Guy Adams - Countess Dracula

[dem]

Guy Adams - Countess Dracula (Hammer, 2013)

Cover photograph;Trigger Images

Blurb
The whole world-loves movie icons Frank Nayland and Elizabeth Sasdy, lapping up each new picture and following their romantic life story both on and off the screen. But all is not as perfect as it appears.

Not only has the advent of talkies meant torturous sessions with a vocal coach to try and remove Sasdy's Hungarian accent but she's starting to spot the first few grey hairs, and the lines on her face are getting deeper every day.

If she loses her looks she'll lose everything, but even a woman as powerful as Elizabeth Sasdy can't fight nature. Can she?

Just how far is the Queen of Hollywood prepared to go to stay beautiful for ever?

We already have a top-notch novelisation of the film courtesy of the excellent Michel Parry. How will Guy Hands Of The Ripper Adams fare with an all-new Bathory bloodbath in a contemporary setting? Fifty pages in (of 248) and it's shaping up lovely!

Leo Hogarth and his portly driver Roland Johns comprise 'The Golden Hollywood Tour', a terminally struggling enterprise in a competitive market. Leo is also proud author of the masterpiece of plagiarism that is Hollywood Glitter (signed souvenir copies available for purchase at end of tour). It is not likely to trouble the best-sellers list any day soon.

Another day, another tour. The latest batch of saps include Tony and Margaret "I want Compensation" Riggers from Colorado. Jerry and Vonda, who won their trip to Tinseltown on something called Celebrity Shuffle. Brandi & Cherlyn, identikit blonde students of the hot pants and bikini-top persuasion. And a miserable old geezer who eventually volunteers his name as Gary Holdaway. As the bus heads up into the hills, Holdaway suddenly screams 'stop!' Roland obliges. Everybody is thrown forward. Margaret complains of whiplash and threatens to sue The Golden Hollywood Tour for every cent they haven't got. Leo rounds on Holdaway, who sheepishly explains yonder derelict mansion was once home to "the greatest Screen Goddess of all" (he notes Hogarth makes no mention of her in Hollywood Glitter), that he only boarded the bus to see Elizabeth Sasdy's former haunt this one last time. You see, he was on terms with Elizabeth at the height of her infamy ...

Leo is not going to pass up a heaven sent opportunity when it grabs him by the balls. Why not take a detour to the crumbling ruin, get this lovestruck old turd to spill the sleaze?

Rewind to 1934. "The greatest screen goddess of all" is engaged in a threesome with two well-hung Puerto Rican youths (she pays top dollar). Her husband, the English matinee idol Frank Nayland, blunders in just as she's taking a mouthful. Theirs is a manufactured marriage of course, but it still hurts, as, despite everything, he's actually come to love her. Elizabeth for her part, devotes every waking moment to making his life a living Hell.

Their agent, Fabio, arrives with the same tedious script as ever. The silents are finished. The modern audience demand talkies, and therein lies a dilemma. The Hollywood publicity machine has seen to it that Elizabeth is adored by millions as the poor girl from Wisconsin who rose to the summit of her profession. A throaty Hungarian accent is unlikely to sit well with them. Won't she at least reconsider, have the studio hire a cutesy young All-American gal to speak her lines? Elizabeth won't hear of it. Fabio almost cracks, tells her she's not as young as she was, that better than her have plummeted from the stars to the gutter, but thinks better of it.

Having dismissed her gigolo's, Elizabeth amuses herself by heaping a little more misery on Frank before bedtime, but he's not biting, and instead lobs a few barbed rejoinders her way. Furious, she begins hurling the glassware ....

And that's how the maid came to bleed all over everybody ....

[dem]

"Who could have thought that bathing in the blood of the young would have any effect at all beyond impending insanity and a prison sentence ?"

