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Post by andydecker on Sept 29, 2013 14:21:12 GMT
Kim Newman
Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard
(Titan Books 2013, a couple of different editions) In Transylvania, the vampire Kate Reed is on the set of Francis Ford Coppola's troubled movie production of Dracula. When Kate meets a young vampire called Ion Popescu, she is compelled to help him escape and begin a new life in America, wehre he reinvents himself as Johnny Pop. He makes his name – and his fortune – selling a new, dangerously addictive drug that confers vampire powers on its users, and becomes a hit on the decadent New York art scene.
As he stalks the streets of Manhattan and Hollywood, haunting the lives of the rich and famous, from Sid and nancy to Andy Warhol, Orson Welles to Francis Ford Coppola, sinking his fangs ever deeper into the zeitgeist of 1980s America, it seems the past might not be dead after all …Finally it is here, the long in the works Anno Dracula 1976 – 1991: Johnny Alucard. Like the reprints before it has some extras. Basically it is a novel in parts, consisting of novellas like Coppola's Dracula", Andy Warhol's Dracula, Castle in the Desert and a few shorter works where Newman put his alternative-world vampires together with characters like Raymond Chandlers Philip Marlowe. No mistake, this is a big novel at 479 pages in small print. Currently reading this I didn't skip the novellas even if I know them all. A few are more successful then others, but some are still powerful works. Andy Warhol's Dracula in particular is a great piece of writing, Newman captures the zeitgeist of Studio 54 and the era hauntingly, beginning with the messy death of Sid and Nancy at the hand of Johnny Pop, while Travis Bickle drives his taxi. Titan has done good work on the books. I had it on pre-order and got the hardcover which was a nice surprise. I am up to the the half, reaching 1990 and I have to say that I am still intrigued about the ending. After the hilarious take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer – which could be seen as a little bit mean-spirited – I came to the part where there is a short walk-on of Vampirella which is even more nasty. Quite a shame that the story will never reach Twilight. The possibilities … ;-) At the moment Johnny Alucard is a mover and shaker in Hollywood and in bed with Baron Meinster's Transylvania Now movement which lobbies for an independent vampire state in Roumania, a sort of back to the roots movement of vampire elders which is mostly met with scorn by younger vampires. Of course Johnny has his own agenda which he furthers with his multimedia concert A Song for Transylvania. To be continued … [/p]
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Post by dem bones on Sept 30, 2013 19:25:50 GMT
Dash my buttons, another coincidence. Yesterday, on a whim I finally got around to your recommendation from The Best Of Best New Horror, Newman's 80 page novella The Other Side Of Midnight, and can now better understand the appeal of Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard. The Other Side Of Midnight is Orson Welles' unfinished masterpiece, a project he's worked on throughout his career without ever attracting a serious backer. That is, until 1980 when the mysterious Johnny Alucard springs from nowhere to bankroll a multitude of Dracula movies. Welles, worried about the financing (he's yet to see the color of Alucard's money), hires his Private Investigator friend, 565 year old Genevievé Dieudonné, to dig up all she can on the new face in Hollywood. As it turns out, this amounts to very little - Alucard has some expertise in covering his tracks - but Genevievé's sleuthing clearly upsets somebody. Moondoggie, a human friend and sometimes donor, is staked and dumped on her doorstep as a warning by teenage cheerleader, Barbara Dahl Winters, aka Barbie, the Vampire Slayer. Barbie has been duped by voracious bloodsucker cum 'mild-mannered school librarian', Ernest 'Gory' Gorse into believing that she is the chosen one, that it is her destiny to rid California of its undead. Gorse, as he later smugly informs Genevievé', realising that too many people were aware of his insatiable thirst, recruited "the dimmest dolly-bird in the school" to rid him of his enemies. The LAPD's finest, Lieutenant Columbo, isn't the biggest vampire fan and suspects Genevievé' of Moondoggie's murder. It won't be the last time she's framed before the drama is played out. We know we are in the 'eighties by an Alucard's interview in The Reporter'. "The pursuit of making money is the only reason to make movies. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. Our obligation is to make money." This plays well the multinationals, but what is his true motive in saturating the marketplace with mega-budget fangy films? According to Kenneth Anger, our enigmatic all-rounder is financing thirteen of them as an experiment in Black Magic. He intends to resurrect the King Vampire from the grave (again)! Aside from the savaging dispensed to Buffy, the customary plethora of pop culture references (some corrupted to suit) include subversive vampire rock favourites by The Eagles ( Hotel California and The Beat Mirror In The Bathroom), brief cameo's from the Addams Family and the Sawyer clan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre infamy, porno flick Debbie Does Dracula, The Village People, and a proposed Can't Stop The Music remake. The designer drug of choice is Drac, powdered vampire blood, feted by its enthusiasts as 'better than speed.'
