Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or
Speaker 1: do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy. Zeph and Beast
Speaker 1: start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hello, Jamie, it just me nine tih Dracula. Bello, Caitlin,
Speaker 2: It's hello.
Speaker 3: The Minions worked for Dracula. Oh don't you remember from
Speaker 3: the opening of Mini, I do remember the Minion has
Speaker 3: worked for real people and fake people.
Speaker 2: Yes, wow, incredible anyway today.
Speaker 3: Because I didn't, I didn't. I politely refused to do
Speaker 3: the voice. I wish there was a way to I
Speaker 3: love like thee the like laugh lines that Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 3: gets where He's like, I know you're hurting right now,
Speaker 3: but we have to cut your wife's head off right now.
Speaker 3: It's an emergency. You're like Jesus, Welcome to the back
Speaker 3: soil Ast. My name is Jamie Loftis.
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Deronte, also known as If listeners
Speaker 2: listen to the Daily Zeitgeist, you might know me as
Speaker 2: my anagram alias nine tit Dracula.
Speaker 3: Truly the best. There's a lot of good ones, but
Speaker 3: that is the best.
Speaker 2: It's a really good well, I prefer Lauren d Titanic.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's that is pretty good. That sounds like
Speaker 3: like a Carmen san Diego style ioas. But for the
Speaker 3: sake of today, nine tit Dracula will do.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, because we are covering Bram Stoker's Dracula nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two. This is the Bechdel Cast, our podcast where
Speaker 2: we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 2: Bechdel test as a jumping off point. Which what's that?
Speaker 2: Should we say?
Speaker 3: Well? Sure, why not? Because the creator of the Bechtel
Speaker 3: test is now our dearest friend friend, so for her
Speaker 3: because she needs our help. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Bechel's hast was created by Quirker to miss Alison
Speaker 3: Bechdel with her friend Liz Wallace. It's so weird to
Speaker 3: do this in person. Often called the Bechdel Wallace Test.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of versions of the test. The version
Speaker 3: we use is thus, there are two characters with names
Speaker 3: of a marginalized gender who speak to each other about
Speaker 3: something other than a man for two lines of dialogue.
Speaker 3: And I feel like it is kind of weirdly relevant
Speaker 3: in today's episode because It was originally created specifically in
Speaker 3: response to a lack of queer relationships between women on screen.
Speaker 3: I feel like there is a for me, a very
Speaker 3: erotic relationship between women in this very film. They kiss,
Speaker 3: they literally kiss. That's erotic. Famously, not always, but in
Speaker 3: this case very yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, And like you mentioned, Jamie, we are
Speaker 2: sitting in person. Very rare for us to do an
Speaker 2: in person record, but it's a special occasion because our
Speaker 2: guest is visiting from another country and you know them already.
Speaker 2: They are a drag artist known for RuPaul's Drag Race
Speaker 2: UK season one. They're the host of the podcast Camp Classics,
Speaker 2: and you remember them from our episodes on show Girls
Speaker 2: and Jawbreaker. It's Crystal.
Speaker 4: Hi, I've crushed oceans of dives to be here.
Speaker 2: You really did, I literally did, literally did?
Speaker 5: Hi?
Speaker 4: Hello, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Actually see Yeah.
Speaker 4: Likewise, this is it is kind of intense, this in
Speaker 4: person thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, speaking out about the eye contact, I know
Speaker 3: you're so beautiful. This is great. It is. I like
Speaker 3: that we only record in person when someone is specifically
Speaker 3: visiting from England, because we did that with Kate a
Speaker 3: couple of months ago as well.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: I mean even just the three movies we've covered with
Speaker 3: you all very campy movies. So before we get into
Speaker 3: your history with the movie, tell us about the podcast.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you. Yeah. So I've started a podcast called
Speaker 4: camp Classics, which I guess is kind of like your podcasts,
Speaker 4: but a queer lens we're looking at. We call it
Speaker 4: a thoughtful podcast about stupid movies. So we're covering kind
Speaker 4: of queer coded and explicitly queer movies and kind of
Speaker 4: looking at them through a queer lens. This movie really
Speaker 4: qualifies as a camp classic. We've got We typically look
Speaker 4: at things from four categories to determine whether or not
Speaker 4: something's a camp classic. You look at it and you say,
Speaker 4: is it any queer joy? Does it have an ongoing legacy?
Speaker 4: Stupid fun? And underdog flop vibes? Those are typical categories.
Speaker 4: So this movie ticks some boxes Foreshore.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: And also, I just think whenever vampires are involved, you're
Speaker 4: probably in camp territory.
Speaker 2: Almost always.
Speaker 3: Almost we've been covered I mean, we did interview with
Speaker 3: a vampire last year, We've just recovered Twilight, and now,
Speaker 3: I mean, vampires are on the brain. Centers just came
Speaker 3: out we've all seen Sinners.
Speaker 4: Not a particularly camp movie.
Speaker 3: I'd say, actually, no, no idea.
Speaker 2: It was the flop vibes are not there's no but
Speaker 2: it is horny, and that's also a prerequisite, I think
Speaker 2: for a vampire mode.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's yeah, it's sexy. It's sexy. That movie
Speaker 4: was so good.
Speaker 3: It was so good. I really want to see I
Speaker 3: need to see it a second time.
Speaker 4: Everything I consume right now just seems to involve vampires,
Speaker 4: which I'm not mad about.
Speaker 3: They're back. I feel like whatever cultural cycle like that
Speaker 3: we fell out of in the late two thousands, we're back.
Speaker 3: And I think that the media is kind of better
Speaker 3: now too, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going through because No Saratu also came
Speaker 3: out recently. I was going through the ranked Dracula slash
Speaker 3: No Saratu because Nosaracha is basically just a Dracula knockoff,
Speaker 3: and there have been Yeah, the two thousands was not
Speaker 3: a great time for Dracula. I didn't realize that Geord
Speaker 3: Butler had played Drus.
Speaker 4: I am desperate to see Dracula two thousands.
Speaker 3: Okay, have you seen I have it up his audition tape.
Speaker 3: He's wearing like a Chris Angel wig.
Speaker 4: It's really wow.
Speaker 3: It's really I love Geord Butler. He's not afraid to
Speaker 3: be really bad in the movie. I love it.
Speaker 4: Gary Oldman isn't dead, but he is rolling in his grave.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, Gary Oldman could never wear this wig, and
Speaker 3: neither could try. No one should wear this wig. I
Speaker 3: love it. I love it. But yeah, it seems like
Speaker 3: the twenty twenties have been good to vampires so far.
Speaker 4: Yeah, apparently Dracula is the most adapted piece of media ever.
Speaker 2: Yes, making like I read something like seven hundred appearances
Speaker 2: in different adaptations, plays, movies, TV shows.
Speaker 3: There are so many different I mean, obviously count Orlock
Speaker 3: is a Dracula ripoff. And I say obviously I had
Speaker 3: to check because I you know, so you never know
Speaker 3: who's ripping off who. Sure, but count Orlock is a
Speaker 3: Dracula rip off. But there's also there's like the Monster,
Speaker 3: the Universal Monster version, which is kind of like stripped
Speaker 3: of context Dracula and he's just a weird guy. There's
Speaker 3: this Dracula who the like book Cannon Dracula. There's Hotel
Speaker 3: Transylvania Dracula.
Speaker 5: That's my niece's favorite of course count Oh my god,
Speaker 5: see everyone's got their Dracula countcula.
Speaker 3: There's why did children have so many vampires? That that's alarming?
Speaker 2: And then you've got things like Blacula and just all
Speaker 2: different manner of adaptations there were.
Speaker 3: This is from a Vulture list, because I mean their
Speaker 3: vulture can be counted upon to have a list of
Speaker 3: this nature. And I celebrate that because I really needed it.
Speaker 3: This morning I learned about adaptations I hadn't heard of.
Speaker 3: One that I was like. One I haven't seen but
Speaker 3: I knew about was Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, love it, love that movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because isn't that about the making of nos forra Tu?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: And then he was in Knows for a two.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then you know who else is in Knows for
Speaker 2: a Tu. Nicholas Holt, who plays Renfield in a different
Speaker 2: movie starring Nicholas Cage and Nicholas Cage is in a
Speaker 2: different movie called Vampire's Kiss.
Speaker 3: Once the Vampire. Wait did I tell my Nicholas Holt
Speaker 3: story on the show before? I think I already did.
Speaker 3: It might have been on the Patreoon. Remember tell us, Okay,
Speaker 3: not to knark out Nicholas Holt, but my friend Cory,
Speaker 3: friend of the show, Cory lives in Long Beach. Apparently
Speaker 3: Nicholas Holt lives in Long Beach. Nicholas Holt had two
Speaker 3: movies in theaters this Christmas. They were Juror Number two
Speaker 3: and No Forratu. Nicholas Holt goes to first of all,
Speaker 3: Nicholas Holt AMC STUBBS member kind of Wild.
Speaker 2: Love It, where he and I are in community together,
Speaker 2: and please.
Speaker 3: Don't use this information for evil. Nicholas Holt confirmed STUBS
Speaker 3: member Corey has gotten in the Long Beach AMC. She
Speaker 3: knows all the information. Nicholas Holt goes to the Long
Speaker 3: Beach AMC on Christmas and everyone's like, is he going
Speaker 3: to see his own movie alone on Christmas? No, He's
Speaker 3: going to see Sonic three alone on Christmas. And I
Speaker 3: was like, he's great. I love him and I would
Speaker 3: be a lifelong fan.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I already thought that man was really sexy, but now.
Speaker 3: He's like also painfully, like beautiful. I was like, I
Speaker 3: would do that. I would see Sonic three alone in
Speaker 3: Long Beach.
Speaker 4: That's so powerful, especially if you knew you were going
Speaker 4: to get clocked doing it.
Speaker 3: Like he walked past two theaters that he was the
Speaker 3: star of the movie and was like, no, it's gonna
Speaker 3: be Sonic three for me.
Speaker 4: No one needs to see Juror number two.
Speaker 3: I think he's wow. He's so real. He's a Stubs
Speaker 3: member just like us. He probably could afford a movie theater. Okay, sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm talking too much. The one Dracula adaptation I learned
Speaker 3: about that I want to see now it is Dracula
Speaker 3: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, which is from two thousand
Speaker 3: and two. It is a silent, black and white film,
Speaker 3: but it is the only major adaptician at least on
Speaker 3: this list, that stars an Asian Dracula, and it really
Speaker 3: hones in on the like the idea of Dracula as
Speaker 3: the other and also I just like the title Pages
Speaker 3: from a Virgin's Diary. Anyways, he's ranked number He's the
Speaker 3: seventh best Dracula. That's pretty high. Wow, that's pretty high. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, shall we get into it with Crystal. What
Speaker 2: is your relationship with this movie.
Speaker 4: With Francis Ford Coppola as Bramstoker's Dracula.
Speaker 2: Yes, as Dracula in general, and of course Francis Ford
Speaker 2: Coppola of Megalopolis fame.
Speaker 4: We can.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's not afraid to do a silly one.
Speaker 3: We know this about him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he what's that tweet? He came on this movie,
Speaker 4: broke career in shambles, mad as hell. I feel like
Speaker 4: that's the story for this movie. I have to embarrassingly
Speaker 4: admit I have not seen a single other friendsis.
Speaker 3: That's okay, I just saw The Godfather for this show.
Speaker 4: Right, I'll get to it. I understand it's supposed to
Speaker 4: be quite good, so you know, I was surprised.
Speaker 3: I really, I really came in not wanting to like it.
Speaker 3: But it is actually quit it's pretty good. I'm the
Speaker 3: first person to say that.
Speaker 4: It turns out. Yeah, But this movie, I think I
Speaker 4: must have seen it as a child, and it terrified
Speaker 4: the piss out of me. I can still like before
Speaker 4: I watched this movie again recently and then again this week,
Speaker 4: I still had that image of Gary Oldman crawling that
Speaker 4: wall and just I found it so terrifying. For some reason.
Speaker 4: I watched it again earlier this year and was just
Speaker 4: obsessed with the campness of it. I had not expected
Speaker 4: it to be so silly. It really takes a lot
Speaker 4: of big swings this movie. And then I watched it
Speaker 4: again this week to prep for this. I've really enjoyed
Speaker 4: all of my time with this movie.
Speaker 2: Same same, Yeah, I didn't see it. I didn't see
Speaker 2: it the whole way through until I think within the
Speaker 2: past year prior to that. And this is something we've
Speaker 2: mentioned on the podcast before, but our friend Alex's Horrorthon
Speaker 2: that he does, it's like a twenty four hour horror
Speaker 2: movie marathon that he does every year. And I saw
Speaker 2: it for that one year, probably like seven ish years
Speaker 2: ago or something like that, except that I wasn't in
Speaker 2: the room for most of it because I had to
Speaker 2: like go teach a class.
Speaker 3: That's how our horrthon goes. I like painted my whole
Speaker 3: bathroom during Horror Fi one year, right.
Speaker 2: So I only saw bits and pieces of it, but
Speaker 2: I was like, what is this movie? Of course I
Speaker 2: had heard of it before, and I was familiar with
Speaker 2: different things like Keanu's bad accent and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff, but I had never fully seen it until
Speaker 2: pretty recently, and I was like, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 2: is the best. I love it. I'm obsessed. Watched it
Speaker 2: three times to prep for this.
Speaker 3: You've you've been like raving about this movie for the
Speaker 3: last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm new to it, but I love it
Speaker 2: the end, Jamie, what about you?
