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A review by markyon
Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman
4.0
Johnny Alucard, Book 4 of the Anno Dracula series, is not something that I ever expected to see, but I’m very glad I did.
For Book 3, (Dracula Cha Cha Cha) published in 1998, seemed to draw things to a definite close – Vlad Tepes, Count Dracula of the Undead, was beheaded, his ashes spread into flowing water and gone, an ending which would normally pretty much decide a villain’s fate.
And yet, like the best of the undead, fifteen years after the last novel (Dracula Cha Cha Cha) we’re back to Kim’s world, an alternate reality where for decades vampires (‘the undead’) live alongside the living, using the ‘warm bloods’ as a source of food, as an entertainment, as a plaything.
For those who don’t know, the series shows an alternative history that reflects how culture deals with the consequences of this, from the 1880’s to the First World War and the 1920’s, and with Cha Cha Cha the 1950’s and 60’s. With Johnny Alucard, subtitled ‘Anno Dracula 1976-1991’, we’re probably in our last book of the 20th century.
Johnny Alucard begins in Transylvania in 1976 where one of our heroines of the series, vampire Kate Reed, is a consultant on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled production of Dracula. Facing appalling conditions, local difficulties and production issues, Kate and Coppola return to Hollywood to begin again, but bringing with them a young vampire outcast, Ion Popescu, who Coppola employed as a member of the film crew in Transylvania.
Now renamed Johnny Pop, the young man settles into the Hollywood lifestyle of girls, drink and drugs, making his name selling a dangerously addictive drug that confers vampire powers on its users. As Johnny stalks the streets of Manhattan and Hollywood, sinking his fangs ever deeper into the zeitgeist of 1980s America, it seems the past might not be dead after all…
In terms of structure, Johnny Alucard is similar to the other books in the series in that there are six main stories in the novel, separated by five ‘Interludes’. Some of these have been published before as novellas. As ever with these Titan Books publications, there is supplementary material at the back. This time there are two appendices: Destroying Drella, which purports to be an essay by Kathleen Conklin about Andy Warhol’s fascination with vampyrism, and Welles’ Lost Draculas, an article by ‘Jonathan Gates’ summarising the many attempts of Orson Welles to complete his film version of Stoker’s tale. Both of these add detail to some of the events in the main body of the novel and are interesting additions to the novel.
Kim once again uses his encyclopaedic knowledge of film and movie making here to create an exciting tale that highlights the hedonistic lifestyle of Hollywood in the 1970’s, but with – erm, added bite. As usual, there’s a brain-straining list of homages and references for anyone who wants to know nicely listed at the back, but the tale is entertaining enough to work without them. Our heroines of earlier Anno Dracula novels, Kate Reed, Penelope Churchward and Genevieve Dieudonne, are intertwined throughout to create both continuity and a point from which all these events can be observed.
There’s some nice little ‘other’ touches, as well. Some of the short chapters in the first part of the novel are Coppola’s Dracula script as if written by John Milius, which are a delight – think Conan as Dracula, with some very cheesy (and yet rather appropriate) dialogue. Similarly there’s a knowing wink with extracts from two versions of an Orson Welles Dracula, first in 1939/40 (where it echoes Citizen Kane) to a jazzier version in the 1980’s. Welles himself goes from portraying Dracula to Van Helsing between the two versions.
Because we’re now ever closer to the present day, part of the fun is reading how Kim merges real people with his fantasy world. There are mentions of so many still-known names and cultural reference points, from Andy Warhol, and John Lennon to Orson Welles and Stephen Spielberg, from Colombo to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that much of the book is enjoyed by just seeing who or what appears next. This is apparent from the start. One of my most enjoyable parts is at the beginning when Kim mixes some of the apparently real (and often quite jaw-dropping) stories associated with the filming of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with his alternate version of Dracula – Martin Sheen’s heart attack whilst filming, Robert Duvall’s famous line from Apocalypse Now re-written about vampires.
The story then becomes something else when our characters reach America. Most of the books this far have concentrated on vampires in Britain and Europe, but here Kim lets them loose in the USA. We have a tale of drugs (here called ‘drac’), vampires and Andy Warhol, fused with an energy and seedy excitement often associated with those cocaine-filled days of the 1970’s and 80’s but with a Horror twist, and some provocative social commentary:
“In the months he had been in New York, Johnny had learned that being an American was just like being a vampire, to feed off the dead and go on and on, making a virtue of unoriginality, waxing a corpse-face to beauty. In a country of surfaces, no one cared about the rot that lay beneath the smile, the shine and the dollar.”
