A Quick Update: Thoughts on Melmoth

I don’t think Melmoth the Wanderer should exist. I’ve read it, a handful of times now, I’ve made sense of the plot, naturally, but... it still doesn’t make sense? I sound crazy, don’t I? Melmoth the Wanderer is a bizarre novel, in the finest of ways, a wonderfully weird novel in the Gothic tradition. The way I understand it, is that Melmoth the Wanderer is not like a real book, it’s like a story within a story (something the novel is very good at, actually!), that is to say, it’s like The King In Yellow, only if the book were actually about The King of Yellow and not the misadventures of those enrapt by said book. Melmoth the Wanderer is fantastical, it reads like the metaphor to another story we simply never hear from. So, how could you possibly adapt the story for stage?

Surprisingly well it seems. A relatively new Irish company (running for twenty five years now), Big Telly, have recently been touring the country with a stage adaption of the novel. I went in expecting the worst, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’ve only been out of the theatre for the two hours, so, my mind is still somewhat scrambled. Even now I’m still trying to put things together.

The play itself does not attempt to control the chaos of the tale, rather it runs with it, unexpectedly it embraces some of the more comical aspects of the story and yet brings something of its own. Each actor brings their own presence to the show, the domineering persona can change within an instant, lights and shadows bound about, the atmosphere is laid thick and the comedy serves only to make light of the human condition. The Wanderer himself joins in on the laughter on occasion, but he laughs not at the comedy, rather the absurdity of it all. He revels in the torturous condition that is life, pain and suffering to him is exquisite, a luxury, he finds pleasure only in the ruthless temptation of others. State and church are a joke, it’s rather apt, but, Melmoth’s life is pain. Deep, right? That being said, the Wanderer himself is not beyond suffering...

Sympathy for the devil.

The stage space is explored with an almost manic edge, as I’ve said, actors bound about, the props are utilised in increasingly inventive ways. Inventive, that’s the show in one word. There is excellent use of a tape recorder, through which the booming voice of Melmoth communicates to the damned, a projector at one point, drenches a backdrop in red as we here gunfire roar to life.

Much like the novel, the heart of the play is twisted. A number of moments are portrayed through devilish pantomime, silent masked figures weave in and out of the scenery without a word of dialogue, the Wanderer’s harrowing tale unfolds through physical expression and a mix of eerie lighting and obscured effects.

Every prop is put to good use.

Purists, looking for a straight adaption of the novel will be disappointed. A great amount of liberty is taken with the source material. It captures the spirit of the novel, however.

Phantasmagoria, shadow play, that’s what it is, at its heart. Shapes move in and out of life and I’m still not one hundred percent certain with what went down. Some actors, double, triple their roles, I lost count to the honest. It’s a savage experience that can both terrify and assuage the heart. At any rate, I highly recommend the show. Check it out... you smelly bastard.

Melmoth is an outsider looking in...

Nu Hammer Flick

Hammer is back, this isn’t anything new, I just thought you’d like to know, ought to know. Truth is they’ve been back a number of years, though it may have been a quiet return, it certainly was a strong one. As of now they’ve released three new films, Let Me In (an interesting English adaptation of Let the Right One In) an Irish horror film Wake Wood (likely more on that later, some day) and most recently The Woman in Black, an adaption of the Susan Hill novel.
This won’t be a review so much as it is a ramble. Really I want to gather my thoughts, and satiate my rampant galaxy-devouring ego.

I’ve a fascination with Hammer. I take myself very seriously, so, maybe I shouldn’t? Well regardless, I’m all too aware of how hooky their films usually are, yet, I still take it all at face value. It bugs me to watch a film with a friend only to have them laugh at the inherently ridiculous proceedings. Yes, I know it’s silly, I know it could very easily be construed as a joke. I realise The Gorgon looks patently silly, yet, I can’t help but be personally affected by the conclusion. There’s something to it, something to the crass nature of their films that appeals to me. Of course that’s not to say all of their productions are like minded. I could recommend Quatermass and the Pit to almost anybody a film not just in the Hammer tradition, but the tradition of cold war era science fiction. Nu Hammer (as I have dubbed them, clever me) is a very different beast. Much, well, classier to be honest. Wake Wood and Let Me In may be divisive films for some, but they are still clever films, in the vein of Quatermass there’s much more to be had for the thinking homo sapiens (rare as they be may be) and little in the way of self-defacing humour. So, what did I think of the new flick?