Speaker 3: I thought, I, this is so embarrassing. I thought I
Speaker 3: had seen this movie. I was aware of the Kianu
Speaker 3: accent thing. I was thinking of Gary Oldman's makeup, and
Speaker 3: I confused it with Ron Perlman Beast from It's a
Speaker 3: very similar makeup the Linda Hamilton Ron Pearlman series about
Speaker 3: Beauty and the Beast, where Linda Hamilton plays I think,
Speaker 3: not Belle but Bell, who's like a lawyer who goes
Speaker 3: out and hangs in the sewer with Ron Pearlman Beast. Anyways,
Speaker 3: I thought it was that it wasn't I have seen
Speaker 3: a lot of that show, but I had not seen this,
Speaker 3: and I mean, it's like, it's great, it's great. I
Speaker 3: had read the book in high school and then I
Speaker 3: was hoping to finish it because I've found an audiobook
Speaker 3: that stars Alan Cumming as Doctor Seward and Tim Curry
Speaker 3: as Van Helsing, and so i bought that audiobook and
Speaker 3: I'm like about halfway through it. It's interesting the like
Speaker 3: adaptation elements that Francis Ford Coppola ads because he like
Speaker 3: expands Mina's story by a lot, but in a way
Speaker 3: that I was like, that's what you did.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what most of my notes are about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I mean I appreciated that because I mean,
Speaker 3: she's not like a straightforward character, but she is, you know,
Speaker 3: very virtuous and very like observant active, but ultimately, you know,
Speaker 3: she has brown hair, so she's virtuous. Lucy doesn't have
Speaker 3: brown hair, so she's cooked. And that's how white woman
Speaker 3: characters work a lot of the time. Yeah, but yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's interesting, like how many different reads
Speaker 3: there are of this. It's really hard to prepare for
Speaker 3: a Dracula episode because there's so.
Speaker 4: Much, yeah, other stuff floating around and in the culture,
Speaker 4: and like, which part do you focus on?
Speaker 3: I'm I'm really excited to talk about it. The production
Speaker 3: of this movie is also like interesting. I was showing
Speaker 3: Caitlin before you got her Crystal. There's a clip of
Speaker 3: the whole cast playing zip zaps off, which was quite triggering,
Speaker 3: and they're like seeing Anthony Hopkins, Sir Anthony Hopkins playing
Speaker 3: zip zaps off. I'm like, that's that's a bridge too far?
Speaker 4: Was Gary Oldman there because he famously was kind of
Speaker 4: like absent during production, right, he was just in his
Speaker 4: tiller getting absolutely shit faced.
Speaker 3: God, I'm yeah, because Winona like called him out for
Speaker 3: that years later, thankfully. But I can't tell because they're
Speaker 3: all wearing, with all due respect, that all the men
Speaker 3: are wearing the same shapeless nineties outfit. So I really
Speaker 3: can't tell if he's there or not.
Speaker 4: Even in this movie, it's sometimes it's hard to tell
Speaker 4: who's who with these men. They're all kind of saying me, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's what.
Speaker 2: Happens when you have an all white cast. I'm like,
Speaker 2: who's that guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And who is, with all due respect, Billy Campbell?
Speaker 3: I don't know, indeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take a quick break and then we'll come
Speaker 2: back for the recap.
Speaker 3: Billy Campbell is an American film and television actor. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: so there you go.
Speaker 2: That's who that is. Okay, here is the recap. We
Speaker 2: open on backstory about Dracula played by disgraced actor Gary Oldman, and.
Speaker 3: It's kind of incredible, incredible in the not great way.
Speaker 3: How much this movie's production like bears that out, and
Speaker 3: how in the nineties, you could just say, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a piece of shit on this movie, and
Speaker 3: that's why I'm so good at acting, and like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, truly. So it's fourteen sixty two in Transylvania and
Speaker 2: Dracula is a human man at first, and he has
Speaker 2: a beloved his wife, Elisabetta played by Winona Ryder, who
Speaker 2: he must leave to go to war because men be
Speaker 2: going to war and impaling people. And then Elizabetha gets
Speaker 2: word that Dracula died in battle, so she takes her
Speaker 2: own life. But he didn't die. That was just like
Speaker 2: false fake news.
Speaker 3: This happened to Romeo and Juliet too. Wait to see
Speaker 3: the body, ladies, wait to see the body.
Speaker 4: Or just don't kill yourself because is dead.
Speaker 3: There's so much to live for. Don't die. I'm a man,
Speaker 3: ye all do respect to your deceased loved ones.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So Dracula comes back to his dead wife absolutely
Speaker 2: devastated and infuriated at like the church and the clergy
Speaker 2: who had like sent him to war. So he denounces God,
Speaker 2: saying that he's going to rise from his own death.
Speaker 3: He stabs across the cross start elodes into a cloud
Speaker 3: of blood, which is awesome.
Speaker 4: What a cool way to become a vampire.
Speaker 3: God, I know he really like the mellow drama and
Speaker 3: this is just oh, it's so good, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: And so he drinks the blood from the cross and
Speaker 2: that's how it becomes a little Vampire's such a drama queen. Okay.
Speaker 2: Then we cut to London eighteen ninety seven. We meet
Speaker 2: a man named Renfield played by Tom Waits of Shrek
Speaker 2: two fame.
Speaker 3: Oh, he plays the.
Speaker 2: Same more well he played. I guess he plays Captain
Speaker 2: hook Slash. He sings one of his songs in the
Speaker 2: bar that Shrek goes too.
Speaker 3: That's important, yeah, in some way, which kind of makes
Speaker 3: him the most famous actor in the movie. Indeed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Renfield has been institutionalized, so another man is
Speaker 2: tasked with taking over his work. This is Jonathan Harker
Speaker 2: played by Keanu Reeves doing a very good and very
Speaker 2: authentic English accent. No, no, oh, I know, poor poor guy.
Speaker 2: I read that he like the reason he sounds so
Speaker 2: stilted and that he's like doing a bad job is
Speaker 2: because he was trying so hard to make it perfect,
Speaker 2: and Coppola was just like just relax a bit buzz.
Speaker 3: Less up, buddy, and he's like, I can't. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: he Coppola does still say very no way. I have
Speaker 3: a fun quote about him. He said this was like
Speaker 3: ten years ago. He said, like, Keanu is still a
Speaker 3: prince in my eyes.
Speaker 4: He saw nice.
Speaker 3: He said, he tried so hard. That was the problem.
Speaker 3: He wanted to do it perfectly, and in trying to
Speaker 3: do it perfectly, it came off as stilted. I tried
Speaker 3: to get him to just relax with it and not
Speaker 3: do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn't as critical
Speaker 3: of him, but that's because I like him so much
Speaker 3: to this day. He's a prince in my eyes, which
Speaker 3: because his character is not a prince. He's just saying that.
Speaker 2: But Keanu is a prince.
Speaker 4: Yeah. He belongs in i'd say modern movies or maybe
Speaker 4: in the future movies.
Speaker 3: He does have a face for the future. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: and he and.
Speaker 4: He does silent and brooty well, but he doesn't necessarily a.
Speaker 2: Period piece is not for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he also said that he Coplo said he
Speaker 3: cast Keanu in that part because he was looking for
Speaker 3: like a hot guy of the moment, because the part
Speaker 3: of Jonathan kind of famously sucks, which no, I mean
Speaker 3: for Nicholas Holt that we could. But Jonathan. I think
Speaker 3: Jonathan's a really funny character because he's just like white,
Speaker 3: not going it through the most uncomfort I really liked
Speaker 3: it in The New Nose for Autu too.
Speaker 4: We're just getting cooked.
Speaker 3: He's just getting he's getting like or just like that
Speaker 3: first dinner where it's like this like absurd looking guy
Speaker 3: being like, okay, so you live with me now, and
Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, yes, okay, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: I like Jonathan, he acts like I went in that situation. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: I've been kidnapped.
Speaker 2: Anyway. So Jonathan Harker is about to go to Transylvania
Speaker 2: to close some real estate deals of Count Dracula, who
Speaker 2: has been buying property up all over London, although of
Speaker 2: course no one knows that this Dracula is a vampire.
Speaker 2: They just think he's like an eccentric rich dude. Jonathan
Speaker 2: technically is, yeah, in addition to being a vampire. So
Speaker 2: Jonathan says goodbye to his fiancee Mina played by also
Speaker 2: Winona Ryder, who is also doing a very good English accent.
Speaker 3: She's done an English accent a fair cause heidden, what's
Speaker 3: the movie Colonial England? And oh, Crucible, but I think
Speaker 3: that had already come out at this point.
Speaker 2: I asked, I don't know the timeline, but yeah, she's
Speaker 2: she's doing her best.
Speaker 1: She is.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: I think her performance is great. The accent is meth
Speaker 3: but I performances equally, I know.
Speaker 2: So Jonathan sets off to Dracula's castle in Transylvania, and
Speaker 2: his journey is as spooky as hell. There's like wols
Speaker 2: and bats and a creepy carriage driver who sort of
Speaker 2: looks like the alien from the Alien movies, and there's
Speaker 2: just like all kinds of weird shit. He arrives at
Speaker 2: the castle and is greeted by Dracula.
Speaker 4: And which looks like that scary man with a.
Speaker 2: Yeah there's and then and also not to appearance shame Dracula,
Speaker 2: but he looks.
Speaker 3: Like a lot of people that I think it's there's
Speaker 3: a there's a threshold we can body shame drag we can,
Speaker 3: and he killed a lot of people.
Speaker 2: He looks like Emperor Palpatine. And then I've got thinking that, yes,
Speaker 2: he's got these like two titty lump hairstyle.
Speaker 3: Which weirdly enough, is how he's described in the book. Oh, like,
Speaker 3: I think that a lot of what this adaptation it
Speaker 3: adds a lot of stuff, but it doesn't really take
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff out, Like the book is really weird.
Speaker 4: He's a fan of Sailor Moon space buns.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, diabolical Lea.
Speaker 2: So he's being very weird. Dracula is he's like flinging
Speaker 2: his sword around, his shadow is walking around independent of
Speaker 2: his movements, the palms of his hands are furry, you know,
Speaker 2: all kinds of weird stuff. And then also Dracula sees
Speaker 2: Jonathan's picture of Mina, who looks a lot like his
Speaker 2: beloved Elizabetta, and he's like, oh, who's that a wooga?
Speaker 2: Hey Jonathan, you better stay here for a month. But
Speaker 2: don't worry. I'm definitely not going to go and steal
Speaker 2: your girlfriend in London.
Speaker 3: Right, And he's like, oh, but well, I have you.
Speaker 3: Can you write three letters confirming that you're totally okay
Speaker 3: that I can just sort of send out every so often.
Speaker 3: Is such a dumb ass, I love? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll do that, Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 4: Something might be kind of weird about this castle, but well.
Speaker 3: I don't want to argue, Okay.
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, back in London, Mina writes in her diary
Speaker 2: about how much she missus Jonathan, how she's going to
Speaker 2: stay with her friend Lucy while Jonathan is away. And
Speaker 2: Lucy's whole thing is that she is horny.
Speaker 3: Horney, so horny, and so you're like, well, of course
Speaker 3: I think terrible it's gonna happen to her. But she's
Speaker 3: kind of a little polyamorous. She's being like, why can't
Speaker 3: I marry three people? I'm like, why can't you? She
Speaker 3: has this.
Speaker 2: Beautiful polycule of several men who are fawning.
Speaker 3: Over her, desperate to give her blood transfusions.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: One of them is a man from Texas named Quincy
Speaker 2: Morris played by Billy Campbell.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's an American actor.
Speaker 2: Oh that's who that is.
Speaker 3: Okay, you might have recognized him from American acting.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So another is a doctor named Jack Seward played by
Speaker 2: Richard E. Grant, and then the third is a lawyer
Speaker 2: named Arthur Holmewood played by Carrie of saw Fame.
Speaker 3: Yes, his most famous role.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: And also, by the way, doctor Jack is currently treating
Speaker 2: Renfield the man who was driven mad after that recent
Speaker 2: trip to Transylvania. He's eating bugs and carrying on about
Speaker 2: his master, who is obviously Dracula. Back at the castle,
Speaker 2: Dracula continues to be super weird. He's shaving Jonathan, he's
Speaker 2: licking the blood from his cut.
Speaker 4: Apparently this was the scene. Specifically, Gary Alban was completely steamed.
Speaker 4: Oh he's been drinking vodka all day. Yes, it's so,
Speaker 4: it's so fascinating.
Speaker 3: Very scary guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he basically plays that drunk man. Also, and have
Speaker 4: you seen slow Horses? No, I think it's him. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's him, and he's just plays an alcoholic but anyway, yeah,
Speaker 4: he's I do love his performance though. He's so watchable.
Speaker 2: He turns in a great performance. And he's also a
Speaker 2: very bad person and two things. Unfortunately, it can be true.
Speaker 3: What has what has?
Speaker 4: I don't know what he's done.
Speaker 2: He was very very abusive to his wife, his ex wife,
Speaker 2: like the the police got involved. Oh I think it
Speaker 2: was like one of those let me just sorry, Okay,
Speaker 2: So yeah, he was like tremendously physically abusive to his
Speaker 2: ex wife. And this was a This this all happened
Speaker 2: after the production of this movie.
Speaker 3: But also, I mean, like you're saying, there's so many
Speaker 3: examples during the production of this movie where when on
Speaker 3: a Rider was like I just felt super unsafe around him,
Speaker 3: and you know, has sort of like walked those comments back.
