Another New Slideshow

[DarkLady]

Thanks for those answers, Gothick. I had no idea!

[Gothick]

Dracula's Daughter is a beautifully excecuted, classic horror film. There are some touches of humor, particularly when the stalwart hero informs his valet he's off to "run down a vampire" and the gentleman's gentleman responds, "but sir, don't you usually do that with your checkbook?" Around the 1890s/1900s, a "vampire" was a common name for an "adventuress" or "gold-digger" or woman who entertained men (sometimes but not always involving sexual favors) but was really after their cash.

House of Dracula IMO isn't as good as the preceding film, House of Frankenstein, but the scenes with John Carradine are fun to see and effective.  Despite the title, Dracula is only in the movie for the first half or so.

G.

[DarkLady]

I've never seen Dracula's Daughter, but now I do want to!

[dom]

Seeing today's capture of Carolyn as vampire in hoDS made me remember that this was my favorite part of the movie back then when I saw it in the theater.

[Gothick]

This old thread used to involve NoDS. So I'll just write a little note to say that last night, I finally watched the DVD issue of NoDS. It is actually the first time I have sat through the entire film in around three decades, I think. I used to fast forward through a lot of it when I'd get out the videotape (please don't take away my fan card).

I really felt as if I were watching it for the first time because the picture was so crisp and the color, outstandingly, was far superior to my old tape which was derived from a 1990s laserdisc. I thought the DVD aspect ratio was superior as well to the laserdisc version.  The movie was just stunningly beautiful to watch, even though the story about two thirds of the way through dissolved into an incomprehensible mess.

I found myself more baffled than ever by the state in which this was released to the public. The MGM suits bear full responsibility for their ridiculous demand that the Dan and Sam re-edit the movie over a weekend. If they'd been given more time to re-edit, it's possible that the result would have been more coherent. I think the movie starts to fall apart at the point when it gets to the titular "Night of Dark Shadows," when Claire and Alex have come back from NYC with the old portrait of Charles (I'd forgotten that was ever seen in the movie at all). There are some startlingly sloppy edits in the movie from that point on--looks as if the tech was re-cutting it with the end of a very blunt razor blade.

As the movie further unwound and the numerous narrative drop-outs accumulated, I became acutely aware that the average viewer must have had no idea at all what was going on. I don't have the energy to enumerate all the missing material that results in the whole point of the story simply being removed. Darren's done incredible work documenting all of it.

The most puzzling gaffe for me were a couple of really abrupt edits/shot switches in the sequence of the ghost Angelique's attack on Alex. I think those must have been the result of some technical difficulties in filming the sequence that Curtis ran out of time to resolve. But who knows? Maybe they removed something significant that happened in the sequence. And the result was those weirdly off-base edits. Hackwork.

Another odd note--I don't really have time or opportunity to check, but I'm sure a brief music cue was missing from the DVD print. I remember it occurring when Quentin and Tracy have arrived at Collinwood at the beginning, and the p.o.v. switches to somebody (presumably Angelique's ghost) looking down from an upper window. On that shot, there used to be a brief cue that was heard. The shot played in silence on my disc.

Thanks to the fact that I watched it from beginning to end for once, I saw many beautiful shots of Grayson I didn't recall from those long-ago sessions with it. That was maybe the best gift of all. I'm so sorry that the climactic moment of her performance in the movie is gone now.

But there's always the trailers...

cheers, G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Don't judge the released version of the film by the print that was used for the DVD/Blu-ray. Believe it or not, the version used was a rough edit which leaves the starts of ends of cut scenes as well as music cues from them. For someone like me, I love the fact that we get evidence of such music cues and, in a few occasions, actual bits of dialogue from the deleted scenes, but I can certainly understand that if someone is looking for a polished edit of the film, they'll find the print sadly lacking. Darren was and most probably still is quite upset that they used the print that they did for the DVD/Blu-ray. And because they've released that version, that brings the total of different versions of NoDS out and about to three, which is just insane, and each one of them has its own issues. (My favorite, though, is the version in which one of the issues is that it leaves Carlotta's dialogue unedited when we would have seen her return to the Gallery after having left to get a salad to serve to Quentin and Tracy. Over the close-up of Quentin that ends the Gallery scene we actually hear Corlotta say, "I brought some" before the scene gets cut off and the film switches to the scene of Quentin and Tracy going to bed. The version is still available on Amazon Video...)

[Gothick]

That's bizarre that they used that print! But, go figure...

It mostly looked great apart from those weird, rough edits ... I don't know just when I'll feel moved to watch the movie again. And yeah, I'm sure Darren was really torn up about this. I know I might have had to go to a parking lot and smash a lot of cheap china, if I'd been in his shoes.

G.