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Post by dem bones on Oct 13, 2013 18:44:00 GMT
Prologue: Promises To Keep (AD 1944) Part 1. Coppola's Dracula (AD 1976-7) Interlude: Castle In The Desert (AD 1977) Part 2. Andy Warhol's Dracula (AD 1978-9) Interlude: Who Dares Wins (AD 1980) Part 3. The Other Side Of Midnight (AD 1981) Interlude: You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings (AD 1988) Part 4. "You'll Never Drink Blood In This Town Again" (AD 1990) Interlude: Miss Baltimore Crabs (AD 1990) Part 5. A Concert For Transylvania (AD 1990) Interlude: Dr Pretorius & Mr. Hyde (AD 1991) Part 6. Charles's Angels (AD 1991) Appendix 1: 'Destroying Dracula' by Kathleen Cronklin Appendix 2: 'Welles's Lost Draculas' by Jonathan Gates
loaned a copy of Johnny Alucard from the idea morgue yesterday, thought it best to get stuck in while The Other Side Of Midnight is still relatively fresh in mind.
Prologue: Promises To Keep: A war orphan in his early teens who has thrown in his lot with Baron Meinster's rag-tag army of urchins, is drawn to the Keep on the Dinu Pass. Dracula finds the boy's lack of empathy for anyone or anything other than himself a highly commendable trait. He has found his "son."
Coppola's Dracula: On location in Romanis with Coppola's crew for the problem-plagued Dracula shoot. A representative of Ceausescu's Securitate is doing everything in his power to disrupt filming, and the Borga Pass is out of bounds while Baron Meinster musters his guerilla band against the army. Coppola is losing his mind. He's sacked his Jonathan Harker, Harvey Keitel, and replaced him with an alcoholic Martin Sheen. Robert Duvall reprises Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now all over Van Helsing ("I love that smell .... spontaneous combustion at daybreak.... "; this, after the massacre of a vampire colony), and a bloated Brando plays Dracula (via Kurtz).
Katharine Reed, journalist and vampire with a heart of gold, is acting as technical adviser on the project. She, Genevievé Dieudonné, and Penelope Churchward were Dracula's three brides as depicted in Stoker's supposed 'novel'. Kath is a thoroughly responsible Undead, feeds only when necessary and has no desire to kill her victims or make them like her, but unlike that other good bad girl, Vampirella, she doesn't feel the need to swan around in a skimpy costume and boots, finding the mousy spinster look more to her advantage. When a vampire kid, who looks all of fifteen but crossed in 1945, shows up at her door, her maternal instincts oblige her to help him, and she persuades Coppola to hire him as interpreter. The boy, Ion Popescu, soon to become Johnny Pop, wants to travel to America where a vampire can be free, and he's not going to let anyone stand in his way. 'Silk suit' , the Securitate goon, has caused 'the maestro' (Ion-Johnny's pet name for FFC: he knows how to flatter) too much aggravation, so the Son of Dracula drains him of every last drop of blood, dumps the corpse in the forest and pins the murder on Kath. When Coppola and crew fly home to LA, Ion-Johnny leaves with them. The forgotten Kath will have to make her own way out of prison.