Speaker 3: But also she had like it just sounded like it
Speaker 3: was being around him was awful and like they had
Speaker 3: a family relationship, and then she loved Keanu. There's I
Speaker 3: have a quote from her as a as a palate cleanser.
Speaker 3: This is from a Vanity Fair interview where we Noa
Speaker 3: was going over her old journals from this time, where
Speaker 3: she said, I have these journals and I just pulled
Speaker 3: one out recently. It was from around the time of Dracula.
Speaker 3: The text says, angst angst, angst angst, thank god for Keanu,
Speaker 3: thank God, I'm going to see Keanu. So they're just
Speaker 3: they're just besties. And it seems like, I mean, Copla
Speaker 3: says he's a prince. It just seems like everyone's looking
Speaker 3: forward to seeing Keanu and absolutely dreading seeing Gary Oldman,
Speaker 3: who in you know, the press junket for this movie
Speaker 3: is like very forthcoming about like, yeah, I was really
Speaker 3: fucked up and I would like lean over and whisper
Speaker 3: obscenities to scare people.
Speaker 4: And you're just sleeping in a coffin every night.
Speaker 3: These really like methody kind of things were, but like,
Speaker 3: you know, method as a means to a use your
Speaker 3: co workers. Interestingly, they originally wanted Daniel da Lewis to
Speaker 3: play Dragula. Oh who, I haven't heard of him ever.
Speaker 3: Like hurting anyone doing method acting, it seems like there
Speaker 3: is surely there's a way to not hurt people.
Speaker 4: Surely you say that, but like I'm trying to think
Speaker 4: of someone who's kind of unproblematically method because I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, the next person that jumps it to mind
Speaker 4: is Jared Letto, who, yeah, I guess he also did
Speaker 4: that ship on a.
Speaker 3: Vampire, But isn't he Jim Carrey did it for a
Speaker 3: Man on the Moon when he was playing Andy Kaufman.
Speaker 3: There's so many examps, but there are some that are
Speaker 3: just like, I haven't heard of means story about danielday Lewis.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong, nor have I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might just be that Tom.
Speaker 3: Hardy as Matt Max where it just sounds like he
Speaker 3: just sort of was like like I don't think he
Speaker 3: didn't and he wasn't mean to be played just as
Speaker 3: like a little cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so method acting maybe not the best.
Speaker 3: Approach if you're already a piece of shit. Yeah right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Dracula, he's you know, being weird and shaving
Speaker 2: Jonathan and Jonathan like that. He starts lurking around the
Speaker 2: castle and he goes into this horny fuck room with
Speaker 2: three lady vampires and they orgy him up pretty good
Speaker 2: until Dracula barges in and he's like, no, Jonathan is mine.
Speaker 2: And then Jonathan watches them eat a baby, and.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh, don't you think, though, if you were
Speaker 4: a vampire, like a baby would be so delicious.
Speaker 3: It's veal, it's human veal.
Speaker 4: I think babies look delicious a bit. Sometimes I don't
Speaker 4: even eat human flesh.
Speaker 3: That is like a like brain reaction to where you're like,
Speaker 3: it's so cute, I want to eat it.
Speaker 1: Truly.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the next thing we know, Dracula is on his
Speaker 2: ship called the Demeter, bound for London, along with several
Speaker 2: crates filled with dirt from his castle grounds. We learn
Speaker 2: that he gets power from those anyway. On the way,
Speaker 2: Dracula is thinking about Mina he's eating the crew of
Speaker 2: the ship, et cetera. He arrives in London and he's
Speaker 2: in the form of like a wolf man and he
Speaker 2: lures Lucy to him, who, by the way, has gotten
Speaker 2: engaged to Arthur aka Carrie Is.
Speaker 3: She picks kind of like I think, at least as
Speaker 3: they're portrayed in the movie, she kind of picks the
Speaker 3: flop I think. But although I was, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about it. I was like, Seward, that's
Speaker 3: a lot of baggage. She takes him at night.
Speaker 4: He also maybe shoots up Heroin at one point.
Speaker 2: He definitely yeah, he has I think a morphine addiction.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, he's very like in the book, he's portrayed
Speaker 3: as just like a guy, but they really go out
Speaker 3: of their way to be like he's he's a bit
Speaker 3: of a mess. Whatever. They're not gonna be married for lawn.
Speaker 2: No. So she's engaged, but then she's seduced by Dracula's
Speaker 2: vampire powers and she fucks and gets bitten by this
Speaker 2: like wolfy version of Dracula, and then Mina comes in
Speaker 2: and sees all of this happening, and then Dracula does
Speaker 2: my favorite thing where someone's like, don't look at me,
Speaker 2: runs away and disappears, So drama, no, not like this.
Speaker 2: And then so Mina helps Lucy get inside, and then
Speaker 2: Dracula moves into his new house in London. He then
Speaker 2: goes out for a stroll around town. We learn that
Speaker 2: con trade of popular belief, Dracula can move about in
Speaker 2: the daytime, although his powers are weak, and he looks
Speaker 2: like how Gary Oldman regularly looks. He's dropped the Palpatine
Speaker 2: vibes and now he looks like if Ozzy Osbourne and
Speaker 2: Slash had a baby at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the the Unfortunately, the purple glasses really scanned
Speaker 3: Johnny Depp to me, but I thought it was really
Speaker 3: funny when he like saw on a rider in the
Speaker 3: crowd and it cuts to like he kind of looks
Speaker 3: like Bono a little bit. You're like, the fuck. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the guy who's like he must have some
Speaker 3: magical abilities because I don't get it. I don't see it.
Speaker 2: That I will talk a lot about, but yeah, we'll
Speaker 2: get there, Okay. So he spots Mina, who's also out
Speaker 2: and about, and he introduces himself to her as Prince Vlad,
Speaker 2: and he's eventually able to lure her in, also using
Speaker 2: his vampire powers question Mark. She seems to think that
Speaker 2: she recognizes him, and he's also about to bite her,
Speaker 2: but he can't bring himself to do it. And I'm
Speaker 2: not really sure what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Also like watching porn, Yeah, and I was like, Mina,
Speaker 3: how do you? She really repressed I which I like,
Speaker 3: we'll talk about more of the productions. But like that
Speaker 3: was why win Ona writer wanted this movie to be made,
Speaker 3: where she was like, Mina is so interesting and no
Speaker 3: one cares like that her Like writers, the whole reason
Speaker 3: this movie exists was is true for a lot of
Speaker 3: own Writer movies. She's a great producer.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay. So meanwhile, Lucy is not feeling quite herself,
Speaker 2: perhaps because Dracula bit her and she's turning into a vampire.
Speaker 4: Which she does have a great smoky yeah she does so.
Speaker 2: Abraham van Helsing played by Anthony Hopkins, a doctor who
Speaker 2: specializes obscure ailments.
Speaker 3: It's so wild that Anthony Hopkins has been old for
Speaker 3: my entire life. It's like he's everyone go follow Anthony
Speaker 3: Hopkins on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, he's got a good presence.
Speaker 3: He's got a great presence. He'll just go live and
Speaker 3: play the piano. Oh and be like hello everybody, and
Speaker 3: just start playing the piano and a ton of cats.
Speaker 3: He seems like a real sweety pie.
Speaker 2: Good for him. Yeah, okay. So he is called upon
Speaker 2: to treat Lucy and he sees the bite marks on
Speaker 2: Lucy's neck and he's like, yep, vampire all right. But Jack,
Speaker 2: Quincy and Arthur, Lucy's three boyfriends.
Speaker 3: I know, they're all like, I want her to give
Speaker 3: her blood. No me, no me.
Speaker 2: But they they're like pish posh vampires. That's not real.
Speaker 2: Back at Dracula's castle, Jonathan is also having a rough
Speaker 2: go of it. He is getting all of his blood
Speaker 2: sucked out by the vampire ladies, but he manages to
Speaker 2: escape and finds refuge in a convent. When the nuns
Speaker 2: send a letter to Mina telling her to come to
Speaker 2: the convent so that she and Jonathan can get married immediately.
Speaker 4: There's so much across European travel in this movie. They
Speaker 4: are back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker 3: Yes, as someone who lives in.
Speaker 4: Europe, how did this exhausting the travel itineraries of this movie?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, So Lucy is becoming more and more vampirey. Then
Speaker 2: Van Helsing starts to do some research on Dracula specifically,
Speaker 2: and apparently his crimes are pretty well documented. It reminded
Speaker 2: me of the vampire research scene in Twilight, Oh my God,
Speaker 2: when she just googles.
Speaker 3: She buys a book and then just googles everything and anyways,
Speaker 3: which is I was like, man, I do that all
Speaker 3: the time, Like I want to have the book, but
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to open it read it.
Speaker 4: One of our camp clues is if someone has to google,
Speaker 4: you know, a freaky activity happening whenever someone googles what's
Speaker 4: happening to me? Or strange powers or in Lindsay Lohan's case,
Speaker 4: and I know who killed me, like twin stigmata.
Speaker 3: Bonus points if they're on Bang exactly Jeeves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so Van Helsing is basically doing the eighteen
Speaker 2: hundreds version of a Google, and he's very excited because
Speaker 2: I guess he's been pursuing Dracula his whole career and
Speaker 2: this is his chance to finally hunt him down.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, he flips out, he's so excited, and
Speaker 3: then he's like he's I think Anthony Hopkins is so
Speaker 3: funny and as he's like, whoo, we gotta cut her
Speaker 3: head off, or like he's just like, can't read the room.
Speaker 3: It's very funny.
Speaker 2: On three separate occasions, he's like, yeah, no big deal,
Speaker 2: I don't no, we don't need to give Lucy an autopsy.
Speaker 2: We just need to chop her head off and drive
Speaker 2: a stick through her heart. And then they do that
Speaker 2: on screen, and then the he says it again later
Speaker 2: you already did it, yeah, he tells. He's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: Mina your your best friend. Yeah, she was in a
Speaker 2: great deal of pain and she and she's dead now,
Speaker 2: but it's okay because we chopped off her head and
Speaker 2: stabbed her in the heart, so no worries.
Speaker 4: And she's like, it's such a tonal choice for this movie,
Speaker 4: which is otherwise so gothic, romantic, serious, erotic. And then
Speaker 4: you just got Anthony Hopkins like yeah, in a different movie.
Speaker 3: Basically he's goofy clown. The book does like regularly mention
Speaker 3: that Van Helsing is funny. Where like that whole thing,
Speaker 3: where when was it Arth that can't Carrie elwa was Arthur?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: When he's like I'll give my blood, no big deal.
Speaker 3: I'll give every last drop. And in the book they're like,
Speaker 3: Van Helsing's so funny that he said, well, not every
Speaker 3: last drop. He so, I don't know, bran Stucker thought
Speaker 3: he was funny, didn't you go Mortensen play Van Helsing?
Speaker 3: Or who plays Hugh Jackman?
Speaker 4: Hugh Jackman. I need to watch that movie again. I'm really.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it since it came out in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four.
Speaker 3: And then sure aged great.
Speaker 4: One thing I remember about that movie is that you
Speaker 4: could see the boom mics. Oh my god, I remember.
Speaker 4: I remember that from the cinema.
Speaker 2: I love that. And then is Underworld a spinoff from that?
Speaker 2: Or is Kate Beckinstill playing a different Vampire Hunter.
Speaker 4: Character she's a vampire and Underworld and she's just not
Speaker 4: a vampire Hunter and Van Helsing I think?
Speaker 3: And then isn't I Frankenstein a spinoff of Underworld?
Speaker 2: It's I don't know if it's a spinoff or if
Speaker 2: it's just like made by the same guy. Okay, but
Speaker 2: there's some connection, yeah, Okay, there's some connection, yes, of course. Okay,
Speaker 2: So Dracula continues to seduce Mina. It seems like there's
Speaker 2: some connection between her and Dracula's beloved Elisa Betta. Of course,
Speaker 2: they're both played by when on a writer. I think
Speaker 2: that Dracula thinks that Mina is like a reincarnation of
Speaker 2: his wife.
Speaker 3: I think the movie thinks that. The movie probably thinks
Speaker 3: that too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is all that
Speaker 3: whole thing is added, like the Elizabetha thing, and the
Speaker 3: like erotic relationship between those two is just like new yeah, yeah, yeah, lots.
Speaker 2: To say there. Yeah, but Mina is like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: I gotta go marry my fiance, but he must never
Speaker 2: know about my new lover, Dracula aka Prince Vlad. And
Speaker 2: so she writes a letter to Dracula breaking up with him,
Speaker 2: and that feels like a very nineteenth century equivalent of
Speaker 2: like breaking up over text.
Speaker 3: She does, and then she goes and he yeah, he
Speaker 3: has a meltdown. I'm like wow.
Speaker 2: So Mina sets off to Romania to meet up with Jonathan.
Speaker 2: She can't stop thinking about Dracula, though I would say
Speaker 2: that he's penetrating her thoughts, and I get it they
Speaker 2: have some of psychic connection. Dracula, meanwhile, is heartbroken and
Speaker 2: crying his eyes out and looking even more like shit
Speaker 2: he's got this like bat face situation happening. His tears
Speaker 2: are blood. He is not having a good time. Mina
Speaker 2: arrives at the convent and we see her in Jonathan's wedding.
Speaker 2: Jonathan now has gray hair because he got all the
Speaker 2: life force sucked out of him.
Speaker 4: You gotta sucked too hard. That is some good head.
