Speaker 1: 0:00

Silence mortals, you dare to enter this sanctuary of the Prince of Darkness, king of the Vampires, lord of all undead, count Dracula. Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures and novelties. We talk in over, about and through our week's topic and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me, as always, is Peter Overstreet University, professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California. So Pete yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:16

What are we talking about today? Today, we're going to be talking about the Prince of Darkness himself.

Speaker 1: 1:23

I noticed you did that with a little bit of a Transylvanian accent.

Speaker 3: 1:25

I was going to do something with a little bit more flourish, but I decided— and then you aborted. I wanted to save it for later, for all of our Hungarian brethren. We're going to talk about the Prince of Darkness himself, count Dracula. Count Dracula, yes, indeed, count Dracula is one of those literary characters that has been adapted to more media than, I think, any other, apart from, maybe, sherlock Holmes. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:53

I think. Yeah, I'm sure that there's a competition between the two of them, but Dracula, if it is not in first, it is certainly in a close second to Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, as far as being adapted to films, but what's interesting about Dracula is that Sherlock Holmes doesn't have any theme park attractions based around him, none that I'm aware of.

Speaker 3: 2:16

None that I'm aware of, I mean, apart from 221B Baker Street. You know, no shade thrown to my Baker Street. You know irregular friends out there in the UK. They do a fabulous job with the actual recreation of Sherlock Holmes' lair. However, there isn't like a whole theme park based around the guy and there isn't really an attraction built around him as far as I am aware of. And, by the way, listeners, if you are listening to go well, I happen to know one send us an email. We'd love to hear about it.

Speaker 3: 2:49

We'd love to learn about this because I'm a massive Sherlock Holmes nerd.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Boy, if there were a Sherlock Holmes ride I would go. I would find a way to get on that Elementary elementary I would totally do that yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:01

So, anyhow, we're going to talk about Dracula as a central figure in a whole slew of attractions all over the United States and maybe a little bit in Romania, depending upon how much time we got tonight. Ah, cool, yeah, we are going to have to start somewhere, but we might as well just go right for the heart. Let's actually go to Romania for a minute. Go right for the heart. I see what you did there. Okay, so the trick is that Dracula has been a fascinating figure in both history, literature, mythology and movies. Yeah, many people have put different connotations and different meanings behind the character, the book. Kelly and I have had this conversation numerous times, where I'm a big lover of Dracula movies and yet I'm always disappointed by them because none of them actually seem to get it right for me.

Speaker 3: 4:02

Because I've read the book. It was the very first book I ever read that was not a children's book. Yeah, it was the summer of 19,. What was it? 1982. Mm-hmm. And.

Speaker 1: 4:15

That makes you 38 right now, right, oh God.

Speaker 3: 4:20

And yeah, I wish, yeah, so no, my father got us a video disc machine, a RCA CED video disc machine. Wow, now, for those who don't know what this is, ka-chunk, let's go back in time. Yeah, today we've got streaming. You go a little bit further back. You have Blu-ray and DVDs. You go a little bit further back, you have VHS. You go a little bit further back, you have Blu-ray and DVDs. You go a little bit further back, you have VHS. You go a little bit further back, you have Betamax. And right about the same time that VHS is just starting, you also have LaserDiscs, which were actually a much superior but very expensive product to make, product to make. But before that, just before, the RCA company devised a way to take the information memory storage material, which is, strangely enough, the exact same film that you put onto CDs. Yeah, yeah, but in order to keep the cost down, they put it on LP, vinyl, which presents a huge amount of problems. First off, it can only store a certain amount of information on one side, right, so that's one problem.

Speaker 1: 5:36

You had to flip them right.

Speaker 3: 5:37

You had to flip them. You would watch a movie and then halfway through the movie it would just stop. You'd be like what happened, and sometimes the disc would have a little code saying turn over disc. And so you'd have to go up and they all came in these plastic sleeves and you would shove the sleeve in on side A and then pull it out and the machine would hold on to the disc in the specialized sleeve and then start playing the disc and all the discs. There wasn't even push buttons on these things, it was all like these big, heavy, like spring-loaded levers to make it play. Yeah, and then you'd watch the movie and the quality was okay, it wasn't bad, it was VHS quality.

Speaker 1: 6:17

Yeah, maybe a little better.

Speaker 3: 6:19

Poor VHS quality. Yeah, it was okay. And then halfway through the film it would stop and you'd have to get up. Put the disc all the way in the sleeve, all the way in, grab the disc, pull it out, flip it over to side.

Speaker 3: 6:33

B, put it in, pull out the sleeve again and watch side B. So there are movies to this day where I still feel this instinctual twitch in my lower back Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sensual twitch in my lower back. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, King Kong, Frankenstein, the Godfather, Dark Crystal, the Producers I owned all Murder by Death, we owned all of these movies on CED. But I always go oh, I got to turn it over, because I'm almost there, Because I was inevitably the DJ of the CED disc Like go turn it over, kid.

Speaker 1: 7:06

It's kind of like those eight tracks that you listen to as a kid, like where you know where the kachunk is coming. Yeah, it's like you're just ready for it, and when it doesn't happen it seems wrong somehow.

Speaker 3: 7:17

Right. So, like on the Star Wars CED disc, I know exactly when to flip it over. Yeah, because it stops right when Grand Moff Tarkin says Terminator immediately. Yeah, and then I would have to get up and flip it over. Yes. Which is great because that role was played by the fabulous Peter Cushing, yeah, who played Van Helsing to Christopher Lee's Dracula.

