Focus your thoughts, gentle reader and let me know if this rings a bell.
A maverick, Academy Award-wining director at the height of his fame and influence goes to a far away war-torn land to create his cinematic masterpiece. The movie’s plot involves a party of four men, who journey into a dark and uncivilized country, in search of a dark and deadly figure of the shadows.
The purpose of their mission: to destroy him and his band of fanatical killers at all costs. A task that takes both filmmaker, cast and crew to the limits of human endurance, indeed, takes them into the very the very heart of…
Oh, you know this one? Ok, yes, you’re partially right. The director in question is Hollywood’s favorite wine-maker, Francis Ford Coppola. And the movie we’re talking about is…. his 1979 version of Dracula?
Well, if you find yourself between the pages of the latest edition of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula book, Johnny Alucard: 1976-1976 (Titan Books), then you’re right on target.
To recap for those who are unfamiliar with the premise of Newman’s masterful alternative history vampire series, Dracula is a real historical figure whose story didn’t end with Stoker’s very inaccurate 1888 biography.
No, in this mash-up of a world, Dracula escaped his tormentors, married Queen Victoria, fought the Nazis and eventually ran out of gas in the 50’s, all the time leaving the world (both undead and “warm”) the promise of his return as a type of vampiric King Arthur.
As could be imagined, a world where Dracula and his minions were as real (and as influential) as, say,Woodrow Wilson or Albert Einstein would twist and warp the nature of 20th century. Throw into this already juicy mix the idea that literary and pop culture characters exist side by side with real folks from the history books and you’ve got a taste of the rich world that Newman’s been playing around in since the first Anno Dracula book.
In Johnny Alucard, a nameless Romanian orphan meets the “King of Cats” not long before his death. The good Count gives him a gift and tells him secret…One that will alter the future world. A world so transfixed by vampires and vampirism, that auteurs from Wells to Coppola eventually grapple with themselves and each other to make Stoker’s Dracula their cinematic masterpiece.
This nameless child, at first hunted and despised, over the years of his undead life comes understand the one pathway to ultimate power. Ruling Hollywood.
And with that goal in mind, Newman’s Johnny Alucard (get it?) takes us through the landscape of the 20th Century’s last three decades at a rip-roaring pace and with its tongue firmly in bloody cheek. Coppola’s ersatz version of Dracula (with Brando uttering those four immortal words as Bad Vlad) is just the beginning of the book’s crazy quilt thrill ride as Newman smashes together a world where you’re as likely to meet Lt. Columbo as Andy Warhol and everybody (and everything) from Jack Kirby to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the Beverly Hillbillies gets a shout out, sometimes all at once.
Newman’s encyclopedic appreciation for the events, movies, music and television of the period, coupled with his uniquely spun take about how the modern day literary convention of vampires (started in many ways Stoker’s novel) mirrors our real life obsessions with fame, youth and celebrity with uncanny accuracy. Here, vampires are the stars and vampirism is all the rage. Instead of a crack epidemic, we had a drac epidemic ( the sniffing of powdered vampire blood). Instead of Live Aid, we had a concert for a Free Vampire Romania.
Occasionally, this free flowing world-building is too much of a good thing as the stream of characters and inside joke references can make the reader feel that they are experiencing a horror novel as performed by Henny Youngman (Take my fangs, please!). At its most excessive, the life-imitating-art-imitating-life-imitating-art aspect of the book gets a little groan-worthy (For pop culture lunatics, one section of the book can be summed in two words: 90’s Baltimore).
But overall, the sheer imagination, dark humor and masterful use of vampire lore makes Johnny Alucard another triumph for Newman and should make the book top-of-shelf for vampire lovers everywhere.
Or to put it another way, if this fall, you must read a horror novel that’s a long awaited sequel to a book that that was made into a controversial movie by a visionary director, oh, about 35 years ago, then Johnny Alucard is your book.
Now, only if we only can get Newman to come up with a chapter in his next book about a director filming a horror movie that secretly is about how Bram Stoker faked the Moon landing…
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Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard (Anno Dracula, 1976-1991)