Over Christmas & New Year I read “Dracula”. It’s very good, with a sense of the uncanny and the other that Lovecraft learnt nothing from. The TV movie of Dracula shown in the same time frame was a classic example of making something less sexy by trying to make it more sexy. Dracula for cultural studies lecturers, with none of the horror or intrigue of the original.
Reading the book I was struck by how the Count is a threat to the whole of civilization. In the films I’ve seen he is more of a personal threat to those who face him. Possibly I just missed this, or possibly this is how film worked in the second half of the twentieth century.
And now I have some Hammer films of the Count to watch. They are very hard to get hold of, which is a shame as they are such a foundational part of contemporary British culture whether contemporary British culture likes it or not. ;-)