Frank Nayland broods in his private home cinema auditorium, watching a rerun of The Golden Cockerel (Romeo & Juliet relocated to the Deep South. Straw hats, dungarees, much toiling on the plantation, etc.). This was the first movie he played opposite his wife-to-be, and Elizabeth was at her most irresistible. Frank, ashamed but unable to resist the urge, unbuttons his trousers and ... well, i didn't even realise masturbation had been invented by 1935. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is gazing fascinated in the mirror. Nothing new about that, but - no, it's impossible! Where that stupid girl's blood splattered her cheek, the skin is all soft and creamy! She checks her reflection over and over and still one side of her face look twenty years younger than the other. She makes a big production of her profuse apology to the maid, Georgina, promising financial remuneration, but first she is going to treat her to a night of laughter and dancing in Hollywood's most exclusive bars and clubs. hotspots. But first, Georgina must choose from Elizabeth's expensive frocks, and then a nice, scented bath, and then an open razor drawn right across her throat.

Frank is a mug. he hates himself for it, but there it is. One wild session with his wife and he's covering up for her, disposing of Georgina's bleached corpse while Elizabeth is out gallivanting uptown, playing to the paparazzi, thrilling and disgusting contemporaries with her miraculously restored beauty. She celebrates by pulling the most gorgeous young hunk she can find. Henry, an aspiring actor, has only been in town a week and doesn't know a soul. She shows him the ropes.

Next morning, Elizabeth awakes in agony. Her skin feels as though it were burning up. She runs to the mirror and - Aaaaargh!!! Faceache is back in town! Henry can't see her like this, to say nothing of her adoring public. She must have blood!

[dem]

"I see they've taken one of the all-time classics - a book about sensuality, violence and honour - and reduced it to a Hungarian in too much make-up moaning at a cocktail party."

- Detective Scott Harrison's succinct criticism of Universal's Dracula.


Frank agrees to provide victims for Elizabeth on a bad-sex-on delivery-basis. he's not actually done much acting since the silents fell out of favour, so his scouting missions provide ample opportunity for him to brush up on his craft. His industrial size make-up kit from scenery chewing days likewise makes a return. He and Elizabeth commandeer a derelict farmhouse as their basis of operations.

Elizabeth is not best pleased with Frank's idea of who or what constitutes a good victim when he brings home a wretched, dope fiend prostitute but needs must in a crisis and she's soon merrily splashing around in the bathtub.

We now learn that Henry's mystery benefactor is Fabio with his talent scout hat on, and he's stunned when his devilishly handsome client informs him who he slept with last night. Fabio isn't buying Elizabeth's "it's all down to a new diet" nonsense, either. What's she up to?

Frank, meanwhile, is drunk and mighty irked at his wife's gall in sleeping with some himbo while he was disposing of a body. When Henry shows up with Fabio in the snazzy and horrible Crystal Heart club, the paparazzi go absolutely gaga. it's just like the old days!

I love Mr Adams' affectionate assault on Hands of The Ripper and this is another cut from the same cloth. It doesn't half belt along, too. Have read it in three very short bursts yet still have less than ninety pages to go.

[dem]

Fabio is furious at Frank Nayland for allowing his personal feelings to get in the way of Elizabeth's Hollywood second coming. "I certainly don't need an abusive alcoholic husband to contend with - how am i supposed to make good press out of that?" As ever, the publicity guru has an answer - a Celebrity divorce! Nayland isn't up for this, but what choice does he have? And it's not as though he'll be moving out now his wife finally has need of him. Eternal youth has its price. Once the effect of each bloodbath wears off, Elizabeth looks five years older - and she's swimming in the stuff on a near daily basis. Ending the butchery is no longer an option, even were she inclined to do so. She and Fabio's protégé, Henry, are now an item, but Frank's still happy to procure victims on the agreed basis, so presumably, his sex life with Elizabeth is more active now than it ever was when they were the love story of the decade.

Fabio is batting away offers from all the major studios until one of them comes up with a suitable script ("More monster madness from Universal, some wild nonsense about werewolves in London ... who gave two shits about London? Werewolves in Los Angeles, yes, he could have got behind that as an idea."). The Sadsy comeback is going to be MASSIVE, so no point diluting the sheer magnitude of the occasion on some lousy B-feature. And still the nagging fear that there's something very wrong going on right underneath his nose - but what?

