Still milking Dracula 130 years later

After a rocky run in (non-Spanish) theaters, “The Last Voyage of Demeter” demonstrates to us that we will continue to have Dracula within our reach for some time.

The horror movie “The Last Voyage of Demeter” has just been made available on Prime Video, one year after it was initially released in the United States. Due to the film’s resounding failure at the box office, Spanish distribution has not been able to accommodate its release. And it demonstrates that, 130 years after Bram Stoker published his masterpiece of gothic horror, “Dracula,” there are still ways to approach the classic, while yet maintaining somewhat loyal to the original but infusing it with concepts that we had never seen before.

The Demeter is what exactly? The film “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is almost entirely set on board a ship that is tasked with bringing a series of wooden boxes from the Carpathians to London. Among other things, the ship is tasked with transporting a number of other items. It is not long until unsettling occurrences start to take place on board: members of the crew start to vanish without a trace, and they come to the realization that there is a malevolent presence on the ship. It is Count Dracula, who has been traveling to England by means of the Demeter. He has been utilizing it as his mode of transportation. A structure that is comparable to that of “Alien” is produced as a result, with the exception that people vote enthusiastically and put their faith in God.

Are you sure that’s in Dracula? Indeed, it is. After an initial segment, which is maybe the most well-known, in which Jonathan Harker pays a visit to the Count in his castle in Transylvania, the action then shifts to London, where the vampire harasses the fiancée of the accountant who traveled to meet him on the other side of the Carpathians. But first, he needs to get there, and he does so on board the Demeter. This is an interlude that we learn about in the book through the logbook of the ship’s captain. It serves as an interlude of pure terror, like an independent story that is inserted into the novel, in which the captain narrates, horrified, how his sailors perish one after another en route to their destination.

This is an intriguing point of departure. Despite the fact that the Demeter has not been the subject of any adaptations performed in the past, its appearance in the novel is significant since it serves to signal that Dracula has arrived in London. This is the reason why we come across movies in which it is depicted as a ghost ship slowly making its way into the city loaded with dead bodies.

The two dismal versions of “Nosferatu” are the most notable appearances of Demeter in the film industry. The first version depicts the vampire count following the crew throughout the city while they are surrounded by rats and darkness, while the second version depicts the ship slowly entering the city while carrying death and pestilence. ‘Ship of Blood’ is the name of a chapter that is only devoted to Demeter in the renowned and well debated BBC adaptation of Dracula that was made available on Netflix in the year 2020.

The novel is being squeezed. Since the novel has been adapted thirty times (and more are to come after its recent entry into the public domain), it is natural that, despite the fact that the character can be approached from a variety of perspectives (ranging from the toothy and insatiable rat to the Victorian gentleman in love beyond oceans of time), new approaches are being sought after. With the exception of the fact that the traditional viewpoint is universally effective,

For instance, Nicolas Cage has been in two films that are based on the insect-eating servant of Dracula. These films are titled Vampire’s Kisses and Renfield.” There are movies that are centered on the legendary vampire hunters lead by Van Helsing and others that take the Count into the 20th century, the future (Dracula 3000), and the character’s (false) historical beginnings (Dracula Untold). These movies are centered on the Count. In addition, there is a film called “Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary,” which is a combination of ballet and silent film and is considered to be one of the best interpretations of the character.

Additionally, there is more to come. It doesn’t end here, because in addition to the most recent ones (the aforementioned ‘Renfield’, with Cage playing the vampire count, who manages to bring interesting nuances to the worn-out character) we have a third version of Nosferatu to come, directed by Robert Eggers (‘The Witch’) and ‘Dracula — A Love Tale’, with Christoph Waltz playing the vampire and Luc Besson directing, in what seems to be the umpteenth reinterpretation of the myth based on the already canonical (and very unfaithful) vision of Francis Ford Coppola from 1992.

Alterations from the very beginning. Ever since the book was first published, the narrative has been accompanied by the mutated and multifaceted persona of Dracula. Remember that the first transfer of rights to the novel was for a theatrical piece (from which, after its huge success, the Universal version starring one of the theatrical Draculas, Bela Lugosi, would emerge), and that it significantly altered the plot. Let us not forget this fact. And the fact that ‘Nosferatu,’ an apocryphal and unofficial version of the novel, transformed Stoker’s widow into a ferocious custodian of her husband’s inheritance, and that she pursued copies of Murnau’s picture around Europe in order to convert them to ashes. Dracula is also capable of changing his appearance, and his ability to adapt to a thousand and one different visions has been a consistent feature throughout his career… till the end of time.

Still milking Dracula 130 years later

By ki0nk

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