Speaker 3: I can I can do that. Okay. Yeah, everyone's a
Speaker 3: really good sport about the fact that he got sucked
Speaker 3: up his great hair.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In that scene where Van Helsing is telling Mina that
Speaker 2: her best friend has been brutally murdered by him, he's
Speaker 2: also like in front of Mina. He says, hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 2: you know all those women that you fornicated with, You
Speaker 2: didn't drink their blood, did you? And Mina's just like what, Okay.
Speaker 3: They just need to have a conversation about it because
Speaker 3: Mina's love with Dracula.
Speaker 2: Come on, I have communication that This is just a
Speaker 2: story about two women with varying relationships to their own
Speaker 2: sexuality and their own notions of love, navigating polyamory. That's
Speaker 2: what this movie is about anyway. So we see the
Speaker 2: wedding and that is intercut with Dracula who is back
Speaker 2: to looking like Emperor Palpatine coming after Lucy again. He
Speaker 2: turns into a wolfy vampire again and seemingly kills Lucy.
Speaker 2: Everyone thinks she's dead. There's a whole funeral that's.
Speaker 4: So good that those rivers of blood allen when he
Speaker 4: bites it. She basically gets fountained in blood. It's so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and she's in like this gold le maay thing. Lucy
Speaker 4: always has one tit out, yes, all.
Speaker 3: The way, lots of gratuitous she's always convalescing in like
Speaker 3: a silver gown.
Speaker 4: One breast, just l.
Speaker 2: Every man who comes into the room. She's like, kiss me.
Speaker 2: She makes out with so many people, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: Also, do you know about this wedding with Keanu and Winona.
Speaker 4: So they wanted it to be authentic, so they took
Speaker 4: them to a Greek Greek Orthodox church and filmed it
Speaker 4: with a real Greek Orthodox minister. And then they realized
Speaker 4: that actually they were potentially married.
Speaker 3: And then did they do anything about daughter?
Speaker 4: They think They were like, it's not legal, but maybe
Speaker 4: in the eyes of God, we just got married.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd be okay with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's cute.
Speaker 2: That would have been a dream come true for Winona
Speaker 2: because she loved Keanu.
Speaker 4: So much, she apparently still texts them and writes some
Speaker 4: letters saying dear husband, oh.
Speaker 3: I love them.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we think Lucy is dead, but Van Helsing
Speaker 2: isn't so sure, so he takes Lucy's three boyfriends, Arthur, Quincy,
Speaker 2: and Jack to her grave site. Her coffin is empty,
Speaker 2: and then Lucy shows up full vampire.
Speaker 3: With an incredible outfit the look of the movie wowow wow,
Speaker 3: and she looks like Queen Elizabeth ye, like it's incredible.
Speaker 4: She also has a medala does vampire Yes.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it was just incredible.
Speaker 2: And she also has a an accessory, which is a
Speaker 2: small child.
Speaker 4: That she's about to eat tasty tasty.
Speaker 2: But they stop Lucy and kill her by driving a
Speaker 2: steak through her heart and chopping her head off, but
Speaker 2: not before Lucy pukes blood all over Van Helsing's face.
Speaker 3: Fun fact, for some reason, speaking of Amidala chopping the
Speaker 3: head off on screen was George Lucas's idea. I guess
Speaker 3: originally they were like gonna cut away and you're like
Speaker 3: a thud. But I guess George, because whatever those seventies
Speaker 3: guys all knew each other, and he was like, no,
Speaker 3: show the head politian vibes. He said, do it.
Speaker 4: Apparently they kind of did twenty seven minutes of gore
Speaker 4: from this movie. WHOA, Yeah, they thought it was too gory.
Speaker 4: I love it. I'd love to see that.
Speaker 3: I want to see what they cut. Yeah, because the
Speaker 3: all of the this movie is like worth watching if
Speaker 3: only for the practical effects. Because here's there's like a
Speaker 3: single CGI.
Speaker 4: Effect in the entire time, and it looks terrible.
Speaker 3: It looks bad. It looks so bad. But even the
Speaker 3: like freaky like smoke that has sex with Winona Ryder
Speaker 3: was a practical effect.
Speaker 4: Whoa.
Speaker 3: It was like, it's like an in camera trick.
Speaker 2: Okay, well yeah, because Coppola was like, I don't want
Speaker 2: any CGI. I don't want any kind of modern tech.
Speaker 2: I want all like old Hollywood stuff. And he had
Speaker 2: to like fire a bunch of people who were like, no,
Speaker 2: it can't be done. And then he hired his son.
Speaker 4: Who was a magician, to do all the practical effects.
Speaker 3: That's good, but doesn't if you have a magician son
Speaker 3: lying around.
Speaker 4: He's literally good for nothing else. This is.
Speaker 3: It's his big moment. Look look, you know there's criticisms
Speaker 3: of nepotism. That's not one of them for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay. So meanwhile, Jonathan and Mina have returned
Speaker 2: to London. Jonathan sees Dracula and recognizes him. Then the
Speaker 2: married couple have dinner with Van Helsing. This is that
Speaker 2: very funny conversation where Van Helsing is just very nonchalantly
Speaker 2: being like, yeah, I murdered your best friend soul. What
Speaker 2: And then he's like, Okay, we have to form a
Speaker 2: plan to hunt down and kill Dracula. So they hide
Speaker 2: Mina away in doctor Jack's office and the men all
Speaker 2: go to Dracula's estate to destroy it and try to
Speaker 2: kill Dracula, who is taking on many forms at this point.
Speaker 2: He's a human sized bat, he's green, missed. He turns
Speaker 2: into a pile of rats at one point.
Speaker 4: What a great way to get out of a party.
Speaker 4: Imagine you're just having a conversation that you don't want
Speaker 4: to be in pile of rats.
Speaker 3: That is a good trick. That is a good thing
Speaker 3: to have in your back pocket.
Speaker 2: I would do that on bad dates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my god, that would be so great. Yeah wow,
Speaker 3: I mean it sucks for the restaurant.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that becomes a rat TOTUOI situation.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I hope that the rats are passionate
Speaker 3: about cooking. If you flooded into a bunch of remis,
Speaker 3: Oh goodness.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Dracula goes to Mina, who is very writhing
Speaker 2: and horny, and he's like, by the way, I am
Speaker 2: a soulless, undead monster. And she's kind of upset at first,
Speaker 2: but then she's like, I don't care. I don't care
Speaker 2: that you killed my best friend. I love you always,
Speaker 2: and then he bites her. She drinks his blood so
Speaker 2: that she'll become a vampire and be able to be
Speaker 2: with him for all of eternity. But just then all
Speaker 2: the men come in and Dracula escapes, and in order
Speaker 2: to save Mina, they must destroy Dracula once and for all.
Speaker 2: So Van Helsing hypnotizes Mina to figure out where Dracula is,
Speaker 2: like he's using their psychic connection. They figure out he's
Speaker 2: going back to Romania so he can grow strong again
Speaker 2: in his homeland and like, I don't know, writhe around
Speaker 2: in his dirt and get his powers back.
Speaker 3: Wow, Dragon, I.
Speaker 4: Love the shots of him in his coffin in his
Speaker 4: gold le mat dress. But he's he's just like kind
Speaker 4: of stuck and he knows maybe something's going wrong. But
Speaker 4: just see his little face kind of cocooned.
Speaker 3: He even sleeps dramatic. It's just I just love it.
Speaker 2: So our friends take a train, hoping to beat Dracula
Speaker 2: to Romania, who is traveling by boat, so it's like
Speaker 2: a race to the castle. They bring Mina along, who
Speaker 2: it's not feeling great, what with all the turning into
Speaker 2: a vampire. She and Van Helsing separate from the others.
Speaker 2: You know, she's turning into a vampire. She kisses Van Helsing.
Speaker 2: She tries to kill him a little bit, as do
Speaker 2: the other lady vampires, the ones who reside in Dracula's castle.
Speaker 2: They've come out for a little snack, but Van Helsing
Speaker 2: chops their heads off, not Mina's. She's still alive. Then
Speaker 2: there's a big chase with everyone racing to the castle.
Speaker 2: There's a big battle at the castle. Jonathan, Van Helsing, Arthur, Quincy,
Speaker 2: and Jack are fighting Dracula and his servants. They stab
Speaker 2: Dracula in the heart, so he's like kind of dying,
Speaker 2: but Mina points a gun at her husband, being like, well,
Speaker 2: when my time comes, will you do the same to me?
Speaker 3: And they're like no, oh, and then they only kill sluts,
Speaker 3: you are virtuous, and then wait till you But what
Speaker 3: if she wasn't okay? So they leave her there.
Speaker 2: Mina stays behind with Dracula, and her love fixes him
Speaker 2: or something she does ultimately fix him. She lands the
Speaker 2: final killing blow by, you know, driving the sword through
Speaker 2: his heart and chopping off his head between confessions of love,
Speaker 2: little kisses that she's giving him, tears that she's crying,
Speaker 2: so it's not necessarily like a triumphant ending. She's like, no,
Speaker 2: my other boyfriend, I have to kill him the end.
Speaker 2: So let's take another quick break and we'll come back
Speaker 2: to discuss, and we're back.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to say I forgot to mention in
Speaker 3: my history of this movie that I watched this movie
Speaker 3: on Pluto TV. Oh, same, did you also see the
Speaker 3: same del Taco ad? Four thousand times?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: What commercial did you see? Four thousand times?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: I absolutely disassociate when I watch commercials, so I don't remember.
Speaker 3: It's really hard. I will forever associate this movie with
Speaker 3: a Deltaco commercial. I was really kind of taken it
Speaker 3: back by how many times I saw it, because I mean,
Speaker 3: Pluto TV is the poor man's TV. They're both free,
Speaker 3: but to b is reasonable sure Pluto TV. It was ever,
Speaker 3: the runtime of this movie extended by forty five minutes
Speaker 3: with the number of delta and it was the same
Speaker 3: Del Taco ad every time. Oh I'm sorry it no,
Speaker 3: it helped it. It had elevated the experience. It's so
Speaker 3: like these it's getting shameless because it least, you know,
Speaker 3: like when because we're now paying whatever. Now I'm like
Speaker 3: being a boomer, but we used to like pay for cable,
Speaker 3: and by we I mean our parents. At least you
Speaker 3: get a variety of commercials. But now it's like you're
Speaker 3: paying to watch the same Del Taco ad four thousand times.
Speaker 3: And so anytime, yeah, I'm just every time I see
Speaker 3: this poster, I'll be like dell, Yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: In any case, should we start with maybe some adaptation changes.
Speaker 2: We've hinted at a few of them. Yeah, I have
Speaker 2: not read the book, but once again, I've read the
Speaker 2: Wikipedia synopsis of the book, so basically I know everything
Speaker 2: there is to know. Jamie. Feel free to jump in
Speaker 2: or fill in any gaps. But what I've gathered is
Speaker 2: that it's a pretty faithful adaptation as far as major
Speaker 2: story events. But there is a pretty major change in
Speaker 2: the sense that in the movie there is a love
Speaker 2: story between Dracula and Mina. They fall in love with
Speaker 2: each other, and that is completely added. That's not in
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole like traveling, time travel, reincarnation story is added.
Speaker 3: And the weirdly this like it feels wild to say,
Speaker 3: but the movie is less queer than the book, which
Speaker 3: is something that I found, Like, there there is an essay,
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's on my telephone. Uh, there there's
Speaker 3: an essay. I read to that and a wild desire
Speaker 3: took me. The Homoerotic History of Dracula Byalia Schaefer. That
Speaker 3: sort of traces how like Bromstoker is it Brom? Is
Speaker 3: it Bram? Is it Brom? He's dead? Bromstoker was very
Speaker 3: likely a closeted queer man. That is like what it
Speaker 3: is heavily speculated he was married. He was, but the marriage,
Speaker 3: like people argued, the marriage may not have even ever
Speaker 3: been consummated.
Speaker 4: I imagine one hundred and fifty years later, people are
Speaker 4: like sexless marriage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, you can't. And like, I mean, his best
Speaker 3: friend was Oscar Wilde diedis died of syphilis. Wrote he
Speaker 3: was a big Walt Whitman fan, and he would kind
Speaker 3: of write Walt Whitman these like arguably love letters. It
Speaker 3: is very likely that he was gay, and this was
Speaker 3: maybe known in his community, but he wasn't obviously out.
Speaker 3: But he started writing Dracula a month after Oscar Wilde
Speaker 3: went to It was like, I kind of forgot about this,
Speaker 3: but Oscar Wilde was punished by the government for being gay.
Speaker 3: He was like, you know, subjected to do it hard labor.
Speaker 3: And then Bromstoker starts writing Dracula a month after that.
Speaker 3: There are lines in the book that are cut from
Speaker 3: the movie, I think the most glaring, which I didn't
Speaker 3: even honestly notice until I read this essay. And then
Speaker 3: once you see it, you're like, oh, duh, you don't
Speaker 3: see Gary Oldman Dracula sucking men. Uh, it's they change,
Speaker 3: which is very much a feature of the book. You
Speaker 3: only see heterosucking in the Coppola movie, and there's actually
Speaker 3: a lot of hetero sucking at it. Like in the book.
