ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 18th

"SLEEPAWAY CAMP" released in 1983

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In 1975, John Baker (Dan Tursi) and his boyfriend, Lenny (James Paradise), take John's children Angela (Felissa Rose) and Peter on a boating trip. After the boat capsizes, John and the children attempt to swim ashore, but they inadvertently swim into the path of a reckless motorboat and are struck, killing John and Peter. 8 years later in 1983, Angela is now traumatized and is living with her eccentric aunt, Dr. Martha Thomas (Desiree Gould), and her cousin Ricky Thomas (Jonathan Tiersten). Sent to Camp Arawak for the summer, Angela is bullied due to her introverted nature by fellow camper Judy (Karen Fields) and camp counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi). Hiding from her tormentors in the kitchen, Angela is almost assaulted by the camp's cook, Artie (Owen Hughes), but is saved by the by the sympathetic head counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo). But later, when Artie is alone, an unseen figure causes Artie to get severely scalded by the water he is boiling!

Campers Kenny and Mike also mock Angela, prompting Ricky and his friend Paul to get into a fight with them; after which Paul becomes friends with Angela.  Kenny is later mysteriously drowned, although his death is also ruled accidental by the camp owner Mel Costic (Mike Kellin). When another camper is killed after being trapped amongst a beehive, Mel starts thinking there is a killer in the camp. The relationship between Angela and Paul also grows strained when Angela catches Paul kissing Judy. Guilty, Paul attempts to explain himself but is shooed away by Judy and Meg, who throw Angela into the water and has sand flung at her by small children.

The night of the camp social, Meg is killed in the shower, Judy is killed by being raped with a lit curling iron, and Mel finds four of the six children who threw sand at Angela hacked to bits. The camp is thrown into a panic with all the deaths, and Mel beats Ricky mercilessly (believing he is the killer), only to be shot in the throat and killed with an arrow by the real killer. Unbeknownst to him, Paul goes the lake to keep his rendezvous with Angela, while Ronnie and the police frantically search for them before they become the killer's next victims - but find the killer is not what they would have ever suspected!

GOOF:   At the end, when you first see Angela sitting and humming, a crew member is visible way over on the other side of the bleachers.

Top:   Angela (Felissa Rose) is having a hard time fitting in at Camp Arawak;

Above:   Joining her at camp, is Angela's cousin, Ricky Thomas (Jonathan Tiersten).

The feature debut of writer/director Robert Hiltzik, Sleepaway Camp was intended to take advantage of the slew of slasher horror films being released in the early 80's, specifically Friday the 13th. For the pivotal role of Angela /Peter Baker, Hiltzik cast then unknown teenage actress Felissa Rose. Apparently, Rose's mother did not want her to be the killer in the film due to her being too young, so in the scenes where you see the killers arms they are in fact actor Jonathan Tiersten (cast as Angela's cousin, Ricky Thomas) arms. This was done because he had more masculine hands with veins, which could better throw off the audience in regard to the killer's identity. Tiersten also doubled for Rose for the scenes when the killer appears underneath the canoe with Kenny and for Judy's death scene when you see the killer standing in the door way (where Tiersten is obviously wearing a wig).

Sleepaway Camp is also infamously known for its twist ending, which is considered by some to be one of the most shocking endings among horror films. The climactic scene was accomplished by using a nude man wearing a mask cast from Felissa Rose's face. There were talks, and even molds created for a strap-on prosthetic penis for Felissa herself to wear, but the idea was ultimately scrapped. The thin man who stood in for Angela in this one scene was a college student who needed to get drunk before he was able to do the scene.

TRIVIA:  Christopher Collet, who played Paul, had a latex version of his head created for the final scene. Someone on the set took the head!

 Top:   Angela's main tormentors, Judy (Karen Fields) and camp counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi);

Above:   Camp owner Mel Costic (Mike Kellin) starts to discover the bodies left around the camp!

The original artwork for the Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit boxed set, which included the unauthorized sequels, was recalled after complaints were made by the American Red Cross. Sleepaway Camp was released theatrically on a limited basis by United Film Distribution Company, who had previously enjoyed success with other genre titles, including, Mother's Day (1980), Creepshow (1982), Class of 1984 (1982) and 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982). On its opening weekend, it grossed a total of $430,000 and became one of the top-grossing film in New York, beating out its horror competition by taking in almost double the gross of Amityville 3-D, earning just over $11 million (against a estimated $350,000 budget).

Sleepaway Camp received positive reviews from critics, with many critics praising the film's twist ending, and has since gained a cult status amongst horror fans. Contemporary reviews of the film have also been positive, with Bloody Disgusting praising Felissa Rose's performance and the film's twist ending calling it "one of the most shocking seen since, possibly, Hitchcock's Psycho". AllMovie wrote in its review on the film, "While most of the gender-bending story's sexual confusion is ultimately half-baked", "Sleepaway Camp is distinctive enough to warrant required viewing for genre enthusiasts."

[Angela stands up and makes a sinister bear-like noise, and Paul's severed head falls from her lap. Susie covers her mouth in horror]
Ronnie: ...How can it be?
[Angela is revealed to be male, she's fully naked and has a bloody knife clutched in her hands]
Ronnie: My god, she's a boy!

