Dracula Lives Page 6

  Chaney’s Dracula was more hideous than Max Schreck’s Nosferatu. Chaney had concocted a makeup that showed the putrid decay of death that lay just beneath a ghastly veneer of life. His vampire brilliantly captured the idea of a demonic creature from the netherworld between the living and the dead.

  Bits of bone were visible under skin that looked thin and taut, as if unable to regenerate itself enough to completely cover the skull. Swollen veins zigzagged along each temple and both sides of the neck. He had taken the goggle-eyed effect from London After Midnight much further.

  Rather than applying the dark circles around the eyes that had become the stereotype for movie monstrosities, he had encircled them with orbits of bone, creating an effect of eyes staring from the empty sockets of a decomposed corpse. Beyond the mesmeric pull of the stare was a bloodless face, whose furrows and wrinkles had been darkened into an expression of jaded contempt. The thin black lips formed into a sardonic smile. They parted to reveal a set of teeth that, in such a hideous decaying face, were jarring in their perfection. He held this grin while the camera pulled back to reveal his hands, folded across his chest in the manner of a corpse.

  Like Nosferatu, he had made the fingers long. But unlike Nosferatu’s rotting clawlike fingernails, Chaney’s were polished black and perfectly manicured into long points. Still grinning, he drummed his fingertips playfully against his chest to showcase the fingers, then lifted a hand and pointed toward his mouth.

  Two fangs suddenly popped down—curved white needles like the fangs of a snake. He moved his finger to point directly at the camera.

  “You, who try to steal what is left of my soul with your magic box. Come here.”

  He beckoned with the finger.

  The camera began shakily advancing. It stopped and steadied several feet short of Chaney and waited. “Leave your magic box behind,” he said. “I have an earth box that will give you a much more satisfying immortality than your little picture show. Come.” He beckoned again.

  The camera jiggled slightly but kept running from the same spot. Seconds later the cameraman came into the shot, facing Chaney, back to the camera.

  “Ah,” Chaney said to the figure, who was dressed in a cape. “I see you are already one of us. Good. A cameraman who can help me steal the souls of the living. Show the audience the eyes through which they will watch our race take over.”

  The cameraman moved to stand beside Chaney, then spun around.

  He was the sawtoothed vampire from London After Midnight.

  Chaney put an arm around the man’s shoulders, then beckoned for the camera to come closer. It moved in until the two hideous faces filled the screen like masks from the Grand Guignol. The camera held on that disturbing image for several seconds, then inched ever closer until only their hypnotic eyes filled the screen. An iris fade-out began, stopping to hold on the demonic stares. In a blink the iris closed, the screen went black, and the evil cello note burst from the speakers. An instant later the final title came on:

  The Beginning

  Markov brought up the house lights and waited.

  “Brilliant,” Quinn said. “Much creepier than Nosferatu. I think it’s the best makeup Chaney ever did. Scarier than his Phantom of the Opera, and that’s saying something. The scene where the Phantom was unveiled is one of the scariest moments in film history.”

  “I know. I was at the premiere. You could hear thumping throughout the theater as kids flung themselves to the floor. Some people even fled the theater.”

  A thrill coursed through Quinn. Markov’s statement reminded him that he was talking to the only living eyewitness to many of the pivotal moments in the history of horror cinema.

  “Chaney’s Dracula would have been groundbreaking,” Quinn said. “The camera work was very sophisticated. Especially that lightning fast camera movement into a close-up of Chaney’s face.”

  Pride brightened Markov’s somber visage. “I was the cameraman. Until the last moment when Tod took over so I could get into the shot.”

  “That was you?”

  “Yes. As I said, I was often Lon’s stand-in.”

  “Very effective. In fact, the whole film was doing things that would have been groundbreaking. Sound, of course. Using those sudden musical notes to heighten the shocks. The dialogue was impressive as well. Very sophisticated. Chaney was a good writer. Those had to be the first words he ever spoke on-screen.”

  “They were.”

  “How did he make those fangs pop down?”

  “He had them fitted onto a spring mechanism that retracted up close to the roof of his mouth. When the time came he would slip his tongue over the mechanism and press until the spring kicked in, and the teeth would pop down.”

  “Way ahead of its time in depicting vampire fangs.”

  “Chaney was way ahead of his time in many ways,” Markov said. “The way he immersed himself in his characters, he was essentially a method actor long before anyone had heard of such a thing. I worked with some greats.”

  “You did indeed.”

  “I can regale you with some of those stories later,” he said. “Now we must move to my studio. In the old days studios were called ‘dream factories.’ Mine is a nightmare factory. The place where I make my monsters.”

  “Your luh-BORE-uh-tree?”

  Markov didn’t smile. “Indeed.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The flickering gaslights created a jittery shadow dance as the two men headed down the long corridor. Holding a candle lantern in front of them for added illumination in the gloomy passage, Markov led the way.

  They hadn’t gone far when they came to an elaborately carved wooden door on the left. “The entrance to your bedchamber,” Markov said without slowing. A short distance beyond the door, they reached a corner where the corridor they were on intersected with another that ran to the right. Quinn stopped when he saw what was standing on a pedestal in the corner.