Speaker 1: 7:39

Yeah, maybe the greatest Van Helsing.

Speaker 3: 7:42

I would totally agree with that. Yeah, and so because of the CD discs. And why I'm bringing this up is another disc that we owned was the 1931 classic film starring Bela Lugosi, directed by Todd Browning. Yeah, dracula, from Universal Studios. And how we acquired that led to my love of this story. It's because these discs were expensive and my parents did not make a lot of money at this time.

Speaker 3: 8:09

So my dad made a deal with me. He says read the book first, smart dad. And I'm six years old. Yeah, read the book first. Yeah, okay. So he hands me a paperback edition and here's Dracula. And I said well, what if I run into a word I don't know? Peter, this is called a dictionary. Oh well, what if I read the dictionary and I still don't know what it is? Peter, you see these things up here. This is called the Encyclopedia Britannica Yep, encyclopedia Britannica Yep. And so I had to read Dracula and I was not allowed to ask my parents any questions about the book until I finished it. Yeah, and I had to do a book report. Oh, brilliant. So this was like. I finished it in about two weeks. Yeah, because it was like serious summer and we had a room in the front of our house with all of our LPs. So I listened to creepy classical music Lots of Toccata and Fugue and lots of Mazorski. I was listening to a lot of it while I'm reading Dracula. Engel's Cave over and over again, oh yeah.

Speaker 3: 9:19

And if I, and a lot of Wendy Carlos, because we had a copy of the Shining, yeah, and also Penderecki, right, right, you know Gustav Penderecki, so anyway. So I listened to a lot of this and I really got into the book, and if I ran into something I didn't understand I would go to the dictionary. I don't know what this word means, you know? Oh, okay, tree panning, what is that? Oh, I know what that is and I look it up.

Speaker 1: 9:42

It's the thing that Yoko stopped John from doing.

Speaker 3: 9:45

Pretty much and then I did a and. As a reward for reading the book, my dad bought me a copy of the CED disc of Dracula, which I played voraciously because I loved those locations, the bleak castles and the weird asylums. And Dwight Frye, as Renfield is so good in that film, he steals the movie.

Speaker 1: 10:07

Oh, he's brilliant. And of course Bela, and of course Bela Lugosi, who's so brilliant in that film, and I defy anyone to. I think that the movie has some issues and I love Todd Browning, but I think the movie's a little bit stodgy, a little bit slow. Many would agree with you, yeah yeah, but it's beautiful and Bela Lugosi is irresistible. He is, he is such a good actor. It is kind of a shame that he got stuck doing horror roles after that, because anytime you see him outside of that role, he is also brilliant. Oh yeah, like, just go watch Ninochka. He steals scenes from Greta Garbo, oh yeah, masterful.

Speaker 3: 10:53

Oh yeah, he's very, very good. Yeah, I kind of want to do a little side thing here, because we're talking about the movie and we're talking about this character and I hope you don't object to this, kelly but I'd like to dedicate this episode to an acquaintance of mine who we were becoming friends. He was a scholar. He wrote many, many books on this very subject. His name is David J Skoll, and David and I met through our love of Dracula. He wrote several books on Todd Browning and on Bela Lugosi and Bram Stoker. He has a book called American Gothic that talks about the development of the 1931 film and all the stage versions and anybody listening who's like a monster movie nerd. You can see him in almost every DVD extra of the Universal Monsters you're thinking of. David just pops up. Dvd extra of the Universal Monsters. I'm thinking of David, just pops up.

Speaker 3: 11:45

Sadly, last year around New Year's on New Year's Day he was driving home with his partner and they were killed in a very, very horrible car accident so tragic it was. It was and I owe David a lot because I was writing a book about the woman who wrote King Kong. Yeah, and he really was one of the along with Kelly. He was one of the three people that really kind of kept pushing me Like how's it going? How's it going? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 12:13

Giving me advice and he was actually like offering to read it and help me critique it before he passed, and I will miss him because, beside all the me, me, me stuff, he was just a really delightful human being.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 12:29

And the reason why I'm bringing him up is to talk about Bela and the 31 Dracula. We have to talk about what I like to call Draxploitation, Because Dracula means so many different things to so many different people. Yeah, and while they were making the 1931 version, the English version of Dracula, all you horror nerds who are listening right now will probably already be going what about the Spanish version.

Speaker 3: 12:56

Right, because, for those who don't know, carl Emly Jr who convinced his father to do Dracula. His father did not want to do a horror movie, but his son loved the story, wanted to do it, and it took him several years to put the film into development and also to get the rights from Madame Stoker, herself Rom's widow.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Well, she was gun-shy after the Nosferatu stuff.

Speaker 3: 13:22

Yes, there is that, and we'll talk about that at another time. What they decided to do is there was a big push to have international audiences. One of the big movie audiences that was readily accessible to Hollywood was Mexico. Yes, so they did a Spanish version at night. So the lights on the production never got shut off, because the American crew would work all day and then, as they were just starting to wrap things up, the Spanish crew would move in and use the same sets, sometimes even the same costumes.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Yeah, Spanish cast and crew.

Speaker 3: 13:57

Yep, and it run by all because the producer, the director who was behind the Spanish Dracula, fell in love with its main star, lupita Tovar. Yes, he was so smitten by her. It's like I'm going to put you on the screen.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Oh, and you can see why. Oh, baby.

