adaptation of Stoker’s novel. (It was his popularity in the stage role that won Lugosi the starring role in Universal’s Dracula.)

But if it was Lugosi that started the sexual fire in the heart of Dracula lore (And that’s debatable, the Stoker novel, even though it describes the Count himself as more monstrous and ratlike–more in line with F.W. Murnau’s presentation of him in the silent Nosferatu–it has more than one explicitly passionate passage.) that’s nothing compared to what two other Dracula movies brought to the mythology. Those movies are Dracula’s Daughter, the direct sequel to Tod Browning’s Dracula, and the Spanish Dracula, which was filmed in tandem with Browning’s on the same Universal set but with different costumes, a Spanish-speaking cast, and a different director, George Melford.

Carlos pre="Carlos ">Villarias (Dracula) and Eduardo Arozamena (Van Helsing)

The Spanish version of Dracula was a common studio solution to the problem of how to serve Latin markets in the age of talkies. Silent films could easily be repositioned for international markets by simply translating title cards. But before dubbing was efficient or practical, it was not unusual for major studios to shoot second versions of their broad-appeal features specifically for non-English-speaking audiences. (Can you imagine a time when dubbing was LESS efficient than filming a complete alternate film?!)

One thing that makes the Spanish version of Dracula particularly note-worthy is that, in many ways, it’s a far better film than Tod Browning’s. Of the two directors, Melford definitely had a superior eye for visuals, and scene blocking (–even though, he didn’t even speak Spanish! He worked with his cast through an interpreter). Browning’s Dracula has long been criticized by film scholars for clinging too closely to the details of the stage script it’s based on. Much of Browning’s blocking looks stagey and awkward. There’s very little camera movement and most of the moody atmospherics one associates with that version owe more to the amazing Universal sets and Lugosi’s layered performance.

Spanish Dracula, by comparison, is far more artfully crafted and, though it uses the same script, the performances are steeped in sexual expression. Its variation on the character Mina (Eva, here) is turned into a ravenous sexual animal after her encounter with the Count. The innocent Spanish girl from a few scenes earlier becomes a legitimate predator…complete with cleavage-baring nighties and wild-eyed expressions of animal desire.

That's a lot of cleavage for 1931.

If you’ve ever enjoyed the Lugosi version of Dracula, you owe it to yourself to seek out the Spanish version for comparison. Watching the two films back to back is especially recommended.

Unfortunately, for all of it’s striking beauty, overt sexuality and elegant cinematography, the main weak link in the Spanish version, is Dracula himself. Carlos Villarias’s portrayal of the Count misses the mark in many ways and at times he appears to be performing in a completely different film than the actors around him. It makes you realize how there really is no beating Lugosi in this role. He might not be the greatest vampire to ever grace the screen (I leave that up to you to decide.) but I’d be hard pressed to choose a better actor in the role of Dracula. It belonged to him. (And he knew it. It was widely reported that he was buried in full cape and wardrobe when the Hungarian actor died in 1956). Additionally, there is absolutely no beating Dwight Frye’s portrayal of Renfield. (Tom Waits? Seriously?)

Lupita Tova as Eva Seward in the Spanish "Dracula"

Despite all the things they have in common — sets, studio, script, etc. — the two Dracula’s both leave you with their very own vibe and together they serve as a fine example of how different personalities behind a camera can create two distinct visions of the same tale.

Irving Pichel (Sandor) and Gloria Holden (Dracula's Daughter)

Perhaps even more interesting is the existence of the criminally underseen Dracula’s Daughter. Filmed five years later, as a direct sequel to Dracula, DD brings back Edward Van Sloan’s Professor Van Helsing, in its opening that takes the reins from Dracula’s final scene, in which Van Helsing has finally killed the beast with a stake through the heart. Van Helsing is detained and accused of the “murder” of Dracula and Renfield, whose bodies have been discovered by Scottland Yard. No one believes his defense, because no one believes in vampires…that is, until Dracula’s corpse mysteriously disappears and bodies with tell-tale bite marks start popping up.

Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), has come to town, successfully laid her damned paternal figure to rest by setting his corpse ablaze, and now sets her sights on freeing her own damned self from the dark chains inherent in her bloodline. But old habits and bloodthirsty urges die hard, and Sandor, her nefarious henchman, is no help at all. He embraces the dark and wants Daughter D to do the same.

After seeking the aid of Otto Kruger’s Professor Garth, an old student of Van Helsing, who’s also been called upon to help clear VanHelsing’s name, the Countess tries and fails at step one of her twelve-step recovery from vampirism. When Sandor brings in a midnight snack, in the form of a beautiful street urchin, “to model for a painting” she tries to exercise some self-control. But after a scene absolutely throbbing with lesbian subtext, DD can’t contain herself and the quivvering nymphette ends up being just another sucked-dry body on the pile.

Nan Grey (as victim) and Gloria Holden (as Dracula's Daughter)

Kruger’s Dr. Garth makes for an interestingly offbeat hero, and Holden is haunting and tragic (probably the first reluctant vampire to grace the screen). Despite some slack pacing in the middle, the first and last reel of Daughter do not disappoint. And watching the pre-code seduction of the young urchin makes you realize just how over-the-top pre-code cinema sexuality could be!

Though there’s a purist in me that hesitates to say it, chances are you’ll find both the Spanish Dracula and Dracula’s Daughter more engaging than the confirmed king of vampire movies. But this is not to say you should skip it. Bela Lugosi’s performance helps you to strip away all the cliche’s that we’ve come to associate with Dracula over the years. Not that I don’t love Sesame Street’s Count, Count Chocula and Grampa Munster (Oh, I DO! I DO!) but it’s refreshing to remind yourself what a truly elegant, devilishly dashing bastard Dracula once was.

The Spanish version of Dracula is a “special feature” on several Universal DVD releases of Dracula. Dracula’s Daughter was an added extra on one of those same releases (as was the follow-up threequel, Son of Dracula, starring Lon Chaney Jr., as the parasitic progeny) but I had no trouble tracking it down online.
Both films: ***

An early scene from Dracula’s Daughter:
Watch the 1936 trailer for Dracula’s Daughter:
Here’s an informative little piece on the Spanish-language production, though, I can’t for the life of me identify the source:

Here’s a slightly more literate Halloween share.

What could be more seasonably appropriate than the works of Edgar Allan Poe? Here are a few choice cuts from my collection of some amazing Poe dramatizations by some of the true horror masters. Included in the zip file you’ll find:
-A 1941 episode of the radio thriller anthology, Inner Sanctum, featuring Boris Karloff in The Tell-Tale Heart
-A Vincent Price reading of The Raven
-Christopher Lee’s readings of The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum for the BBC’s Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic Tales
-John Carradine reading The Raven
-Three LPs worth of Poe stories from Richard Taylor’s series of horror records. (These recordings were available for sale, mail-order, in the pages of horror mags like Famous Monsters and Vampirella in the 60s and 70s. They’re bare-bones readings, but lots of spooky fun.)
-And finally, a promotional single for Roger Corman’s 1963 adaptation of The Raven, starring Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Boris Karloff.

DOWNLOAD CLASSIC READINGS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE FROM THE MASTERS OF HORRORS (Megaupload)