219: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (feat. Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry)

As someone who loves pinball and only watched this movie after I played the machine, this episode is perfect.

I listened to this one driving across North Dakota. Talk about WINDS!

So I always analyze vampire media as a metaphor for some kind of taboo desire that will eventually destroy the user. The very first vampire novel, the one by John Polidori, was written while he was continuing to work for his ex-lover and world champion fuckboy, Lord Byron. It’s about how a mysterious monstrous fuckboy ruins and then kills people. It’s *so* good if you know the context! Anyway, some of the earliest vampire stories use really heavy-handed opium/morphine allusions, for example. Anne Rice really popularized vampires as gay, and her timing was perfect/tragic because the second book came out right as the aids crisis was starting to really hit America. Modern vampires are almost always queer-coded, but usually not homophobically - it’s more about the dangers that lure and kill the beautiful young victims (aids, violence, drugs, etc.) So FFC’s BS’s D came out during peak Anne Rice Vampires era. It’s not at all about the monstrosity of gayness, but it’s still about vampirism as a metaphor for something. I think FFC has made it Mina’s story, and that’s why it’s thematically important for her to kill the big D at the end. Doesn’t it seem creepy to any of y’all, waiting to cross oceans of time to reclaim his wife, when Mina isn’t actually Eliasaveta? He seduces her away from her husband and won’t let her break things off. Good on her for making absolutely sure her ex from hell is really dead. Thank you for making me Feel Different Things for some girls, Winona!

MIKE MIGNOLA DID THE DESIGNS FOR ATLANTIS????

I love it when a joke doesn’t work and then you spend the next 5 minutes wallowing in it and talking about how it didn’t work. Riveting radio

Harker in Dracula: Dead and Loving it is actually Steven Weber (Gary Cole'e Waluigi)

My god what a f*cking great episode I have been weeping at work and making grotesque whimpering/snorting noises. Absolutely amazing ❤️

Once again humbly requesting a Venture Bros episode, content lords

The worst thing about the love plot IMO is how it removes Mina's agency. In the book she is THE reason the lads are able to track down & defeat Dracula (it's her idea to be put under hypnosis!), but here once she gets bit she's totally in thrall to him & her past self.

Do one theory about why Howard Hughes was Like That is that he received a mercury syphillis cure while also getting an early version of penicillin (cause he was uuuuh secretly funding a lot of US germ warfare stuff) and some of his germophobis is downstream of that (also he hit his head, a lot.)

How have you not called this episode "Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula"?

Great episode, but since Transylvania is actually part of Austria-Hungary, not Romania, when the film takes place, bad episode.

I hate when storylines get all muddled like this. In the Spotify wrapped message, you said one of you would die in 2026 but now in the pre roll for the series, Brian says he's already dead? Whats going on?

One of the reasons that Bram Stoker included Quincy was that he was touring America shortly before writing Dracula. He learned about vampires from people in Maine who were in the midst of a vampire panic (tuberculosis outbreak) and were digging up corpses to stake/behead/eat the hearts out of.

Waluigi being Dutch to Wario's German makes too much sense.

If you're going to keep doing vampire stuff, please please please do Werner Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampyre, which in my opinion is the absolute best version of that story.

This movie is the Warhammer 40k of Dracula adaptations. It has literally everything in it, and it's all turned up to 11, and it's awesome. This movie looks so beautiful and cool.

I got that PinBall Maschine for my 13th Birthday. What a wonderful machine!

I’m starting to think AJ has a thing about horses.

Is Tom Waits Waluigi to Elvis Costello's Luigi?

This movie is PEAK Goth-Camp, thanks for this one!

Coppala made that movie about Tucker? I had no idea! It's a pretty good watch actually. You could get Victoria on for it.

Vlads cast

The interstitial makes me want to see Waits dressed as the Joker belting out Downtown Train

The anti-immigrant readings of Dracula are always funny to me cause you've got an Irish guy writing a novel for a British audience about how scary those Eastern Europeans are when the furthest East a person he's ever met is from is Whitechapel. I do enjoy this movie, but I find it's a hollow comparison to the book.

As a Vampire Media Connoisseur this is not only one of my favorite vampire movies, but one of my favorite movies of all time, for all the reasons u mentioned. It also sits in this weird place for me where it's very goofy and campy and I can laugh at it but simultaneously am totally unironically on board for the whole thing. The ending actually DOES kind of affect me, like I always kinda tear up at the end and I could never figure out why!! It's just vibes. Who knows. Baffling.

Malta AND the Final Justice episode of MST3K referenced. You can go after Mayo Pete, he's mispronouncing his last name on purpose so we do not claim him.

I fully support forcing AJ to watch more movies

Omg, please cover Julie Taymor's Titus

Said "hell yeah" three full times while reading the title of this episode

Flash Gordon is the dark souls of pinball not Dracula

I outloud said "oh you shouldn't have" when I saw this topic, hell yes

OHHH HELLLL YEAAAAH this movie is so dreamy and horny i love it