NBC adds a Dracula show….

Updated on May 13, 2013 By Ken Begg 33 Comments

Aside from Ironside, NBC is raising even more undead. I understand mileage varies, and I hold no contempt for anyone who disagrees with me on this, but man, that strikes me as a real piece of shit. I can’t f*ckin’ believe they are trotting out that reincarnated lover crap again!! Seriously! Also, the Sherlock Holmes-esque slo-mo fight scenes, etc. Horrible. I love how they try to class this up by name-dropping Downton Abbey (!!!!) and The Tudors. I don’t think Downton Abbey became a hit solely because of its opulent production values.

Again, maybe this is in fact the Dracula that audiences are now craving. However, anyone want to bet $20 this will last out a season, let me know.

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  • Sandy Petersen

    I am constantly puzzled by the “immortal love” angle that has been unwelcomely introduced into some modern vampire movies. Surely, the vampire is a symbol of soulless, conscienceless, promiscuity, not eternal devotion. They’re Getting It Wrong.

    I mean, if they want a reincarnated love angle, use a mummy. Those aren’t even supposed to be soulless.

  • Ericb

    But it’s hard to make a mummy cute.

  • For what it’s worth, Dracula will be the focus of the sequel to MIRANDA GRACIA MEETS FRANKENSTEIN. I wrote the first draft recently, and I’m proud to note Dracula is actually evil and isn’t out to make a date with anyone.

  • Ken_Begg

    But…but…what about the nuance, man?!

  • fish eye no miko

    Ah, I thought this might an updated thing, like “Sherlock” or “Elementary”.

  • fish eye no miko

    I’ll admit I liked it in “Blacula” (a movie that’s much better than it’s goofy title implies), but mostly… yeah. Even if you DO want the vampire to meet the girl/guy of his/her dreams, you don’t need to make it a “reincarnated love from when s/he was mortal” plot.

  • Ken_Begg

    Yeah, but it was fairly fresh in Blacula. Seeming every version of Dracula since the Jack Palance film shoehorns in this element, and I’ve seemingly seen it over and over and over. And Blacula was *meant* to be a tragic vampire from the beginning; making Dracula that is a profound meddling with the character, I think.

  • Cullen Waters

    Oh dear sweet God. No one reads the original book any more, do they? They don’t even bother with the Classic Illustrated version.

    One of these days someone will do an innovative, faithful version of Dracula and I’ll drop dead with amazement.

  • The movie with Christopher Lee and Klaus Kinski and Herbert Lom was supposedly a lot truer to the book than other versions. How much that has to do with the fact that I was fairly under-whelmed by the picture, I couldn’t say.

  • fish eye no miko

    Yeah, that’s part of it, “Blacula” was old enough that it was still a new idea. Plus, William Marshall is just so cool… (-:

    And, interestingly, Dracula WAS in Blacula; he’s the one who turned Mamuwalde into a vampire, mainly cuz (iirc) he had designs on Mamuwalde’s wife.

    BTW, I’m always amused by story lines where, instead of just killing someone, their enemies put them under some curse that, when push comes to shove, makes them MORE powerful… WTF? Just kill them, you dumbass(es)!

  • It’s gotten so bad that a lot of people who read the original novel complain that the “love scene” between Dracula and Mina comes off like a rape, therefor it must be badly written. Which rather ignores the fact that it was SUPPOSED to be horrific!

  • Someone will try. Isn’t there some sort of zombie romance movie coming out this year with cute zombies?

  • Ah, Blacula. Far and away the greatest Blaxploitation horror film ever.

  • Hey, I’ve read the book a few times! But it is amusing to hear people complain about the ‘mishandled love scene’ between Drac and Mina in the book. You know, the one that ends with poor Mina sobbing, “Unclean! Unclean!”? Apparently it’s got to be a love scene because everyone knows that Mina was Drac’s One True Love in the original story and all that.

  • Cullen Waters

    What I heard was that Count Dracula wasn’t all that close, but I haven’t seen it (yet, he says sadly). Still, I’d much rather watch it than this series.

  • Cullen Waters

    I thought I was over how mad I was at Bram Stoker’s Dracula right up until I reread Bram Stoker’s Dracula last year. Then I hit that scene. I can’t understand how anyone at all can read that scene (written by Mina herself as I recall) and honestly think there’s a pleasant connection between the two at all.

    I find it humorous how mad that promo’s been making me all day. I’ve read the novel twice. Twice. You’d think it wouldn’t eat at me like that.

  • fish eye no miko

    I think you mean “Warm Bodies”? It’s already been released.

  • Ken_Begg

    I think the Louis Jourdan mini-series is probably the closest you’re going to come. The picture Rock mentions was directed by Jess Franco, so there’s your problem. I don’t remember Stoker’s novel containing constant zoom shots.