Speaker 3: They're they're not like feasting on Keanu and you know,
Speaker 3: sucking him dry all day long. It's he's a prisoner. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of hetero elements added for this movie
Speaker 3: that is still very queer campy, but like it's interesting
Speaker 3: that in the book there's more. The line that is
Speaker 3: changed that Talia Schaeffer points out is when the vampire
Speaker 3: gals are like around Jonathan and they're like, we're gonna,
Speaker 3: you know, suck you off. They don't get to do
Speaker 3: it in the book because Dracula person and says, how
Speaker 3: dare you touch him? Any of you? How dare you
Speaker 3: cast eyes on him? When I have forbidden it? Back,
Speaker 3: I tell you all, this man belongs to me. Francis
Speaker 3: for Copola cuts out this man belongs to me That
Speaker 3: is not said in the movie. There's just these moments
Speaker 3: that in the book, like in the context of who
Speaker 3: Bromstoker was when he wrote it, feel intentional that are
Speaker 3: taken out in the nineties. And then yeah, all the others,
Speaker 3: all the lucy stuff, which is like another hetero element
Speaker 3: to like make Dracula a straighter character.
Speaker 2: Arculate, right, right, So also I saw that in the
Speaker 2: book the Lucy character is more like prim and proper
Speaker 2: and not so horny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I honestly do prefer Copola Lucy.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have lots to say about this rendition of
Speaker 2: the character.
Speaker 4: But she's problematic as hell. But god, I'm so glad
Speaker 4: she was.
Speaker 3: She went out having fun, she went on top, she
Speaker 3: had three boyfriends at the time of death. That's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seriously. So those are the main adaptation changes as
Speaker 2: far as I could tell, which led me to a
Speaker 2: lot of the questions I had.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Oh. The only other thing is like, this
Speaker 3: is the only adaptation that I mean, there's seven hundred.
Speaker 3: It's probably not the only, but the only popular adaptation
Speaker 3: of Dracula that actually makes an effort to like put
Speaker 3: it in a place in history, because I like, all
Speaker 3: monster stories are about the other. But the story of
Speaker 3: Dracula is about like, or one of the facets of
Speaker 3: the story is like anxiety around Eastern Europeans migrating west,
Speaker 3: and like Dracula is the embodiment of this xenophobia, and
Speaker 3: this anxiety.
Speaker 4: Potentially antisemitic as well. Right, Yeah, but I've also seen
Speaker 4: that it he could represent like an anti feudalism sort
Speaker 4: of perspective as well, and like the rise of the
Speaker 4: bourgeoisie and you know, the rise of capitalism and meritocracy
Speaker 4: as it were, against this kind of archaic form of government.
Speaker 3: That makes that makes especially in the context of like
Speaker 3: characters like if Mina and Jonathan are representing England, especially
Speaker 3: Jonathan because he's like so prim and proper that it
Speaker 3: leads to his ruin Ye and oh that's interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, vampires can be anything you want. In the debate,
Speaker 4: there's such a great standards, so fun versatile.
Speaker 3: There's a thesis paper about every aspect of Dracula.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So these adaptation changes, particularly revolving around the
Speaker 2: love story that's added in between Dracula and Mina. I
Speaker 2: did not realize that until doing research for this episode,
Speaker 2: that that was a component that is not in the
Speaker 2: book and is added in for the movie. So I
Speaker 2: was like, because as I was watching this, I was like,
Speaker 2: what is like, is there a vampire spell that he's
Speaker 2: casting on her? Like what what sort of like powers
Speaker 2: and mind control, like seduction powers, et cetera. Does he
Speaker 2: have slash that he's able to who use to sort
Speaker 2: of exert power over both Lucy and especially Mina, And
Speaker 2: is that more clear in the book, do we get
Speaker 2: more kind of like world building and backstory about what
Speaker 2: his powers are and how he's able to get Mina
Speaker 2: to fall in love with him. Turns out that's not
Speaker 2: in the book at all. So this is just a
Speaker 2: thing in the movie where I'm like, Okay, now, is
Speaker 2: it that he is using these like mind control powers
Speaker 2: on her? Is it that she is a strong willed
Speaker 2: person but like no one is a match for the
Speaker 2: likes of Dracula, Or is it that, like, Mina is
Speaker 2: a woman and this is a movie made by men,
Speaker 2: and therefore they think that she's like mentally and emotionally
Speaker 2: weak and fragile and susceptible to kind of maybe vampire
Speaker 2: powers or maybe just like, oh, a man is paying
Speaker 2: attention to me.
Speaker 4: I read it as she is the reincarnation, and as
Speaker 4: she accesses that, she's accessing a past love. But I
Speaker 4: don't think the movie does a great job of showing
Speaker 4: or telling that. And so the first time I watched it,
Speaker 4: I was like, wait, she loves them? When did that happen? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does happened so quickly.
Speaker 4: There's a few moments I got in this movie where
Speaker 4: And I never say this, but like, I kind of
Speaker 4: wish this movie told a bit more and showed a
Speaker 4: bit less Like it there's a few times where it's like, wait,
Speaker 4: what and who and how did that is? What's supposed
Speaker 4: what am I supposed to be getting from this bit?
Speaker 4: But I think that the movie thinks that there are
Speaker 4: lovers across time that are finally reunited and that's what
Speaker 4: he ignites in her, rather than it being a manipulation.
Speaker 2: Which is also the plot of the Haunted Mansion starring anyway, with.
Speaker 3: Another with another character named I think Elizabeth. I also weirdly, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess my. I feel like that that layering to
Speaker 3: me felt like misguided. Like I want to believe it
Speaker 3: was well intentioned, because I think, like, if I'm putting
Speaker 3: on like nineteen ninety two brain, it's like they're expanding
Speaker 3: the character of Mina but to give her another love interest.
Speaker 3: But I think you can also see or I'm kind
Speaker 3: of going off of like Wenoda Rider's take on it,
Speaker 3: which is that like the expansion of the story is
Speaker 3: intended to emphasize her repression and it's like through accessing
Speaker 3: this past love with Dracula that she is able to
Speaker 3: actually experience lust and sex, and it's almost like it
Speaker 3: reminds me of We talked about this in the Twilight video,
Speaker 3: citing the Natalie Wynn video about like the ravishment fantasy
Speaker 3: and like she's able to be her horniest self through
Speaker 3: this like mystical connection with this past love. I don't
Speaker 3: like how it's written, and I do feel like it
Speaker 3: ultimately kind of like is like how can we make
Speaker 3: Dracula like straighter? Or like there are other ways to
Speaker 3: do this, but I might get My read of it
Speaker 3: was that it was intended to because her relationship with
Speaker 3: Jonathan is like very sterile, Like.
Speaker 2: She's like, we've kissed, but nothing else.
Speaker 3: I did appreciate that they made out at the altar.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's a move. That's a move. I
Speaker 3: want to do that.
Speaker 2: But she's just an act. She's like basically pretending that
Speaker 2: her Jonathan is Dracula exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that it was an attempt written and directed
Speaker 3: by men to emphasize how repressed she was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a nineties attempt to give this character a
Speaker 4: bit more. But because it's in the nineties and it's
Speaker 4: in this cocktail of like erotic thrillers. Like the way
Speaker 4: we give her more is by making her horny, right,
Speaker 4: I think there is something in interesting in that, And
Speaker 4: I think the idea is about yeah, like repression and
Speaker 4: how hardy can you be before you have to have
Speaker 4: your head cut off? Like I think that's kind of
Speaker 4: a fun a fun thing. But there's almost something more
Speaker 4: feminist in the original text, which is just like men
Speaker 4: as a girl who gets shit done, and she's a
Speaker 4: scientist and she kills Dracula, and like she doesn't need
Speaker 4: to have a romance with every man she meets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was like I do. I prefer the book
Speaker 3: for that reason. Also, she has a job, she's like
Speaker 3: they mention it in the movie, but it never really
Speaker 3: comes up. But she teaches a school. Yeah, she's really smart.
Speaker 3: She she's a very active like I think she's she's
Speaker 3: kind of the protagonist of You could argue, I mean,
Speaker 3: she's certainly a more active character than any of the
Speaker 3: men trying to kill. You can argue that like her
Speaker 3: and Van Helsing are like pretty equally active and powerful
Speaker 3: when it comes to taking Dracula down. And in the
Speaker 3: book it's not because she's like secretly in love with
Speaker 3: him at a soul level. It's because she needs to
Speaker 3: kill Dracula.
Speaker 2: It needs to be done.
Speaker 4: Maybe there would have been a way to explore her
Speaker 4: being repressed and horny without it needing for her to
Speaker 4: also have like true love with Dracula. Yeah, do you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? Yeah, because that obviously is a
Speaker 4: thing that existed at that time, and women, you know,
Speaker 4: weren't allowed the access to their sexuality that they are now.
Speaker 4: So that's a cool thing to kind of explore.
Speaker 2: But I don't want to know what francis for a
Speaker 2: complos version of that is necessarily like.
Speaker 3: But I think it's interesting because I'm trying to remember
Speaker 3: I So, I was not a huge fan of the
Speaker 3: new Nose Ferratu, in which Lily Rose DApp plays the Mena.
Speaker 3: She's called Ellen in that one for whatever, because it's
Speaker 3: the rip off, but that's the Meana character, and I
Speaker 3: feel like it for me at least, wasn't much better.
Speaker 2: I thought it's worse and we won't spoil it. We
Speaker 2: won't spoil Nose for Atu, but people just have to
Speaker 2: do a different episode not acting, because yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: that was handled way worse.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's like, unfortunately, I think whatever it sucks
Speaker 3: to have to use this yardstick of like random famous men,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'm a I guess I'm a fan
Speaker 3: of like Robert went to the Library Eggers. But I
Speaker 3: thought that, yeah, like it was worse than twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: Like she is less active than she was, but also
Speaker 3: she's most active in the original text. So it's I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: The bottom line is the movie I don't think makes
Speaker 2: it clear enough what is going on with her internally?
Speaker 2: Like is it that she's being, you know, mind controlled
Speaker 2: by these vampire powers? Is it that she is a
Speaker 2: reincarnation of his past lover from five hundred years before
Speaker 2: or whatever?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Is it that she's just a fragile woman, because there's
Speaker 2: like there are different moments where when she first meets Dracula,
Speaker 2: like on the streets of London, she's very firm with him.
Speaker 2: She's just like, you're trying to get around buy a map, bitch, Like,
Speaker 2: leave me alone. You're annoying and weird.
Speaker 3: I'm engaged, uh, like I have a fiance.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden she's like, oh, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I've been so rude. Let's hang out And then they
Speaker 2: go and watch porn together.
Speaker 3: I just wish it was clearer that if this is
Speaker 3: what happens. I wish it was clearer that like that
Speaker 3: happens because he's Jedi mind tricking her or whatever, because
Speaker 3: I assume that's what he was doing. But it just
Speaker 3: there's no.
Speaker 2: Visual like manifestation of that on screen.
Speaker 3: So I'm just like what I was like, we need
Speaker 3: to have like a little she like like woooo right,
Speaker 3: because it does just kind of I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like Coppola trusted to us a little bit
Speaker 3: too much in that moment because it does just sort
Speaker 3: of seem like a decision she makes versus something that's
Speaker 3: like happening.
Speaker 2: To her, right, Like I need to see her eyes
Speaker 2: glaze over or something, you know. So that was very
Speaker 2: confusing and that made me I was just like, what
Speaker 2: is happening? And I don't like the implications of this.
Speaker 2: I guess it does make sense if she's a reincarnation,
Speaker 2: but I don't love that either, Like I would much
Speaker 2: prefer the version that we see in the original text.
Speaker 3: I mean that's like Crystal like you're saying, like there's
Speaker 3: like there has to be a way to explore Like
Speaker 3: I because I'm all for the like stuff that's not
Speaker 3: in the book of like Nina wanting to explore her
Speaker 3: sexuality and like find a means to explore sexual passion
Speaker 3: that is just like not allowed and certainly not with
Speaker 3: her like door husband. But this just is like not
Speaker 3: the way to do it.
Speaker 4: What do you think the movie thinks about her sexuality?
Speaker 4: Like That's the other thing I wasn't entirely clear on,
Speaker 4: Like is it is it encouraging it or is it
Speaker 4: saying that like because Lucy's punished, but like because it
Speaker 4: just ends where it does. Like I don't know, does
Speaker 4: she go back with Jonathan at the end or is
Speaker 4: she like awake now and she's like I can do better.
Speaker 2: We don't know, we don't know, we don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind I hope she just goes off into just
Speaker 4: like she gets three boyfriends.
Speaker 2: You know, I would love that for her.
Speaker 4: She's clearly not happy with that man, and the movie
Speaker 4: makes it clear that she's not. But I don't know,
Speaker 4: does the movie kind of think she needs to get
Speaker 4: back in her box hardness? I say, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because it is like emphasized in the movie
Speaker 3: that she's like her quote unquote value is her virtuousness,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't really come all the way around on
Speaker 3: that to say, like, I think that it feels like
Speaker 3: the movie still thinks that at the end. But an idea,
Speaker 3: it's confusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little bit ambiguous, right, because I mean,
Speaker 2: if you compare her with Lucy, it's the classic kind
Speaker 2: of Madonna horror complex thing where Mina is virtuous and
Speaker 2: she's virginal, and but she still falls in love with Dracula,
Speaker 2: and therefore she's also polyamorous because she loves Jonathan. Maybe
Speaker 2: we're led to believe she also loves Dracula. She's emotionally
Speaker 2: cheating on both of them, but she can be saved
Speaker 2: because she's the more pure, virginal one. You know, she
Speaker 2: gets a redemption. She's the one to kill Dracula. Her
Speaker 2: love releases everyone from like the darkness of it all
Speaker 2: versus Lucy, who she's horny, she's having sexy dreams, she's
Speaker 2: far more sexually curious. She's got three boyfriends lusting after her,
Speaker 2: and then she is punished because of that by being killed.
