Immortyl Revolution: Halloween Customs

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Dracula in a Comedy Vein by Charles E. Butler/Final Day of Halloween Giveaways

Okay guys and ghouls! The big day is finally here. I want to thank all those who have stopped by to support the authors and enter the giveaways! If you haven't entered, you have to 11 p.m. EST. Links are at the end of the post!

Dracula - In a Comedy Vein!

By Charles E. Butler

First, I would like to thank Denise for asking me to write something for her blog. As my fanaticism is very limited, I find it harder to actually think what more to write about the canny Count? I thought that I would concentrate here on the movies that lean towards humour as opposed to the regular blood-letting. Nosferatu (1921) is a movie that is very, very dark. There are only a few shots of the monster, Graf Orlok, that survived the match that destroyed the original negatives way back in 1929. Played today, they take up around all of fifteen minutes. Although the film is my favourite vampire movie, it is creaky today and does send itself up for unintentional laughter. I would love an aspiring film maker to blend those snippets of film to happy music in the way Walt Disney did in the forties and fifties on his celebrated wildlife shorts. Max Schreck, bopping with his coffin under his arm, dancing to the strains of ‘grab your partners’, is a surreal image that I just have to see…one day!

Now, more serious work.

Dracula was first parodied internationally in the ground-breaking movie, Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein (1948), directed by Charles Barton for Universal. Fans queued around the block in England to see the new dynamic duo, advertised as A&C meet the Ghosts! The film itself had been assembled as straight horror with the title, The Brain of Frankenstein, but the studio’s new discovery had to be unleashed. As Lugosi pats Costello on the head - ‘What we need today, is young blood…and brains!’, his comic turn literally brought the house down. It is perhaps the last time that Lugosi was taken seriously in a movie. He would continue in comedy both intentional and unintentional, in such fare as Old Mother Riley meets The Vampire (1952) and Spooks Run Wild! Not forgetting of course, the very dire contributions of Edward D Wood Jr.

Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein had touched an impressive nerve and Lugosi gives his best performance as Dracula in Clown white make up and satin cape. The perfect straight-man foil for the bungling boys from burlesque. The comedy set a standard that would be repeated often in films like Fright Night (1985) and The Monster Squad (1987), in which Duncan Regehr’s very serious Count is laid out with garlic pizza! At the end of this scale is the bullseye from Stan Dragoti. Love At First bite (1979), is a wacky metaphor on urban life in Los Angeles, as the Count is ejected from his ancestral home by jack-booted authoritarians who want to turn the Castle into a training facility for the Country’s gymnastic prospects. When Dracula romances a hopeless nymphomaniac, he easily drags us into his broken world better than any of the serious ‘lost love’ movies that would follow, whilst still keeping his power and his dignity. Christopher Lee stressed that, ‘You may laugh at things in the film, but you never laugh at Dracula!’ All the above movies adhere to this quote.

“Oy, vey! Have you got the wrong Vampire!?” Alfie Bass shirks the crucifix with this quote in the biggest cult vampire movie, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Directed by Roman Polanski, this schizoid addition to the myth hangs on a knife thread as many set pieces leave us wondering whether to be horrified, or to laugh out loud! He makes many nods to Stoker and previous vampire classics, and I got the impression that, although the film was heartfelt, he wasn’t totally at ease with the material and had his name taken from the credits when producer, Martin Ransohoff, re cut and re-edited his opus. It was Polanski’s version - titled, Dance of the Vampires - that gave the picture the adulation that it holds amongst fans today. A more notable movie of this period is the excellent Harvey Kurtzman brainchild, Mad Monster Party (1967), that has Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Creature From the black lagoon, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Invisble Man and Baron Boris Von Frankenstein on its roster of famous fright figures. Topping it all off with a guest spot by It, a sculpted Claymation mannekin of King Kong!

Christopher Lee himself, although he hated making many of his Dracula movies, has never laughed at his most famous creation. In 1959, he did a comedy titled Tempi Duri Per I VampireUncle Was A Vampire/Hard Times For A Vampire. In this Italian production, Lee was Baron Rodrigo who returns from the grave to bite his aristocratic cousin, Renato Rascel. Rascel begins imitating Bela Lugosi with fangs and indulging in some serious slapstick comedy. Lee’s next comedy vampire movie is the fabled Dracula, pere et fils/Dracula, Father and Son (1977), in which, despite the title, he is actually called Le Prince Des Tenebrae, a peri-wigged throwback of French Aristocracy. Directed by La Cage Aux Folles Edouard Molinaro, it is the deplorably dubbed USA cut that announces Count Dracula as the real villain. The French release is a very amusing whimsical fantasy with Les Prince letting nagging brides walk into the sunlight without warning them first.

