THE SNUGGERY: E1 DRACULA ‘TILL DAWN
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Episode 1. We take a look at the stylish horror of Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and talk about the grindhouse classic From Dusk to Dawn.
Episode 1. This is an accessible version of episode one with no added background sound for listeners with sensory issues.
Show Notes, Episode 1
Welcome. I am your host Leto Armitage. Please take the large red couch and help yourself to the tea on the sidetable. It is Monday, October the 2nd 2023 and this is Season 1, Episode 1 of The Snuggery podcast.
Each Monday through the month, I will discuss a few vampire movies that merge the titillating and terrifying through the vehicle of the nosferatu. So, this is not a place where I will discuss non-erotic vampire works such as the animated Vampire Hunter D or the excellent 30 Days of Night. These will be short episodes that I hope, from this haven of hedonism, will help highlight some horror for your hungry nights
I am going to kick this list off with two films that you might already know. These are two mainstream Hollywood movies that take very different approaches to the sensual and the sanguine.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
First up is Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It deviates from the epistolary novel in many ways, though despite those variations it remains the most faithful adaptation I can think of, especially in how it catches the vampire as a symbol of violent primal lust contrasting with the Victorian norms of the age.
Featuring Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Waits, Gary Oldman, Lucy Frost and an under-used Cary Elwes the cast is amazing.
The first of the film’s erotic scenes occurs when Reeves, as intrepid English whipping boy Jonathan Harker, is fed upon by the Brides of Dracula. Though their roles are relatively minor, it is worth mentioning one of the trio in more detail. Raven-haired Italian Monica Belluci was cast, this only being her second film after her debut a year earlier in an Italian comedy. If you don’t know her career I strongly recommend 2000’s Italian film Malena and 2001’s French film Le Pact De Loups. In both of these she drips enough sensuality that you could collect it into a jar and drink it.
Although Mina, played by Winona Ryder, is Dracula’s romantic fixation in the movie, as the look-alike and possible reincarnation of his long-dead wife Elizabet, it is Lucy Westenra who is his sexual prey. Played by Sadie Frost, who was a working actress with several successful films already. She embraced the role showing more sensuality in going topless and writhing on a bed in a voluminous dressing gown than most porn starlets can accomplish with no practical limitations – except perhaps acting skill.
When Mina and Lucy frolic in the rain, in the hedge maze, it is joyous, innocent, sexy and ominous as we see the eyes of Dracula projecting over the vast distances as he lies interred onboard the Demeter at sea.
When the wolf escapes the zoo under Dracula’s influence it is not only a creature under his thrall, but a vessel for his spiritual projection, transforming into a man-like wolf-creature at need. That need comes to bear when it enters Lucy’s room and copulates with her, a profane rutting of a noblewoman with a wolf, a pure carnal sexual instinct released. And, despite the very strong beastiality overtones, it manages to capture eroticism and horror in equal measures, something very few films accomplish. And honestly, who doesn’t want to see a horny redhead ravished by a werewolf? I mean, we’re not saints around here.
There are certainly no saints or exemplars of virtue in our next movie. Released four years later, it embraces a more contemporary invention of vampirism.
From Dusk to Dawn
Released in 1996, From Dusk to Dawn was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez. The movie was successful, spawning several questionable sequels and an excellent television series. And a forgettable video game.
It is written in two styles, with a mid-movie transition. The first part of the movie plays very much how you would expect from the man who wrote Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Then about 45 minutes in, the protagonists arrive at the trucker’s stop known as the Tittytwister and an over-the-top grindhouse takes off.
As the characters walk up to the bar, Cheech Marin, who plays three small roles, has this absolutely classic monologue:
“All right, pussy, pussy, pussy! Come on in pussy lovers! Here at the Titty Twister we’re slashing pussy in half! Give us an offer on our vast selection of pussy. This is a pussy blow out! All right, we got white pussy, black pussy, Spanish pussy, yellow pussy, we got hot pussy, cold pussy, we got wet pussy, we got smelly pussy, we got hairy pussy, bloody pussy, we got snappin’ pussy, we got silk pussy, velvet pussy, naugahyde pussy, we even got horse pussy, dog pussy, chicken pussy! Come on, you want pussy, come on in, pussy lovers! If we don’t got it, you don’t want it! Come on in, pussy lovers!”