Speaker 2: But I think she's such an interesting character because, yes,
Speaker 2: the story does ultimately punish her for her horniness. But
Speaker 2: before that, she still has these three men who are
Speaker 2: like tending to her. No one's really judging her. They're
Speaker 2: not like, well, you deserve this for having sex with
Speaker 2: a wolf.
Speaker 4: But it does seem like Dracula's decides she's an easy target.
Speaker 4: Like there's almost like right, there's a sense that she's disposable,
Speaker 4: and as soon as she dies, it's it's like this
Speaker 4: van helsing those jokes about cutting her head off. It's
Speaker 4: like he's not mourning her because well, she was a slut,
Speaker 4: right right, she got what she The movie kind of
Speaker 4: is is very she got what she deserved or but
Speaker 4: I agree, I.
Speaker 2: Wish there was like a slightly different, just version of her.
Speaker 3: Where I get stuck again, is that like all that
Speaker 3: is true, but Lucy and Mina have a great relationship
Speaker 3: the whole time, and like so it's like Lucy does
Speaker 3: feel very clearly judged in a way that like elevates.
Speaker 3: It's sort of presented in the book of like poor Lucy,
Speaker 3: that sucks, but like this is like she dies because
Speaker 3: she wanted three boyfriends. But in both like their friendship
Speaker 3: is so strong. They're not like unlike a lot of
Speaker 3: Madonna Hort stories. They're not turned against each other, they're
Speaker 3: not herod to each other and their friendship. There's like
Speaker 3: a scene that I really kind of was like, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, is that Mina wants to stay with Lucy
Speaker 3: instead of to go rescue her like draculate ass husband.
Speaker 3: Where she's like, I don't want to go, and Lucy's like, no,
Speaker 3: you have you have to go get your dragula ass husband,
Speaker 3: like you have to. And but but it's like against
Speaker 3: Mina's better judgment, like she her love for Lucy is
Speaker 3: stronger than like her love for this guy she married.
Speaker 3: And so I do like that at very least for
Speaker 3: all of the movie's faults, like that friendship is intact
Speaker 3: and that like mutual respect between them isn't intact, because
Speaker 3: I feel like it was like a lesser adaptation would
Speaker 3: be like and there's even like Mina says like, oh,
Speaker 3: like Lucy's so pretty, but it's not like ugh, I
Speaker 3: can't believe how hot she is. She's like it's it's
Speaker 3: just like wow, my beautiful friend. You know, it is sweet,
Speaker 3: Like I wish I was.
Speaker 2: As pretty as Lucy and I and all these men
Speaker 2: doored me. It's not like jealousy or envious. It's just
Speaker 2: more just like good for her than everyone loves her.
Speaker 4: It's so sweet that Lucy's like kind of encouraging her
Speaker 4: sexuality as well, like there's something very yeah, lovely about that.
Speaker 4: She's like, look at his book, isn't it fun? And
Speaker 4: she's like, you don't need to be ashamed?
Speaker 3: Like right, yeah, but then the plot punishes her for
Speaker 3: feeling that way. It's so hard, I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love the scene where they're flipping through Arabian
Speaker 2: nights and like looking at all the horny drawings and
Speaker 2: and mean is like I could never can people even
Speaker 2: do this unless like, yeah, I did it last night.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I like that. I like that's it. You know,
Speaker 3: it's very stretched, but I like, you know, that's a
Speaker 3: dynamic I'm familiar with of like your friend that had
Speaker 3: sex before you being like it's awesome, try it out sometimes,
Speaker 3: like hekay, I.
Speaker 2: Wanted to talk about. So you know, there's there's different
Speaker 2: interpretations of the book as we discussed, as far as
Speaker 2: like fears around immigration and like Eastern Europe infiltrating Western
Speaker 2: Europe and like ethnic otherness and things like that. So
Speaker 2: what the movie does is basically, the good guys in
Speaker 2: the story are white Anglo Saxon Christians from England or
Speaker 2: I think vi Van Helsing is Dutch, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's all like.
Speaker 3: Colonizer vibes for sure.
Speaker 2: And then the bad guys, the bad people in the
Speaker 2: movie are from Eastern Europe, Turkish people and Romani people,
Speaker 2: because you get this villainization of Romani people. This is
Speaker 2: something we've discussed a lot on the podcast. In this movie,
Speaker 2: they are depicted as the like mindless loyal servants of Dracula.
Speaker 2: They're doing his evil bidding for reasons unknown, maybe that
Speaker 2: he's promised them eternal life or not sure. But also
Speaker 2: the g slur is used repeatedly throughout the movie. And
Speaker 2: then you have within the first thirty seconds of the movie,
Speaker 2: you've got like voiceover that's villainizing Islam because it's like,
Speaker 2: oh yes, uh, Muslim Turks invade Romania, threatening all of christiendom.
Speaker 3: Right. So the way that like historical context is brought
Speaker 3: in is just offensive, which is like irritating, not surprising,
Speaker 3: But it's like Coppola had such an agenda to like
Speaker 3: show that Italians are not the stereotypes they're presented as
Speaker 3: but any nationality that he doesn't associate with, He's like,
Speaker 3: they are they are You're like, heyah right, yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean and that's like an element of this story that
Speaker 3: if you want to do a book adaptation, that's like
Speaker 3: something that you can really like move in a different
Speaker 3: direction in a more thoughtful way, and this movie sort
Speaker 3: of shows it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what else I'd love to shout out the costume designer, yes,
Speaker 4: and the production design in general, but the costume designer
Speaker 4: on this movie was Ako Ishioka, who won Yes, but
Speaker 4: she won an Oscar for costume design in this I
Speaker 4: think these are some of the best costumes I have
Speaker 4: ever seen in a movie.
Speaker 3: Man that she also did my favorite. She did mirror
Speaker 3: mirror to the best Enderella costumes ever. She's so good.
Speaker 4: So the embarrassing thing that I thought of when I
Speaker 4: saw this was like this, these might be the best
Speaker 4: costumes I have ever seen in a movie. And I
Speaker 4: was like, what else is up there? And I was
Speaker 4: like the cell And I was like, that's embarrassing, intrusive
Speaker 4: thoughts that I've just had, And so then I googled
Speaker 4: and I was like, no, they are really good. And
Speaker 4: then it turns out she did those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she did a lot, she would do it. I
Speaker 3: was so sad to see that she'd passed, because I mean, god,
Speaker 3: so good.
Speaker 4: So she was a graphic designer by trade, so she's
Speaker 4: actually got a Grammy as well for album art design,
Speaker 4: and she nearly she was nominated for two Tony's for
Speaker 4: costume design as well, So she nearly had an egot
Speaker 4: in but in the sphere of design, which is so cool.
Speaker 3: That's amazing, so cool. Only musicians do that, that's amazing.
Speaker 4: And also I just want to shout out that she
Speaker 4: didn't ad for a Japanese department store called Parco with
Speaker 4: Faye done Away and it's just Fade done Away one
Speaker 4: long shot of her unwrapping and eating a hard boiled egg.
Speaker 4: It is so surreal. Wow. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, go
Speaker 4: check out acho Isshioka's work. She did a she did
Speaker 4: a music video for B York. Yeah, it's just really cool.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful. I appreciated that. Yeah, I was looking for
Speaker 3: like more about like how Coblu was like choosing who
Speaker 3: to collaborate with, and I guess he was just like,
Speaker 3: find me someone weird. Yeah, and they're like, we've got
Speaker 3: the gal, We've got her, and it's oh my god.
Speaker 4: She came Apparently she came to his attention because she'd
Speaker 4: done some posters for Apocalypse Now that were yeah kidding, yeah,
Speaker 4: and you can actually see those and they're really great
Speaker 4: as well. So she was not a costume designer before
Speaker 4: this movie. He just hired her because she was an
Speaker 4: amazing graphic designer that rocks.
Speaker 2: I was obsessed with Dracula's suit of armor in the
Speaker 2: opening set because it looks like, yeah, it looks like
Speaker 2: like muscles with.
Speaker 3: The skin removed, you know, it's like very sinewy.
Speaker 2: I was like, that looks like the Bodies Exhibit.
Speaker 4: Yes, real bodies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's like.
Speaker 2: Really beefy and bulky.
Speaker 4: And I was just like, what is this?
Speaker 2: And his helmet is wild?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then again also just all of the makeup design,
Speaker 4: like the every I think every monster look he does
Speaker 4: is like a hit. It is so good.
Speaker 3: It's that lucy outfit. Really, I gasped, Yeah.
Speaker 4: So thank thank you this movie for all of that.
Speaker 3: Indeed, the last thing that I had I was like
Speaker 3: ragging my brains for what movie we covered recently were
Speaker 3: this also came up? I'm curious what you both think
Speaker 3: about it, because this is Frau. But when this movie
Speaker 3: came out, frank Rich, frank Rich, who you know, not
Speaker 3: a not a smitless record, but he is the producer
Speaker 3: of Succession, so no, he's anyways, but he wrote about
Speaker 3: this movie in relation to the AIDS epidemic? What movie?
Speaker 3: Where were we talking about recently? Where it also was?
Speaker 2: It was was an interview with a vampire.
Speaker 3: No, it was more recent than that. I got a
Speaker 3: but but in that case, the movie was I think
Speaker 3: the director was asked like, were you trying to like
Speaker 3: make a comment on the AIDS epidemic? And he was like,
Speaker 3: oh no, oh my god, because it because if he was,
Speaker 3: it would have looked really bad.
Speaker 2: Was the schol Yeah, I remember the conversation.
Speaker 3: In this case, I wasn't able to find any reference
Speaker 3: of Copola acknowledging that that was something that he intended,
Speaker 3: But it was definitely something that was mentioned around the
Speaker 3: discourse of this movie when it came out, and it
Speaker 3: is still talked about now. There's an article I have
Speaker 3: here from twenty twenty one from Film Days by a
Speaker 3: writer named Joshua Sorenson who sort of reflects on how
Speaker 3: he feels like this movie was in conversation with the
Speaker 3: AIDS epidemic in nineteen ninety two. And yeah, I just
Speaker 3: wanted to say that. I think it's like, I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it feels it's kind.
Speaker 4: Of a big blind spot, especially because the movie does
Speaker 4: kind of collate vamporism with an STI. There's like because
Speaker 4: Van Helstein talks about like civilization, yeah, and there's this.
Speaker 4: It's all very like vampism is very sexually transmitted in
Speaker 4: this movie. So it is kind of weird that it
Speaker 4: exists in this time where you know, it's such an
Speaker 4: incredible cause of death and and the movie's kind of like,
Speaker 4: we're not worried about that. Yeah, we are going to
Speaker 4: make the allusions to it being sexually transmitted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a lot of horror movies. It feels
Speaker 2: like a lot of horror movies, either maybe intentionally such
Speaker 2: as perhaps It follows draws this parallel, or people watching
Speaker 2: and consuming the movie draw the parallel, right, and that
Speaker 2: is you know, perhaps a cultural problem where because that
Speaker 2: ultimately villainizes sti's and the people who have them. So
Speaker 2: for anyone who's like, oh, yeah, obviously, you know, vampires
Speaker 2: sucking each other or sucking other people and transmitting their
Speaker 2: vampirism and all of that being horrible, and that's the
Speaker 2: same thing as contracting an STI it's not the best.
Speaker 4: I guess that's maybe just another example of FFC, like
Speaker 4: degaying this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so a lot of the gay stuff that
Speaker 4: was there in the book, or that kind of was
Speaker 4: an obvious parallel that you could make, has been kind
Speaker 4: of omitted.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have a bit from this piece by H.
Speaker 3: Joshua Swords and where he I mean, he gets into
Speaker 3: it at length, but he sort of draws, I mean,
Speaker 3: he mostly draws it to Lucy's character and mentions the
Speaker 3: sort of de queering that FSC does. But he says quote.
Speaker 3: But even if Dracula's de queering is an attempt to
Speaker 3: capture the increasing universality of the HIV AIDS epidemic, it
Speaker 3: is textually undermined as the only two characters to contract
Speaker 3: disease on screen are the ones who are queer coded
Speaker 3: Mina and Lucy. Because this piece is really pushing the
Speaker 3: mean and Lucy agenda, the film is caught between two mindsets.
Speaker 3: It seemingly aims to move beyond the stigmatic relationship between
Speaker 3: the LGBTQ plus community and HIV AIDS and the public consciousness,
Speaker 3: but that intention is not supported by the framing. The
Speaker 3: fact that Mina and Lucy contracted only because they sought
Speaker 3: it out recalls the I don't have it, do you
Speaker 3: mentality that led to the spread of the epidemic in
Speaker 3: the first place. I don't know what to make of this.
Speaker 3: I kind of am glad FFC has never commented on it.
Speaker 3: I don't really care to know what he thinks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and maybe in a sense he wasn't qualified to
Speaker 4: talk about it anyway, So maybe we're maybe we're better
Speaker 4: off that he steered clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. And also it's like I think again,
Speaker 3: going back to the original text, it was I guess
Speaker 3: blood transfusions were super new at the time, and some
Speaker 3: prem Stoker wasn't thinking much harder than like, this is wild.
Speaker 3: What if I made all these guys do it? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the part where I think it's Arthur and then
Speaker 2: one of the other boyfriends gives, like donates blood to
Speaker 2: Lucy and I'm just like, do you even know what
Speaker 2: your blood type is?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 2: Are you the universal donor? Do you have a matching
Speaker 2: blood type is Lucy.
