Short Film: Dracula’s Guest

This 2021 short film comes in at 20 minutes and is a puppet retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest, a posthumously published short story that is thought to have been an expunged opening to Dracula. This short was created by Mark Dickinson – whose work we have looked at previously, along with his band the Others, in Under the Sunset (in truth I have several silent pieces Mark did that I must post about at some point). This piece is narrated by William Westwater, who is the vocal talent for the excellent band Fear Incorporated.

in the crypt

The film follows Dracula’s Guest very closely – there are some aesthetic changes, for instance the use of a constable coming to the rescue rather than an officer with his soldiers, and some that were likely to help production – rain and a hail storm rather than snow, for instance. One choice was to decide on a date of 1898 – a year after the Dracula novel was published. Be that as it may we do get an accurate retelling, which I won’t spoil. One aesthetic choice I enjoyed was showing the Count when his note is read and rendering him in the Orlock style.

Dracula

The filmmakers use some interesting footage within the film, for instance a film of a steam train or a clip out of the classic Swedish film Häxan (1922) to illustrate Walpurgis Night. There are also stock stills both establishing and as backdrops. Not all worked – the typically British looking train station platform struggled to establish us being in Bavaria – especially with the visible signs being in English. This is a minor niggle however, and the constructed graveyard looked fabulous. You can judge for yourself, however, as you can see the short, embedded below. At the time of writing there was no IMDb page.