Death Train/Detonator

There are bad movies, and there are bad movies one loves. Years and years ago, back in the days of VHS and videoclub, I rented a made for TV B movie. It's title is Detonator, or Death Train in the US. It's an action thriller set on a train hijacked by terrorists lead by a mysterious Russian general turned rogue. Not only did they hijacked the train, but they put an artisanal A bomb on it. And there is a second bomb somewhere else, to complicate things further. This is a sinister but (very) convoluted scheme to restore USSR and it makes very little sense. But there's action on a train going through Europe, with an nuke as a MacGuffin, so what's not to love? And a word on the casting: you have a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan as the lead, Patrick Stewart to give this mess some proper British thespian gravitas, Christopher freaking Lee as the villain (magnificent as always), a pre Lester Freamont Clarke Peters... Seriously, if nothing else, the casting director did his job right. Is it good? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I had a ball rediscovering it recently.

RIP Christopher Lee

I am late reporting the news, however I could not ignore it, because of my love and admiration for the man and his work: Christopher Lee died recently, at the venerable age of 93. He played Dracula in many movies, he resurrected from pretty much every type of deaths, from getting a stake through his heart to being burned by sunlight, but he could not survive old age. More than a popular actor, Lee was a polymath and a true artist. I enjoyed so many of his roles, especially his Hammer ones. He played so many iconic characters, was often the best thing about many flicks of sub-qualities, but for me he will first and foremost be the Count. Because although Lee had many different roles, and Dracula was played by many different actors, Lee is the only one who actually bothered making the character true to the spirit of the novel, for which he had a great respect. When I read the novel, Dracula has the traits and the voice of Christopher Lee. That said, I will never limit his monumental career to the role I prefer. And I intend to watch more and more movies with Christopher Lee, of all genres. In the months leading to Halloween, I will treat myself with a few Hammer flicks. In the meantime, here is one of his interviews which I find fascinating:

Dracula

I have been thinking about this post for ages and ages, the time of the year is a good excuse to write about it. The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde and Frankenstein were the first classic horror stories I read, but shortly after I read Dracula and it became my favourite horror book. There are many reasons for this. Dracula is a pure, unambiguously evil badguy, unlike the monster who is a tragic figure and Mr. Hyde who is the evil alter ego of a faillible but otherwise good man. Yes, whatever some pretentious movie says, Dracula is all evil, cruel, murderous, amoral, predatorial. There is a good deal of gore and violence, but dosed with suspense and quieter moments. There is also the scope of the story: Dracula has ambitions of conquest, he wants to take over the British Empire, he is not merely a threat to a few teenagers or too curious academics. And there is the subtext, the (intentional?) Catholic mysticism (I envy Bruno Starrs as he pretty much defended in this article what I had found out years before), the middle class that is struggling against ancient powers, there is also all the Freudian things you can find in it. Even as a teenager ignorant of literary criticism, I could feel the book's evocative power and its rich subtext. And of course, there were genuine moments of terror in the novel.

I read the novel at least four times, three in French (including once for a literature course) and one in English. It shows how fascinated I got with the book. I still have dreams about it, they are scary but pleasantly so, too much anyway to be classified as nightmares.It might not be great literature and my tastes have evolved since I read it, but as as horror novels go, Dracula is still my favourite.

I took this picture last year at Madame Tussaud's. I have reluctantly put it on this post. Count Dracula was not Vlad Tepes (Elizabeth Miller demonstrated it) and his appearance in the novel is much more frightening than any historical model he was only loosely based on to begin with, or indeed any of his subsequent incarnations, even Max Shreck and Christopher Lee. But I thought I needed some kind of picture to illustrate the topic.