JL: OK, so let’s talk about Vampires—Dracula. There are more movies with Dracula in them than any other kind of monster.
JC: Vampires are all-purpose monsters for each new generation.
JL: The new abstinence vampire is now. The Mormon vampire!
JC: You had the Rudolph Valentino vampire originally, with Béla Lugosi and his slicked-back hair and this kind of come-hither look but, throughout the years, look at Christopher Lee and his Dracula—it’s entirely different.
JL: About vampires: Is there anything you particularly like or dislike, or think is cool?
JC: Well the original myth works. It’s a myth of decay. The European aristocracy is falling to ruin in Gothic castles, and who do the aristocrats live on? They live on the peasants. They suck their blood. Think about that. Where does that come from? It comes from European attitudes way back when. European attitudes about how things work. But then they slowly corrupt…
JL: Now, what about the Wolf Man?
JC: The Wolf Manis a take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This innocent man is bitten by something, and he can do nothing about it. He’s good and evil, both.
JL: I think that the Jekyll and Hyde thing is not entirely right, because in Jekyll and Hyde, it is basically two sides of himself, whereas with the Wolf Man, it’s more of a disease. He’s a victim.
JC: He is a victim, yes. The Wolf Manis a victim of life’s circumstance, of something that has just happened to him.
JL: OK, so what about the Mummy?
JC: The original [Karl Freund,1932] Mummy movie with Boris Karloff is just Dracula. It’s literally a remake.
JL: Yeah.
JC: He comes back, he’s after the girl… but it’s still a great movie.
JL: It’s slow, but I love the opening when the Mummy walks out.
JC: Fabulous. But that’s Dracula, and the legend is that he’s a sort of fallen character. In the Christopher Lee version [ The Mummy, Terence Fisher, 1959], he wanted to live with his love forever…
JL: In the first Mummy, Karloff’s Mummy is the bad guy, but in other Mummy movies it’s the priest, and the Mummy is just a kind of killing machine.
JC: That’s why I like the Christopher Lee version.
JL: He’s fabulous in both The Curse of Frankenstein[Terence Fisher, 1957] and The Mummy, and totally different.
JC: His eyes in The Mummy! He can be so sad and haunted by this ancient love for this girl, and yet he can become so cold. I mean, he’s fabulous! The Curse of Frankensteinjust transformed me when I was a little kid.
JL: What I love in that is, when they shoot him, Chris has clearly got blood in his hand and he goes (slaps face)…
JC Of course.
JL: It works totally.
JC: But it was like “Ooh!”
JL: The gore was amazing.
JC: I was eight years old when I saw that.
JL: Frankenstein’s monster, the Creature. He’s always very sympathetic to me.
JC: Yeah, it’s sad because he had no choice in his existence.
JL: Doctor Frankenstein in the Hammer films—Peter Cushing—becomes the monster.
JC: That’s what’s so fabulous. He’s great, and evil. But poor Christopher Lee in that movie is kind of just walking flesh.
JL: OK, so what about zombies? Zombies were Voodoo zombies; then, starting with George [George A. Romero] really, they were vampire zombies. George copied his zombies from an Italian movie, The Last Man on Earth[Ubaldo Ragona, 1964] with Vincent Price, based on the Richard Matheson novel. Did you ever see that?
JC: Yes, I did.
JL: Because I said to George: “You got your zombies from that,” and he said, “Absolutely!” But you know, the idea of zombies, they were Voodoo, and then they became caused by disease, accidents, radiation spills…
JC: There was a film in 1959 that no one mentions, a movie called Invisible Invaders. Invisible moon people come down here and take over dead bodies, and the dead bodies rise up. Edward L. Cahn, who also did It! The Terror From Beyond Space[1958], directed it. Invisible Invaderswas the first rising dead movie that I can remember.
JL: So, do you know what a ghoul is?
JC: Tell me.
JL: Well, a ghoul is basically a re-animated corpse.
JC: That’s a zombie.
JL: A zombie is also a re-animated corpse. See, I never understood it.
JC: It’s the Walking Dead.
JL: The Walking Dead, exactly. But a ghoul knows what he’s doing and has a purpose. Zombies are either eating or killing machines, and they just shamble around. Why do you think zombies are so popular now?
JC: Everybody’s been re-making Night of the Living Deadsince 1968. Over and over. I’ve never seen anything like it. Specifically the rules of Night of the Living Dead.
JL: Like shooting zombies in the head to kill them?
JC: Everything about it! George A. Romero transformed horror movies. He really did.
JL: Well, Halloween[John Carpenter, 1978] inspired many other films. Here’s a question: In the first Halloween, Mike Myers (the killer) is clearly human.
JC: Sort of.
JL: No, he’s human. The only thing that’s supernatural about him is that he gets up and walks away after he’s been shot.
JC: But he’s everywhere. His behavior is of the other world. He’s partially supernatural, but nothing is explained. It’s an intentional overlay on this kind of banal story of a guy running around killing people.
JL: Now, what about giant monsters, like Godzilla?
JC: I love Godzilla. He’s everything to every generation. He was friendly, he was evil, he works forJapan, he works againstJapan, he fights other monsters…
JL: Now what is this big thing about dinosaurs? In movies, we always have people coexisting with dinosaurs. You know One Million Years B.C.[Don Chaffey, 1966] and all that kind of stuff… I asked Ray Harryhausen why he thinks that is, and he said, “Because without people, it’s boring!”
JC: Well, I think that’s true. I’ve got a question for you, pal! What is the Golem?
JL: The Golem? It’s made of clay, very much like Frankenstein. They say it’s a legend, but it’s not. I can’t remember the name of the guy who wrote it (Berthold Auerbach for his 1837 novel Spinoza), but it’s set in Prague and it’s a story about the rabbi of a ghetto where the Jews are being killed, who makes this clay model, and he comes alive through Kaballah and prayer. The Golem is basically a monster, an avenger for the Jews. But then he falls in love with a Gentile. There are three movies where Paul Wegener wrote, directed, and starred as the Golem. But they’re kind of anti-Semitic movies; they’re weird!
But let’s get back to zombies. Why are zombies so popular now?
JC: I don’t know. They started as something actually frightening; when you saw Night of the Living Deadin 1968, it was actually scary. You started worrying what you were going to see. Are the filmmakers going to go too far here and show me something I don’t want to see? When the girl goes after her mother…
JL: No, her father. You saw the zombies eat her mother, and then she goes after her father.
JC: Yeah, her father. And she chomps up the bones! But one of the things George [A. Romero, the director] said was, every time he did one of those zombie movies, critics would come and visit the set, and all they’d want is to be a zombie… that’s all they’d want!
JL: Do you think the appeal of zombies has something to do with death? Or is it not even about that any more?
JC: No. It’s us. As George says: “They’re us.”
JL: That’s a good title: “Zombies Are Us.”
JC: What do you think, John? Are you going to make it? You could do it as a comedy!
JL: Everyone’s making them. Now, I have another one for you—monsters in the ocean. Jawsis a monster movie.
JC: But it’s not based in any kind of fantasy world. It’s not a monster created by science.