Speaker 3: 14:14

Lupita Tovar Ay ay ay. She is. Wow, she's beautiful and she's fantastic and she was really, really sweet and she lived well over 100 years. I think she was like 104. Holy cow, she lived to a very long Lord age. I mean I could look it up, but she did live well past 100. The one thing about that production that fails is Dracula. Yeah, no offense to any Carlos Villarreal fans out there, but Carlos is so hammy and so over the top he almost ruins the whole movie. Yeah, but everybody else is just going for it. They're buying into it. It's much darker, it's moodier. There's camera moves that are not being used in the English version.

Speaker 1: 15:03

It's interesting how dynamic the camera is compared to Browning's, which has always struck me as strange, because Browning was not shy about moving the camera around, but something about this production seemed to be kind of tying his hands.

Speaker 3: 15:18

Well, and that would be his alcoholism That'd do it. Yeah. So a lot of people have actually speculated that he was kind of director in name only and that the director of photography I think it was Carl Freund. It is, yeah, Carl Freund was the one who was actually pulling the strings, which is why he got to take the reins on the Mummy. Which with Boris.

Speaker 3: 15:41

Karloff, which, if you watch it, is almost the exact same story, just with a dusty Egyptian named Ardeth Bay as opposed to Count Dracula, right, but they both have very abrupt endings. Much to my partner's chagrin, she's watched both of them. They just go and they go and they're great, and all of a sudden they stop. Why is that? Well, it's only two reels. Like what do you want you know? Why is that? Well, it's only two reels. Like what do you want you know? See, dracula is so fascinating, yeah, that there is a history of using him as a, frankly, as tourist fodder, yes, going all the way back to the 1500s.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Okay.

Speaker 3: 16:20

People would go to Braun Castle just to see whether or not the impaler himself, vlad Shepes, was gone. Yeah, but the locals would charge the money to go see the abandoned castle. Yeah, so it has been a tourist attraction ever since. Yeah, and here's one of Pete's deep dives for all you horror fans out there that it might blow you away Castle Bronn, which is not technically Castle Dracula, yeah, there are two castles that he inhabited, the actual Castle Dracula and Bronn Castle, right, okay, bronn Castle is where he was actually imprisoned when he was near the end of his life, where Vlad the Impaler, vlad the Impaler, okay, yes, that building was commissioned by an order of knights from Germany who specialized in building wartime encampments and embattlements.

Speaker 3: 17:18

Okay, and they were very good at it. They were renowned all throughout and they were actually commissioned to build stuff during the Crusades. Yeah, they had a long family history and they built Brown Castle. Hmm, as a matter of fact, one of the patriarchs of the family, who was a contemporary of Vlad Shepis, was probably the person who was responsible for the propaganda against Vlad, because Vlad owed him money, right.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Because I've heard this I actually read this very recently. Like it turns out that the people that were basically ruled over and protected by Vlad the Impaler, their history of him is actually quite favorable. They really love the guy.

Speaker 3: 18:01

Yeah, they review him as a hero, yeah, yeah. So it's almost like the same type of propaganda of like the English saying well, you know, napoleon was very short. Right, you know it's that type of thing, only it's to the extreme. Well, he impaled people, so he must have drank their blood and he thought he was a vampire and all that. Yeah, well, who wasn't impaling people too? Yeah, but the name of this family is Frankenstein. Wait, say that again. The name of the family and the order of knights that built Bronn Castle is Frankenstein.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Okay. So that, to say the least, is a coincidence. Uh-huh, so that, to say the least, is a coincidence. So how do—so does Mary Wollsing—and folks believe me, I'm hearing this for the first time, just like you are, so I'm trying to stand in and ask the questions that I hope that you have. So does Mary Wollsingcraft, shelley, know this history, or is she just pulling Frankenstein out of thin air?

Speaker 3: 19:08

She was inspired by a visit to Castle Frankenstein in Germany, okay, and the castle was actually being used as a research center for people working on galvanistic experimentation at the time.

Speaker 3: 19:25

The fact that I'm getting this from is from a book called In Search of Frankenstein, written by Radu Florescu. Okay, and he goes into some detail about how the Knights Frankenstein were commissioned by Vlad's father to build the castle. They built it and then the Draculas and the Frankensteins actually started having money issues between each other, uh-huh. And so at one point, you know, call Xandor Vorkov, right Like. At one point, a Dracula probably really did have a fight with a Frankenstein For real, so like. But it's just this weird little coinkydink that these two families met. But apparently the Frankenstein family was actually part of the propaganda arm against Vlad the Impaler to paint him as a vampire.

Speaker 1: 20:17

This is the story you have waited your entire life to tell, isn't it, Pete?

Speaker 3: 20:21

I you know I love doing that. So I do teach a college course on the history of horror and I love watching the eyeballs of all my students pop when they hear that. And I and you know who didn't hear about that was David. David Skull did not know this and I said you need to read Radu Flarescu's book. And he read and he called me up later. He said I read it, holy moly, like that really blew my mind and I went yeah, I mean it's documented. So yeah, the Knights Frankenstein actually probably met against Dracula's castle and it is operated as a historical landmark.

Speaker 3: 21:05

And a tourist trap and a tourist trap, Because the minute you walk up there's a dude dressed in a Dracula's cape, as everybody knows by watching Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, so, but still, you know it's. I mean, my grandparents went there when I was very young. Yeah, and okay, another little story from my childhood. And this magazine is going to keep coming up. It was a magazine that started in the 50s and it lasted the real magazine. They revived it, but it was never the same for me. It ended right around 1982.

