The baffling "Cape Kite". Dracula is fried by the sun but his cape becomes airborne like a black kite and flies off to parts unknown. Really torpedoed things for me. I saw it premier in 1979 in NYC and hated it then; watched it on video years later and hated it then!
Up till then it was a classy terrific adaptation.
I thought it lost some air in the second half to be honest. The first half is mesmerizing, mostly because Langella is, but once he's done working his way into the character's lives the movie breaks down into a series of confrontations and staking attempts, each much like the rest. (The ending isn't very different from anything in the previous hour, except that this time he dies.) Plus, and this almost disappointed me more, this movie's particularly colorless Jonathan Harker becomes a major character just when we thought he'd been finally dumped aside for good.
So I dunno, the kite alone didn't bug me too much. That he survives (in some form) and she looks to the skies as he flies off isn't a bad idea for an ending; as for the actual effect, hey, it's better than 1979-era animation of a bat flying off probably would have been.
The end just flew (no pun intended) in the face of vampire lore convention. The vampire is immolated by the sun. Nothing survives. Okay maybe it's clothes fall to the ground. Or as in the Christopher Lee films he is reduced to ashes, but next film when blood is poured on them he reconstitutes. That it is still bright daylight whatever survived should have quickly perished.
Yes and Lucy staring at the flying thing made it seem like her undead lover was still undead.
As far as animation goes, check out "Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein". Made in 1948, effects wizard John P. Fulton did a great job of turning Bela Lugosi's Dracula into and from a bat. For a spoof, it was to me the best man to bat, bat to man transformations I had ever seen. Still holds up.
Course Fulton was a one of a kind effects wizard. He also did the amazing stuff in "The Ten Commandments"
This is the movie I saw. Does the cape fly on a ship.
shareThis is true, it's a total violation of the "rules." But what the hell, that never bothers me much. If you're already willing to suspend disbelief about a vampire existing at all, that doesn't seem much further to go.
Thanks for the tip! I never really did get around to watching the Abbot and Costello monster movies and certainly never expected it'd be the effects I wanted to check out, heh.
I recommend just the "A&C Meet Frankenstein as it is the funniest and best for effects like Lugosi to Bat, Chaney to wolfman, etc. Later ones got cheaper and B-grade, though I recall "A&C Meets the Invisible Man" having some good effects but not compared to what John P. Fulton did with the 1933 original "Invisible Man" movie.
You're right. It is silly to even debate what is what when it comes to the supernatural in movies\TV. Same as arguing comic book movies but boy do folks!
Eh, the arguing's fun too. :) Thanks again for the tip!
shareActually in the book, "Dracula," by Bram Stoker, the source material for the movie, or at least the play that is the sourced from the book, Dracula is able to walk around in daylight and does so fairly often. He is first seen in England outside in the open in daylight. The burning up is a product of other movies. The book tends to be all over the place in terms of "the rules." At one point it is explained that the only way to kill a vampire is to cut off the head and cut out the heart, yet at the end of the story, they kill Dracula by stabbing him with a knife. The kite did suck, though.
shareOh man, you're right. Loved the book but it's been years and I forgot that detail. I wonder who invented it (must have been a movie...'Nosferatu' I guess?).
shareHe isn't just stabbed in the heart. Jonathan slices through his throat first. It doesn't actually say the head comes off but surely that's the implication.
shareNo, I think he just cuts his throat. Not easy to saw through a spine with a knife. But yes, he did cut his throat.
shareI'm sure it's not easy in real life, but considering the information supplied earlier in the book I still think it's reasonable to assume it's meant to be a decapitation and he just didn't think it was necessary to describe it in gory detail. I could be wrong of course but until I see a manuscript with "I decided to change the rules for this scene" written in the margin I'm going to give Stoker the benefit of the doubt.
shareoh well.
shareCouldn't disagree more. It was a beautiful shot.
"No matter where you go, there you are."
The only problem I had with the Cape Kite at the end was that you could see the stick through it (like you could see Frank's harness when he was shot and when he went up in the air on the ship's hook).
Now that's what digital correction is for -- not for draining the color out of a once-fantastic looking film!
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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA
The entire premise that Dracula is stupid enough to put himself in a situation in which he gets fried is terrible. When that premise starts, this film jumps the shark. A "cape kite" is just a small symptom of that much larger and far worse problem.
shareIf you watch the credits and the cape kite flight all the way through to the end, the kite actually blows up and disintegrates into nothing, meaning Dracula is reduced to nothing but ashes. I kind of liked the ending because it appears as though the film is still going on as the credits are rolling, as if it's not quite over. Pretty cool way to finish a movie.
And yeah, I liked this version of Dracula way more than the Dracula '31 version. The sound, editing, effects, atmosphere... everything is just better. Although, they are very different they have a lot of similarities since they were both based on the play. This '79 version after 40 years of it's release is still a very rich experience today, while the original is showing it's age. That bat in the original is laughable... haha...