The two career criminals enter the Tittytwister with their three hostages and settle in. True to its name we see scantily dressed and topless dancers who are good-looking – I mean I wouldn’t throw any of those Latinas out of bed – but they are mechanical in their movements, go-go dancers more languid than lusty. It is not the best setup for erotica and indeed, the movie is not erotic except for one scene but that one scene alone earns the film a place on this playlist. Though I will mention a second one that perhaps some folks find erotic.
About an hour in, Danny Trejo’s bartender character introduces the dancer Satanica Pandemonium, a name with all the subtlety of a lemon wrapped around a brick smashed upside the viewer’s head. Satanica is played by a sultry Salma Hayek, in a role I’ve been told almost went to Madonna. This is really hard to imagine. I know that she has done a number of erotic themed works over the years, but I have never felt that sultryness that Salma Hayek radiates in this. And besides, the Michigan native is far too white to play a Latin American vampire.
When Satanica emerges to dance, she is wearing a long cloak and headdress and she reveals from underneath the cloak a large white snake. As she dances Satanica sheds the cloak, headdress and snake. Hayak has said she entered a kind of trance while doing the dance and improvised it. The dance succeeds at being mystic, as much ritual as risque. It is often called a striptease, but that description is both factually wrong and horribly underwhelming.
It is a concert of gyration and undulation that broadcasts the pure potential for feminine pleasure, a male epiphany of the female form in motion. An epiphany of appreciation. As she crosses the tables accompanied by the growling guitar riffs of the Chicano house band, played by the very real and excellent Tito and Tarantula, the camera stroked up her legs and I suspect more than one early pre-pubescence boy discovered adolescence watching this scene.
When she reaches Ritchie, played by Quentin Tarantino, who wrote the scene, Satanica places her toes in his mouth and Ritchie sucks on them as if they were mana. When she pours tequila down her leg he laps it off her toes as if it were ambrosia. Now, to be clear I don’t have a foot fetish. Toes do nothing for me sexually, but while I was watching that scene I would have gladly saddled up for a turn. You never know if you’ll like it until you try it right?
The other scene that some may find arousing is shortly after. An enraged Satanica abuses George Clooney’s character, stepping on his chest and informing him in a monologue that he will be her dog:
“I’m not gonna drain you completely. You’re gonna turn for me. You’ll be my slave. You’ll live for me. You’ll eat bugs because I order it. Why? Because I don’t think you’re worthy of human blood. You’ll feed on the blood of stray dogs. You’ll be my footstool. And at my command, you’ll lick the dog shit from my boot heel. Since you’ll be my dog, your new name will be Spot. Welcome to slavery.”
It is a scene that does nothing for me, but I suspect more than one submissive finds their pulse quickened by it.
From here the movie transforms into a less sensual, but very carnal, bit of cinema, in the blood and meat sense, as the violence ramps up and finishes its run time as an over-the-top grindhouse action horror movie.
Outro…
So, these are for your Halloween sexy vampire playlist: From Dusk ’till Dawn and Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As we part ways, I wish to part with a promise.
Next Monday, I will return with a trilogy of less-known films. They are some of the classic Hammer vampire films known as the Karnstein trilogy. And for all their faults they are fascinating, both as a bit of sexual cultural history and as works of cinema.
I think perhaps they reached further than their grasp could reach in what they were trying to accomplish, but I also think they are worthy of being on our sexy Halloween playlist. So, until then, be naughty and be good to each other.
ABOUT LETO ARMITAGE
Leto Armitage was born in America under a set of circumstances that prophesied that he would one day unite the lost tribes and return the Ever Summer. Somewhere around twelve, he realized he had been left unsupervised and binged too many Arthurian movies in his formative years and that he was just another kid who accidentally got an education while reading above his age level.
By the time he turned old enough to get a passport, he started finding excuses to travel determined to find out what culture, food and women there were to experience. After learning to grill in Oaxaca, do kinbaku in Japan, and being banned from several former Soviet block countries, he returned home to settle down and see what damage he could do locally.
After working jobs including being a short order cook, bodyguarding strippers and professionally doing reader’s advisory for erotica he realized the most reasonable path forward was to become a writer. Today he lives with cats, dogs, and humans who seem to like him despite actually knowing him. He prefers to sit on his back deck, listening to the birds and Barry the Bumblebear bee, while he writes cozy, uplit romance and raunchy erotica.
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