Speaker 3: 21:38

And it was started by a guy named Forrest J Ackerman and it was called Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. Yeah, In the 80s they used to put these advertisements for get some real soil from Dracula's tomb and it looked like a gold chain with a little golden coffin that had these, and it was hollow in the inside, except for these two little pieces of glass with a little bit of dirt in it. It was hollow in the inside, except for these two little pieces of glass with a little bit of dirt in it, and it was supposed to be real dirt from the basement of Dracula's actual castle in Transylvania.

Speaker 1: 22:14

Yeah, and in 1970s money it was 20 bucks. That's a lot of money, yeah, yeah, for a kid especially.

Speaker 3: 22:19

For a kid especially. Yeah, and you thought you were going to get this cool and I was like I'm going to wear that with my Van Helsing outfit. I have real you know like wow, yeah. So I spent a whole summer mowing lawns, walking dogs, picking up dog poop whatever I had to do to get the money to do it. I sent away the money that I sent away for this thing, cut out the little coupon in the back, sent it off to the captain company in New York, yeah, and I waited for six weeks and then I finally got this little envelope and I opened it up. The necklace the actual necklace part was plastic, oh no. And the coffin was made of plastic.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 22:58

And I realized that there was this little fine print on the advertisement because I was so upset Like I thought it was gold, yeah, and it's like no. It actually says it is a plastic thing. But it's rendered to look like because it's an illustration, it's not a photograph.

Speaker 3: 23:16

Yeah, but, it's rendered to look like this shiny gold object, but it's like, oh no, it's just the way it's lit. It's like, oh you, cheap. Well, apparently a lot of people got cheesed by that. Yeah, a lot of kids remember that. For a lot of you monster kids some of you might be listening now going I remember that I have that too. It was cheap. So my grandparents felt for me, yeah, so they went to Romania and they brought back a rock from the room where Vlad the Impaler was imprisoned. And I still have it. It's up on my wall. I have a actual stone from Castle Dracula on my wall. That's amazing, so like, and that's because I got ripped off by the Captain Company, because my grandparents were awesome, but I have a love for this. But Dracula's Castle is a tourist attraction, yeah, but it's mostly just a historical attraction You're not going to, except for near Halloween or Walpurgisnacht, where they let you sleep in coffins in the Grand Hall. Yeah, but other than that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:13

And I know that it was sort of post the Lugosi film that the people in that particular area of Eastern Europe said, hey, we might have something we could, you know, make some money off of here.

Speaker 3: 24:26

You get tired of hearing from tourists like where's Dracula's castle? They go all right, let's make some bucks.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Well and it's interesting. So you know, looking at the kind of origins and I swear we'll get to some theme park stuff soon but looking at the origins of Dracula as a book, as Bram Stoker's book, some of the origin is clearly Vlad the Impaler. He would have known this historical character, though Stoker never in his entire life went to Eastern Europe. He was well-traveled but he didn't go to Eastern Europe, so it's all hearsay. Some of the origin is just basically the Penny Dreadfuls that are floating around England. Barney the Vampire Barney the Vampire yeah, and some of it may be a little bit.

Speaker 1: 25:17

The person that Bram Stoker worked for Ah, yes, and who might that be? Kelly, that would be the most famous actor in England. Henry Irving Ah, yes, and who might that be? Kelly, that would be the most famous actor in England. Henry Irving Ah, yes. So Stoker, he's an interesting guy. He's Irish, he is stage, he's doing a lot of jobs, but at this point he's stage managing for the Lyceum Theatre. He is the. It is sometimes described as manager of and it is sometimes described as assistant to Sir Henry Irving, and he is working. And the Lyceum Theater at this point it's still around, but at this point it's a fascinating and weird group of people. Many of them are connected one way or the other with the Order of the Golden Dawn Alistair Crowley's group. And you say that and people hear it and go, oh, were they evil? No, it was just. You know, it was like any kind of weirdo occult group that is fashionable at the time. That's what they were doing Now.

Speaker 3: 26:24

Let's all get drunk and go play ping pong.

Speaker 1: 26:30

For a brief period of time, a woman named Pamela Coleman Smith worked with the Lyceum Theatre. She was an American who caught up with that company when it was touring through America and then was brought over to England. She was an illustrator and she is the woman who drew the Rider-Waite tarot deck the single most famous tarot deck in the world Nice. Pamela Coleman Smith drew that and many of the actors from the Lyceum Company are the characters on those cards. Sir Henry Irving is certainly at least one of them. Stoker might be one, though that's not entirely positive, but he might be. So a really interesting and odd group of people, but Henry Irving had a reputation.

Speaker 3: 27:28

Yes, he did.

Speaker 1: 27:30

Irving was a. The Lowdown on the Plus Up is a BoardWalk Times podcast, a BoardWalkTimes podcast. At BoardWalkTimesnet you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company. Disney history and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardWalkTimesnet he was arresting. He could hypnotize with his eyes. He was erudite. He was friends with Queen Victoria, which helped the theater a lot.

Speaker 3: 28:34

So he's basically like a Victorian Peter O'Toole? Yes.

Speaker 1: 28:39

And so, to an extent, Dracula may have been in part based on Henry Irving, a guy that was not particularly likable.

