THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER

[GRWelsh]

I have to go see this since I'm a Dracula fan. It looks like a dramatization of a single chapter from the novel DRACULA, which is an interesting idea. I'm getting a vibe from it that is similar to the ALIEN movie with the crew and passengers being stalked by Dracula in his most monstrous incarnation. From what I remember in the novel, there were no survivors mentioned. If I had to make a prediction, someone on the DEMETER will have to be the protagonist, and one or more will try to stand up to Dracula and some may survive by getting off the ship before it gets to Whitby in England.

[GRWelsh]

I reread the chapter from DRACULA that this movie is based upon. There isn't much to it. It is a one month voyage told through the point of view of a newspaper clipping that included the ship's log written by the captain, July 6th to August 4th. The ship starts out with a crew of nine, and they begin to vanish one by one without anyone knowing what is happening, although they occasionally think they see a tall, thin man walking on the ship. The timeline from the log is:

6 July: Set sail from Varna with a crew of 5 hands (Russians), 2 mates (one Roumanian), a cook and the captain.
13 July: After passing Cape Matapan in Greece, crew seems scared but will not speak out.
14 July: Crew says there is something but would say what, and crossed themselves.
16 July: One of the crew, Petroksky, is missing after being relieved from his watch by Abramoff. The downcast crew says they expected something of the kind, but wouldn't say more than that there was something aboard.
17 July: one of the men, Olgaren, confided to the captain that he thought there was a strange man aboard the ship. On his watch during a rain-storm he saw a tall, thin man walking on the deck and then disappearing. The captain orders the ship to be searched from stem to stern. After the search, the men are relieved and return to work cheerfully.
22 July: After three days of rough weather, the men are too busy to be frightened and they pass the Straits of Gibraltar.
24 July: Another man disappears, and the men are all in a panic of fear. They set a double watch as they fear to be alone.
28 July: They've gone through four days in a sort of maelstrom, and the wind a tempest, with no sleep for anyone. Men all worn out, and wind starts to abate.
29 July: Single watch as men too tired to double. Now without second mate, and crew in panic. First mate and captain agree to go armed henceforth.
30 July: Weather fine, all sails set, as they are nearing England. Captain is awakened by first mate to tell him man of watch and steersman are missing. That leaves only the captain, the first mate and two hands left to work the ship.
1 August: Two days of fog, and not a sail sighted. Ship is in the English Channel, and without power to work sails has to run before the wind. They dare not lower the sails, as they could not raise them again. Ship seems to be drifting to some terrible doom.
2 August: Captain is awakened by a cry and joins first mate on deck who also heard a cry and there is no sign of the man on watch. Fog seems to move with the ship as it moves along the North Foreland into the North Sea.
3 August: Captain goes to relieve the man at the wheel, but no one is there. The mate tells the captain that on the watch the previous night he "saw it, like a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale. It was in the bows, and looking out. I crept behind it, and gave it my knife; but the knife went through it, empty as the air." The captain thinks the mate is mad as he searches the ship and then says "You had better come too, captain, before it is too late. He is there. I know the secret now. The sea will save me from Him, and it is all that is left!" The mate throws himself into the sea, and the captain believes it was he, the first mate, who slew the others one by one.
4 August: Still in a fog too thick for the sunrise to pierce, the captain ties his hands to the wheel after seeing the monster the night before.
8 August: After a storm, the Demeter arrives in the harbor, with the corpse of the captain still tied to the wheel, and his log kept in a bottle in his pocket.

From what I read online, Stoker's original name for the Russian ship was the Dmitry or Demitrius Pupoff and then it was changed to Demeter for publication. From what I can tell, only three of the nine crew are named, the 5 hands being Russian and one of the mates being Roumanian. For the movie, it appears they are changing some things in order to have English speakers, as well as having passengers in addition to crew.

[geneweigel]

All the clippings put the Demeter story together.

Looking at the reviews, it seems its so so.

I recognize the lead as a character from the WALKING DEAD show (2010-2021), he was a forgettable character from the middle of its run so that is not promising.

The development was 30 years long originally seen as a Coppola (1992's BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA) spin off with Jude Law and Viggo Mortensen coming and going as leads.

I just hope it isn't politically correct as it seems so that I can actually be motivated to watch.