Top:   One of Angela's bullies meets a grisly end;

Above:   The final, shocking twist-ending that has made Sleepaway Camp a cult classic!

In the late 1980s, Michael A. Simpson directed two sequels, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989). In them, Angela (now played by Bruce Springsteen's younger sister, Pamela Springsteen) resurfaces at a nearby summer camp, but this time masquerading as a counselor after a sex change that made her entirely female. Much like at the previous camp, she gleefully tortures and kills anyone who misbehaves or annoys her.

Over the years, Hiltzik had no idea that his Sleepaway Camp had gained such a devoted following until he was contacted in March 2000 by Sleepawaycampmovies.com's Jeff Hayes who then arranged for him to record a commentary for the Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD. After a number of sequels directed and written by others, Hiltzik decided to return to write and direct the sequel, Return to Sleepaway Camp. He decided that this newest chapter would ignore the storylines of the other sequels, stating that he wanted to pick up from where the original film had ended. Although filming was completed in 2003, Hiltzik struggled to complete the visual effects for the film.  According to Fangoria.com, the digital effects were redone from 2006 to 2008, before finally being released by Magnolia/Magnet Picture on November 4th, 2008. 

The purportedly final film in Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp trilogy, titled Sleepaway Camp Reunion, was also announced to be in the works, although Hiltzik and "Return To Sleepaway Camp" producer Jeff Hayes have since stated their starting working on a reboot/remake that would retain the key characters and elements of the original film with additional storyline elements and a dose of modernizing. As of Summer 2014, Hiltzik was reportedly tweaking the script, although he had no rights to the film series. Michael Simpson, the director of Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, is also reportedly writing a script for his series of Sleepaway Camp movies as well, titled Sleepaway Camp: Berserk.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   83%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 16th

"NIGHT OF THE COMET" released in 1984

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The Earth is passing through the tail of a comet, an event which has not occurred in 65 million years. The last time coinciding with the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. On the night of the comet's passage, which takes place eleven days before Christmas, large crowds gather outside to watch and celebrate. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Regina "Reggie" Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart), who works in a local movie theater, stays after the theater closes to play her favorite arcade game until another players score (with the intials DMK) is removed and have sex with her boyfriend Larry (Michael Bowen), the theater projectionist, in the steel-lined projection booth. At the same time, Reggie's 16-year-old sister Samantha "Sam" (Kelli Maroney) is arguing with their stepmother Doris 9Sharon Farrell), who punches her in the face. Sam then spends the night in a steel backyard shed.

The next morning, a reddish haze covers everything, and there are no signs of life, only piles of red dust and heaps of clothing. Unaware that anything strange has happened, Larry goes outside and is killed by a zombie wielding a pipe wrench. When Reggie goes looking for Larry, she encounters the zombie, but escapes. She heads home to find her sister alive, and later realize that because they both spent the night shielded from cosmic effects by steel, they were saved from the comet's effects. After figuring out what has happened, they hear a disc jockey and race to the radio station, only to find it was just a recording, but they do meet up with another survivor, Hector Gomez (Robert Beltran), who spent the night in the back of his steel truck. When Sam playfully speaks into the radio station's microphone, she is heard by researchers in an underground installation out in the desert, including Dr. Carter (Geoffrey Lewis) and Audrey White (Mary Woronov). They  note that the zombies, though less exposed to the comet, will eventually disintegrate into dust themselves.

Back in town, Hector briefly leaves the sisters to search for his missing family, and Reggie and Sam are later attacked by some zombie stock boys in a department store. They are saved by the arrival of a rescue team from the scientist's Think Tank, and Reggie is taken back to the base, while White stays behind with Sam to wait for Hector to come back. But White kills the scientist who remained behind with her and tells Sam and Reggie the truth -  the researchers had suspected and prepared for the comet's effects, but inadvertently left their ventilation system open and the fans running during the comet's passage, allowing the deadly dust to permeate their base. Now the  dying scientists hunt down and render healthy survivors brain dead so they harvest their untainted blood to keep the disease at bay while they search desperately for a cure. After confessing, White commits suicide and Sam and Hector resolve to rescue Reggie from the hands of the murderous scientists holding her captive! 

TRIVIA:    Joss Whedon has cited this film as a "big influence" for his original film script of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), which is rebooted in his television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997).

Top:   Sister's Sam (Kelli Maroney) and Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) find themselves as one of the few survivors of the passing comet the night before;

Above:   They eventually meet another survivor Hector (Robert Beltran)

When writing the script for, director Thom Eberhardt wanted to merge the idea of strong female protagonists with his love of post-apocalyptic films set in empty cities. For inspiration, Eberhardt approached real-life teenage girls - whom he met while filming PBS specials - and without telling the girls details about the script's premise, he asked them to describe how they would react to an apocalyptic event. Most of the interviewees saw the scenario as an exciting adventure and only saw a downside to the experience when Eberhardt brought up the subject of dating! Using their answers, Eberhardt wrote the script to be lighthearted and adventuresome, with the then-working title of Teenage Mutant Comet Zombies. 