Interlude: Castle In The Desert: When his ex-wife, Linda, is brutally murdered (the stake & croquet mallet combo), and her daughter abducted, Philip Marlowe, ten years retired, takes the case. It transpires that Racquel, who always did have a rebellious streak, has recently severed ties with a Manson tribute biker-vampire cult, the Anti-Life Equation, and they are not best pleased at he. Ostensibly the President of the cult is 'Khorda the Destroyer,' all long hair, kaftan and head shop beads, but the real brains behind the operation is pulp SF writer turned messiah, L. Keith Winton, author of Robot Ranger of the Gamma Nebula (Astounding Stories, 1946) and the weighty Plasmantics: The New Communion (1952) on which he founded the Church of Immortology.
ALE are holed up in Mandaley Castle in the Mojave desert, and Marlowe is wondering how to attempt a rescue. Fortunately, a chance meeting in a bar lands him a capable partner.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 13, 2013 18:55:52 GMT
while The Other Side Of Midnight is still relatively fresh in mind. The Sidney Sheldon novel?
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Post by dem bones on Oct 14, 2013 17:28:13 GMT
while The Other Side Of Midnight is still relatively fresh in mind. The Sidney Sheldon novel? Not unless Sidney Sheldon's novel includes scenes of Studio 54 hipsters getting high on crystallised vampire's piss. Back with Johnny Alucard, it's time to catch up with the third of the late (again) Dracula's brides. Andy Warhol's Dracula: Room 100, the Chelsea Hotel, New York. Johnny Pop has drained the blood of Nancy Spungen, leaving her stoned punk rock superstar boyfriend Sid to take the murder rap. He jumps a cab to his place of work (the driver is a disturbing character by the name of Travis), Studio 54. It was a shrewd move feasting on that flash Brooklyn kid, Tony Manero, as not only has he inherited his killer wardrobe but his masterly of the dance-floor. But Johnny's not come here merely to show off. He's pushing his must-have designer drug, Drac). One hit and the disco crowd are sworn off such woefully inferior fare as coke, smack or Angel dusk. Soon New York is menaced by a new, bloodthirsty breed of addict, the dhampire. Penelope Churchward is Andy Warhol's current girl of the year, and very comfortable in the position, or would be, if he wasn't sulking. Unknown to the outside world, seems it wasn't the skills of the medical profession that saved Warhol when Valerie Solanas shot him at the Factory in '68, and a vampire's existence can become tedious when there's no triple A-list party to attend. But Andy regains his enthusiasm when Johnny Pop struts his stuff, and Penelope can only agree, this youthful undead is an icon in the making. So it proves. The meteoric rise of New York City's latest darling is followed by an equally rapid fall. Pop grows complacent. He makes too many dangerous enemies. Drac puts the crack dealers out of business overnight, and the Mafia are not best pleased when he refuses their kind offer of partnership. He realises it's time to relocate in another city but leaves it too late. His trusted lieutenants - Rudy Pasko, an ambitious young hustler, and Elvira, the camp vamp horror movie hostess - are targeted by Travis Bickle and his Fearless Vampire Killers, Thana the glam nun, Blade, Hell boy, etc.. Pasko, who craves immortality, not drug dependency, sells Johnny out. Poor Elvira suffers a stake through her generous cleavage. Johnny Pop proves his Son of Dracula credentials by routing the Bickle crew, but at the cost of vast quantities of blood and several limbs. If he doesn't receive a transfusion of vampire blood fast, he's done for. Pasko, on the promise of unlife eternal, gathers Pop's stray body parts, bundles him into the car and drives over to Warhol's place. What a really bad night to discover Andy's greatest pose of all .... Who Dare's Wins: Kate Reed again, back in London just in time to negotiate the release of twenty-five hostages held by Baron Meinster and his Transylvania Movement. Meinster, flanked by rat-faced Count Orlock and poor little rich girl Patricia Rice, the rebellious daughter of a famous comedian, have stormed the Romanian Embassy to publicise their campaign for an Undead homeland. Home secretary Lord Ruthven reckons he can swing it with Thatcher to let them have Wales ("The Taffs are all bloody Labour voters anyway, so we'd be glad to turn them over to the drac-head dandy"), but Transylvania is Ceasescu's,to dispose of, not Britain's. Meinster may look like a bad Adam Ant impersonation but he has his head sewn on, and so too does Ruthven. The meticulously stage-managed "siege" is concluded to their mutual advantage.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 14, 2013 18:57:46 GMT
Did you recognize all members of Travis' little posse? I am still undecided on a few. Especially the two black guys. One is obviously Blade as you wrote, but who is the other? Shaft?
