Got a gripe about how Hollywood handles horror? Well, sit back and see if you agree with William Armstrong and his...
By William Armstrong
Everyone has their own pet peeves about horror movies; some fans hate low budget no-talent films; others vilify big budget attempts that sadly misfire; some like to blame certain actors or directors as to why "can't miss" films fail, like the recent Godzilla fiasco.
My pet peeves are twofold.
The first is the way Hollywood, in its greedy attempt to bilk money out of unsuspecting fans like ourselves, love to mis-title or re-title movies to drag us into the theaters, and then wonder why we don't "like" the movies or tactics. The second pet peeve is why Hollywood, who seems to feel like we fans are either fools or idiots, like to keep remaking movies about, say, Frankenstein, or Dracula, and never get it right, because they feel that one, their version is "superior" to the original books, or that no one cares if they make "changes" to the original intent of the authors.
To get back to my first pet peeve, I went to a drive-in theater years ago to see a film with the title Teenage Dracula. And what film was I subjected to? None other than Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, the Al Adamson no-budgeter that I had already seen, and although I enjoy these types of films, I did not particularly care to be lured into the theater expecting to see a different movie. Another film with deceptive advertising was Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror. I like Paul Naschy's werewolf films, but don't approve of Hollywood re-titling the movie because they thought no one wanted to see a new werewolf movie. Even Hammer's excellent Brides Of Dracula was a misnomer; the "Brides" in the title belonged to Baron Meinster, not Dracula. A more appropriate title would have been Dracula’s Disciple (which the film was about). But someone probably thought the audience was not intelligent enough to know what "Disciple" meant. Besides low budget movies, I love it when Hollywood makes a really good big-budget masterpiece. Unfortunately, they don't seem to know how.
Two
films I had high hopes for (and I usually never have high hopes for any motion picture,
which is why I seldom find myself disappointed in any movie...I usually find myself
surprised when a movie does come out better than I expected) were Bram Stoker’s
Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
You would think, with Coppola and Kenneth Branagh behind them, that we could finally get them done right. Wrong assumption. When I found out James Hart had worked on the script all hopes I had went out the window. Hart seems to think he is writing for Marvel Comics "What If..." series of comic books. You know, what if Peter Pan had grown up (the film Hook), or what if Dracula's first wife was reincarnated into Mina. In fact the idea of this Dracula had already been done, and better, in the Jack Palance TV version, screenplay by that great writer Richard Matheson.
Did you ever feel as though, when you were watching a movie, you could have done better? Well, on this one I could have. I would have adapted the book Dracula that Stoker wrote, adding maybe the chapter that was removed before publication, Dracula’s Guest, and made it into a TV mini-series, and starring Max Von Sydow as Dracula; I would not have cast Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder for the roles they portrayed, but would have chosen an excellent young British actor and actress in those parts.
The best version of Dracula I have seen yet is the three part
"Great Performances" PBS version with Louis Jourdan as Dracula (not really
miscast, but not my top choice for the part), Count Dracula by Gerald Savory. He
should have written the Coppola version.
As for the Branagh version of Frankenstein, why was so much screen time taken up to show the "birth" of the monster? Shelley only took up a few lines; she was more interested in telling the story of a man who played "God", and the consequences that came about afterward. When reading the book, I could almost imagine the words she wrote about the creature coming to life on a stormy November night with a half-lit candle on the window sill. But every time a movie is made, they feel they have to make a big deal out of the creation scene. And then to change the ending and bring Elisabeth back to life, or to have her heart ripped out by the creature were two total aberrations taken by the filmmakers. To make the creature so sympathetic and yet have it commit such a dreadful act was totally out of character.
As for the make-up, well, the creature was not stitched up from parts of other humans as most of the movies show; Frankenstein took 2 years and worked from the inside out, with larger than normal pieces. And the face of the monster is more or less described in the book. A good Hollywood make-up artist could have come up with something more terrifying, yet sympathetic looking.
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| "Make-up...baaaaad..." |
I wonder if I will ever see these two classics of horror literature done the way they deserve to be made. Most likely, the only way that would ever become a reality is if I had the opportunity to do it myself, and
I can't imagine Hollywood letting that happen.
Unfortunately, William, neither can we! Oh, well, perhaps in the midst of needless remakes and endless sequels to feeble horror films, something ghoulishly good might slither out. Cheers!
Article copyright William Armstrong