  • GalaxyJane

    Wow, that looks absolutely f’ing dreadful. And as a Downton fan I can say it even fails as costume porn. At least they have put it in the Friday night death slot, when its target audience of teenaged girls lusting for a counterintuitively-devoted immortal lover will be out on dates with actual boys. That frankly says a lot about how much confidence NBC has in it.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, I think you guys have brought up everything I have an issue with- esp that Dracula from the novel is a friggin’ monster for crying out loud!

    I does strike me odd though out of the Universal monsters Dracula was the only one I felt was purely vile and I felt no sympathy for whatsoever. I mean the Mummy was trapped by a forbidden love, Frankenstein was the original deadbeat dad to his poor monster, the Wolfman didn’t ask to be turned into a bloodthirsty beast, etc. Dracula never showed one ounce of remorse at the monster he was and yet he out of all of them is now written as sympathetic-sigh…

  • He probably comes closest to being sympathetic in HOUSE OF DRACULA, when he claims to be seeking a cure to his condition. He can’t overcome his true nature, though, and uses the treatment to turn his doctor into another vampire. It’s all a front, and he is at his core a manipulator. That’s actually one of the things I made sure to include in my script.

  • Well, to be fair, in the original movie Bela does have this line: “To die — to be TRULY dead — that must be glorious.” It at least implies that he’s not entirely thrilled with what he’s become.

  • Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks for reminding me of the title. Now I’ll just drink until I can forget it again.

  • Hmm, I wonder if in this version of Dracula we’ll get the scene from the book where Drac feeds his vampire brides with an infant and then has the kid’s sobbing mother torn to pieces by wolves? Or would that affect audience sympathy for him?

    I also wonder if they’ll do right by poor mishandled Renfield? I remember writing this about him a few years gone:

    “And poor Renfield is one of the most badly-interpreted characters in the
    entire story. He swings wildly from revolting and murderous lunatic to
    cunning servant of Dracula to a poor, broken soul. Certainly the usual
    sentiment towards him that comes through from Doctor Seward, Mina, and
    Van Helsing is one of pity, even when he’s at his vilest. And when
    Renfield is killed by Dracula after an attempt to stop him from hurting
    Mina, an attempt that even Renfield later acknowledges as useless before
    dying, the feeling is one of remorse. In some ways Renfield reminded me
    of Gollum-Smeagol from LoTR, a broken creature aware of their own
    ‘broken-ness’ and fighting to rise beyond it. And though the struggle
    ultimately claims both, there is still a feeling that “Whatever he once
    was, this shouldn’t ought to have happened to a man.””

  • Cullen Waters

    I keep meaning to pick up the Jourdan series. Heard a lot of good things about it.

  • Gamera977

    Ah, I’d forgotten that line- thanks!

    And I guess I did feel a little sorry for the guy in ‘Son of Dracula’. He comes all the way to the New World and the first gal he meets makes a fool out of him. Of course after being so stupid as to spell his name backwards as an alias he was probably asking for it though.

  • My own favorite memory of SoD was the local doctor and the Van Helsing wannabe chatting about Dracula’s weird power to become a mist to “go secretly among his enemies and destroy them” — and all the while mist!Dracula is slipping into the room behind them. Really made them look competent, didn’t it?

  • sandra

    I can’t get the promo to play.

  • Chaney did strike a cord when he noticed he’d been double crossed and was in a panic toward the climax. Also when Carradine noticed his coffin was being abandoned in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. I attribute that more to the skill of the actors than the character himself, though.

  • Even I will defend the principle that Blacula can have a reincarnated lover. But on the other hand, Blacula is also never friggin’ portrayed as a good guy – he is a monstrous force of destruction and spreads his disease rampantly and carelessly. Tragic, yes. But still a monster who Must Be Destroyed. In fact, it is one of the few movies to get that particular concept right, so that I was both sad & relieved when Blacula walked into the sunlight to die.

    So how did cheap-ass exploitation directors pull off something that Hollywood hasn’t really achieved successfully in the last 30 years? Was it ALL Wm Marshall’s charisma? Surely not.

  • Marsden

    I know I’m posting a week and a half late, but I miss the days when undead were just that, dead things that moved and were a danger. Now there just like a different kind of “people” instead of soulless animated cadavers. 28 days and Legend monsters wouldn’t apply because they are living people with some kind of disease, but all the others, especially the plethora of vampires, are completely ridiculous! The curse of the undead meant your soul was in some horrible torment unable to pass on because of the connection of the body still moving on Earth. It wasn’t something you would ask for! D’oh!

  • Eric Hinkle

    It probably helps a lot when you actually care about the story you’re telling. The ‘Blacula’ people did.

  • Sandy Petersen

    a cogent point.