Sometimes, being typecast isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was typecasting that brought audiences a decade of classic action films from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Breaking out of that mold brought more financial success, to be sure, but crossover Arnold never felt like the real thing. He felt sanitized for mass consumption. This is an oversimplification, of course, but the Arnold that was in Junior, the anonymous and final film he worked on with director Ivan Reitman, could not have been more out of place. Continue reading “Schwarzenegger Month: Junior”
Some of Those Responsible: Frank Langella
October Horrorshow: Dracula (1979)
I’ve seen hundreds of horror films. And I’ve seen more Dracula films than I can either count or name. But until recently, I had no idea that this version of the oft-filmed tale existed. This Dracula is so lost to the digital history of cinema that when I searched for it on IMDb, I had trouble locating its page. I have a hard time understanding why.
Perhaps Dracula has been adapted for the silver screen so many times that there is a sense of fatigue surrounding the character. Certainly, once a viewer latches on to a particular film as their favorite, only a morbid fascination with the character would compel one to dig through the continuously growing pile of Dracula films looking for a hidden gem. But that’s precisely what this Dracula is.
From 1979, this Dracula is an adaptation of both Bram Stoker’s novel and a stage play that ran on Broadway. Reprising his role from the play is Frank Langella as Dracula — a tall, rugged charmer with a gigantic mane of David Copperfield hair. Alas, the 1970s. Director John Badham helmed a film that is quite a compression of the novel, but it’s also very lean. I can only guess that this leanness is a result of the film using a stage play as part of its source material. The necessities of film and stage require that a story with the scope and breadth of a novel has to be trimmed down to fit very real budgetary and physical constraints. The play, being a successful production, probably got the bulk of that work out of the way, leaving the film free to breathe back out a bit on what the play sucked inwards. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Dracula (1979)”