Free Anno Dracula by Kim Newman Page A

bald head. Heavy jowls glisten as a humourless smile discloses yellow eye-teeth the size of thumbs.
    Harker halts.
    A bass voice rumbles.
    DRACULA: I... am... Dracula.

27

    Francis had first envisioned Dracula as a stick-insect skeleton, dried up, hollow-eyed, brittle. When Brando arrived on set, weighing in at 250 pounds, he had to rethink the character as a blood-bloated leech, full to bursting with stolen life, overflowing his coffin.
    For two days, Francis had been trying to get a usable reading of the line ‘I am Dracula.’ Kate, initially as thrilled as anyone else to see Brando at work, was bored rigid after numberless mumbled retakes.
    The line was written in three-foot-tall black letters on a large piece of cardboard held up by two grips. The actor experimented with emphases, accents, pronunciations from ‘Dorragulya’ to ‘Jacoolier’. He read the line looking away from the camera and peering straight at the lens. He tried it with false fangs inside his mouth, sticking out of his mouth, shoved up his nostrils or thrown away altogether.
    Once he came out with a bat tattooed on his bald head in black lipstick. After considering it for a while, Francis ordered the decal wiped off. You couldn’t say that the star wasn’t bringing ideas to the production.
    For two hours now, Brando had been hanging upside-down in the archway, secured by a team of very tired technicians at the end of two guy-ropes. He thought it might be interesting if the Count were discovered like a sleeping bat.
    Literally, he read his line upside-down.
    Marty Sheen, over whose shoulder the shot was taken, had fallen asleep.
    ‘I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula! I am Dracula?
    ‘Dracula am I. Am I Dracula? Dracula I am. I Dracula am. Am Dracula I?
    ‘I’m Dracula.
    ‘The name’s Dracula. Count Dracula.
    ‘Hey, I’m Dracula.
    ‘Me... Dracula. You... liquid lunch.’
    He read the line as Stanley Kowalski, as Don Corleone, as Charlie Chan, as Jerry Lewis, as Laurence Olivier, as Robert Newton.
    Francis patiently shot take after take.
    Dennis Hopper hung around, awed, smoking grass. All the actors wanted to watch.
    Brando’s face went scarlet. Upside-down, he had problems with the teeth. Relieved, the grips eased up on the ropes and the star dropped towards the ground. They slowed before his head cracked like an egg on the ground. Assistants helped him rearrange himself.
    Francis thought about the scene.
    ‘Marlon, it seems to me that we could do worse than go back to the book.’
    ‘The book?’ Brando asked.
    ‘Remember, when we first discussed the role. We talked about how Stoker describes the Count.’
    ‘I don’t quite...’
    ‘You told me you knew the book.’
    ‘I never read it.’
    ‘You said...’
    ‘I lied.’

28

    Harker, in chains, is confined in a dungeon. Rats crawl around his feet. Water flows all around.
    A shadow passes.
    Harker looks up. A grey bat-face hovers above, nostrils elaborately frilled, enormous teeth locked. DRACULA seems to fill the room, black cape stretched over his enormous belly and trunk-like limbs.
    Dracula drops something into Harker’s lap. It is Westenra’s head, eyes white. Harker screams.
    Dracula is gone.

29

    An insectile clacking emerged from the Script Crypt, the walled-off space on the set where Francis had hidden himself away with his typewriter.
    Millions of dollars poured away daily as the director tried to come up with an ending. In drafts Kate had seen - only a fraction of the attempts Francis had made - Harker killed Dracula, Dracula killed Harker, Dracula and Harker became allies, Dracula and Harker were both killed by Van Helsing (unworkable, because Robert Duvall was making another film on another continent), lightning destroyed the whole castle.
    It was generally agreed that Dracula should die.
    The Count perished through decapitation, purifying fire, running water, a stake through the heart, a hawthorn bush, a giant crucifix, silver