  Shrouded in a black cowl, a grinning skeleton holding a scythe in one hand and brandishing a crucifix in the other stared from eyeless sockets.

  Markov held the light closer to the figure. “One of my most prized pieces from my collection of movie memorabilia.” The strobe effect of the candlelight animated the lifeless skull.

  Quinn searched the film archives in his brain for which movie this would have come from. “Is this from the opening cemetery sequence in Frankenstein?”

  “The very same.”

  “But Browning didn’t direct that. James Whale did. I would think each set would have been closely guarded.”

  “They were. I didn’t take it from the set. I got it years later at an auction. I paid a king’s ransom for it, but I had to have it.”

  Still holding the light in front of the skull, he said, “All of my set decorations are placed with a particular thought in mind. I added the scythe, meaning to suggest the Grim Reaper. The idea behind placing him at this intersection is that he is poised at the threshold between the living and the dead, waiting for new souls to harvest.”

  “Not a comforting thought for your guests, to have him right outside their door.”

  “True. Consider that a small test of your love of horror.”

  They rounded the corner and headed down another long, windowless corridor. Quinn began counting his paces, wanting to create a mental map of the layout. He had counted thirty when they came to another finely crafted wooden door on the right.

  “Johnny’s quarters,” Markov said without slowing.

  Thirty-one paces later they came to a similar door and stopped.

  Markov pulled out a skeleton key. “Not exactly the most sophisticated locking system, but I didn’t want to keep track of countless keys. This way I need only one. There was also the matter of not violating the set design. The movie of my life is a period piece.”

  “I thought I saw a modern lock on the door to Johnny’s quarters.”

  “Everyone needs their privacy. The need is especially acute for two people in such an … u
nusual relationship, so cut off from the world. Johnny’s apartment is the only exception to my one-lock rule.”

  “A good policy,” Quinn said. “By the way, I must compliment you on your Art Direction and Set Decoration. Cedric Gibbons would approve.”

  “Oh, come now. I have a high opinion of my talents, but Gibbons is the god of art directors. He won eleven Oscars. You flatter me.”

  “No, I don’t. You’ve done an excellent job of designing a home that blurs the line between movies and real life.”

  Markov gave him the now-familiar stare. “In my case there isn’t one. My horror film is the record of the horror of my life. They are one and the same.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Johnny sat at the control panel in the steward’s quarters, watching them on one of two dozen large monitors that gave views of every part of the castle and grounds. Markov and Quinn had stopped by the Grim Reaper to discuss something. Alongside the bank of monitors was an array of controls for everything from panning or tilting a particular camera to starting the coffee in the kitchen. Johnny pushed a button.

  A tiny camera embedded in one of the eye sockets of the Grim Reaper took a picture that would enable it to instantly recognize the new soul that had come into their realm.

  Markov led them into his laboratory. After he closed the door, Johnny pushed another button.

  The scythe made a vicious whoosh as it rent the air.

  Practice.

  CHAPTER 9

  Markov unlocked the door and pressed a button on the inside wall. Fluorescent light bathed a vast studio. The windowless square, filled with modern audiovisual equipment, was a jarring contrast to the gloomy Gothic design of the rest of the castle. Walls and floor were carpeted, no doubt to improve the acoustics. The wall to the left was mostly shelving. Quinn glimpsed cans of film and blank recording media.

  Markov led him past a huge instrument panel on the wall to the right, filled with monitors, gauges, and dials.

  He gestured at the panel without stopping. “Master control for all the various systems of the estate.”

  A plush leather swivel chair on casters for tending to the impressive array made Quinn think of Captain Kirk in Star Trek.

  Labels under each monitor told which part of the castle or grounds it showed. Two in all capital letters under much larger monitors caught Quinn’s eye: LAGOON and GARDEN. Unlike the other monitors, these were turned off, their screens black.

  After the instrument panel came a door. On the way here they’d passed Johnny’s quarters. The two spaces must be adjoining. Markov seemed to like keeping his steward nearby.

  A few steps past the door, they stopped at a bank of half a dozen computers, their widescreen monitors resting on a shelf built into the wall. To the left of the computers, a 35-millimeter projector faced a five-foot screen. Everything was immaculate and precisely arranged. This was the workspace of a perfectionist.

  “My remastering/editing console,” Markov said.

  Quinn made a polite nod. His attention kept being drawn to the lurid horror movie posters arrayed on the carpeted wall behind the console: Horror of Dracula, The Mummy’s Ghost, House of Horrors, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Man-Made Monster, The Monster Maker.

  “My wall of inspiration,” Markov said. “Come. Let me show you how the 21st-century version of the mad movie scientist creates his monsters.”

  He led them to an area that looked like the place where a kid who loved monster movies kept his toys. There were reproduced miniatures of King Kong, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Robby the Robot, and several others.

  “For whatever reason,” Markov began, “people are given certain abilities. I have already mentioned my genius for technology. From my first day at Universal, I understood the importance of technology to filmmaking, so I made it my business to learn each new innovation. In particular I wanted to learn how to make the most realistic movie monsters the world had ever seen. In the ’60s, I taught myself robotic animation and started with Robby. I was able to move my creations around, and they were very good, but never quite realistic enough to suit me. Then the digital revolution begat computer animation, and …” he gestured at the array of miniatures “… these creatures became extinct.”