Well you’ll be happy to know I was suitably impressed. It isn’t the strongest of Nu Hammer’s batch, it could be the weakest, but is it a weak film? Not at all, if anything it’s a brilliantly put together film. People with a clear love for the medium put this together, there’s a technician’s touch a real professionalism to the flick. If Wikipedia is to be believed the picture was put together for a mere ten million, yet I honestly couldn’t see any difference in visual quality between this and say, any other big budget Hollywood effort (effort is the word). The visuals are crisp. There are occasional spurts of camp, but, would it really be a Hammer flick without it? There are no glaring faults, I couldn’t find any. It’s a new hammer picture in the fullest sense, with that comes both good and bad, if the film could be at the fault of anything it’s playing up certain modern horror tropes. The film is creepy, there’s no doubting that, the presence of the titular woman in black is both ever-present and mysteriously vacant at times. The film is eerie, gloomy, it smells of fresh doom, the kind of stuff that gets me up (pun most definitely intended) in the morning, but does it rely on jump scares? Yes... occasionally, muddy pipe anybody?. It’s most certainly Hammer, Nu or not. A good third of the film (at the least) involves Radcliffe, candle in hand, wandering about a spooky set, a spooky well designed set (Hammer always did get the most out of their sets). At the best moments the film feels like a well orchestrated rollercoaster ride, at worst a touch derivative.

Speaking of Radcliffe, who plays our intrepid hero, I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. The film is a touch of an ordeal, it has a cathartic effect without moving into spoilers, you can see Radcliffe’s conscious effort to move out, grow out of his previous role as the boy who lived. It’s admirable, and he does a good job. The cast shines, there’s talent abound, I wasn’t exactly a fan of Radcliffe before, but I’d be interested to see where he goes from here. I can’t be sure of Radcliffe’s age, but he seems young, and for one as young as he is he portrays the character’s anguish well, the character in question is burdened by the kinds of problems which should haunt a man much older than he, yet his performance is believable.

A recurrent critique I’ve spotted about the web is that the film is somehow classical to a fault? No doubt there are moments that feel derivative, but I can’t say I agree with this. Yes, the story is at its heart a classicist approach to the ghost story, but, that’s what Susan Hill does. She does that and more. I’ve read a number of Hill’s works, sadly I’ve not had the pleasure to read The Woman in Black, yet (I know, shoot me now) her work is characterised by a classicist approach, but she often does more, as does this film. The approach is classical, the form is classical, but the tale that informs the story is anything but that. Story threads, the way in which they evolve and unfold, the characters are fully fleshed modern creations, the characters inhabit a classicist ghost story, and so breathe new life into it. This is far removed from the stories of M.R. James, neuroses once implied are explored, this is not classical to a fault. I couldn’t help but feel that as a critique it fell short. But then I’ve spent innumerable hours of my life reading such stories, perhaps this isn’t something that any old person would notice (please, this time I’m trying not to sound like a snob).

The Woman In Black isn’t any old horror story. There’s much more to it. It may not be perfect, but it’s a great film, do check it out. Is it classical to a fault? In a handful of places, but this is not an issue. I admit that in places the film is reliant on certain negligible modern horror tropes. Minor critiques aside this was a strong film from Nu Hammer; I can’t wait to see what they’re up to next.

A minor update is in order. I’m taking a free form approach to the blog, as of late I’ve been rather busy (something I’m quite happy with) and I’m excited to see where my current work is going to take me. Y’know working with chemicals and things, because that is my real job...
What this means is that I’ll actually be updating my blog more than before, but you can forget about those previously mention articles, reading over them, I found them to be, rather weak. Since my last entry on Dracula I’ve been rather happy with the blog, so I feel it would be best to take it in a natural direction. I’ll write what I like, when I like, on any natural topic that comes to mind. Well, thanks for reading, night!

I'm Scared, Hold Me!