Eberhardt initially had trouble convincing the studio to let him direct the film, but they relented when he held out, as Atlantic Releasing Corporation was looking to immediately invest $700,000 in a teen-targeted project to capitalize on the success of their 1983 hit Valley Girl and the popularity of quirky drive-in films like Repo Man. Atlantic then assigned two producers, Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford, to the project, who initially resented being assigned to such a low-budget B movie. Lane and Crawford eventually clashed with Eberhardt during pre-production, and at one point even tried to have the debut director replaced.

[opening lines]
Narrator: Since before recorded time, it had swung through the universe in an elliptical orbit so large that its very existence remained a secret of time and space; but now in the last few years of the 20th century, the visitor was returning. The citizens of earth would get an extra Christmas present this year as their planet orbited through the tail of the comet. Scientists predicted a light show of stellar proportions, something not seen on earth for 65 million years, indeed not since the time that the dinosaurs disappeared, virtually overnight. There were a few who saw this as more than just a coincidence, but most didn't... 

Top:   The survivors learn that those not turned to red dust by the comet, are now flesh eating zombies!;

Above:   A group of desperate scientists, led by Dr. Carter (Geoffrey Lewis) and Audrey White (Mary Woronov) struggle to find a cure

Eberhardt soon cast Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney as sisters Regina "Reggie" and Samantha "Sam" Belmont, with Robert Beltran as Hector Gomez. Beltran initially turned down the role because he didn't want to play Hector as a typical 'Cholo' type, but was convinced to stay after hearing Eberhardt's thoughts on how to portray the character. It was Beltran who later recommended Mary Woronov for the part of disillusioned scientist Audrey White. Sharon Farrell soon joined the cast as Reggie and sam's cruel stepmother Doris, and even cast Farrell's own son, Chance Boyer, in a small role as the little boy survivor Brian. Finally, veteran film actor Geoffrey Lewis came onboard as Dr. Carter, the leader of the think tank.

The scenes of an empty Los Angeles were filmed in the morning on normal business days, with shots of the barren city being done quickly while the traffic was held up at stoplights. In fact the two police officers who are seen riding motorcycles in Samantha's nightmare were actually location cops who worked on the movie stopping traffic so filming can be done. The radio station set was later built in an abandoned warehouse, with the sequence at the department store being shot at night. The exterior shots of the Think Tank base were achieved with miniatures and forced perspective.
  
Star Stewart did almost all of her own stunts, except for riding the motorcycle through Los Angeles. The long shots of Stewart on the motorcycle are a stunt woman while the close-ups of Stewart were done by putting the motorcycle on top of a flatbed truck. Maroney later improvised the Uzi line when the weapon jammed for real - Eberhardt told the cast to react to any unexpected occurrences as their characters would do, since time and money were tight and they needed to avoid unnecessary retakes. As filming continued, people kept asking Eberhardt about DMK, until he felt obligated to have DMK appear as Danny Mason Keener (played by Marc Poppel) at the end of the movie - complete with DMK vanity plates, no less!

Above:   Writer/director Thom Eberhardt

Night of the Comet opened in the US on November 16, 1984, earning $3,580,578 in its opening weekend (coming in at third place) and stayed in theaters for six weeks - grossing $14,418,922 total in the US, making Night of the Comet another financial success for Atlantic. The film is also noted as one of the first mainstream films to carry the MPAA PG-13 rating.

Variety wrote that Eberhardt "creates a visually arresting B-picture in the neon-primary colors of the cult hit Liquid Sky as well as pointing similarities with Five, The Day of the Triffids, The Omega Man, Dawn of the Dead and Last Woman on Earth. They described the film as "a successful pastiche of numerous science fiction films, executed with an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek flair that compensates for its absence in originality. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "a good-natured, end-of-the-world B-movie" whose "humor augments rather than upstages the mechanics of the melodrama", while author Neil Gaiman wrote in 1985 that the film was "one of the most amusing, witty, imaginative, and thought-provoking films I've seen that was made with no budget and is also cheap exploitation."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   83%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 13th

"BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA" released in 1992

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In 1462, Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman), a member of the Order of the Dragon, returns from a victory against the Turks to find his wife, Elisabeta (Winona Ryder), has committed suicide after receiving a false report of his death. Enraged that his wife is now damned for committing suicide, Dracula desecrates his chapel and renounces God, declaring that he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. In a fit of rage, he stabs the chapel's stone cross with his sword and drinks the blood which pours out of it.

In 1897, newly qualified solicitor Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. M. Renfield (Tom Waits), who has gone insane. Jonathan travels to Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisition in London, including Carfax Abbey. Jonathan meets Dracula, who discovers a picture of Harker's fiancée, Mina (Ryder) and believes that she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be attacked and fed upon by his brides ((Michaela Bercu, Florina Kendrick, and Monica Bellucci) and sails to England with boxes of his native soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey. His arrival is foretold by the ravings of Renfield, now an inmate in Dr Jack Seward's (Richard E. Grant) neighboring insane asylum.

