10 Abandoned Scripts Better Than The Finished Movie
9. Ken Russell's Dracula Would Have Been Much Crazier Than What Killed It
Ken Russell, notable enfant terrible of cinema, has made some truly incredible films, but he's certainly an acquired taste. The Devils, Altered States and Tommy are all works of art, but they're often considered too extreme to sit through. That's to say nothing of Lisztomania, a film about composer Franz Liszt whose opening scene is a nausea-inducing single shot of the man's (Roger Daltrey) hedonistic lifestyle.
So it makes sense that he approached Bram Stoker's classic horror novel, with a cast that would include Oliver Reed in the title role, Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow, James Coburn, Peter O'Toole and Mick Fleetwood (one of these things is not like the other).
Russell's take on the count was not unlike his portrait of Liszt. "If you lived for centuries," Russell wrote of the potential film, "would you go weak in the knees at a picture of a dull clerk’s fiancée and lock yourself away in a gloomy castle? I wouldn’t. I’ve come up with a reason why Dracula would want to live forever." Apparently, however, much of the origin and debauchery featured in Russell's script was more autobiographical than faithful to the source.
That it began its existence as a proposed ballet speaks to just how garish and over-the-top Russell intended the film to be. But the success of John Badham's adaptation with Frank Langella ultimately killed the project. Russell's biographer, in the introduction to the published script, has since accused Francis Ford Coppola of plagiarism for his 90s version of the novel. And Russell himself did re-visit the vampire genre in 1988 with Lair of the White Worm.