  “Are they still functional?”

  “Oh yes. As are some other robotic things I keep around for my amusement. I was in my seventies when home computers came in, but I didn’t run from them like most people my age. I couldn’t wait to get one. In 1975, I ordered the Altair 8800 from Popular Electronics. The model generally considered to have launched the home computer revolution. You ‘tinkered it together’ from a kit.”

  “Quoting Morbius again,” Quinn said.

  “I still think Forbidden Planet is one of the best sci-fi films. Way ahead of its time.”

  “Maybe the inventor of the Altair 8800 loved it, too, since Morbius lived on the planet Altair 4.”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Markov said. “I also found it an interesting coincidence that your name is Quinn. There’s a character named Quinn in Forbidden Planet.”

  “Yes. The engineer. When I first saw Forbidden Planet as a kid, I thought it was cool to have the same name as one of the guys on the spaceship. Until he gets killed by the Monster from Morbius’s Id.”

  “One of the great movie monsters,” Markov said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “When I first started to teach myself computer technology, I did indeed fancy myself as a kind of Morbius. I learned everything there was to learn, down to the last bit and pixel. When the first DVDs hit the market, I knew a revolution had begun. I immersed myself in learning all the digital possibilities for filmmakers. Come. Let me show you the pièces de résistance.”

  They went back to the editing console and sat side by side in two rolling office chairs. Markov put his hand on an unusually large mouse with several buttons. Clearly relishing the chance to tell someone of his accomplishments, he became more animated than Quinn had yet seen him.

  “The process I am about to show you has taken countless thousands of hours, spread out over decades, to develop. Along the way I created this mouse, which can give the computer commands unique to my operation. Here’s the map of the castle I use to place my creations wherever I need them.”

  A click of the mouse brought up a stunning, high-definition image of the exterior of castle.

  “The master shot, so to speak. I have a separate page for each area of the castle. Each page has a grid dividing it into squares. Standard letter and number coordinates along the sides allow me to pinpoint any square.”

  A series of clicks brought up images of the entrance, the stairs, the study, the screening room. He stopped at the one showing the inside of Quinn’s apartment. “You get the idea.”

  “Yes.”

  “Once a film is digitally remastered, I can pause it at any point. I then very precisely highlight the part of the image I need, pixel by pixel, and extract it from the picture. I can then paste that into my digital editing program and make it larger, make it appear more vicious—the possibilities are endless. Once the enhancement is finished, I can then place the enhanced version wherever I want it in the castle by entering the coordinates of that particular square in the grid. Animating them requires another step, which I will show you in a moment. Before we get to that, you commented upon the excellence of my Bela Lugosi voice. Let me show you how that is achieved.”

  A few mouse clicks brought up a freeze-frame of Lugosi standing on the stairs in Dracula. Beneath the image was the track of the editing software that would graphically display the peaks and valleys of the sound. “Watch what happens when he speaks.” He clicked the mouse and the movie came to life. Lugosi spoke his famous opening line:

  “I am … Dracula.”

  The line on the sound track zigzagged as it registered the highs and lows of the soundwave created by Lugosi’s voice.

  “I put on earphones and record my version on a new track
directly beneath his, watching both of the graphic displays, doing it over and over, continually modulating my voice until the graph of my voice matches the graph of his as closely as possible.”

  “Ingenious.”

  Markov quoted Morbius again. “Mere child’s play. I can do it with any of the actors if I take the time.”

  “You could sell your secrets to Hollywood and be a very rich man.”

  “I am already a very rich man. I am only interested in culminating my life’s work. Besides, there are aspects to what I do that are very dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How so?”

  “You shall see. Come. Let me show you the rest of the process.”

  They went to the far end of the room. An oversized recliner faced a full-sized movie screen. On a small table next to the recliner was an unusual pair of large gloves and large tinted goggles. The goggles were clearly designed for some kind of specialized viewing. The temples that secured them over the ears were much larger than regular temples, to accommodate a series of small lights that continually pulsated along one, and a series of buttons that ran along the other. Beside them was an oversized mouse similar to the one at the remastering console.

  “First I bring up the location where I want to insert my digital creature.” He clicked the mouse and the exterior of the castle again came onto the screen. “The master shot.” Another few clicks brought up the grounds that ran along the right wall of the castle. A short distance beyond the access road, the clearing was bordered by thick woods.

  “Now I insert whatever digitally-enhanced creature I have extracted from a movie.”

  A couple slight finger movements on the mouse made a huge black dog appear at the edge of the woods. “From the 1939 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I have greatly enhanced him for my purposes. Made him much larger and more fearsome.”

  “He’s definitely fearsome,” Quinn said. “Almost as big as a bear.”

  “Now we come to the most formidable obstacle: animation. Not animation as we know it, where the character’s movements are done once and remain the same forever. I wanted my creations to be independent entities. Things I could move about at will, while giving them whatever life was needed to suit the situation.”