Dear Alex,
Yes I can remember quite a few things but I hope they’re not too personal…I liked the Hammer writing (the titles) -it reminded me of the First Reich typography-I wonder if that was intentional considering the era the film was made-I wonder if the First world war still represented the horror of the second…twice it happened it must have felt like it was going to happen forever.
I thought Christopher Lee was Peter Cushing and I was having little fantasies about him swimming in the sea and imagining his fangs taking in the North Sea…and then Doctor Van Helsing arrived and I realised I had got it wrong. I couldn’t imagine what Dracula’s body was like anyway, so it solved a problem for me-I thought maybe…My mother had an Edwardian Schoolmaster doll. She had patched his face up with plaster and watercolour and he looked like those WWI Pachendale victims that had their faces patched up-to be left with half of their face with an unnatural sheen. I always wanted to see what the Schoolmaster’s body was like under his black gown and trousers-but his legs looked like matchsticks and didn’t join up with his Edwardian spats. Maybe I am thinking of Mumra but that’s what I thought Dracula’s body might be like. I don’t think he had need of a body did he? The women seemed delighted with his mouth. When did the acceptance of the clitoris as useful and important come about? I remember my aunt saying that for a woman to have sex on top of a man was seen as outrageously emasculating.
What else do I remember…that the unpleasant action occurred downstairs in the cellar. The glacial waters that flowed outside Dracula’s castle reminded me of Switzerland…..The deep flowing water of Geneva was very exciting for me…I remember looking over a bridge at the cormorants underwater and wondering if I would ever come back and see it and if I would be married by then. I fell asleep in the park after that, setting my alarm clock, and was woken up often by annoying men trying to ‘help’ me. The students had gone to the United Nations and I had fainted so I was allowed to wander around on my own.
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