Speaker 3: That's our typet universal donor. Yeah, I just funny to
Speaker 3: say that that was an element of the conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to make it, and yeah, yeah
Speaker 3: nor I. Anyways, that was I think that was the
Speaker 3: last thing that I had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just love that. Like every thirty to ninety
Speaker 2: seconds in this movie, there's just something on screen where
Speaker 2: you're like, oh my god, either a costume or some
Speaker 2: special effect or blood gushing from something or blood being puked,
Speaker 2: or furry palms of hands or Dracula climbing up the
Speaker 2: wall of the castle or anything like that.
Speaker 4: Such a dense movie, there's like so many shots. Well
Speaker 4: well said, but yeah, I think I hope it's I
Speaker 4: don't know if we've really clarified when we've been talking
Speaker 4: about this, but this movie is so camp. It's so silly,
Speaker 4: Like as much as it's got big themes and it's
Speaker 4: kind of got like this lush production that makes it
Speaker 4: feel like a prestige movie, it's also very very very silly,
Speaker 4: And I mean the women have nothing to do basically there.
Speaker 4: They most spend most of the movie gasping, writing and
Speaker 4: gasping with a boob out like that is the role
Speaker 4: for a woman in this movie. Gary Oldman is like
Speaker 4: campus tits in it. Just everything he does, the bad accents.
Speaker 3: Why does cast British people?
Speaker 4: What are you doing?
Speaker 2: She pronounced win on a writer pronounces the word clerk
Speaker 2: like clerk.
Speaker 4: There's also a moment where she says home we went to.
Speaker 2: His then again, oh my gosh, and then oh, I
Speaker 2: forget what Keanu's line read. Oh he keeps saying beaudapest.
Speaker 2: I probably knows maybe how you pronounce it. And also
Speaker 2: we love Keanu. But his excuse for this was I
Speaker 2: was tired. He was like, you just did point break.
Speaker 2: I just did a lot of movies in a row.
Speaker 2: I kind of sleepy, so that's why I didn't do
Speaker 2: a good job.
Speaker 3: You're like, that's what you say in the Francis Ford
Speaker 3: Coulful movie, You're sleepy, wake up. I love it.
Speaker 4: Gary Oldman, I think does potentially the best evil cackle
Speaker 4: that has ever been on screen. It's good Van Helsing,
Speaker 4: very camp.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. I think Hopkins brings it.
Speaker 4: Although he might be the worst person in this movie,
Speaker 4: like the worst man, what do you mean in a
Speaker 4: movie full of bad men? I think Van Helsing might
Speaker 4: be kind of the character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it was like not the worst performance,
Speaker 3: no no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 4: He does a great job. He does a great job.
Speaker 4: But it's like he's the like he's the toxic mask presence.
Speaker 4: Like he's kind of worse than Dracula in a way.
Speaker 4: Dracula is eating a lot of people, but Van Helsing's
Speaker 4: just like Christian values but also kind of gleefully killing ladies.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, And we didn't get much into the like
Speaker 3: religious aspects, but I feel like it's like very much
Speaker 3: in conversation with the like z a phobia of like
Speaker 3: basically any non Christian religion is the occult. You're like, ok.
Speaker 2: Van Helsing describes Lucy. He says, after she's been bitten
Speaker 2: and turned into a vampire. He says, Lucy is not
Speaker 2: a random victim attacked by mere accident. She is a
Speaker 2: willing recruit, a breathless follower, a wanton follower, a devoted disciple.
Speaker 2: She is the devil's concubine. Basically just like.
Speaker 3: He's literally and I don't know why, like that that
Speaker 3: did make me laugh when you because because he's literally
Speaker 3: like kind of jumping up and down. He's like walking
Speaker 3: away and saying all this fucked up stuff. He's like,
Speaker 3: she's married to the devil, and he's like also.
Speaker 4: Doing something like I want an all female rock band
Speaker 4: called Devil's Concubine.
Speaker 3: We can work with this, yes.
Speaker 2: Anthony Hopkins also plays the like clergyman at the very
Speaker 2: beginning of the movie. Oh yeah, that him. He's in
Speaker 2: like a scraggly wig and stuff. But yeah, he's the
Speaker 2: one where Dracula comes back from impaling thousands of people
Speaker 2: and he's like, I denounce God and Anthony Hopkins priest
Speaker 2: is like no, don't stop it. And it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, there's just I love the like vampire orgy
Speaker 2: room in the castle.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, where is.
Speaker 4: The like prestige HBO series about Dracula's brides that will
Speaker 4: justice for them? They the way they died was very
Speaker 4: lackluster for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could have used again, and like I could
Speaker 3: he used some names. I could have used some names,
Speaker 3: could names and some stories? How did you become a vampire?
Speaker 4: I'd love to see their story. Wow, just because they're
Speaker 4: just seemed to be having a great time. They're letsing off,
Speaker 4: they they eat the occasional man, they eat the occasional baby,
Speaker 4: the eat the occasional horse. Yes, this horrible Christian man
Speaker 4: comes and cuts their heads off.
Speaker 3: It's just give him a chance.
Speaker 2: Got to know them seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, we're celebrating the boring nuns. They're handing on crucifixes, boring,
Speaker 3: get a life, eat a horse.
Speaker 2: I did appreciate the very least that, even though Mina
Speaker 2: in the movie, you know, basically just forced into this
Speaker 2: love story that was invented by the movie, which was
Speaker 2: written by James V. Hart. Yes, so he adapted the
Speaker 2: book and wrote the screenplay for this movie.
Speaker 3: He's a His other credits are oh yeah, he did Hook.
Speaker 3: And then he also went on to do Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: which is always a story that she'd be adapted by
Speaker 3: a woman. Come on, come on, But for what it's worth,
Speaker 3: even though she's not credited again as a one on ahead,
Speaker 3: we took this script to Francis Ford Coppola and was like,
Speaker 3: what do you think? And then.
Speaker 4: As an apology for dropping out of gold Father three, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Which which only I mean and good call by Winona
Speaker 3: on that one, because they didn't Sophia Coppola.
Speaker 4: Replace her and Apparently the reason I haven't seen famously,
Speaker 4: haven't seen any FF. But apparently the reason she's so
Speaker 4: bad in it is because she had one day to
Speaker 4: prep for the role and that was a case of
Speaker 4: nepotism maybe gone wrong.
Speaker 3: That's it, Yeah, that's It's one thing to hire your.
Speaker 4: Magician's son, but she was just doing her dad a favor.
Speaker 3: I know, I yeah, that's I'm that's Francis for Copla's fault.
Speaker 3: That's not God because she wasn't she like a teenager
Speaker 3: like she was. Also, Winona Writer is an amazing actor.
Speaker 3: She's been like nominated for She was really on a
Speaker 3: roll before they were like, we have to kill her
Speaker 3: because she shoplifted. Kill her, then kill me. I shoplift
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so obviously Mena's role is change for the movie,
Speaker 2: but I do appreciate that she doesn't. She's never like
Speaker 2: well not never, but she doesn't ultimately become like the
Speaker 2: damsel in distress. I feel like this type of movie
Speaker 2: would have Oh, Dracula kidnaps her and then they have
Speaker 2: to go and rescue her. Rather she's bait, which isn't
Speaker 2: better really, but but at least at least they.
Speaker 3: Bring her along. It makes me sad to be like,
Speaker 3: but at least she knows she's bait because often they're like,
Speaker 3: she has no idea, don't tell her right, right, and
Speaker 3: again like not to but like in the most recent
Speaker 3: Dracula adaptation, the Lily Rose depth character is like inside
Speaker 3: for ninety percent. I remember when she left the house
Speaker 3: on purpose and I was like, but like, you know, Mina,
Speaker 3: it's still not as active as the original book that
Speaker 3: was written one hundred years before it came out.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 4: She does. She does do the conclusion of the movie
Speaker 4: like it's her, which is cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed, does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss?
Speaker 3: That's all I have.
Speaker 2: I guess one last thing where Coppola brought in someone
Speaker 2: to coach Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost, who plays Lucy
Speaker 2: during their like erotic scenes, because he felt uncomfortable discussing
Speaker 2: sexuality with these young actors, so he brings in an
Speaker 2: acting coach named Greta Seacat, which doesn't seem like quite
Speaker 2: the same thing as a like intimacy coordinator. But I
Speaker 2: don't think that existed writer, right, But at least it
Speaker 2: was something. It was some attempt to hopefully, and I
Speaker 2: don't know how that went exactly with this acting coach,
Speaker 2: but at least there was some attempt.
Speaker 4: Apparently the same thing happened with the Brides of Dracula,
Speaker 4: who had all been cast on the basis that they
Speaker 4: would be nude in the movie, but then when it
Speaker 4: came time to shoot, everyone was too nervous to ask
Speaker 4: them to take their clothes off.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I think he ended up getting his
Speaker 4: magicians on to ask them. Well, so maybe that's why
Speaker 4: he ended up hiring Greta.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Never never, no offense to any listening male magicians,
Speaker 3: but never underestimate the delusional confidence of a male magician
Speaker 3: to ask you to do something you don't want to do.
Speaker 4: I think potentially they did want to do they didn't
Speaker 4: mean to it, but.
Speaker 3: It's like the magician. You dispatched the magician. It's just
Speaker 3: it's insulting. I do appreciate at least, I mean again,
Speaker 3: it's such a little thing. But like a director that
Speaker 3: knows their limits, that is like, this is out of
Speaker 3: my comfort zone, which is like directors are entitled to
Speaker 3: have things outside of their comfort zone as long as
Speaker 3: they take care of it.
Speaker 4: I've got some I've got some kind of warm, fuzzy
Speaker 4: feelings for FFC after researching this. I have no idea
Speaker 4: what he's like Beyond this. He's probably done some really
Speaker 4: horrible stuff. But apparently even when this movie was coming out,
Speaker 4: he was so afraid of finding out if it was
Speaker 4: a success because his career was really riding on it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: He took all of his family on holiday and he
Speaker 4: couldn't look at it. He was too stressed and scared.
Speaker 4: And he finally got his wife to be, like to
Speaker 4: check the box office and she's like, add it up,
Speaker 4: it's a huge hit. But he was just like, really
Speaker 4: scared and nervous.
Speaker 3: I for what I can tell, and like, I'm listeners
Speaker 3: sent me straight if I'm wrong. He's a relatively scandal
Speaker 3: free director.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 3: I was also very like, he's not my favorite director
Speaker 3: by any stretch of the imagination, but I just like
Speaker 3: I do like watching him talk. I like that he
Speaker 3: make takes big, weird swings even when I don't like them.
Speaker 3: And I really like that he made Anthony Hopkins play
Speaker 3: zip Zapps off like it does seem like, you know, comparatively,
Speaker 3: especially in the generation of directors that he's a part of.
Speaker 3: He seems like a relatively sweet person.
Speaker 2: Right, He's coming off of making what's largely considered some
Speaker 2: of the greatest movies in American film history, between the
Speaker 2: first two Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now, so you think
Speaker 2: that would inflate his ego so much that he would
Speaker 2: just be a terror on set. But it seems like
Speaker 2: maybe not so.
Speaker 3: Good guy, question the bars, but it is, I mean,
Speaker 3: his career is there there. Guest of the show Maya
Speaker 3: made a video when Megalopolis came out that had like
Speaker 3: traced his like wild history and like movie finance, where
Speaker 3: like if he didn't have the winery, he'd be so
Speaker 3: fucked many times over. But like that, even after one
Speaker 3: of the other Copla movies we've covered that I always
Speaker 3: forget is directed by him, is Peggy Sho got married
Speaker 3: and like so he I don't know if like that's
Speaker 3: like a real artist. That's so cool that he was
Speaker 3: still like trying shit out and is still trying shit
Speaker 3: that is often straight up bad, but it definitely not safe,
Speaker 3: Like this movie is not making safe choices.
Speaker 2: Everyone, like producers, critics, everyone in the industry basically thought
Speaker 2: this movie would be a huge flop at the box office,
Speaker 2: and we're like surprised that it wasn't because it was
Speaker 2: made for a budget of forty million dollars, which seems
Speaker 2: less than I would have thought because of how much
Speaker 2: like just money you see on screen with the practical
Speaker 2: sets and effects and costumes and all that.
Speaker 3: Which he dealt with by shooting and this ended up.
Speaker 3: I thought it was like a creative choice because he
Speaker 3: was like paying homage to the original Monster movies or whatever.
Speaker 3: But he shot it entirely on sound stages. I think
Speaker 3: it looks awesome because it shot on sound stages. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, part of that was because he had gone over
Speaker 2: budget and like time scheduling for his previous movies, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I don't want to make anyone mad again.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it, play it safe and like shoot
Speaker 2: inside kind of thing.
Speaker 4: This way, the studio execs could keep an eye on him,
Speaker 4: and they could visit set every day as well and
Speaker 4: see what he was doing.
Speaker 3: They're like, okay, do we do we have is Reeves
Speaker 3: playing zipzabsop? Good good job.
Speaker 2: But anyway, made for a budget of forty million dollars
Speaker 2: and grossed two hundred and nineteen million dollars.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety two dollars, it was one of the
Speaker 3: biggest movies of the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it beat out like Back to the Future two
Speaker 2: and damn so good for him.
Speaker 4: Do you think this movie is remembered particularly, not as.
Speaker 2: Much as I would say. Obviously has a cult following.