Throughout the 70s - who can forget David Niven as Dracula in the terrible Vampira/Old Dracula? Or Ferdy Mayne losing his trousers in The Vampire Happening?- and 80s, many movies touched on the vampire as straight comedy material such as Saturday the 14^th , with husband and wife team Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss living in a house over-run by ghosts and vampires. Teen Vamp and Once bitten were very dire teen nerd comedies of the worst order. It is also hard to believe that Nicolas Cage was playing it straight in the oddball, Vampire’s Kiss. When Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula held a thousand unintentional laughs, it is no wonder that Mel Brooks found it a hard movie to send up. Winning the day as Van Helsing in the acting stakes, Brooks peppered his screenplay with some great one-liners, “Yes, we have Nosferatu! We have Nosferatu today!” Leslie Nielsen’s fatherly approach to everyone’s favourite Count wins simply because Nielsen is always amusing and watchable. The film itself finds very few things to laugh at.

As my typing commences, the cinema is opening its doors for the eagerly awaited Hotel Transylvania starring irritable slapstick comedian Adam Sandler as the voice of Count Dracula. As the film is lovingly animated in the The Incredibles mold, I can see a sure fire winner at the box office!

Charles E. Butler resides in the UK and is the author of The Romance of Dracula. You can follow Charles and chat about the Count at this Facebook page: Count Dracula

Okay, kiddos! Here are the links to all the Halloween Goodies! It's easy as pumpkin pie to enter. You just need to leave comments at the various posts or enter the Rafflecopters (for my Bitten By Books Giveaway and B.K. Walker's Halloween Basket. (These are run separately and have different rules so please check). Leave a comment here for Charles and you'll be entered to win one of the five copies of Annals of the Immortyls I'm giving away!

Good Luck!

Halloween Giveaway Links

Paperback, The Hallowed Ones Laura Bickle

http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/laura-bickle-on-fear-of-unseenhalloween.html

Paperback book from Katrina Michaels and ebook of Annals of the Immortyls: http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/spotlight-on-tainted-blood-by-katrina.html

Paperback book from Lee Taylor: http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/lee-taylor-on-halloweenpaperback.html

Ebooks by Vanessa Morgan:

http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/vanessa-morgan-talks-about-scary.html

Ebook from Katie Salidas:

http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/sexy-cedric-interviews-fallon-from.html

Ebook from Roy Hudson:

http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/roy-hudson.html

Two Paperbacks from A. J. Scudiere:

http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/author-j-scudiere-on-darkside.html

B. K. Walker Halloween Gift Basket Rafflecopter:

http://www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/10/b-k-walker-halloween-gift-basket.html

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Monday, October 22, 2012

A Druid's Perspective on Halloween: Donald Kirby on The Wild Hunt/ Seven Super Giveaways

Welcome back to all! Today, I'm pleased to welcome a fellow writer from my critique group, the North Columbus Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers, Donald Kirby. I asked him to share some of his wealth of knowledge and tell us about the origins of Halloween.

Giveaways: At the end of the post I've included links to all 7 active giveaways! In addition, anyone who comments on this post will be entered to win one of five copies of Annals of the Immortyls in ebook. Check back later this week to enter some more!

The Wild Hunt

A different perspective

Donald Kirby

First, I am writing this on the fly, so forgive my brevity. The original article I wrote was ruined by a rather nasty virus on my computer. Second, I have no degree in history nor anthropology so I am not including foot-notes (it would take to darn long to find my books, the pages etc. I am a writer with a full time-plus job, and thus have other deadlines). But these matters do rise in my own faith, my being a modern Druid. As we joke amongst ourselves, “Druidry is a religion with homework”.