Speaker 3: 28:49

No, he's not. Yeah, for all accounts, he is not very likable.

Speaker 1: 28:53

But I think what is really interesting about the story of Stoker and Dracula and how it first connects to theme parks is that Stoker and Irving were in New York at a certain point and they saw in about 1896, they saw Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Irving was entranced by this. I'll bet he was fascinated by this thing and you know, at this point Buffalo Bill Cody was a big deal Like. These were big shows. He was somehow getting huge casts, including large casts of Native Americans who were Including the great Sitting Bull himself.

Speaker 1: 29:38

This is right, yeah, and who would come out and actually simulate their own defeat? He was doing these big shows, huge audiences, and Irving convinced him to come to England. Wow, and so Cody came to England. Stoker helped facilitate all this. Stoker did not like Cody either. A lot of people didn't like Cody either, right, so Cody came to England. Mm-hmm, irving sponsored it.

Speaker 1: 30:07

The papers had kind of a field day because they considered Cody this sort of you know, ruffian, right, you know this guy that they didn't have a lot of respect for and they couldn't figure out what his relationship with Henry Irving might be. Right, so there are all sorts of aspersions cast, but Irving did be. So there are all sorts of aspersions cast, but Irving did know Queen Victoria and he got her to come to these shows twice. She came to see Buffalo Bill Cody twice, and so it ended up being a huge deal. Buffalo Bill Cody made a ton of money. Probably Irving did too. So one of the things that. So I'm going to tie this into both the book Dracula and into the origins of theme parks. Only the way you can Go ahead. I feel like I'm slaloming here.

Speaker 3: 30:56

No, you're doing great.

Speaker 1: 30:57

I'm on my way, I'm totally with you. Okay, when we see film versions of Dracula—and I think we both know that more people have seen film versions of Dracula than have actually read that book Correct Generally the climax of the book and spoiler alert. If you've never, ever seen a film version of Dracula, is Professor Van Helsing doing something to kill Dracula, right? This is not what happens in the book. No, in the book, a character named Quincy Morris kills Dracula. Yep.

Speaker 3: 31:31

With a bowie knife.

Speaker 1: 31:33

With a bowie knife. Yeah, jonathan Seward tries to slit his throat while Quincy Morris stabs Dracula through the chest with a bowie knife. It's pretty gruesome. Morris then dies heroically.

Speaker 1: 31:48

Quincy Morris is an old Wild West character. He's from the United States. He is very much in the vein of Buffalo Bill Cody. This is fairly clearly the inspiration for this character, and Stoker's doing something really interesting here, where he's taking two different kinds of frontiers and having them clash and in a way, saying they're both better off dead. So you've got. Dracula is in his past. Heroic.

Speaker 1: 32:30

Dracula is defending his people from the Turk. At some point they describe him as living at the edge of Turkey land, yeah, and he supposedly makes a deal with the devil or sells his soul or something to defend his people, the Turk. This is a long time ago and he's done it and that frontier is no longer a threat and he's just devolved into the creature that we know him. Now Quincy Morris has come over from the United States. His frontier is dying too. This is, like you know, the late 1800s, the early 1900s. We're not taming the Wild West really anymore, right, yeah, and so his frontier is also dying, and so we put these two frontier characters, neither of which Stoker likes very much, and they kill each other. Wow, it's really interesting. And you know, quincy Morris dies very beautifully in the book, yeah, like he lays down just as the sun is setting, mm-hmm, and just says you know, it was all worth it to see this. Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful thing. So how do we tie this into theme parks?

Speaker 1: 33:47

In about 1906, buffalo Bill Cody appears in Missouri and he meets a very, very young Walt Disney. This is true. Now, this is late in his career. This is like 10 years later. Cody is not as big a deal anymore. No, he's still a legend, but, yeah. But Walt sees him marching through the center of Marceline, missouri. Wow, and Cody picks Walt up and puts him on the back of his horse. This is true, this actually happened. Wow, and Walt Disney rides, puts him on the back of his horse.

Speaker 1: 34:25

This is true, this actually happened, wow. And Walt Disney rides through town on the back of the horse with Buffalo Bill Cody.

Speaker 3: 34:33

That's really cool.

Speaker 1: 34:34

And later, remembering it, disney says I was mighty impressed.

Speaker 2: 34:41

What a Walt thing to say what a Walt thing to say.

Speaker 3: 34:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:45

So ultimately we've got this through line of this one character, the character that Stoker brings over from America, this actual person, buffalo Bill Cody, the character that he becomes in the book, who actually kills Dracula, and then the character that inspires Walt Disney. A lot of stuff going on there.

Speaker 3: 35:08

We could go into all of these different origins, for because there's a lot of weird, weird connections with just Dracula alone. I do want to talk about, really briefly, about one fun little factoid. Yes, because the film is what really makes Dracula the popular thing that it is. Yeah, but it may have actually been film that inspired Dracula as well, or at least an element of it. Yeah, there was a French filmmaker who made his own movies in Montreal in France. His name was Georges Méliès Mm-hmm and he made what is credited as the first horror film called the Devil's Castle.

