Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

[MGagen]

Pedantic twittery aside, the Coppola film is a reasonably faithful retelling of the events of original story. What the film lacks is the title character. The nature of the character is changed from a pitiless inhuman monster into pitiable lost soul. This has nothing to do with adapting the epistolary structure of the novel to the screen, which was handled quite deftly.

 

[Forbin]

It Takes a Thief again - Montalban shows up as a high-class international fence in "The Galloping Skin Game".

And of course Malachai Throne is a regular, keeping Al on a tight leash.

Other interesting guests this episode were Richard Keil as the giant henchman, and Martine Beswick looking jet-set stunning.

 

[Greg Cox]

Pedantic twittery aside, the Coppola film is a reasonably faithful retelling of the events of original story. What the film lacks is the title character. The nature of the character is changed from a pitiless inhuman monster into pitiable lost soul. This has nothing to do with adapting the epistolary structure of the novel to the screen, which was handled quite deftly.

And this is where I'm contractually obliged to point out that the whole business with the Count pining for the reincarnation of his long-lost lover was first introduced in the 1973 TV-movie version of Dracula, scripted by Richard Matheson, which lifted it from Dark Shadows, which possibly got the idea from the old Universal mummy movies . . ...

 

[Forbin]

Was that the Loius Jourdan one?

 

[Shaka Zulu]

^ Nice. I love old shows with airport scenes; there's a glimpse of a very early United DC-10 there. SFO airport, by the way.

I'm old enough to remember when you could go to the airport just to hang out and watch the planes. When you didn't need a boarding pass to go into the terminal and you could wait for your visitors at the gate. That must freak out young people now.

There are people that still do that, BTW, as shown here in this article (Plane Spotting at Pearson Airport 101)-but you have to know the lay of the land, where to do it, and the rules of being near the airport when you do it (as well as probably have access to a car.) Myself, I plane spot too, but from the Harbourfront district in Toronto (I've been trying to take pictures of the planes taking off from the Billy Bishop Airport in the harbor district for a while.) I also train spot by taking pictures of the trains as they arrive and depart from the city (by going to the bridge that spans the Gardiner Expressway and taking pictures there.) So no, it's not a dead pastime.

 

[Forbin]

Watched an episode of Probe just now where Doug McClure chases around India after a stolen Kali statue. Featuring Alfred Ryder and Reggie Nalder (who I only ever recognize by his voice) as natives of that exotic land:

 

[Greg Cox]

Was that the Loius Jourdan one?

No, the Jack Palance one.

The Louis Jourdan version was a British production that came a few years later. And Jourdan played the Count as coolly evil and without any sympathetic qualities, very much in the style of Lugosi.

The Jourdan version, "Count Dracula," is probably the version most faithful to the book.

 

[Christopher]

It was interesting to read the book and see that Dracula there had none of the romantic or sympathetic qualities found in more modern portrayals; he's an unambiguous predator, a seducer and user of women. If vampirism is a metaphor for sex, then the novel's Dracula was a rapist, not a suitor.

In fact, according to some interpretations, the book was an anti-immigrant or anti-Semitic allegory, with Dracula symbolizing the Eastern European immigrants moving into England, lowering property values, and tainting the purity of proper English womanhood. So Dracula was meant to be a grotesque and threatening figure rather than a sympathetic one. Maybe our modern repositioning of him as a less unambiguously evil figure reflects our more inclusive worldview today, our openness to accepting outsiders rather than demonizing them, though maybe that's overly self-flattering.

 

[Forbin]

Whenever I hear a phrase like "English purity" or something similar, I can't help but think of how many cultures inhabited or invaded England over the centuries - Celt, Saxon, Viking, Norman... What exactly IS "pure English?"

 

[Christopher]

Whenever I hear a phrase like "English purity" or something similar, I can't help but think of how many cultures inhabited or invaded England over the centuries - Celt, Saxon, Viking, Norman... What exactly IS "pure English?"

Right. You could say the same about any racial or cultural purist movement.

 

[Forbin]

Indeed!

 

[Shaka Zulu]

It was interesting to read the book and see that Dracula there had none of the romantic or sympathetic qualities found in more modern portrayals; he's an unambiguous predator, a seducer and user of women. If vampirism is a metaphor for sex, then the novel's Dracula was a rapist, not a suitor.

In fact, according to some interpretations, the book was an anti-immigrant or anti-Semitic allegory, with Dracula symbolizing the Eastern European immigrants moving into England, lowering property values, and tainting the purity of proper English womanhood. So Dracula was meant to be a grotesque and threatening figure rather than a sympathetic one.

The Hammer films with Chris Lee as Dracula are the only ones to do this; he just out-and-out bites women (and men) and is completely a monster, with little suaveness to him. Although I still love Bram Stoker's Dracula, I think that this was the correct portrayal.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Personally I think it's refreshing to see vampires portrayed as truly evil monsters. Things like Daybreakers and The Strain are, IMHO, the 'true' image of vampirism.

 

[Forbin]

In a fairly silly 2-parter with a plot right out of Mission: Impossible, Mannix is hired to smuggle a Klingon heart surgeon into a nameless Easter European country, because he's the only doctor in the world who can put a pacemaker in the revolution's leader.

Then to escape the country, the doctor must be disguised as... Kung Fu Klingon!

I wonder if that's an in-joke, or if Colicos just kept the whiskers.

 

[Christopher]

^Does Colicos's character turn out to be evil? If not, that really is a surprising role for him.

 

[Forbin]

No, not at all! He's reluctant and a tiny bit self-serving, but he comes around to the cause quickly.

The episode felt almost uncomfortably like a M:I episode. There was a lot of foreign intrigue, car chases through the studio alleyways (I think they turned the same corner about 5 times) and thru the LA hills, all to Lalo Schiffrin music. There was an eastern European dictatorship police captain after them, soldiers in Jeeps, fake Eastern bloc language signs... Maybe it was a leftover script repurposed. Quite far from the usual Mannix episode!

 

[Christopher]

By the way, yesterday's Batman 2-parter on MeTV, "An Egg Grows in Gotham"/"The Yegg Foes in Gotham," qualifies for this thread, because it featured Gene Dynarski as a henchman of Vincent Price's Egghead (whose hench-theme was bald guys -- the other one being perennial Adventures of Superman goon Ben Welden in his final henching role before retirement).

What the hell is a hench, anyway? (Actually it's from a Germanic word for a horse or gelding; a henchman was originally a horse groom or attendant to a noble or royal person.)

 

[FormerLurker]

Using your origin for the word (and I don't doubt its authenticity), the meaning has probably evolved to mean a workman who serves the interests of his employer, regardless of the nature of the employment.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, of course. I was just riffing on my own facetious use of "henching" as a verb, which is something that occasionally crops up in comedic treatments of henchman characters.

 

[Forbin]

I certainly hope no supervillain takes the "gelding" aspect literally!