Random Happenstance

Pluto TV started their Universal Monsters channel a couple months back, and ever since it's been on in the background here most of that time. Lon Chaney's Larry Talbot/the Wolf Man is probably my favorite, but even some of the lesser lights have their moments: I kinda like the 1941 gorilla-suit number the Monster and the Girl. A mild-mannered church organist tries to save his sister when she's forced into prostitution in the big city (!) but gets framed for murder and sentenced to death. Some scientists ask if they can have his brain when he's, y'know, done using it; and transplant it into a gorilla; who later goes on a murder spree against the crooked D.A. and untouchable mobsters. One of the 'tough-guys,' a sneering gunsel, freaks out after a couple bodies are found, crushed into pulp: "I don't wanna be mangled!" Fearing the gunsel had lost his nerve and might talk, the bosses are forced to have him, 'taken care of,' but yeah, still gets mangled.

Actually, I was going to talk about Dracula, since that channel runs a good-sized block of it: they start with the 1931 Bela Lugosi version, then the 1979 Frank Langella Dracula (which has music by the great John Williams, which just feels wrong!) then the 1931 Spanish Dracula, that was filmed nights with Lugosi's. Also, sometime in the last couple months, I know Svengoolie ran the Jack Palance TV movie from 1974. So I've seen or read more than a few versions of Dracula, but partially because it varies, I always forget what happens to Jonathan Harker. He's more central in some tellings, but I usually think when he goes to Transylvania, he's not coming back out. Let's see how he does today! From 1976, Marvel Classics Comics #9, "Dracula" Adapted from the novel by Bram Stoker, script by Naunerle Farr, art by Nestor Redondo. Cover by Gil Kane, in the classic Marvel style!

This was actually a reprint, from an 1973 English adaptation. (Which I thought predated Marvel's Tomb of Dracula, but no!) Per one source, out of 36 issues of this series, 12 of them were reprints from other publishers. It has the square, typeset-style word balloons that probably seem weird to American readers, but is otherwise a pretty good retelling of the story. Harker does survive; after his encounter with Dracula's three women, he manages to climb out of the castle, but is unsure if any of that actually happened when he wakes up in a hospital later. Hey, the Demeter referred to by name! I feel like it either wasn't, or a different name was used in the '31 movie; I still want to see Last Voyage of the Demeter.

Mind you, I don't know if most versions have a sequence straight-up outlining Dracula's powers like this, but you know what, for comics that's pretty standard, right? Anyway, I liked seeing a more classic Dracula: I know Marvel's in the middle of a big vampire thing, but they're still using the red armor look, which has to be 'inspired' by 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula; and I don't think anybody likes it. At all. It's been around 15 years, and hasn't won me over yet.