Creature feature: Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Chapter seven of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula centres on the Captain’s log for the sailing vessel Demeter’s voyage between Varna in Bulgaria, and Whitby in England, as it unwittingly transports a vampire to his new hunting ground. 

When the Demeter runs aground on the English coast on 8 August 1897, its captain is found dead with his wrists lashed to the ship’s wheel by the chain of his crucifix. He has been dead for about two days, but one hand is still clenched around his final entry to the ship’s log. The full log reveals a growing sense of unease and a string of tragic deaths and disappearances that whittles the Demeter’s crew to just four survivors by the time it arrives in English waters. But there is a fifth being stalking the decks.

In the Captain’s log, one of the Demeter’s sailors, Olgaren, describes a stranger onboard with them as, “A tall, thin man, who was not like any of the crew,” and in his 3 August log entry, the Captain writes that the first mate describes him – or It – as follows: “I saw It, like a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale.” On 4 August, for the first and last time, the Captain sees the stranger himself. In his final entry, he writes with dread, “I am growing weaker, and the night is coming on.” 

New horror film The Last Voyage of the Demeter uses the unfortunate Captain Eliot’s (Liam Cunningham) log as a jumping-off point to explore how the OG vampire, Count Dracula (Javier Botet), treats the crew of the Demeter as a combination of in-flight snack packs, and onboard entertainment. But say goodbye to your suave, ladykiller Drac with his widow’s peak and cape. This vampire is a bat-eared beast.

Stream The Last Voyage of the Demeter now.

The bat man

In the hands of producer Bradley Fischer, director Andre Øvredal, creature designer and sculptor Göran Lundström, special effects makeup artists Jörn Seifert and Tamar Aviv, and makeup designer Heike Merk, Count Dracula starts off his voyage on the Demeter far closer to the eel-toothed, maggot-white, and skeletal Nosferatu than aristocratic count.

Andre wanted an animalistic Dracula who’s fragile at the start of the voyage, like a waterlogged and yellowing zombie who’s desperate and addicted to blood. Even in this weakened state, the 400-year-old walking corpse is stronger than anyone in the crew. And he takes a malicious pleasure in finding that out. It’s a reaction that’s readable from a distance, since the face design in that phase gives Dracula a permanent, spike-toothed smile and glinting, lidless eyes (replaced with CGI on screen) that follow his prey’s every twitch. As Dracula discovers how easily he can feed on the crew, Javier shows how much he enjoys their fear and his own evil, as he mimics their reactions, chases them around, and lets them think that they can escape him, only to pounce. 

The more Dracula feeds, the more he regains his powers. Bat wings start to form from the skin flaps on his back, and his starved torso grows larger. His skin darkens and repairs as he becomes more batlike. His back and neck develop the kind of musculature that would support wings (if your human bones were made of air). This black bat version of Dracula is mostly brought to screen via CGI, rather than by prosthetics. But Javier still performed the movements and interacted with the cast in these scenes. The VFX artists at MPC then used that film footage to reference his eyeline, his reactions and his performance, while animating his bat-monster sequences. 

The man bat

In everyday life, Spanish actor Javier Botet – a specialist in creature roles like The Crooked Man in The Conjuring 2, the wight who nearly catches Aria under the library table in Game of Thrones, Season 8 episode 3, and Set in the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy – easily fulfils the only three descriptions we have of Dracula aboard the Demeter: tall, thin, and pale. 

Javier’s body gives him some unique advantages for the role. While he towers above his co-stars at a height of 6 feet 7 inches (2.01 m) tall, he also weighs just 123 pounds (56 kg). His uncanny flexibility, combined with his extreme height and leanness (a symptom, in Javier’s case, of a genetic connective tissue disorder called Marfan Syndrome) allowed the film’s makeup artists to flesh out their Dracula’s transforming body, from starved monster to strengthening horror, while allowing Javier to use his elongated hands and contorting limbs to terrifying effect.

Javier’s slenderness lets makeup artists pile on the prosthetics and decaying flaps of skin that will become Dracula’s wings, and still have a Dracula with proportions that look starved and ancient instead of winding up with a stocky little “bat ball” at the end. And thanks to Javier’s professionalism and experience with monster makeup, they could spend four hours a day transforming him into the creature – from zip-up painted skin suit, overlaid with makeup and built-up muscles, to all the prosthetic pieces on his face, which took three hours to apply each day – and then have him walk onto set and still give a mesmerising physical performance, contorting his body in ways that blend the human and the monster. 

What’s a couple of pointy ears and a snaggle-toothed, skeletal smile to an actor who’s worn fake breasts and wigs to play monstrous mothers and the ghosts of murdered wives?

Stream The Last Voyage of the Demeter now.