Speaker 3: 35:50

Now, it's a silly romp and he's like jumping around doing his usual stuff and stopping the camera and starting it and making stuff vanish and reappear. But it opens with a bat in a castle flapping around in front of the camera and with a puff of smoke suddenly appears a man in a castle flapping around in front of the camera and with a puff of smoke suddenly appears a man in a huge black cloak with a high-peaked collar. Yeah, many have speculated that that one little thing may have. If it didn't inspire Brom, it most certainly may have inspired filmmakers like Todd Browning. Yeah, for having that element of you know, the transformation from a man to a bat. Yeah, also, it's interesting film plays into the exploitation of Dracula in a way here, and it really starts with some Hungarian Jews who moved to Los Angeles called the Lemleys.

Speaker 1: 36:56

Yes.

Speaker 3: 36:57

And Carl Lemley basically had his entire family living on the lot. It was like a family ranch where they made movies, universal Studios, and very early on he knew that as movies grew in popularity and as people started flooding into the desert community of Los Angeles and Hollywood to try and get into this new thing, this new entertainment medium of motion pictures, and everybody came from all over.

Speaker 1: 37:27

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:30

That he could make a little extra money because movies were competitive, because you also had three different places that were dominant filmmakers in America.

Speaker 1: 37:40

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:41

You had the British making films and you had the Germans making films and, yes, other countries were making films too, but those were the two main European centers for cinema and the Italians, but as far as true industry, it was America, with most of the productions happening in both New York and in Los Angeles. So Lemley Sr makes a shrewd business move and he starts charging in mission to take people onto the set, which was easy because it was silent. You didn't have to worry about people talking, right, yeah, you just. Oh, hey, look over here they're working on a Western. Look over here they're working on a Charlie Chaplin film.

Speaker 1: 38:18

And they're doing it at the same time, Like there's no reason not to.

Speaker 3: 38:22

Right, yeah, literally right next to each other, or you know, back and forth. And so they would do walking tours and they realized, well, there's a lot of people. And then the back lot got bigger and bigger. So he bought some excursion buses and chopped off the top and they would drive around with these convertible buses with the open top, and that's the birth of the tram ride, Right, right. So when Lemley Jr and Sr collaborated on the Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney Sr, those tours obviously became a lot more centered on these humongous sets that they built to replicate the streets of Paris. Some of these sets still, in little bits and pieces, still exist, but they've also been wiped out over time. But one of the sets that still exists is what is called the Court of Wonders, which is part of the Hunchback set, and part of it became transformed into insert the Vania location for your monster movie here. But it was used in almost all of it was used in the Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, all of that, and it's still part of the tram tour.

Speaker 1: 39:34

You know, what's funny is I just finished a book, a very late book, by Ray Bradbury. Later in his career he was writing murder mysteries, for whatever reason, and several of the books that he wrote were murder mysteries that featured himself as a main character and occasionally a character based on Ray Harryhausen. And so I just finished this book called A Graveyard for Lunatics, and it all takes place on an old movie lot. I'm going to assume that we're talking about the 50s, maybe 40s, but frequently he references being on the Hunchback of Notre Dame set. Oh yeah, that is on that lot and it's an imaginary lot he's made it up, but it is clearly a conglomeration of several movie studios that you know, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:28

And so Universal is where it really takes off.

Speaker 1: 40:31

Now.

Speaker 3: 40:32

I do want to put a pin and just say we would love to talk about all of the carnival attractions and also we should, while we talk about silent films, the Cinematograph, which was a carnival attraction. That was basically a silent movie theater in a big black tent and they would usually put these elaborate facades in the front and they would show George Ben-Elias movies like Voyage de la Lune and the Castle of the Devil.

Speaker 1: 41:02

Voyage de la Lune, which turned into a theme park attraction in Disneyland Paris.

Speaker 3: 41:07

Yes, it did. Yeah, Absolutely, and one of the other films that was featured in Cinématographs was FW Murnau's Nosferatu.

Speaker 1: 41:14

Yeah, masterpiece.

Speaker 3: 41:16

Masterpiece. Yeah, although the widow Stoker didn't like it. No, she was not crazy about that she fought them and actually won her copyright case litigation against Murnau and Albin Grau, who were a pair of occultists who wanted to make a whole series Like in an alternate universe. Stoker was, you know, Madame Stoker was actually okay with it. Yeah, and there was all these devil-worshiping silent movies that we would get to see by Murnau and Albin Grau, but we'll never find out. So you know, Murnau Herzog will have to make an alternate reality movie of that.

Speaker 1: 41:51

Yeah, and Stoker was Bram Stoker was dead by that point. Yes, he was.

Speaker 3: 41:56

Yes, he was this notion of having. So we love to talk about all the carnival rides in which Dracula is usually some sort of dummy, usually in a Bela Lugosi-style cape with the red lining and the fangs in a coffin. Dracula, at this point, when you go into the 50s, is already a staple of Halloween fare. Yes, okay, yes, okay. But the notion of taking people onto the set as an attraction where, yeah, I want to see I've already seen the movie, but I want to see more of this yeah, so they're exploiting Dracula as one of the sales pitches, because they would actually start dressing somebody up as Lugosi to walk around and you'd get your photo op with them or you'd sit in a coffin.

Speaker 3: 42:42

Yeah, so along comes the 1960s, yeah, and with the birth of color television and black and white television, there's this push to come up with new, catchy, edgy types of television that will appeal to younger viewers. And thanks to our friend Forrest J Ackerman and his magazine Famous Monsters, yeah, and also Boris Bobby Pickett and his song, the Monster Mash, monster Mash. Yeah, the birth of the monster kid era is in full force at this point. Yeah, and rather than doing yet another, daddy knows best, leave it to beavers style, ozzie and Harriet style sitcom style. Ozzie and Harriet style sitcom.