Dracula is important, I owe quite a lot to Dracula. I’d always been interested in reading, but my tastes were loose, without a real focus, there wasn’t anything I was particularly passionate about. Then I read Dracula, at, an admittedly impressionable age. I was awe struck, I’d always been sensitive to horror, easily disgusted, easily frightened, like I said, impressionable. Certain scenes from the novel have invaded the public imagination. Who can forget Harker’s first encounter with the Count, or the scene of Lucy’s final grisly end as Arthur, her husband, is tasked with driving a stake through her livid undead flesh. There are a great number of scenes I can recall vividly, the novel, to me, is a long fever dream, a series of nightmarish scenes that return to me every so often. It’s the very same in popular culture. Through a series of influential films, the tale has invaded common thought.
Very recently I’d reread it. The first time in two years, but, something was amiss, something was... not quite right.
Only a manner of weeks ago I’d reread Le Fanu’s Gothic classic Carmilla, though some of the closing scenes are haphazardly handled (particularly the hunt) it’s still a fine read, one I could unremittingly recommend to any person with even a passing interest in the genre. I’d returned to Dracula with great anticipation. The novel has made me who I am, really, it founded my love of genre fiction, it was an integral part of me.
A strange thing happened, I didn’t really like it. I suffered an existential crisis of sorts, a Dracula based existential crises, that’s got to be a first, right?

Pictured: Sorrow

Dracula films, as good as some are, are usually somewhat hooky, off, there’s always a level of cheese, a waft, if you will. The novel had always been separate, to me, it was classy, refined, powerful, mysterious. There was a mystique, I approached it as something both well read, well versed and yet at the same time forgotten, abandoned, unlike the films. As I said, I approached it as a separate entity. Stoker was a hero to me, there was something eminently familiar and foreign in him. He was a fellow countryman, I felt I could relate to him. He was an old master of the craft. I’m afraid to say, that, as of now my view has almost totally changed.

The plot, what little of it there is, it’s well, awkward! Events carry on with little rhythm. Don’t even get me started on the transfusion nonsense. Characters are caricatures, Men are men and women are women and to Stoker this is and always was the case and so help the future of the species it must always remain so. Stoker, it pains me to say, was no artist. The novel carries with it an awkward question of the position of the sexes. Mina scoffs at the idea of the “New Woman”. The women, oh man... It’s quite obvious that the novel was written by a man. The women don’t act naturally, really, they read as the perfect (until corrupted by Dracula) evocation of the Victorian ideal, the male Victorian ideal. I could not remove myself from the novel. At every moment it was quite apparent I was reading a book. I couldn’t quite... sink my teeth into it.

Sorry

It was quite clearly a man writing female characters.
The magic had faded, the book fumbles about, feeling in the dark for plot hooks, occasionally Stoker gets it right. It dawned upon me that the, almost knowing level of cheese that characterise the filmic interpretations of the character, were more close to the source material than I’d previously thought. There are the good, Nosferatu, the Lugosi flick, the hammer picture and the Coppola film. I’d started to question myself, wonder if I’d walked down the wrong path, in a momentary panic I’d wondered if I’d spent my years reading campy nonsense, if I’d poured over comically awkward works for far too many years. Had I tackled actually, tackled this book with a straight face? It seemed impossible to me. I began to wonder if Drac’s cohorts weren’t any better. I thought to myself, could I really trust my own judgement? Soon enough I came to my senses. I still love Frankenstein, Melmoth, Torrance and the gang, I was certain. As I closed the book, I’d thought to myself, would I ever read it again?
I was disgusted, I could feel it in my bones. I’d loved the book, really, it seems silly now but I had loved the book. I’d read it over and over, years ago I’d finish it only to start again. Though my tastes are much more diverse, I can’t get enough of horror (classy horror), I owe it all to Dracula.
Could I still love the book?

Hisssss?

The answer is... yes. I still love it. I don’t resent the time I’ve spent with it. I can’t even say I’ve out grown it, I haven’t. Stoker’s prose, Stoker’s direction... Stoker is an awkward writer. For every triumph he has, he falls somewhere else. He’s flawed, as we all are. But for a writer he has a peculiar number of flaws. The novel’s goody-goody morals do nothing for me, the Christian overtones confuse me (given the almost darwinesque elements) and certain sections of the novel seem to go nowhere. But, there’s still something to it. When Stoker gets it right, there’s a level of intensity, that, for the time was unseen, visceral moments, haunting moments, the tale has etched its way into the minds of millions. The novel is celebrated, and I can’t see that ever changing. Dracula has changed the way we approach horror, among other things. I can still vividly recall Harker’s short stay in Dracula’s castle, those moments are unforgettable, among the best in the novel. I call into question the quality of the characters, and yet, Stoker managed to conjure up Renfield (who is portrayed brilliantly by Tom Waits in the Coppola adaptation), a walking enigma. Let’s not even go into Dracula himself.

Despite all of its flaws, I still love it. It’s an important novel.
Dracula is important.