The Wild Hunt. Speak those words to a reader of fantasy, and images of a dark, vast horde ridding skeletal steeds across plains of lightning in the sky may well fill his or her mind. Ask them to describe it and they might tell you blood-thirsty beings swooping down with the screams of the damned to pursue the unwary people who travelled during Halloween –Samhain to the Celts and Wintersnight to the Germanic Tribes. It began on Halloween when the Veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest, and ended on May first when the earth returned to wakefulness.

But the Wild Hunt was so much more than a Christian embodiment of evil, especially to the Germanic people.

To the ancient Celts the Wild Hunt was a vast army of Slaugh. These were a type of Fairy-Folk who were particularly malevolent. WY Evans-Wentz wrote in his book Fairy faith in Celtic countries (around 1910) accounts of children and animals being abducted during All Hallows Eve by the Wild Hunt and their spirits taken, while the bodies were found miles away from home. Many of these instances the bodies seemed to have been dropped from a great height.

The Scottish legend of Tam Lin is version of the Wild Hunt. Depending on the version you read or hear, the un-Seelie Court must either pay tribute to Hell with a mortal, or take a mortal to replenish their numbers. We may never know the original story, as Church persecution and suppression of Pagan knowledge was particularly brutal in Scotland.

Many of these stories changed, even though the core remained the same well into the 11th and 12th centuries AD. However, we must take these accounts with a grain of salt. In their zeal to destroy the old ways of the Pagans, monks demonized the old Gods. One leader of the Hunt was Frau Holle (or Hulda), who in Germanic lore kept the spirits of those children who died young and mothers who died in childbirth. She would feed them the first berries of summer, and come Wintersnight, she and her consort Wodan would ride across the skies; she would seek those special spirits still wandering -not to punish, but care for them. Wodan would gather those warriors who belonged with him, and those who tried to escape the Afterlife for proper judgment. It also gave his army of dead warriors something to do in during the dark-times of the year.

To look upon the Hunt would bring ill-luck as the deceased mothers and warriors would curse any of the living who saw them. To look upon a departing soul kept it earth-bound and starving for another year. Or the wails of those who could not leave would drive Holle and Wodan into such a rage that the Gods would turn on the transgressor. Sometimes a person or animal or wayward spirit would simply be caught up the wake of the Hunt, never to seen again.

But if left in peace, it was said that any field the Hunt passed over unseen would bear twice the bounty of the previous year. As time passed and those who held to the old Gods were tortured into compliance with with the edicts of the converted kings and the Church, Frau Holle became the embodiment of evil in woman’s clothes. She was transformed into one who stole or killed children, and Wodan became the Hunter of those damned and going to Hell.

In Scandinavia the Hunt was led by Odin (the Norse version of Wodan) or Freya, who was Queen of the Valkyries. Again, the Hunt was changed from a rite of passage for the seasons and the dead to a thing vilified during the onslaught of the new, imported faith.

One way to hide from the hunt was…do you know? Yup, costumes. Jack-o-Lanterns got their start in Scotland as a way to fool those spirits (human and otherwise) seeking to hide in a house from the Hunt. By carving faces in turnips and gourds, as well as straw dolls, it was to tell theose beings that the house was already full. The German custom of souling was begging for food before the start of winter (October 31rst) to leave for the dead or the Hunt. If someone did not give the poor child something to offer Holle or the Ancestors, mischievous pranks were played on the scrooge, so real spirits would not bother the innocent of the household. This became the foundation for our own Trick-or-Treat.

There is no doubt the ancient peoples rightly feared the Wild Hunt. No one wanted to be bound up in its fury and power. For it held death, life, and magic that humans could not comprehend.

There is so much more to tell, and I do have the time for it all. But as readers and writers, I pray this sparks a little curiosity in you. As we write and read, we create. I tell you these old tales in hopes that an author published or not, can find a twist to some old tales; so that a reader can make the written word take a deeper life in his or her imagination. “What if” are not dangerous words, but the two of the most wonderful.

As Wintersnight approaches, keep a candle lit for those who have gone, and listen for the sounds of hooves and battle cries across the sky.

A very big thanks to Donald for being my guest today!

Now here are those links for the 7 giveaways! All of them end on Halloween night, so enter now before it's too late! All you need to do is comment, except for B. K. Walker's giveaway, which is a Rafflecopter you can enter within the post. Don't forget to leave Donald a comment or question to be entered to win Annals of the Immortyls!