The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Big Dracula fan here.

I will probably go to see Renfield tomorrow. I have been looking forward to it since Cage was announced. My feeling on it is if you're not going to do the book accurately then at least do something wild and interesting which Renfield seems to be.

This film intrigued me when announced as well, but I'm not completely sold based on the trailer. It looks like what I expected it to be and that's taking Dracula from 1 Chapter of the book and making a monster film. Could be good, could be bad. All depends on how fleshed out the character is beyond taking out crew member one by one.

Either way it's a good time to be a fan. Still hoping I get my perfect book adaptation one day.

I think in an ideal adaptation there should be both an element of sex and allure to vampirism, and also show the fact it's a disgusting disease. Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series captures it quite well especially in the first book.

I watched The Strain (the TV series) - it leaned a tad too much into disgust for my liking! But when it was good it was great, it certainly had elements inspired from Dracula.

As far as this films goes, it's good to see Dracula as a beast but I just hope they show him to be more than a voiceless predator. I find these adaptations can often go to the opposite ends of the spectrum and can't get the right balance.

Looks good, i'm in..

I've always hated the vampire as a sex object. Sure, it was hinted at in Bram Stoker's novel and became bolted on with Anne Rice. But I prefer the vampire as a viscous, repulsive, animal myself. Something that needs to be put down rather than envied or attracted to. I'd take Kinski's Nosferatu or the vamps from '30 Days of Night' over most iterations any day of the week.

There's probably a thousand different takes on what Stoker was up to when he wrote 'Dracula', but without input from the man himself, they're practically worthless and there's no solid agreement to be found on any of the subtexts that have been put forward by various scholars, much of which was conjured up years after the author had died. In the end all of these musings could simply be the product of overactive imaginations and Stoker simply just set out to write a spooky story about a vampire that made a few quid for him.

In any case, one could read 'Dracula' and have any subtext pass them by quite easily, especially one that's of a sexual nature as there's not much of that in it. There's certainly some romantic elements therein and Stoker wrote more romance works than horror. But overt references to anything sexual (or any of the other proposed subtexts) would be rather hard to pin down, unlike in, say, Le Fanu's 'Camilla'. Although, I would suggest that most 19th Century readers of that story would have had the lesbian aspects fly right over their heads.

But the character of Dracula as sex object really only became a thing with his appearance on the screen in the 1930's, and even then it remained extremely subtle in the Universal movie. But unfortunately (IMO) such a thing has mired the vampire ever since to the point where the classic monster has become tamed into a milquetoast sexual fantasy of an extremely dubious nature.

I've read 'Dracula' three times and one thing I will say about it is that it's a dreadfully written book and one where the titular character disappears for its bulk. It does have its moments and can be quite atmospheric, but after an admittedly brilliant opening section it settles into a turgid series of scrappy information that doesn't get going again until the end.

As for Stoker himself being gay, there's really no proof of that and it's probably just wishful thinking on behalf of certain people. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde for a period, but that in and of itself means nothing. Wilde had many friends in theatre who weren't gay, a number of which vocally opposed his imprisonment for his homosexuality. But that's certainly no evidence that the people writing in good favour of Wilde were themselves homosexual. I think the question of Stoker's sexuality is, more than likely, just another bit of "pink revisionism" in which some have pounced upon singular snippets of extremely tenuous information and bloated it into an unfounded notion in order to claim a famous individual as "one of their own" as it were.

Trailer looks like 'Dracula' meets 'Alien'...I'm all over it!

I saw part of the trailer and it felt like a straight to digital release (as I said I only saw part of the trailer) but a few weeks it came up in an article about box office taking and apparently this is a big deal for Universal.

Always open to filmmakers trying something new classic characters. Be interesting to see if they make it creepy despite knowing how it all turns out.

no irish release date?

Had been a bit worried with the amount of clips they've released. You could probably see half the movie if you watched them all 😂

Having said all that, the elevator pitch of Alien by way of vampires on a ship had me interested from the get go.

In fairness it is based on part of the book, but yeah to drag it out it's basically that. This film has been in production hell almost as long as Vlad has been sleeping.

Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro both loved it so now I am looking forward to seeing it. :)

Getting mixed reviews. The common complaint is that it's a bit slow, anaemic, and the conclusion to the story is already known.

It's become a bit of internet meme

Wonder Woman is having a laugh anyway

Well god damn, I managed to catch this....and I really enjoyed it.

Cast is very good and you care about most of them, it is surprisingly emotional at times, goes by fairly quickly and Dracula is how he should be, evil with a mocking glee at the horror he's putting up on the ship.

It has a lot going for it, the only criticism I would have is that I would have liked a better design of Dracula, or at least feel more intimidated by him. The actors did a better job of conveying fear than the character himself.

But ultimately, for a film dedicated to 1 chapter, it is extremely impressive.

That was a lot better than i was expecting. Definitely worth a watch if you like the genre.