The Last Voyage of Demetrius: Which Great Directors Made This 20-Year Project?

What is it about? The haunting final chapter of Bram Stoker’s fantasy classic Dracula, Demetrius’ Last Voyage follows the tragic fate of Demetrius, a merchant ship hired to transport a private cargo of 50 wooden crates from the Carpathian Mountains to London. Overwhelmed by strange events, the crew of the Demetrius try to avoid the relentless presence that attacks them every night. When the ship finally reaches the shores of England, it is nothing but wrecked and charred wreckage, without a single survivor on board.

A particular episode of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

If Dracula Adapted numerous times for film, this is the first time a film has accurately dealt with the transport of a vampire from his native Carpathians to England. The Count boards the Demetrius, a ship loaded with a dozen wooden boxes filled with black soil, including one in which he is hiding.

Chapter VII of Bram Stoker’s famous novel mentions the last crossing of the Demetrius in an extract from an English diary. Dailygraph An article dated August 8, 1897 describes a violent storm that suddenly broke out near the small English coastal town of Whitby. In a series of short notes, the entry describes a 4-week voyage, from July 6 to August 4, during which strange events seem to have overtaken the ship and its crew.

Alien in the ocean

While reading the screenplay written by Braj Shute and Zach Olkiewicz, based on earlier ideas, André Ovredal found similarities with Ridley Scott’s cult film, Alien: An Intense Horror Film, with a crew of mostly proletarians who had to. He will meet an unknown and indomitable opponent. “For me, it was an 1897 ocean version of Alien, with Dracula as an extraterrestrial being.”He confides.

For producer Mike Medavoy, the parallel with Alien is not anecdotal: “During the years of working at United Artists, I rubbed my shoulders Walter Hill who was working on the original Alien script at the time, and the concept behind closed doors, with no way to escape, intrigued me. In Demetrius, the demon is transported to London, where he intends to start a new life. And as for Alien, the heart of the movie is what happens on that ship. »

A long time project

For the producers, Bradley J. Fisher, Mike Medavoy and Arnold W. Messer, adapting a specific passage Dracula Bram Stoker allows us to approach the vampire myth from a new angle. But they needed a lot of patience to implement this project, which emerged in the screenwriter’s head almost two decades ago. Many directors have succeeded: David Slade, Neil Marshall, then Guillermo del Toro, who refused because of the schedule.

He suggested Norwegian film director Andre Ovredal, whose horror film “Horrible Stories” he created, to the producers. Ovredal admits to being intimidated by the task: “I felt like I had to wear shoes that were too big for me. This meant competing with such masterpieces as Nosferatu or Dracula. We should have aimed very high. Our goal was never to make a big, epic, authoritative film. We wanted to make a strong and commendable horror film. »

A regular monster

In the role of Dracula, we meet the Spanish actor Javier Botet, who is used to the roles of monsters. We saw him in the skin of scary creatures in the films: “Mother”, “The Witches of Zugaramurd”, “Crimson Peak”, “Slender Man” or “Scary Stories” directed by Andre Ovredal.

Suffering from a disease called Marfan syndrome, which is characterized by hyperlaxity (excessive elasticity of the peri-articular tissues), Javier Bote is two meters tall and has particularly long and thin fingers, hands and feet.

The creation of Dracula

The production brought in special makeup manager Goran Lundström, who won two Oscars for his work on The Border and House of Gucci. The team tried to capture on screen the terrifying description of Dracula as depicted in the script: a nightmarish face, a bone-white body, razor-sharp teeth and wide-spread wings. While digital effects were certainly used, the team was very much tied to the use of traditional special effects, with prosthetics and make-up.

A creature appears in five stages of its physical evolution, which Goran Lundström called:

1. An emaciated and hungry Nosferatu
2. Skeleton werewolf
3. Nosferatu the man
4. Nosferatu bat
5. Dracula is fully imbibed, the stage at which he can blend into the human mass.

Stages 1 and 4 were largely inspired by the appearance of Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck, in Nosferatu. Javier Bote shaved his head for the role. Its preparation required 3 to 5 hours of work: the silicone prostheses were first attached to the head, and then it had to be slipped into the latex suit.

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