DRACULA: SOVEREIGN OF THE DAMNED (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*                                                                                                                        As much as I admire the Marv Wolfman-Gene Colan epic that I've termed THE FALL OF DRACULA, I never would have thought anyone would have selected it as the first feature-length adaptation of a Marvel story. After all, one reason Marvel allowed Wolfman and Colan to devote the last three years of TOMB OF DRACULA to the vampire lord's tragic demise was that the comic's sales had declined. Many comics-fans esteemed the feature, but who in the early eighties cared what comics-fans thought?                                    

This ninety-minute feature (give or take a few minutes) premiered on Japanese television first and appeared in American venues like cable and video stores a couple of years later. I speculate that Toei Studios weren't so much engrossed with the TOMB OF DRACULA iteration as with the possibility of forging profitable working arrangements with Marvel Comics. To be sure, the name of Dracula certainly commanded its share of attention among Japanese audiences, just as had the name of King Kong back in 1966, when Toei produced a version of the great ape's adventures for American television. It's of passing interest that the very next year after SOVEREIGN, Toei produced a TV-film that freely adapted Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, supposedly "licensed by Marvel Entertainment," though I saw no resemblance between the TV-film and Marvel's 1970s take on the Monster. Apparently around the same time, Toei had something to do with the rather charmless 1981 SPIDER-MAN cartoon, so a relationship did develop, even though SOVEREIGN probably didn't contribute anything more than a "trial run."                                                                                                            

So how does SOVEREIGN rate next to the excellent source material? Well, apparently some literal-minded studio boss instructed writer Tadaaki Yamazaki to boil down almost everything in the last three-year run into ninety minutes, possibly trying to impress Marvel with Toei Studio's fidelity. Given that impossible task, Yamazaki deserves credit for a yeoman effort. Naturally he doesn't keep such franchise-characters as the Silver Surfer, who made a brief appearance in the long comics-arc, and though Dracula's daughter Lilith makes an appearance, someone renamed her "Layla" even though she keeps the same comic-book attire, and she's not said to be Drac's progeny, at least in the English dub. Yamazaki radically simplified the vampire-lord's origins from the comic as well. Dracula still starts out as the 16th-century warlord Vlad Tepes, a man who commits extreme cruelties to defend his country. But in SOVEREIGN, Vlad dies and Satan himself raises the warlord from death to become his agent of evil. In the comics-story Satan played a much less active role in Dracula's travails.                      

In FALL, Dracula wants to build a base of power, in part to better deal with his vampire-hunting enemies: the wheelchair-bound Quincy Harker (renamed "Hans" in the anime), Rachel Van Helsing, and Drac's distant relation Frank Drake. To this power-gathering end, Dracula finds his way to a Satanist cult, one which is about sacrifice a virgin bride to the demon, and he impersonates Satan in order to control the worshippers. Yamazaki brings in new motives: Dracula resents Satan's manipulations and intends to kill the devil's bride, named Dolores in the anime, just for spite. But after abducting Dolores, the vampire and the aborted sacrifice fall in love within mere minutes. The script does not dwell on what passes between them, but somehow the undead count begets a son on Dolores. I suppose nine months pass until the boy is born, though I'm not sure why Satan, pissed at having his bride stolen, is willing to wait that long for vengeance.                                                                               

  However much time goes by, things come to a head when the three vampire hunters overtake Dracula, while Satan instructs his followers to slay the vampire and his bride. Before Dracula can kill all the Satanists, one of them unleashes gunfire that kills the newborn. The distraught parents bury the unnamed child, but this time Heaven apparently intervenes. The babe is brought back to life, becoming a golden skinned adult who calls himself Janus, and he fights with Dracula in the name of Heaven. (A later section implies that Dolores brought Janus to life with some hidden power, but this doesn't affect the plot at all.) In the comic Janus' conflicts with Dracula go on for a while, but the script races on to the next high point: Dracula contending with Satan himself.                                       

Satan plays his trump card and removes Dracula's powers, making him into an ordinary mortal. In this form the vampire hunters won't attack him, but Dracula is desperate to recover his lost status. In New York he tries to get Layla to bite him and re-vampirize him, but she kicks him to the curb. Drac travels to Transylvania seeking help from the other vampires there, but a new lord has arisen in the meantime, and a mortal Dracula has to fight him. Drac gets his powers back, but the vampire-hunters show up, and Harker sacrifices himself to destroy the vampire-lord for all time, The End.

   

Obviously SOVEREIGN has far too many plot-threads to give any of them proper development, and no one who didn't know the source-material would be able to navigate the flood of barely explained characters and incidents. But Yamazaki does succeed in one department: he, like Marv Wolfman, makes the monstrous central character both noble and ruthless in a compelling manner.  The animators do a fine job translating the Colan images of the Count into limited movement as well-- though all of the other characters suffer by comparison, in terms of both art and writing. In the final analysis, this first feature adaptation of a Marvel comic must be judged a failure. But at least it's an interesting failure.