Top:   Dracula (Gary Oldman) seduces Mina (Winona Ryder) - the reincarnation of his wife Elisabeta

In London, Dracula emerges as a wolf-like creature amid a fierce thunderstorm and hypnotically seduces, then rapes and bites Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost), with whom Mina is staying while Jonathan is in Transylvania. Lucy's deteriorating health and behavioral changes prompts Lucy's former suitors Quincey Morris (Billy Campbell) and Dr Seward, along with her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood (cary Elwes), to summon Dr Abraham Van Helsing (Anothony Hopkins), who recognizes Lucy as the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. When Mina receives word from Jonathan, who has escaped the castle and recovered at a convent, she travels to Romania to marry him. In his fury, Dracula transforms Lucy into a vampire. Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Morris kill Lucy out of mercy the following night.

After Jonathan and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil. Dracula enters the asylum, where he kills Renfield for warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters while the others hunt Dracula, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. A confused and angry Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers her previous life as Elisabeta. At her insistence, Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns via her connection with Dracula that he is sailing home in his last remaining box. The hunters depart for Varna to intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. In a last desperate gamble, the hunters decide to split up; Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the gypsies transporting the Count, in the hopes of destroying Dracula once and for all!

[Dracula violently throws the vessel of Holy water to the ground]
Dracula: I renounce God! I RENOUNCE GOD! I rise up from my own death, to avenge her's with all the powers of darkness!
[Dracula throws the Priest to the ground and runs up to the stone cross in the chapel, peircing it with his sword. Blood starts to run from the damaged cross, which Dracula catches in a cup]
Dracula: Blood is the life. And so shall it be mine!
[Dracula drinks the blood and stumbles back from the altar. Finally Dracula howls in fury and pain!]

Top and Above:   Confronted with the suicide of his wife, Dracula curses himself to avenge her death, by striking his sword into the stone crucifix - which immediately begins to run with blood!

Writer James V. Hart started writing his adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel in 1977 and had hoped to have veteran filmmaker David Lean direct the picture, but was unavailable as he was working on Nostromo (this film was eventually shelved after Lean's death in 1991). By the time actress Winona Ryder saw the script when it was originally going to be made as a TV movie, directed by Michael Apted, by then titled Dracula: The Untold Story. She took the script to Francis Ford Coppola, whom she had not spoken to since withdrawing from The Godfather: Part III (1990) due to exhaustion six months earlier. They were originally meeting to discuss an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and on her way out she mentioned the script for Dracula. Coppola was interested as he saw it as a bridge-building exercise between him and Ryder, and, due to delays and cost overruns on some of Coppola's previous projects such as Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart, was determined to bring the film in on time and on budget. Coppola also had hopes that Dracula would financially rescue his struggling studio American Zeotrope from bankruptcy (similar to the hopes he once had for The Godfather: Part III).

During pre-production of Dracula, Coppola came up with the idea that when in the presence of a being such as a vampire, the laws of physics don't work correctly. This is why shadows often seem to act independently of the figure casting them, why rats can run along a ceiling upside-down and why liquid drips up instead of down. Coppala and Hart also wanted their adaptation to be one of the very few Dracula films in which, like in the novel, Dracula begins as a white-haired old man and becomes younger as he feeds on blood. His appearance as an old man is changed, however: in the novel he is described as "a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere," while in the film he wears a long red robe, is of average height, and does not have a mustache.

Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget into costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature. He had an artist storyboard the entire film in advance to carefully illustrate each planned shot, a process which created around a thousand images. He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film and added music, then spliced in scenes from the French version of Beauty and the Beast that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists.  He showed the animated film to his designers to give them an idea of the mood and theme he was aiming for. Coppola also asked the set costume designers to simply bring him designs which were "weird". "'Weird' became a code word for 'Let's not do formula,'" he later recalled. "'Give me something that either comes from the research or that comes from your own nightmares.' I gave them paintings, and I gave them drawings, and I talked to them about how I thought the imagery could work."

Van Helsing: Mr. Morris, your bullets will not harm him. He must be beheaded. I suggest you use your big Bowie knife.
Quincey P. Morris: Well, I wasn't plannin' on getting that close, Doc.

Top and Above:   Over four centuries later, Dracula meets with young lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) to discuss purchasing property in London

Liam Neeson was considered for, and very much wanted, the role of Van Helsing, but after Anthony Hopkins, still riding the success of The Silence of the Lambs (1991), showed interest in the role, Neeson was ultimately turned down. Hopkins would also play Cesare, the priest who tells Dracula that Elisabeta's soul is damned; and he provides the voice-over sequence during the narrative for the Captain of the Demeter. Of Coppola's original list of potential actors to play the iconic Dracula role (including, Daniel Day-Lewis, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Grant, Gabriel Byrne, and Alan Rickman, among many, many others), character actor Gary Oldman - known for his particular acting style in numerous widely diverse roles - was cast to play the Romanian prince. On accepting the role, Oldman hired a singing coach to help him lower his voice by an octave to help him give Dracula a more sinister quality and had his front hairline shaved, both for make-up purposes and to closely resemble Vlad.

With Ryder already attached to play Mina Murray, actress Sadie Frost almost didn't bother auditioning for the part of Lucy as she figured that she was too physically similar to Ryder. It was only after Coppola had real trouble casting the part, and had happened to see Frost's performance in Dark Obsession (1989), that she was approached. Still, after accepting the part, Frost dyed her brown hair red over lingering concerns that she still resembled Ryder too much. For the role of Jonathan Harker, Coppola approached Keanu Reeves for the role. Coppola said of his casting choice: "We tried to get some kind of matinée idol for the part of Jonathan, because it isn't such a great part. If we all were to go to the airport...Keanu is the one that the girls would just besiege."

