Saturday, January 14, 2006

Raiding Dracula?

When I first read Colour Out of Space, one section made my heart race. Then I remembered why. In the movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula which really is Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, there is a vivid scene done well where the horses are ripped to shreds by the female vampires.

Stoker actually wrote [Ch. 27. Memorandum by van Helsing], "For the snow flakes and the mist began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him. And then the horses cowered lower and lower, and moaned in terror as men do in pain. Even the madness of fright was not to them, so that they could break away. ... The horses had ceased to moan, and lay still on the ground. The snow fell on them softly, and they grew whiter. I knew that there was for the poor beasts no more of terror." {my emphasis in bold}

Lovecraft wrote, "At this point, as the column of unknown colour flared suddenly stronger and began to weave itself into fantastic suggestions of shape which each spectator described differently, there came from poor tethered Hero such a sound as no man before or since ever heard from a horse. Every person in that low-pitched sitting room stopped his ears, and Ammi turned away from the window in horror and nausea. Words could not convey it - when Ammi looked out again the hapless beast lay huddled inert on the moonlit ground between the splintered shafts of the buggy. That was the last of Hero till they buried him next day." {my emphasis in bold}

So, fellow bloggers, contemplate this. Which scene is the more terrifying?

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