Downs – "I Traded My Eyes"

I don’t think I ever got the real erotic subtext of Dracula until I heard it on radio.

Here’s Dracula by the CBS Radio Mystery Theater from 1974, courtesy of Relic Radio.

Run it up to around 11:55 to the point where Mina Harker is watching Dracula give Lucy Westenra the kiss of death. Mina somehow gets into Lucy’s head, and we get this description.

I watched Dracula as he approached my bed … there was a deliberate voluptuousness about him that I found both thrilling and repulsive. … As the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin, and seemed about to fasten on my throat …  and then two hard dents of two sharp teeth just touching and pausing there … I closed my eyes in a langorous ecstasy … I waited there with a beating heart.

Anybody else need a cold shower?

It’s a weird adaptation. It spends a lot of time talking about Lucy’s victims, and ends abruptly with the stake through Lucy’s heart.That part is essentially cut out of the Bela Lugosi version, if memory serves.

The killing of Dracula takes place completely offstage, through narration. I guess they had to cut it short to make room for the radio pr0n.

(Above picture is a still from BalletMet’s Dracula, which is the 2nd most erotic Dracula adaptation I’ve ever seen. I spoke about Comix & the Ballet in 2012 on the Panel blog.)