Elizabeth's parties were once the scandal of Hollywood, and now, for the first time in five years, she's to throw open her doors for a night of debauchery. The Tinseltown Glitterati won't know what hit them .....

[andydecker]

I missed this.

Didn't I read somewhere that Hutson's Frankenstein - still sitting unread around somewhere on my shelf - was to be the last of the new Hammer novels?

[dem]

Jul 15, 2013 20:01:46 GMT andydecker said:

I missed this.

Didn't I read somewhere that Hutson's Frankenstein - still sitting unread around somewhere on my shelf - was to be the last of the new Hammer novels?

Disinformation is a curse of the internet, ain't it, andy? Remember the "Years Best Horror has been cancelled!" hysteria of what, four, five years ago? The series is still going strong, as, it seems, are Hammer books!

Read no further if you don't want a clue as to the result

Have now finished Countess Dracula and it's a jolly, bloodthirsty romp. certainly no disappointment after the Probert-enhanced Hands Of The Ripper, and Guy Adams knows just where and how to end, which is always a plus.

It takes more than a joke shop false beard to deceive Fabio, and he follows Frank on his latest creepy crawl of the Red light district in search of Elizabeth's next bubble bath buddies. Betty and Joannie, welcome to thy doom. Fabio's worst fears are realised when, back at the farmhouse, Frank totals Joannie with a brick, and a hideous, baggy-skinned, liver-spotted monstrosity throws open the door and drags her inside.

Detective Scotty Harrison of the LAPD is also forming terrible suspicions about the disappearance of Georgina Woolrich and the involvement of Elizabeth and Frank in same. Much as he detests actors with every bone in his body, he knows that, party or no party, now's the time to take them in for questioning. He gatecrashes.

Everyone, bar Scotty and Patience the housekeeper, are naked but for a mask and very involved when ... it happens. A woman screams that she's sitting in something disgusting and it is, of course, our evil heroine. She's reverted to her true self mid-orgy! The participants separate and run shrieking in all directions in the face of such extreme ugliness. What if it's contagious!

OK, I think that as far as we should go with this. Best way I can put it is, Mr. Adams' version of Countess Dracula moves like an early Laymon and reads like a Haining-era NEL. Recommended, in other words.

[ripper]

I've been a bit hesitant about dipping my toes in the water of the new Hammer novelisations. I wasn't really sure if I was going to get along with re-locating the plots to more modern times, rather than more straightforward treatments. However, after reading Dem's comments about Countess Dracula, I thought I would give it a go. I'm about 50 pages in so far and I have to say that I really do like it. I haven't read anything else by Guy Adams, so wasn't sure what to expect, but I was hooked from page 1, and I am sure that it is not going to take me long to finish the book.

[dem]

Sept 26, 2013 18:14:17 GMT ripper said:

I've been a bit hesitant about dipping my toes in the water of the new Hammer novelisations. I wasn't really sure if I was going to get along with re-locating the plots to more modern times, rather than more straightforward treatments. However, after reading Dem's comments about Countess Dracula, I thought I would give it a go. I'm about 50 pages in so far and I have to say that I really do like it. I haven't read anything else by Guy Adams, so wasn't sure what to expect, but I was hooked from page 1, and I am sure that it is not going to take me long to finish the book.

I liked it a lot, and his modern day version of Hands of The Ripper is a real scream. Haven't read too many of the Hammers, but Shaun Hutson makes a neat job of The Revenge Of Frankenstein (a straight novelization of the film, although Mr. Slugs fleshes out the characters), Mark Morris handled his Vampire Circus update with aplomb, and I even enjoyed Francis Cottam's The Resident. Some of the later releases are on the bulky side. Tim Lebbon's original story Coldbrook runs to a generous 650 pages which rather scares me away. Sara B. Elfgren & Mats Strandberg's The Circle also tops 600.

