vampires – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “Dracula” (1931)

So, the upcoming Svengoolie movie is “Dracula” released in 1931 starring Bela Lugosi. They tried to get George Burns to star in it, but he refused to take the cigar out of his mouth long enough to put the fangs in.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this classic vampire flick in which the story differed from the Bram Stoker novel in that Soupy Sales was substituted to play Renfield who traveled to Transylvania instead of Jonathan Harker to sell real estate to Count Dracula. This, of course, could only be accomplished by contacting the extraterrestrials to create a wormhole in which time travel could be accomplished by bending the wormhole tightly enough to snatch Soupy from the future, which was lucky because it prevented him from making the disastrous on-air joke in 1965 in which he “suggested” to kids to get “green pieces of paper” (money) from their parents and mail it to him.

If you don’t remember the story that way then you’re either suffering from the Mandela Effect or the ETs got to you as well.

Anyway, except for the switch in characters, the action goes pretty much to plan the way Stoker wrote it up except for the ironic issue of Lugosi actually being quite fond of garlic which led to him eating the stuff while filming in addition to filching it in between takes and taking it back to his trailer to share it with Lon Chaney, who was feeling pretty bad for not getting the Dracula role in the first place because, despite it being offered to him first, he was later rejected because he couldn’t stop turning into the Wolf Man at inopportune moments during the screen test when the cue card person kept turning the card upside down. His growls sounded inside out, which struck the director as silly, which got him laughing so much he got the hiccups.

Anyway, Lugosi got the part and he’s remembered for unforgettable lines like the ones below:

Count Dracula: This is a very old wine. I hope you like it.

Renfield: Aren’t you drinking?

Count Dracula: I never drink since I took the pledge.

Well, I may have got a couple of details wrong, but that never hurts anything.

Svengoolie Upcoming Movie: “Horror of Dracula”

Svengoolie Show Intro: “Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

This week’s upcoming movie on the Svengoolie TV Show is the 1958 classic “Horror of Dracula.” I don’t remember ever seeing it. Speaking of classic, I admit I read some of the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) comments about the movie which features Christopher Lee as Dracula.

I’m not sure if it’s a typo or not, but one other website besides TCM say that Lee’s total time on screen for this 82-minute-long movie was only 7 minutes. The quote is:

“Ironically enough, Lee is only on the screen a total of seven minutes in Horror of Dracula yet his frightening presence is felt through the film.”

Can that be true? It got me wondering how many minutes of commercials are in a full-length film. I’m not talking about Svengoolie’s comedy bits. I get a big kick out of those! It’s the typical advertisement time I was curious about.

So, I looked this up and the counts vary, but I picked a website called TVWeek to get figures. The article is from 2014 so my guess is that the ad time estimates are even longer now, but in a typical average cable TV hour there was a little over 15 minutes of commercials. There were 237 comments, which I ignored because I figured they were the usual gripes.

And Christopher Lee got a total of 7 minutes screen time? Isn’t that almost the same time the Liberty Mutual star LiMu the Emu gets (“You’re just a flightless bird!”)?

Svengoolie Show “Son of Dracula”Spelling Bee Game!

I saw the Svengoolie show 1943 film, “First Cousin Twice Removed of Dracula” last night. Sorry, that’s actually “Son of Dracula.” You can watch it colorized on the Internet Archive.

It starred Lon Chaney as Count Alucard, and that name didn’t fool anybody because it’s just Dracula spelled backward. The goof everybody already knows about occurs early in the show when Dracula transforms from a bat in front of a mirror and his reflection is clearly visible.

You don’t see that much of Count Dracula and you never see his fangs. He’s well-spoken and mostly polite. He didn’t cry out “Bluh, bluh” even once, but then neither did Bela Lugosi.

Maybe I was just overthinking Dracula’s overall plan for taking over America. Was he supposed to suck the blood of hundreds of millions of people one by one or what? Even with the help of Enirehtak, the Southern belle he hypnotized into being his wife, that would be a long-term project even for the immortal vampires.

That approach is probably what killed the movie “Attack of the Vicious, Loathsome, Depraved but Suave Vampire Anteaters with Denture Fangs from Saturn!” The solution to save the planet was to ban Poligrip. Theater staff had to wake up the audience members, but only occasionally.

In spite of what you might think about the flying bat special effects, there were no strings involved—just a decrepit bat.

There were a few elderly gentlemen in the film, Dr. Brewster being one. He had a great idea about how to protect a little boy from another attack by Dracula. He drew little crosses on the kid’s neck where the fang puncture wounds were. See there? You don’t need to carry a crucifix around! Just cross your fingers at vampires.

And Dracula (no spring chicken himself) suffered a mishap while carrying his bride across the threshold after their wedding. He fell and broke his hip. Vampirism doesn’t protect men from osteoporosis. The action shots got a little shorter after that. Using a walker tends to slow chase scenes down.

On the other hand, Dracula was otherwise well preserved for being hundreds of years old. He got a little perturbed when somebody threw out his bottle of Serutan. Remember, that’s Natures spelled backwards.