Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [169]
Extracts from Anno Dracula: The Movie
Shortly after Anno Dracula was published, I did a draft of a film script for producers Stuart Pollak and Andre Jacquemetton (who appear in Johnny Alucard). In this, I made a few tweaks to the plot and reordered the importance of some of the supporting characters. These extracts concentrate on scenes which are either original to the script or changed from the novel.
EXT. NIGHT.
A severed head, somewhat resembling Peter Cushing, is impaled on a spear. Exposed to the elements for a while, it is dilapidated. Pale moonlight emphasises hollow eyesockets. A wind blows.
A caption in Hammer Films Gothic crawls across the screen.
STENTORIAN NARRATOR
In 1885, Count Dracula travelled from his castle in Transylvania to London, intent on founding a new order of beings whose road leads through Death not Life. The story has it that Professor Van Helsing gathered together stalwart Englishmen and women to defeat the vampire, expelling him from these shores, ultimately destroying him. But what would London, what would the world, have been like if Van Helsing had failed? This is the city that might have been if the Count had prevailed. Dracula has taken by force Queen Victoria as his bride, and declared himself Prince Consort and Lord Protector of Great Britain and her Empire...
Music: the stirring preamble to ‘Rule Britannia’. A solo voice, strong but feminine, begins ‘When Britain first at Heaven’s command, arose from out the azure main, this was the charter, the charter of the land, and guardian angels sang this strain...’
We pull back to see that the spear is one of a row standing outside Buckingham Palace. The building is illuminated by barbarian torches. Other poles support impaled corpses. At the doors stand wolf-faced guards in full uniform.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, and Britons never never never shall be slaves...’
EXT. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. NIGHT.
A heraldic shield: the lion and unicorn of Britain transformed into gape-mouthed monsters, overlaid with the bat standard of Dracula. This device is on the door of a carriage, drawn by black horses down the driveway. A GUARDSMAN salutes the carriage, He has a bestial snout, red eyes, vampire fangs. The main gates open, and the carriage trundles into Birdcage Walk.
EXT. LONDON. NIGHT.
The carriage proceeds through the streets. We glimpse scenes of a transformed Victorian London. Lamp-lighters touch sparks to gas-jets producing puffs of flame, well-dressed toffs bothered by street urchins, policemen march in pairs, an organ grinder plays for a horned imp. An effete DANDY, in extravagant black clothes, tries to fend off a plump WHORE: his face is skull-white but for penny-sized rouge spots on his cheeks; he too has fangs.
About a quarter of the people we see on the streets are vampires.
Some newly-raised from the dead, Victorians with large teeth; others are medieval monsters imported by Dracula. Some part-animal, others visibly decrepit or mutated, some lithe and alive in un-death. All eyes turn as the carriage passes. Some shrink in fear, some doff hats, others peer with curiosity. A WOMAN crosses herself; a POLICEMAN batters her with a truncheon.
At a crossroads, a party of Carpathian soldiers, directed by RUPERT OF HENTZAU*, a dashing vampire, erect a sharpened wooden stake. A CONDEMNED MAN, dressed in a nightshirt, struggles as the soldiers hoist him up and impale him on the stake. Blood gushes on the pavement. A vampire CHILD darts out of the crowd, laps it up like a dog, and is shooed away.
HENTZAU (reading aloud from a proclamation)
So perish all who defy the rule of Prince Dracula, Lord Protector of These Isles.
We rise above the coach as if on batwings, and look over the city. This is the West End, the well-lit civilised area, hectic with theatre crowds and night life. Human-sized wing-shapes flit between