Speaker 3: 43:24

Producers at Universal Studios came up with an idea to basically take that sitcom formula and mix it with the monster craze, and thus comes the Munsters, the Munsters, yeah, with Herman and Grandpa and Lily and Eddie and the whole and Helen. The works right. Okay, the cool thing is and my parents have memories of this, going to Universal Studios, yeah, you go on the tram tour and they would be filming the Munsters on the back lot, and so, and people would request, can we and that was actually part of the map Go see the Munsters house? Huh, on the Universal Studios map 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

Speaker 1: 44:01

1313 Mockingbird.

Speaker 3: 44:02

Lane, 1313, mockingbird Lane, absolutely, and you would go on it and sometimes the actors would be outside. So Al Lewis would be outside smoking a cigar out there with Fred Gwynn and they're doing burlesque stick outside and Fred is like half naked because he would be wearing so much foam padding that he'd be losing so much weight from all the sweat as a German. But they would be out and they would sign autographs and take pictures with fans on the tram tour. And eventually Universal, during the second season of the Munsters, they said well, people request these so much, we can't let them on the set. It's slowing down the filming. Yeah, so if you happen to see them, great, but we're not going to stop the Tran. Let them off the Tran onto the set, which is what they would do. Yeah, they built a fake set, right adjacent to 1313 Mockingbird, so you'd see the house.

Speaker 3: 44:56

But then they take you into Grandpa's lab and they had a wax figure from the wax museum in Anaheim, california, made up of Herman on a slab, and they had some replica of Strickfadden equipment zapping away around it. Yeah, and you get your picture with this fake Herman to visit. You know, the Munsters? Yeah, and the Munsters became quite a staple and there were a lot of monster fans out there and a lot of it has to do with Forrey Ackerman. Sure, because Forrey started fandom. He really did. He made it okay for people to say I'm a geek, you're a geek, wouldn't you like to be a geek too? Yeah, he's also responsible responsible for being the press agent of L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. Oh, weird. Yes, one of the things that he actually kind of regretted in life is helping Hubbard get Scientology as popular as it was.

Speaker 1: 45:53

Wow, he had no idea he wasn't a.

Speaker 3: 45:54

Scientologist. He was not a Scientologist, he didn't believe in it. He thought okay. But he helped him sell Dianetics and he was a very good salesman. Forry could sell anything and he was best friends with Harryhausen and Bradbury. They were best friends, they were absolute besties. But Forry's love for monsters really came through in the magazine and I grew up with this magazine. I collect these magazines. I love them.

Speaker 3: 46:22

Apart from theme parks and animation, monsters are my third thing and I love them so much, and it's mostly because of Fori, who I got to meet when I was very young. The thing is is that as the monsters waned, fandom for monsters started to wane too a little bit, because this is the late 60s, mm-hmm. People's attention was suddenly moving away from the gothic, yeah, and it was moving much more towards movies like Blood Feast, yeah, you know, night of the Living Dead, mm-hmm. All of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was moving to these much less gothic, much more gritty slasher films, and so the public interest was moving away from that. And then somewhere in the early 70s it came back. Yeah, no one can explain how that happened, except for one thing, which is General Mills putting out serials based off of these monsters.

Speaker 3: 47:16

We're talking about Count Chocula and Frankenberry and Booberry, which went through its own controversy because of the dye used. It was seriously affecting children's poop and changing its strange colors, which terrified parents. So they had to.

Speaker 1: 47:29

But probably delighted the kids.

Speaker 3: 47:30

Yeah, the kids were like, wow, it's like neon green and glows in the dark. I must be a monster, right? But people were really interested in monsters again for this, like this new flash had happened.

Speaker 1: 47:41

You know, blue poop is the kind of erudite conversation that people tune in for.

Speaker 3: 47:48

Speaking of Carl Emily. Yeah, so there was this new push for it, and also because of Famous Monsters. The other thing that Forrey did is he introduced fans like myself, but also filmmakers like John Landis, rick Baker, joe Dante, steven Spielberg to the people who were behind the scenes. Yeah, and one of the families that was behind the scenes was the Westmore family. Okay, now the Westmores are everywhere in Hollywood. You can't shake a stick and not bump into a Westmore in Hollywood, especially in the makeup world.

Speaker 3: 48:25

Bud Westmore was the Westmore in question who took over Westmore of record. Yes, bud Westmore took over the Universal Makeup Department in the 1940s, where he took over for Jack Pierce. Okay, jack Pierce is the makeup man responsible for all the Universal Monster makeups. Right, he was a genius, even though he was kind of a curmudgeon and he was exacting, but man, he was amazing with makeup. Very, very fascinating fellow. But he never had a contract. So when the new management took over Universal Studios, they bought it off of the Lemleys. They realized he didn't have a contract and so he was just unceremoniously fired. Oh, wow, and I mean he did make up off and on from that point on, but I think his last gig was actually making Gus the Talking Mule by putting peanut butter on its lip. Yeah, yeah, it's really kind of sad. The ending of his life is really really really poorly taken care of. But he was very influential.