With his self-described "dream cast", Coppola openly encouraged all the actors to read the novel and add suggestions and notes for their characters to incorporate into the script. In fact, at the first "cast meeting" called by Coppola, he got all the principal actors to read the entire Bram Stoker novel out loud to get a feel for the story, which, according to Anthony Hopkins, took two whole days to complete. Coppola also had Richard E. Grant (playing Dr Jack Seward), Cary Elwes (as Sir Arthur Holmwood) and Billy Campbell (as Texan adventurer Quincey P. Morris) embark on a series of "adventures" including horse back riding and hot air ballooning to build the camaraderie between the three.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing: We are dealing with forces beyond all human experience, and enormous power. So guard her well. Otherwise, your precious Lucy will become a bitch of the Devil! A whore of darkness!
[Quincey pushes Van helsing away]
Quincey P. Morris: Well, you're a sick old buzzard!
Professor Abraham Van Helsing: Hear me out, young man. Lucy is not a random victim, attacked by mere accident, you understand? No. She is a willing recruit, a breathless follower, a wanton follower. I dare say, a devoted disciple. She is the Devil's concubine!

Top:   Meanwhile back in London, Jonathan's fiance Mina is staying with her friend, Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost);

Above:   Learning of Mina's existence, Dracula (now appearing younger) arrives in London for her!

With budgetary concerns still paramount in his mind, Coppola chose to film Dracula almost entirely on sound stages in Los Angeles, with principal photography beginning on October 14th, 1991. One of the earlier scenes filmed was the heroes confronting Lucy in crypt, after she is turned to a vampire. During shooting the scene, the little girl who played the child carried into the crypt by Lucy was genuinely terrified of Frost in her vampire make-up, and obviously wasn't expecting to do more than one take. Coppola and Frost had to do a lot of sweet-talking to the child (with Frost also constantly removing her "fangs" to show their weren't real) in order to get her back in Sadie's arms for another go at the scene.

In fact, Hopkins, Reeves, Elwes, Grant and Campbell had a similar experience while shooting the scene when they come upon Dracula with Mina in the asylum - although for completely different reasons. Initially, Oldman had problems with this scene, feeling constricted in the suit and not very scary, until Coppola told him to whisper something scary into each actor's ear, which Oldman did with relish. No one knows what he said to them, but they all look absolutely terrified in the scene! Oldman also came to the "assistance" of Frost during the ravishment scene with the Wolf-monster - feeling increasingly nervous as the scene went on, Oldman began to speak seductively off camera to Frost while they were filming; Frost laughingly later described the things Oldman said to her as "very unrepeatable". But while Oldman clearly had no qualms discussing sexuality with the young actresses, Coppola brought in acting coach Greta Seacat to coach Frost and Ryder for their erotic scenes as Coppola was uncomfortable! On interesting instance occured when time came to shoot the scene involving Harker and Dracula's brides on the bed. Although the three actors playing Dracula's brides (Michaela Bercu, Florina Kendrick, and Monica Bellucci - in one of Bellucci's first acting roles) had already agreed to appear nude in the film, everybody on the set was too timid to ask them to take off their clothes before filming their scenes. Coppola asked his son Roman Coppola to ask them, but Roman didn't want to do it, either, and asked another crew member to do it!

TRIVIA:   The scene of Lucy (Sadie Frost) getting back into her coffin in the underground crypt was shot in reverse to give it an eerie quality.

Top:   Eventually Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) is called on to help investigate Dracula;

Above:   Van Helsing confronts a now-vampire Lucy in her crypt!

Costume Designer Eiko Ishioka was from Japan, and because the costumes had a Kabuki theater-like appearance, Oldman's wig maker and hair designer Stuart Artingstall studied traditional Kabuki and Geisha hair styles and incorporated them into her unique and elaborate designs. Each wig was "built" and took many hours of painstaking work to thread each hair in a base individually, as is done in traditional opera companies. And despite his occasional discomfort in them, Oldman creatively contributed to the make-up effects when Dracula transforms into various monstrous forms. Although at one point during filming, a double was used to portray the wolf-beast version of Dracula when Gary Oldman suffered an allergic reaction to the makeup.

Coppola was insistent that he did not want to use any kind of contemporary special effects techniques such as computer-generated imagery when making the movie, instead wishing to use antiquated effects techniques from the early history of cinema, which he felt would be more appropriate given the film's period setting coincides with the origin of film. He initially hired a standard visual effects team, but when they told him that the things he wanted to achieve were impossible without using modern digital technology, Coppola disagreed and fired them, replacing them with his son Roman Coppola. As a result, all of the visual effects seen in the film were achieved without the use of optical or computer generated effects, but were created using on-set and in-camera methods (with the exception of the blue flame effect, which is the only optical effect in the film). For example, any sequences that would have typically required the use of compositing, were instead achieved by either rear projection with actors placed in front of a screen with an image projected behind them, or through multiple exposure by shooting a background slate then rewinding the film though the camera and shooting the foreground slate on the same piece of film, all the while using matting techniques to ensure that only the desired areas of film were exposed. Forced perspectives were often employed to combine miniature effects or matte paintings with full sized elements, or create distorted views of reality, such as holding the camera upside down or at odd angles to create the effect of objects defying the laws of physics. Coppola and the special effects team also consulted with a professional magician to achieve the effect of Dracula's brides rising up from the bed.