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Post by dem bones on Oct 14, 2013 21:20:40 GMT
Did you recognize all members of Travis' little posse? I am still undecided on a few. Especially the two black guys. One is obviously Blade as you wrote, but who is the other? Shaft? "The black man with the wooden cross" had me stumped, but Shaft makes sense. Those i recognise (or think I do) are Paul Kersey from Death Wish as the lone vigilante, and Popeye Doyle from the French Connection as the cop. Took me ages to realise that the beatnik in the psychedelic van and his smelly dog are Shaggy & Scooby-Doo! . Andy Warhol's Dracula is my pick of the novellas to date, but it's all been good fun. For some reason, I couldn't get into The Bloody Red Baron at all, struggled through I don't know how many pages before giving up, but Johnny Alucard got its hooks in early with the Coppola story and its not eased up since.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 15, 2013 17:19:06 GMT
The last known photograph of Mr. Newman at a Vampyre Soc meeting, seconds from exsanguination.
... maybe I spoke too soon, as the next interlude went over my head - perhaps a rematch with The Other Side of Midnight was necessary after all. You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings: Purgatory, New Mexico. A CIA training facility for the most promising vampire cadets. A power-dressed Miss Penelope Churchward, codenamed Trampire, tutors in etiquette. The ever-escalating Cold War proving an unsustainable drain on both American and Russian finances, it's agreed that the fate of Romania will be decided by a grudge exercise in the desert between team Purgatory and a Transylvanian Old Guard XII. On the eve of the contest, the Americans are instructed to lose as a goodwill gesture toward Baron Meinster and the Pre-Communist feudal lords 'Rocket' Ronald Reagan is determined to restore to power. Miss Churchward's star pledge, Banshee, has other ideas.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 15, 2013 18:24:21 GMT
The last known photograph of Mr. Newman at a Vampyre Soc meeting, seconds from exsanguination.
... maybe I spoke too soon, as the next interlude went over my head - perhaps a rematch with The Other Side of Midnight was neccessary after all. You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings:Purgatory, New Mexico. A CIA training facility for the most promising vampire cadets. A power-dressed Miss Penelope Churchward, codenamed Trampire, tutors in etiquette. The ever-escalating Cold War proving an unsustainable drain on both American and Russian finances, it's agreed that the fate of Romania will be decided by a grudge exercise in the desert between team Purgatory and a Transylvanian Old Guard XII. On the eve of the contest, the Americans are instructed to lose as a goodwill gesture toward Baron Meinster and the Pre-Communist feudal lords 'Rocket' Ronald Reagan is determined to restore to power. Miss Churchward's star pledge, Banshee, has other ideas. I don't have the novel at hand, but as far as I remember this was a riff on the X-Men - Banshee and the others - and on superspys. Nikita, Rainbird from Stephen Kings Firestarter. I thought this one of the weakest parts. "The black man with the wooden cross" had me stumped, but Shaft makes sense. Those i recognise (or think I do) are Paul Kersey from Death Wish as the lone vigilante, and Popeye Doyle from the French Connection as the cop. Took me ages to realise that the beatnik in the psychedelic van and his smelly dog are Shaggy & Scooby-Doo! . The wooden cross also threw me. I am still not convinced this is Shaft. But who else? Thana of course is iconic, Ms.45. Mr Newman really has a gift to put characters through a dark twisted mirror. Shaggy and Scooby were kind of frightening.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 16, 2013 9:52:26 GMT
I don't have the novel at hand, but as far as I remember this was a riff on the X-Men - Banshee and the others - and on superspys. Nikita, Rainbird from Stephen Kings Firestarter. I thought this one of the weakest parts. The wooden cross also threw me. I am still not convinced this is Shaft. But who else? Thana of course is iconic, Ms.45. Mr Newman really has a gift to put characters through a dark twisted mirror. Shaggy and Scooby were kind of frightening. Thanks Andy, would never have got Ms. 45, The X-Men or even Nikita, Firestarter being one of the few pre- The Stand King's I've yet to get around to. It's a happy fluke coming to Johnny Alucard off the back of Alwyn W. Turner's non-fiction Crisis? What Crisis? Britain In The Seventies, as they're both swamped in that era's pop culture references (i'm sure this will prove to be even more the case with Mr. Turner's Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain In The Eighties). There were moments during Andy Warhol's Dracula in particular where it was like "didn't I just read this?"