Speaker 3: 49:32

But Bud Westmore was very opportunistic, but every Westmore kind of special. Bud specialized in character makeups. And then his brother worked at MGM and he specialized in glamour makeup, like making taking Edith Head's costumes and mixing it with that Westmore's makeup. It was amazing, yeah, and there was a Westmore at Paramount, there was a Westmore at Fox, there was Westmores everywhere. Yeah, well, the Westmore family, their children, came up with an idea at Universal Studios. Let's let people in on the secrets. Yeah, so they did a show called Hollywood Movie Makeup Show. Yeah, and it was like this weird little outdoor gazebo that had makeup tables and they would pull people out of the audience and do like a glamour makeup on one and make somebody up as Frankenstein, like some dad.

Speaker 1: 50:19

Oh, wow, and it was pretty cool, yeah, and I can see where this is going to lead into the kind of show that Universal does for a very, very long time, absolutely, and it becomes you know the magic.

Speaker 3: 50:30

You are in the magic of the movies. Yeah, this is kind of I mean they had pulled people. I mean it goes with an old tradition from the old studio tours where sometimes if you were on that tour, you had the right face, they would pull you off that tram, shove you in the background of a movie. You got to look, kid, let's get you in there. You know, there it is. Here's your two bits. Yeah, here's your two bits. Yeah, but in this case you're getting charged a certain amount of money for a photo op right.

Speaker 3: 50:57

Well, along comes Universal Studios and they are working on a remake of Dracula, yeah, Starring the, based off of the Broadway revival of the Dean and Balderston play starring Frank Langella, yeah, and they decide to cash in on this and they decide to take the makeup show and blend it and they go. Well, who do we know who really knows monster movie makeups? Well, there's a bunch of movie makeup guys out there. You know we've got John Chambers who did the Planet of the Apes movie, but you know he's currently busy saving people from Iran because he was part of the.

Speaker 3: 51:37

Argo project. Who else do we know? How about Don Post? He makes all those movie monster masks, right? Uh-huh, don Post was a film makeup guy but he was producing these fabulous movie monster masks Dracula, frankenstein, quasimodo, that kind of stuff and they would sell them on the back of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Yeah, but they were not like the cheap masks. These were high-quality Hollywood masks that in the 60s were going for 30 bucks a pop. Wow, frustrating every baby boomer monster kid you can think of. So they were like well, we could just get a bunch of movie monster masks, we'll have the monsters. So they called Don Post. He's like I'm busy, I can't really do this, but I got a guy who works for me and his name is Vern Langdon. Yeah, now, vern is a wild man, this guy. Let me tell you something. Vern Langdon, he did everything. He was a sculptor, he was a wrestler, he was born in Oakland, california. Oh huh, he was a local boy for us.

Speaker 3: 52:44

You know, and he worked at the Don Post studios and he worked on the calendar masks, as they were known, because there were 12 masks and they look like a calendar. Yeah, they even sold like a version of King Kong, like a big gorilla suit and a Metaluna mutant version. That was pretty cool too. He worked on the show. The makeup show was actually called the Land of a Thousand Faces Makeup Show yes, and that was in 1975. And then they shut that down.

Speaker 3: 53:11

They tore out the gazebo, yeah, and they raised it and they built this beautiful castle yeah, With gargoyles and stuff. You walked in. You were in this fabulous you know castle yeah, With gargoyles and stuff. You walked in. You were in this fabulous you know castle and out would come Dracula and out would come Renfield and people would get pulled out of the audience and they would be turned into monsters. I loved this thing so much and Vern was one of the designers of the show. He even did the music. He played the organ. He actually released a whole bunch of record albums, like Vampire at the Harpsichord and Eric at the Phantom at the organ, and he's also known for creating the theme song for the Carnival of Souls.

Speaker 1: 53:55

Oh huh, Interesting.

Speaker 3: 53:57

Yeah, he was a very and he later, when he was done sculpting, he became a professional wrestler and he died in 2011. Yeah, by all accounts, like a really, really sweet guy, but he did. He was a circus clown, he was a magician. Yeah, this attraction, which was Dracula's Castle Castle Dracula is what it was actually called yeah Was touted in the advertisements as being super special because they spent $3 million to build it. They were so proud of this. They put that in the newspaper ads.

Speaker 1: 54:29

Yes, and one of the things that I read about this show that they were doing is that so when we talk about Universal Studios and at this point it's starting to become more of a fully-fledged theme part we have to talk about Jay Stein.

Speaker 3: 54:46

Yes, please, let's talk about Jay Stein.

Speaker 1: 54:48

So Jay Stein is, at this point, the creative head of Universal Studios. He also seems pretty insane. Also seems pretty insane. Yes, when you compare the staffs of Universal Studios to the staffs of Disneyland, you find a really interesting comparison. The staffs of Disneyland, they're geniuses, brilliant people, thoughtful, inspirational. The staff of Universal Studios is a mob. Yeah, they are cutthroat. They will fire you if you like, breathe funny, yep. And Jay Stein is right, at at this point, the top of the ladder here. Yeah, and one of the things that you are all if you work for Jay Stein. At this point, the thing that you are trying to achieve is what's known as a J-bang.

Speaker 3: 55:52

Okay, a J. Okay, please explain what is a J-bang. So a J-bang is Folks. This is still an appropriate show for kids.

Speaker 1: 56:02

It is absolutely. It's not what you're thinking. Thanks for listening to part one of our Dracula in the Theme Parks episode. Please join us next week for part two, where we discuss Universal's Castle Dracula in a lot more detail. The most prolific designer of dark rides you've never heard of, why Dracula bleeds money and, of course, the J-Bang See you real soon, thank you.