The latter parts of the novel show Johnny’s evolution into Johnny Alucard (and if you haven’t realised by now, read that surname back in reverse order) – the age of the vampire as King of America, Anni Draculae.
Getting there we encounter a variety of stories, with a great wry sense of humour (Debbie does Dracula, anyone?) Many of the tales are about drugs and film making, a process not always mutually exclusive. In the 1980’s Orson Welles is funded to create the ultimate Dracula picture, better than the Coppola version mentioned earlier, only to find that, once again, fate determines things otherwise. Penelope Churchward shows us a top-secret American vampire-soldier project, Kate Reed finds herself the target of a vampire assassination group.
In its latter stages, Johnny Alucard becomes a tale more about the decline of Hollywood, the business it has become and the lifestyle it promotes, a sad reflection of the filmic glory it once had. By the 1990’s the film industry is a place of defeated dreams rather than celluloid celebration. I can’t help but feel that this is a reflection of Kim’s personal view, although it is always dangerous to feel that you have determined the personal views of a writer when reading their work. The ending brings the disparate stories together and ties things up fairly well.
In terms of writing, there’s a fifteen year gap between Cha Cha Cha and Alucard. Kim has been rather busy – reviewer for Empire Magazine and author of many other non-fiction and fiction novels, he’s not let the grass grow under his feet. What this time has also done is allow the writer to develop his craft, and the technical skill and ambition of Johnny Alucard shows that evolution clearly. This is a denser, much more complex and nuanced book in the Anno Dracula series, which shows an intelligence, an intensity, a knowing wink in a novel designed to homage as well as entertain that many other similar books lack.
Johnny Alucard is an interesting and entertaining addition to the Anno Dracula series. I think it will be best appreciated if you have read the earlier novels, but it is not essential, for its well-referenced irreverency, meticulous cultural referencing and satirical commentary make this an accessible and worthwhile read. Despite being a book I never thought would be assembled, I’m very pleased I got the chance to read it. A great Halloween read.
For Book 3, (Dracula Cha Cha Cha) published in 1998, seemed to draw things to a definite close – Vlad Tepes, Count Dracula of the Undead, was beheaded, his ashes spread into flowing water and gone, an ending which would normally pretty much decide a villain’s fate.
And yet, like the best of the undead, fifteen years after the last novel (Dracula Cha Cha Cha) we’re back to Kim’s world, an alternate reality where for decades vampires (‘the undead’) live alongside the living, using the ‘warm bloods’ as a source of food, as an entertainment, as a plaything.
For those who don’t know, the series shows an alternative history that reflects how culture deals with the consequences of this, from the 1880’s to the First World War and the 1920’s, and with Cha Cha Cha the 1950’s and 60’s. With Johnny Alucard, subtitled ‘Anno Dracula 1976-1991’, we’re probably in our last book of the 20th century.
Johnny Alucard begins in Transylvania in 1976 where one of our heroines of the series, vampire Kate Reed, is a consultant on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled production of Dracula. Facing appalling conditions, local difficulties and production issues, Kate and Coppola return to Hollywood to begin again, but bringing with them a young vampire outcast, Ion Popescu, who Coppola employed as a member of the film crew in Transylvania.
Now renamed Johnny Pop, the young man settles into the Hollywood lifestyle of girls, drink and drugs, making his name selling a dangerously addictive drug that confers vampire powers on its users. As Johnny stalks the streets of Manhattan and Hollywood, sinking his fangs ever deeper into the zeitgeist of 1980s America, it seems the past might not be dead after all…
In terms of structure, Johnny Alucard is similar to the other books in the series in that there are six main stories in the novel, separated by five ‘Interludes’. Some of these have been published before as novellas. As ever with these Titan Books publications, there is supplementary material at the back. This time there are two appendices: Destroying Drella, which purports to be an essay by Kathleen Conklin about Andy Warhol’s fascination with vampyrism, and Welles’ Lost Draculas, an article by ‘Jonathan Gates’ summarising the many attempts of Orson Welles to complete his film version of Stoker’s tale. Both of these add detail to some of the events in the main body of the novel and are interesting additions to the novel.