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Post by dem bones on Oct 29, 2013 18:25:55 GMT
"You'll Never Drink Blood In This Town Again": With the execution of the Ceausescu's, Baron Meinster's dream of establishing a vampire homeland in Transylvania with himself as dictator nears fulfilment, but he needs International support. To this end, he despatches a three vampire delegation to Beverley Hills to sound out the world's most powerful media mogul, John Alucard. The trio - two ex-Securitate, Crainic and Striescu, and Ferraru, a big player on the London stock exchange - are no more to Alucard's liking than their foppish leader. He is well aware that the psychotic Crainic has been instructed to destroy him, but plays along regardless, suggesting a Benefit Festival for Transylvania, headlined by global superstar Timmy 'Vampire Junction' Valentine. "It will be bigger than Live Aid, than Woodstock. we could even get Cliff Richard!"
Meanwhile, a thrill-kill vampire couple who owe everything to NBK's Mickey & Mallory Knox (via Bonnie & Clyde, Starkweather & Fugate/ Badlands' Kit & Holly, etc), are busily engaged in a private war versus everyone. The lovers, Lambchop and Bloody Holly, come to the attention of Alucard who decides a solo Holly better suits his purposes. He destroys Lambchop before removing a sizeable chunk of the girl's brain to make her malleable. Penelope Churchward is enlisted to tutor the wild girl in preparation for the showdown with Meinster's agents during a supposedly friendly re-enactment of General Zaroff's wild hunt from The Most Dangerous Game.
It may be that the new material needs time to bed down, but I found this particular novella a little too busy for its own good. The cameos and special guest appearances are coming so thick and fast, it's difficult to keep tabs. In quite possibly the most unforgivable episode ever committed to print, Vampirella is exposed as a convert to the teachings of L. Keith Wilson, presumably so we won't feel so sore when she's gratuitously recycled as a batch of drac dust. Sebastian Newcastle (Yellow Fog) is also involved in some way or other, and Alucard is negotiating the release of fearless vampire killer Charles Manson. Who is the fat Texan in the white suit? Is he supposed to be sheriff bozo from The Dukes of Hazzard?
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Post by dem bones on Feb 7, 2015 17:22:01 GMT
Never did get to finish Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard before it's library loan date expired. To be honest, I was finding the newer material a slog. That said, while passing through Harrow on Jan 28th, I wasn't overly distressed at finding a copy for £1.50 in a College Road charity shop. We go again.
Miss Baltimore Crabs (AD 1990): At the height of the Drac wars, Geneviève Dieudonné, now working as a medical examiner, investigates the latest in a string of Poe-inspired murders, this one seemingly suggested by Berenice (Poe , you'll not be the least surprised to learn, is himself undead - and currently working for Alucard in Hollywood). The victims are Barksdale drug-dealer Wilkie Collins (no relation) and the two gals who process the vampire drug in his makeshift basement laboratory. The case brings Geneviève's into conflict versus psychedelic gangster Willis Daniels and what I take to be the entire cast of Scream, Blackula, Scream. Stephen Jones saw fit to include Miss Baltimore Crabs in Best New Horror 25 as is his prerogative. It's cleverly done but sadly, only served to remind me why I ran out of steam with Johnny Alucard in the first place.
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