[ripper]

I finished it off this morning. A real page-turner and I was surprised by the revelation at the end. I spotted a few names re-cycled from the film, where actor and character names have been used. The Frank Nayland name nagged at me as I was sure it was a reference to something, but I didn't twig until reading through the cast list of the film and seeing Nigel Green as playing Captain Dobi (the Nayland character equivalent of the film) and remembering he played Nayland-Smith in the first Harry Alan Towers Fu-Manchu film. I hope other Hammer books feature such references as I found it fun to try to spot them. Overall, I thought Countess Dracula was pretty darned good and I have ordered Hands of the Ripper as my next taste of the modern Hammer novelisations.

[ripper]

It has been 4 years since my brush with Countess Dracula, so I thought I would try a re-match. I polished it off in two sittings and I found it as much of a page-turner as before. I really do like the setting of 30s Hollywood. The scandals of those times have always fascinated me and Guy Adams made a shrewd move by setting it during that period. Elizabeth Sasdy is a nasty piece of work and it is rather satisfying to see her get her just desserts. However, Adams did make me feel a tinge of sympathy for her, and also, I thought, portrayed Frank Nayland's weakness and obsession with her quite well. Initially, I didn't like the Henry character, but warmed to him as the story unfolded; he is obviously way out of his depth in his relationship with Elizabeth, and it was nice to see Fabio's attempts to extract him from her clutches. There's enough sleaze and bloodshed to satisfy, but it never goes really over the top. I noticed that the virgin's blood being required for the rejuvination to work had been replaced by the blood of any female. However, it isn't really established that the blood needs to be female as blood from a male partially rejuvinates Elizabeth towards the end of the book. I did wonder why Elizabeth didn't try animal blood to see if it would work; slaughtering stray dogs etc would have been easier and far safer than picking up hookers every couple of days...and why didn't anyone notice that said hookers were disappearing at an alarming rate? All-in-all, a very enjoyable read. The plot and characters drew me in just as much as when I first read it.

[helrunar]

Dem, I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts (as we used to say over here) that your notes are infinitely more amusing than slogging through this thing.

I'll enjoy settling down with a nice hot cuppa at some point over the weekend with these notes from you.

H.

[helrunar]

What a great thread! Just what I needed tonight.

Dem and Ripper, I adore you both, and I love being one of the more cobweb-encrusted residents of the Vault... UFFF.... EEEEEE-villll... *echoing cachinnations die away with the sound of foot-dragging shambling slowly disappearing down a vaulted catacomb*

H.

[dem]

Thank you for your kindness, H. Really, Countess Dracula has fared better than most Hammer tie-ins/ reinventions, both in Michel's fleshed out novelisation and Guy Adams' delightful period novel - on the evidence of this and Hands of the Ripper, he has a flair for this kind of thing.

[andydecker]

Still didn't read it. I dutifully bought some of the new Hammer novelizations back then, but most left me cold.

I only knew Guy Adams' comic work for 2000 AD and found it lacking. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing technically bad about it, but it was just more of the same. His horror series Hope is "An alternate 1940s Hollywood. WWII is over, victory having been secured by occult means. Now, magic is a part of everyday life, its practitioners commonplace. Mallory Hope is one such skilled operative, though calling on the dark arts takes its toll on the user. He's also a private investigator, hired for all manner of down 'n' dirty jobs, but the one desperate case he wants to close is the whereabouts of his wife and son...", as described by the Albion British Comic Database.

IMHO these "alternative" scenarios are becoming ever more artificial and by the numbers. This is no exception. I guess this is the curse of reading this stuff so many years, you are hard to please and are looking for innovation in the wrong places.

[Dr Strange]

Sept 25, 2021 11:15:49 GMT andydecker said:

Still didn't read it. I dutifully bought some of the new Hammer novelizations back then, but most left me cold.
I only knew Guy Adams' comic work for 2000 AD and found it lacking. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing technically bad about it, but it was just more of the same.

I think I've only read two of his books - the 2011 Hammer Kronos novelization and a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Breath of God (also 2011) - I didn't get on great with either of them, and have more-or-less avoided him since. He's got an interesting biblio - www.fantasticfiction.com/a/guy-adams. He can fair churn them out.