Kim once again uses his encyclopaedic knowledge of film and movie making here to create an exciting tale that highlights the hedonistic lifestyle of Hollywood in the 1970’s, but with – erm, added bite. As usual, there’s a brain-straining list of homages and references for anyone who wants to know nicely listed at the back, but the tale is entertaining enough to work without them. Our heroines of earlier Anno Dracula novels, Kate Reed, Penelope Churchward and Genevieve Dieudonne, are intertwined throughout to create both continuity and a point from which all these events can be observed.
There’s some nice little ‘other’ touches, as well. Some of the short chapters in the first part of the novel are Coppola’s Dracula script as if written by John Milius, which are a delight – think Conan as Dracula, with some very cheesy (and yet rather appropriate) dialogue. Similarly there’s a knowing wink with extracts from two versions of an Orson Welles Dracula, first in 1939/40 (where it echoes Citizen Kane) to a jazzier version in the 1980’s. Welles himself goes from portraying Dracula to Van Helsing between the two versions.
Because we’re now ever closer to the present day, part of the fun is reading how Kim merges real people with his fantasy world. There are mentions of so many still-known names and cultural reference points, from Andy Warhol, and John Lennon to Orson Welles and Stephen Spielberg, from Colombo to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that much of the book is enjoyed by just seeing who or what appears next. This is apparent from the start. One of my most enjoyable parts is at the beginning when Kim mixes some of the apparently real (and often quite jaw-dropping) stories associated with the filming of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with his alternate version of Dracula – Martin Sheen’s heart attack whilst filming, Robert Duvall’s famous line from Apocalypse Now re-written about vampires.
The story then becomes something else when our characters reach America. Most of the books this far have concentrated on vampires in Britain and Europe, but here Kim lets them loose in the USA. We have a tale of drugs (here called ‘drac’), vampires and Andy Warhol, fused with an energy and seedy excitement often associated with those cocaine-filled days of the 1970’s and 80’s but with a Horror twist, and some provocative social commentary:
“In the months he had been in New York, Johnny had learned that being an American was just like being a vampire, to feed off the dead and go on and on, making a virtue of unoriginality, waxing a corpse-face to beauty. In a country of surfaces, no one cared about the rot that lay beneath the smile, the shine and the dollar.”
The latter parts of the novel show Johnny’s evolution into Johnny Alucard (and if you haven’t realised by now, read that surname back in reverse order) – the age of the vampire as King of America, Anni Draculae.
Getting there we encounter a variety of stories, with a great wry sense of humour (Debbie does Dracula, anyone?) Many of the tales are about drugs and film making, a process not always mutually exclusive. In the 1980’s Orson Welles is funded to create the ultimate Dracula picture, better than the Coppola version mentioned earlier, only to find that, once again, fate determines things otherwise. Penelope Churchward shows us a top-secret American vampire-soldier project, Kate Reed finds herself the target of a vampire assassination group.
In its latter stages, Johnny Alucard becomes a tale more about the decline of Hollywood, the business it has become and the lifestyle it promotes, a sad reflection of the filmic glory it once had. By the 1990’s the film industry is a place of defeated dreams rather than celluloid celebration. I can’t help but feel that this is a reflection of Kim’s personal view, although it is always dangerous to feel that you have determined the personal views of a writer when reading their work. The ending brings the disparate stories together and ties things up fairly well.
In terms of writing, there’s a fifteen year gap between Cha Cha Cha and Alucard. Kim has been rather busy – reviewer for Empire Magazine and author of many other non-fiction and fiction novels, he’s not let the grass grow under his feet. What this time has also done is allow the writer to develop his craft, and the technical skill and ambition of Johnny Alucard shows that evolution clearly. This is a denser, much more complex and nuanced book in the Anno Dracula series, which shows an intelligence, an intensity, a knowing wink in a novel designed to homage as well as entertain that many other similar books lack.
Johnny Alucard is an interesting and entertaining addition to the Anno Dracula series. I think it will be best appreciated if you have read the earlier novels, but it is not essential, for its well-referenced irreverency, meticulous cultural referencing and satirical commentary make this an accessible and worthwhile read. Despite being a book I never thought would be assembled, I’m very pleased I got the chance to read it. A great Halloween read.