 

If you liked to know more on how Coppola and his visual team created the stunning effects for Dracula, check out the behind the scenes video from IHdb's Facebook Video Library

Above:   The hunters come face-to-face with Dracula!

In the months leading up to its release, Hollywood insiders who had seen the movie felt Coppola's film was too odd, violent, and strange to succeed at the box office and dubbed it "Bonfire of the Vampires" after the notorious 1990 box office bomb The Bonfire of the Vanities. But when it was released in 1992, Bram Stoker's Dracula became an instant success, grossing over $30 million in it's opening weekend (the Japan-based leadership of Sony was so new to Hollywood that after the film's record setting premiere weekend, they asked the American executives if the $30 million+ box office tally was considered a good result!). And needless to say with a final box office performance of over $215 million, earnings from the film American Zoetrope from bankruptcy after suffering from financial difficulties and liabilities of $27 million over the past 3 years.

Critics also praised Dracula, with Roger Ebert awarding the film 3/4 stars, writing, "I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt. Production designers Dante Ferretti and Thomas Sanders have outdone themselves. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, gets into the spirit so completely he always seems to light with shadows." Ebert did, however, voice criticisms over the film's "narrative confusions and dead ends". Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film suffered from a "somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line" but that it "remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy." However, Empire's Tom Hibbert criticized Keanu Reeves' casting and was not the only critic to consider the resultant performance to be weak. In a career retrospective compiled by Entertainment Weekly, Reeves was described as having been "out of his depth" and "frequently blasted off the screen by Gary Oldman". Virgin Media journalist Limara Salt, in listing the "Top 10 worst movie accents", wrote: "Keanu Reeves is consistently terrible at delivering any accent apart from Californian surfer dude but it's his English effort in Dracula that tops the lot. Overly posh and entirely ridiculous, Reeves' performance is as painful as it is hilarious." (Salt also said that Winona Ryder is "equally rubbish"). Reeves himself said years after the movie came out that he wasn't happy with his work in it, stating he had been exhausted from making several films right on the heels of signing on as Jonathan Harker, and that he tried to raise his energy for the role "but I just didn't have anything left to give".

TRIVIA:   Director Francis Ford Coppola claims that Bram Stoker's name was included in the title because he has a tradition of putting the author's names in the titles of his movies that are adapted from novels, such as Mario Puzo's The Godfather (1972) and John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). Others have claimed, however, that Stoker's name was included in the title to avoid legal action from Univeral Studios, who claimed to own the rights to the simple title Dracula (1931).

Top:   Francis Ford Coppola on set with Gary Oldman;

Above:   Coppola on set with his children, Roman (Visual Effects Supervisor) and Sofia (a future Oscar-winning writer/director for Lost in Translation)

Nevertheless, Bram Stoker's Dracula was honored with four Oscar nominations and eventually winning three of them for Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Make-Up at the 66th Academy Awards ceremony in 1993. The film also won five out of an impressive ten nominations at the Saturn Awards, including Best Horror Film, best Director, Best Costume, Best Actor (for Gary Oldman) and Best Writing (for James V. Hart). "Love Song for a Vampire" by Annie Lennox (as the closing credits theme), also became an international hit.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   78%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 12th

"CREEPSHOW" released in 1982

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A young boy named Billy (son of author Stephen King, Joe King) gets yelled at and slapped by his father, Stan (Tom Atkin), for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow. Stan reminds his wife that he had to be hard on Billy because he does not want their son to be reading such "crap". As Billy sits upstairs cursing his father with hopes of him rotting in Hell, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition in the form of The Creep from the comic book, beckoning him to come closer; and begins the first episode.

Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer), the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging, fraud, extortion, and murder-for-hire, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors). Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart, Peter. Years later, the remainder of Nathan's descendants — including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia (Carrie Nye), his great-grandchildren Richard (Warner Shook), Cass (Elizabeth Regan), and Cass' husband Hank (Ed Harris) — get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June. Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the grave site and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. Suddenly, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got!

The next episode features a dimwitted backwoods yokel, Jordy Verrill (played by Stephen King himself), who thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. As the meteorite is too hot to touch, he douses it with water, causing it to crack open and spew a glowing green substance that comes into contact with his skin. He then finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body. Jordy is eventually cautioned by the ghost of his father not to take a bath. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater. By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alien vegetation - and is still growing!

Nathan Grantham: [still clacking his cane, the clacking sound has been slowly intensifying] BEDELIA! WHERE'S MY FATHER'S DAY CAKE?
Bedelia Grantham: [Bedelia picks up the marble ashtray and lifts it above her head, her father looking up at her in terror] HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
[Bedelia bashes her father's head in with the marble ashtray, killing him instantly]

Top:   Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors) laments killing her father at his grave;

Above:   Unfortunately, her father is also showing up for Father's Day

Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen), a vicious, wealthy psychopath whose jocularity belies his cold-blooded murderousness, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross), and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson), by separately luring them out to his secluded beach property and then, at gunpoint, burying them up to their necks below the high tide line. He explains that they have a chance of survival—if they can hold their breath long enough for the sand to loosen once the seawater covers them, they could break free and escape. Vickers sets up closed-circuit TV cameras so he can watch them die from the comfort of his well-appointed beach house. However, Richard is in for a surprise of his own when the two lovers he murdered return as a pair of waterlogged, seaweed-covered revenants intent on revenge!

