On May 26, 1897, Bram Stoker‘s novel Dracula went on sale in London bookshops. The vampire book would eventually spawn many versions in other media as well as other stories about the Count from Transylvania.
The novel originally only achieved moderate sales, so that Stoker’s obituary in 1912 did not even mentioned the name of the novel Dracula. But a Broadway production in the 1920s started boosting sales of the book. And the real breakthrough came with Universal’s 1931 film that starred Bela Lugosi and was directed by Tod Browning.
A Taste for Love
Many other TV and movie versions followed. Although one of my favorite versions only appeared in part in the excellent comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall
In that movie, the character Peter Bretter — played by the film’s writer Jason Segal — is working on a puppet play about Dracula. Below, Mila Kunis encourages him to perform one of the play’s songs, “Dracula’s Lament.”
We never see the whole play, entitled A Taste for Love. But at the end of the film we get a good taste of it, which only makes us wish Segal would film the whole thing in a new movie.
The music is surprisingly wonderful, the puppets created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop are brilliant, and actor Bill Hader adds a nice touch. Check it out.
Segel has explained that he really did work on creating the Dracula puppet musical to be its own production. But with help from director Judd Apatow, he concluded it worked better as a segment in another movie rather than as a production all its own. Too bad, but at least we got to see some of it in the very funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
I wonder what Bram Stoker would think?
Photo of Bela Lugosi as Dracula via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.
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. We do learn about Wallace, but the movie does not overshoot, staying anchored in Lipsky’s memoir where he only had five days of access to Wallace. But the movie features smart dialogue and is revealing, both about Wallace and about Lipsky, as we watch the reporter do what reporters do as they invade a person’s privacy.