Speaker 2: Obviously people return to it, but I feel like it
Speaker 2: doesn't get brought up quite as much as you would expect.
Speaker 4: That's kind of how I feel too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been I until you started raving about it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I even knew it existed till
Speaker 3: like the last couple of years. But also, the Dracula
Speaker 3: space is very crowd Yeah, there's a lot of there's
Speaker 3: a lot of competition in Dracula movies, but this is
Speaker 3: like definitely one of my favorites. Yeah, it's number six
Speaker 3: on Vultures Draculas.
Speaker 4: Wow, number six, Sorry, what's number one?
Speaker 3: I think it's the original nose fora tu Let me
Speaker 3: check which you know, fair.
Speaker 4: Enough Normalstracula two thousand.
Speaker 3: This is technically Dracular rankings Dracula Performance Rankings. Gary Oldman
Speaker 3: comes in at number six.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Number five is Christopher Lee, who apparently played Dragula in
Speaker 3: Like Movies fifteen.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, he definitely was in like A nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 3: I want to say yes, he started playing Dragula in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty eight and played him all the way through
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy six, So maybe that's out of sheer volume
Speaker 3: actually knows Vatu. The original Nos Foraratu is number four.
Speaker 2: Number three played by Max Shrekrap Exactly.
Speaker 3: Number three is William Marshall in Blacula and screen Blacula Scream.
Speaker 3: Number two is something I haven't seen klaus Kinski in
Speaker 3: the Werner Herzog remake of Nos Farratu. He's supposed to
Speaker 3: be the most soulful Draculum. And then number one's bella logo. Fine, fine,
Speaker 3: I get it sure below below anyways, it's a crowded space,
Speaker 3: the Dracula space. Yeah, where does Dard Butler? Dr Butler
Speaker 3: comes in at number twenty nine.
Speaker 2: Brutal, brutal of how many.
Speaker 3: Thirty two?
Speaker 4: That makes me want to see that movie so much more.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a truly perfect candidate for your show.
Speaker 4: Yea, yeah, I think Dracula's on a plane at one point,
Speaker 4: Oh my god, you should I think instead of the Demeter.
Speaker 4: It's a plane.
Speaker 3: Have you seen I Frankenstein? No, Oh my god, you've
Speaker 3: got to cover Bye Frankenstein. Yeah, it's that but Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: And it's Aaron what's his name, Aaron Eckhart, coming off
Speaker 3: of his playing two Face. He's going to start a
Speaker 3: franchise and it does not happen. It's nice, is there,
Speaker 3: fab It's great?
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Well, does the movie past the Bechdel test?
Speaker 4: Real thing?
Speaker 3: I do think it does.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's what I've concluded. I obviously, Mina and Lucy
Speaker 2: talk quite a bit in a number of different scenes,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they're talking about a typewriter or a dream
Speaker 2: or a book, but it's almost always in the context
Speaker 2: of like, oh, you're writing, you're using your typewriter to
Speaker 2: write a letter to a man, or I had a
Speaker 2: dream about hetero sex with a man. So, and then
Speaker 2: they more explicitly talk about Jonathan, about Lucy's three boyfriends,
Speaker 2: about Dracula. So it's very even if there's like a
Speaker 2: kind of almost technical pass, I feel like the context
Speaker 2: or the subtext is always still about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, men, and like the point of everymen scene is
Speaker 4: ends up about sex or men, right, I think.
Speaker 3: So, Yeah, let me see what the technical passes were,
Speaker 3: because I did kind of forget, Oh.
Speaker 2: Did you consult Bechdel test dot com, Bechdel test dot com,
Speaker 2: scholarly journal.
Speaker 3: Yeah. People think we spend the who whole show trying
Speaker 3: to figure this out and sometimes we don't even remember
Speaker 3: to do it. Attention it does. Yeah, so I think
Speaker 3: it's just technical passes. I guess that, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: it doesn't pass the Bechdel test if by in our estimation.
Speaker 3: I do think that like the only thing I could
Speaker 3: give it sort of a like it's trying is like
Speaker 3: to women talking about passion and lust during a time
Speaker 3: where that wasn't permissible, but it is connected obviously to
Speaker 3: like hetero lust, but polyamorous hetero ust Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, does it count if they're just like we're
Speaker 4: both horny when that.
Speaker 3: Wasn't legal, like get your head cut off? In this culture?
Speaker 2: Does it pass the test when they kiss each other?
Speaker 2: Because I would argue that kissing is communication, It's true.
Speaker 4: The language of love, It's true.
Speaker 3: I think I think you could I would agree to
Speaker 3: a soft pass argument, but like it's not you know,
Speaker 3: if we had to talk about it for this long,
Speaker 3: it's not a great bath.
Speaker 2: But examining it through the Bechdel cast Nipple scale, this
Speaker 2: scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples
Speaker 2: based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Ooh,
Speaker 2: this one's tricky. I think it's sort of like a
Speaker 2: split down the middle. For me, I would give it
Speaker 2: ten out of ten on the Horny scale. I would
Speaker 2: give it probably like an eight out of ten on
Speaker 2: the rompometer. She'll give it like, actually, probably two nipples
Speaker 2: on the nipples scale because of the adaptation changes made
Speaker 2: specifically to Mina's character, making her less active, forcing her
Speaker 2: into another romantic situation which might involve coercion, We're not sure,
Speaker 2: might just be that she's a reincarnation of someone, but
Speaker 2: still it feels there's like coersive elements to it that,
Speaker 2: you know, Dracula's playing Jedi tricks on her or whatever. Unclear.
Speaker 2: The representation of Romani people and the kind of albeit
Speaker 2: brief but villainization of Islam should have been deleted from
Speaker 2: the movie, and yet it wasn't. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just wish that the movie was more gay and
Speaker 2: less let's punish women for having sexuality. So two nipples,
Speaker 2: but maybe that's too much even but I just it's
Speaker 2: so camp, it's so awesome, the production design and the
Speaker 2: costume design all the time. I know that doesn't factory
Speaker 2: into the nipples scale, but like it's just hard not
Speaker 2: for me to be obsessed with this movie. Ye, so yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll give it two nipples, and I'll give one to
Speaker 2: Winona Ryder's pronunciation of Clark. She's like, oh, Jonathan doesn't
Speaker 2: want me to marry him because she thinks that he's
Speaker 2: not worthy because he's just a law Clark. And then
Speaker 2: I'll give my oh, I'll give my other nipple to
Speaker 2: this scene where Lucy has approached Quincy and she's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god.
Speaker 4: It's so big.
Speaker 3: Can I touch it? And then it's just mean of
Speaker 3: being like, my friend Lucy is amazing. I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it ends up being about Quincy's knife, but
Speaker 2: it's really about.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that a lesser movie would not
Speaker 3: to start the episode again, but like a lesser movie
Speaker 3: would make Lucy out to be this like big joke,
Speaker 3: like broad, you know, slutty character, and she's not that.
Speaker 3: She's not punished. She's punished about as as one could be.
Speaker 3: But it isn't like, oh, we shouldn't like or respect
Speaker 3: this character, Like this character isn't worth virtuous Mina's time,
Speaker 3: Like she's like, wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: I love that she does that. It's great. So that's
Speaker 2: who gets my nipples. And I love the movie the.
Speaker 3: End I'm going to go I'll go to as well.
Speaker 3: I feel like as a yardstick, it is like so gorgeous,
Speaker 3: it is so campy. But if the movie from nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two is less gay than the book from eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, it was a problem. We have a problem.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think that the Mina adjustments, like it
Speaker 3: was an attempt. I didn't love the attempt. I liked
Speaker 3: the idea of like exploring this character's passion and like
Speaker 3: the restrictions of the time that Bramstoker kind of probably
Speaker 3: wouldn't have been able to or maybe not thought much of.
Speaker 3: But I just didn't I felt like the direction they
Speaker 3: did it was very nineteen ninety two, very yeah, like
Speaker 3: erotic thrillery in a way that I feel like didn't
Speaker 3: really do the character much of a favor. But it's
Speaker 3: like such a great movie.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 3: Ship Mina and Lucy. I do love their friendship. I
Speaker 3: think that they are the best on screen pairing, and
Speaker 3: I wish that they had just run away from whatever
Speaker 3: the fuck was going on in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that they should have paired off and
Speaker 2: then Lucy's three boyfriends should have gotten everybody.
Speaker 4: Should just be gay, be gay, cry eat babies. But
Speaker 4: did you do not think that their kiss was a
Speaker 4: little bit male gaze?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like drack keels like and now you're gonna kiss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the way that like Lucy's tits are
Speaker 2: out and every scene gratuitously, it is very gratuitous.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm not I could. I was like
Speaker 3: it was a hot kid. Oh no, I think you're right,
Speaker 3: You're right, and we have to say it. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: go to nipples wanted to mean and one to Lucy perfect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think for all of the reasons you've said,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I'm gonna also give it two nipples. I've
Speaker 4: got consensus. One other thing that I remembered about why
Speaker 4: I hate Van helsing, and it's just symbolic of like
Speaker 4: the kind of man stuff that's all over this movie
Speaker 4: is at the end of the movie, Winona's turning into
Speaker 4: a vampire, and she's like, gonna try and seduce him
Speaker 4: and turn him into a vampire, And so she kisses him,
Speaker 4: but he fully kisses her back. He's like yeah, He's
Speaker 4: like great, Yeah, I've been waiting. I assumed this would
Speaker 4: happen for me at some point based on what he's
Speaker 4: so annoying. Yeah, it's like, yeah, there's just man's fingerprints
Speaker 4: all over this production, and it really holds back any
Speaker 4: of the things that's trying to say about women's sexuality,
Speaker 4: surprising to no one. So anyway, Yeah, two nipples. I'll
Speaker 4: give one to the costume designer Ako, and I'll give
Speaker 4: the other two Feminist icon, the pile of rats.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, my god, you've got to go to the
Speaker 2: pile of remi icon, queer icon, that pile of rats. Everything.
Speaker 3: One more nice thing about my two favorite male actors
Speaker 3: in this movie was that Francis for Coppola did encourage
Speaker 3: Gary Oldman to say gross things to people in her ear.
Speaker 3: So he was complicent in that, which when on a
Speaker 3: rider would say later she was very uncomfortable with. She
Speaker 3: really didn't like it. She felt unsafe. I guess that
Speaker 3: Francis Ford Coppola asked Keanu and Anthony Hopkins to do
Speaker 3: the same thing, and they were like, no, we're not
Speaker 3: going to do that. That does She's an actor. I
Speaker 3: think she'll be okay. And I love those guys, so
Speaker 3: that I was glad to know that they did the
Speaker 3: right thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Anthony Hopkins also apparently she was afraid of fire.
Speaker 4: She has a like lifelong fear of fire, and so
Speaker 4: they had to do that scene where they're in a
Speaker 4: ring of fire. And as soon as they started filming,
Speaker 4: he picked her up and carried her out of the fire.
Speaker 4: He was like, very protective of her. And yeah, he
Speaker 4: also didn't he didn't want to shout you slut at
Speaker 4: her on a on a film set, which was you know, as.
Speaker 3: A low bar. Yeah. I was like, wow, femin it's
Speaker 3: not called what men of so many men want to
Speaker 3: yell at. Well, you know, there's a lot of men
Speaker 3: barely clearing the bar of decency in this in the
Speaker 3: story of this production. Yeah, did we do it.
Speaker 2: We did the episode. Chrystal, Thank you so much, thank
Speaker 2: you for joining.
Speaker 4: Us, Thank you for having me, And if you're listening,
Speaker 4: allow me one last shameless plug and if you're anything
Speaker 4: like me and two weeks between episodes of The Bechdel
Speaker 4: Cast is far too long, feel free to check out
Speaker 4: camp Classics for more of my unqualified opinions about movies.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Yeah, please cover I Frankenstein.
Speaker 4: Wait, I am going to need to move on from
Speaker 4: vampires at some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And guess who's gonna be waiting for you? HOODI Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: hoodie nunchuck.
Speaker 4: You did not say hoodie or nunchuck earlier.
Speaker 3: Sexy hoodie nunchuck. I love my favorite shot in all
Speaker 3: of movies. They showed the passage of time of like
Speaker 3: three hundred years of just a static shot of I
Speaker 3: Frankenstein on top of them out and swinging nun chucks
Speaker 3: and they're like three hundred years past. It just cuts
Speaker 3: to the presence. You're gonna love it. Oh, I wish
Speaker 3: I could see it again for the first time. I
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 2: Where can people follow you online?
Speaker 4: So I'm at Crystal We'll See You Now on Instagram
Speaker 4: and TikTok, and my podcast is at KEMP Classics Podcast
Speaker 4: on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Yay.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Instagram as well. At Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: You can also subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon. That's
Speaker 2: the best way to support the show. It's only five
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Speaker 2: episodes every month, and the entire back catalog of it's
Speaker 2: almost two hundred bonus episodes.
Speaker 3: So there's no time as a brutal mistress.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where our I Frankenstein episode lives.
Speaker 2: That was a Matreon episode if I remember correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that we've Caitlin let me do that one as
Speaker 3: a treat and then entered the community. I frank I
Speaker 3: owe you as a joke. If it came a passion,
Speaker 3: I owe you a debt of gratitude, thank you so much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: thank you for thanking me again, of course.
Speaker 2: And uh yeah, check out our link tree. There's links
Speaker 2: there to stuff. Link tree slash. Bechdel Cast love you,
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye, goodbye.
Speaker 1: There is.
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