A college custodian, Mike (Don Keefer), drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate, hidden under some basement stairs for 147 years. He notifies a college professor, Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver), of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain an extremely lethal creature resembling a Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson (Robert Harper), who is skeptical and investigates. The crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley flees to inform his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook). Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, babbles to Northrup that the deadly monster must be disposed of somehow. But Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his perpetually drunk, obnoxious and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma "Billie" Northrup (Adrienne Barbeau) - whom he often daydreams of killing - and contrives a scheme to lure her near the crate, and the beast inside!

The last episode tells the story of Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall), a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with both electric locks and surveillance cameras. During a particularly severe lightning storm, he finds himself looking out over the concrete canyons of New York City, as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the terror begins for Mr. Pratt, who now finds himself helpless, when his flat becomes overrun by hordes of cockroaches. As the cockroaches begin to overrun him, he locks himself inside a panic room, only to find the cockroaches have already infested the room as well!

Finally back at Billy's house the following morning, two garbage collectors (Marty Schiff and Tom Savini) find the Creepshow comic book in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs and a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisement for a voodoo doll, but lament that the order form has already been redeemed. Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates and becomes deadly as Billy repeatedly and gleefully jabs the voodoo doll as he finally gets revenge on his accursed father for his past abuse!

[repeated line]
Jordy: Oh, Jordy Verrill, you lunkhead!

Top and Above:   Jordy Verrill (Stephen King) discovers a meteorite in his back yard, that has a very averse effect on him!

Inspired by the EC and DC horror comic books of the 1950s such as Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, famed horror novelist Stephen King embarked on his first screenplay; adapting most of his own short stories into the script, including Weeds (included in the segment, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill) and The Crate. Something to Tide You Over is almost identical to King's short story The Ledge in which a wealthy man forces his wife's lover to risk his life for amusement, and was also included in King's original 142-page screenplay. Only the segment Father's Day was originally written by King for Creepshow.

King and Night of the Living Dead filmmaker George A. Romero had at that point been friends for years, and always wanted to work with each other on a film. Romero took the opportunity to direct the anthology film, and, in keeping with  Romero's tradition of filming in and around the Pittsburgh area, most of the film was shot in an empty all-girls school located outside Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The school was converted into a film studio, and the episodes The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, and They're Creeping Up on You, as well as the prologue and epilogue, were filmed in their entirety at the former school. Several additional locations were also used for filming: most of the interior and exterior shots for the university sequences for The Crate were filmed at Carnegie-Mellon University (Romero is a Carnegie-Mellon University alumnus), with Margaret Morrison Hall serving as Amberson Hall. The backyard party was filmed in Romero's own backyard at his former residence on Amberson Avenue in Shadyside, Pennsylvania. Father's Day was filmed on location at a mansion in the Pittsburgh suburb of Fox Chapel, with only Something to Tide You Over being filmed outside of Pennsylvania, at a beachfront residence in New Jersey.

[waves wash over Harry, as he turns to face the video camera]
Harry: Richard! I'm gonna get you! You hear me, Richard? YOU HEAR ME, RICHARD? I'm going to get you f...
[a wave washes over his head, cutting him off abruptly]
Richard Vickers: You've gotta hold your breath there, Harry. You've gotta hold your breath!

Top and Above:   Becky (Gaylen Ross), and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) confront their killer, Becky's insane husband, Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen)

In one of his first big screen appearances, Ted Danson was cast as the doomed Harry Wentworth. Danson later said in an interview that his daughter was on the set during the scene where his character returns from the dead encased in rotting flesh and seaweed. He purposely tried avoiding his young daughter out of fear of scaring her. Finally, despite his best efforts, she went up to him, looked at him and simply said, "Oh, hi Dad." Danson also explained the brief shot of his character drowning underwater: "so they make a little aquarium tank. I got in a wetsuit and climbed in, and somebody would reach down with an oxygen tank ventilator thingy, and I’d breathe, and then they’d take that out. And there was a yoke made out of… I don’t know, wood and fake sand, so it looked like my head was buried in the sand, underwater." Comic actor Leslie Nielsen - who plays the sadistic Richard - while he was all business while filming his scenes, also had a fart machine in his pocket during the shooting. He would let it go off during rehearsals and just before Romero would call Action, causing Danson and the crew to crack up with laughter.

It is rumored that Max von Sydow was originally slated to play Upson Pratt in Creepshow's final story, They're Creeping Up On You!, before E. G. Marshall was cast in the role. The story was originally supposed to take place in a lush, carpeted penthouse apartment. However, because with cockroaches this would have been unworkable, Romero opted for a more empty almost hospital room-like set for the story. Romero had said that the cockroaches were the most expensive part of the movie, stating that the cockroaches cost 50 cents a piece and they used more then 250 000 of them, grand total of $125 000 on roaches alone. The large cockroaches featured in the episode "They're Creeping Up on You" were hissing cockroaches imported from Guatemala.

Romero was unable to obtain an export permit for them, so they were imported on a temporary permit. This meant that each one had to be counted before and after each shot, and accurate records kept of the number of dead specimens. The cockroaches were stored in styrofoam egg cartons kept inside a large van that was filled with high levels of carbon dioxide to keep the cockroaches quiet. In the final scene of the segment—in which the room is almost filled with cockroaches—many of the apparent insects were actually nuts and raisins, as specified by Tom Savini (who also designed and created the creature for The Crate episode, which he cutely nicknamed "Fluffy").

[Henry watches as the creature in the crate attacks his wife]
Henry: Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch!

Top:   Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver - right) explains to his friend Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook) just what he discovered under the stairs;

Above:   Henry's obnoxious wife Wilma "Billie" Northrup (Adrienne Barbeau) meets the creature inside the crate

The prop 10-cent "CREEPSHOW" comic book featured in the film was drawn and inked by veteran artist Jack Kamen, one of the artists for the original E.C. crime and horror comics of the 1950's. Kamen also created the comic book-style poster for the film, which was also featured on the front of the Plume "Creepshow" comic book adaptation (which Bernie Wrightson, another prolific horror comic artist, drew and inked the interiors for). Originally, King wanted Graham Ingels, another EC artist (famous for his work on the title The Haunt of Fear) to do the artwork for the film's poster, but he refused. It was head of EC comics William M. Gaines who then suggested Jack Kamen do the assignment, who accepted.

In a Creepshow special feature from the pages of Cinefantastique magazine around the time of Creepshow's release, King and Romero, revealed that if the film's final story (They're Creeping Up On You!) had proven to be too difficult and ambitious to film, it would have been substituted with the King short story The Hitch-Hiker - which ended up being the final story of the film's sequel, Creepshow 2 (1987), directed by George A. Romero's cinematographer on the original Creepshow, Michael Gornick.

Lenora Castonmeyer: How many men have you destroyed? How many men have you killed you monster?
Upson Pratt: Only the stupid ones. Only the ones who handed me a knife and then stretched out their throats. Only the ones who, if you'll pardon the expression, fucked up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got this bug problem. So we'll have to defer your charming conversation for another time.
Lenora Castonmeyer: I hope you die!

Top and Above:   Tyrannical businessman Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall) meets his worst fear!

Warner Brothers tried a very unusual release strategy with the film. Instead of opening the film wide during the lucrative summer season, the studio gave it a four-week trial run at a number of Boston-area theaters in July 1982. After it did great business, Warner then ended the trial and prepared for a wider release in November 12th, 1982. Their thinking was that a bizarre, R-rated horror film was best position was close as possible to Halloween, and that a pre-October 31st release was a non-starter because it would have had to compete with Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but Warner forecast, correctly, that the Michael Myers'-less 3rd Halloween movie would burn out quickly and leave the horror field open for Creepshow to do impressive business, which it did with an a gross of nearly $6 million (making Creepshow Romero's only film to open up at number one at the weekend box office). Creepshow would eventually gross over $21 million at the US box office during its theatrical run.

Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Romero and King have approached this movie with humor and affection, as well as with an appreciation of the macabre", while in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is". Richard Corliss wrote in Time, "But the treatment manages to be both perfunctory and languid; the jolts can be predicted by any ten-year-old with a stop watch. Only the story in which Evil Plutocrat E.G. Marshall is eaten alive by cockroaches mixes giggles and grue in the right measure". Creepshow has of course become a cult horror classic, with Bravo awarding it the 99th spot on their 2012 list of "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments", mostly for the scene with the cockroaches bursting out on Upson Pratt's body.

TRIVIA:   During a break in filming, Stephen King took his son to a McDonalds, and as a joke, Joe was made up with bruises, cuts and scabs. The girl at the Drive-Thru called the police when she saw him.

Top:   Director George A. Romero with writer Stephen King;

Above:   King on set with "Daddy" from Father's Day

A sequel, Creepshow 2, was released in 1987, and was once again based on Stephen King short stories (including The Raft and The Hitch Hiker), with a screenplay written by Romero. Unlike the first film, Creepshow 2 only contains three stories instead of five. Originally two more stories consisted of Pinfall and Cat from Hell were set to appear in the film, but were scrapped due to budgetary reasons; the latter, however, has been filmed for Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. A further sequel, Creepshow III, featuring no involvement from Stephen King, George A. Romero, or anyone else involved in the production of the first two films, was released direct-to-video in 2007 (though it was finished in 2006) to mostly negative reviews. This film, in a fashion similar to the original Creepshow, features five short, darkly comedic horror stories - although Creepshow make-up artist and actor Tom Savini has said that he considers Tales from the Darkside: The Movie the "real" Creepshow 3.

Taurus Entertainment (rights holders of the original Creepshow) have licensed the rights to Jace Hall, of HDFILMS, a Burbank, California company, to produce Creepshow: RAW, a web series based upon the original film, with pilot episode Insomnia (directed by Wilmer Valderrama and features Michael Madsen) premiering in 2010.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   69%

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