[GRWelsh]

My hard copy of DRACULA is a beautiful book that I bought in 1986. It is illustrated by Greg Hildebrandt and published by the Unicorn Publishing House (1985). It has a soft cloth cover with no dust cover so I should have kept it in a plastic bag to preserve it better! It's still in pretty good shape, but the dust has slightly affected it. The illustration for the Demeter chapter is in pencil showing the captain's body with hands lashed to the wheel and still holding a cross and wrapped up in rosary beads.

Rereading this reminds me that Dracula had powers over the weather. His origin is implied as coming from being a sorcerer who studied at a school named Scholomance near Lake Hermanstadt. At this school of dark magic and sorcery only ten students were admitted at a time and the tenth the Devil claims as his own.

From Chapter 18:

The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due.

From Chapter 23:

He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

From the Wiki article on Scholomance:

The Scholomance (Romanian: Șolomanță [ʃoloˈmantsə], Solomonărie [solomonəˈri.e]) was a fabled school of black magic in Romania, especially in the region of Transylvania. It was run by the Devil, according to folkloric accounts. The school enrolled about ten students to become the Solomonari. Courses taught included the speech of animals and magic spells. One of the graduates was chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker and tasked with riding a dragon to control the weather.

The school lay underground, and the students remained unexposed to sunlight for the seven-year duration of their study. The dragon (zmeu or balaur) was kept submerged in a mountaintop lake, south of Sibiu, according to some accounts.

Folklore
An early source on the Scholomance and Dracula folklore was the article "Transylvanian Superstitions" (1885), written by Scottish expatriate Emily Gerard. It has been established for certain this article was an important source that Bram Stoker consulted for his novel Dracula. Gerard also published similar material in Land Beyond the Forest (1888), which Stoker might have also read, and other commentators stated this was Stoker's direct source for Scholomance in his novel.

Twenty years earlier, a description of the Scholomance and its pupils (the Scholomonariu) was given in an article written by Wilhelm Schmidt (1817–1901), a German schoolteacher at the Romanian town of Hermannstadt.

Some modern commentators have referred to the school as "L'École du Dragon" or "The School of the Dragon".

Curriculum
The school, it was believed, recruited a handful of pupils from the local population. Enrollment could be seven, ten, or thirteen pupils. Here they learned the language of all living things, the secrets of nature, and magic. Some sources add specifically the pupils were instructed on how to cast magic spells, ride flying dragons, and control the rain.

The duration of their study was seven or nine years, and the final assignment for graduation required the copying of one's entire knowledge of humanity into a "Solomonar's book".

There was also the belief that the Devil instructed at the Scholomance. Moses Gaster remarked that this association with the Devil indicates that the memory of the school's origins as having to do with King Solomon had completely faded.

Location
The Scholomance, according to Gerard, was at some unspecified location deep in the mountains, but the dragon (correctly spelled zmeu, though given phonetically in German as ismeju) was stabled underwater in a small mountaintop lake south of Hermannstadt in central Romania (modern Sibiu, Romania, called Nagyszeben in Hungarian). Stoker's novel locates the Scholomance near a non-existent "Lake Hermannstadt".

The Solomonărie, as it was called by the Romanians, was situated underground, according to Romanian folklorist Simion Florea Marian. Students there shunned sunlight for the seven-year duration of their training.

Weathermaker
Further information: Solomonari § Dragon-riders and weather
By some accounts, one of the ten graduating students would be chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker (German: Wettermacher) and to ride a dragon (zmeu in Romanian) in this errand; every time the dragon glanced at the clouds, rainfall would come. But according to legend, God made sure the dragon would not weary, because if it plummeted, it would devour a great part of the earth. The Solomonari's dragon-mount was, however, a balaur according to folklorist Marian's account.

Origins
See also: Solomonari § Origin and name
Scholomance is a Germanization, Solomonărie was the Romanian form according to the popular beliefs collected by Marian, and an alternate Șolomanțâ is given elsewhere.

These forms suggest a tie to King Solomon, and it has been pointed out that one account in folklore describes the Solomonari as disciples of the weather-controlling ways of Solomon. Additionally, some assimilation might have occurred with Salamanca, Spain, the famed city of learning, with medieval stories of a sorcery taught by the devil located in the Cueva de Salamanca [es].

History of the Germanized form
Scholomance has been suspected of not being a genuine Romanian term, but rather a misnomer, created through the corrupted Germanization of "Solomonari", the term for the students and not the school. Such a view was given by Elizabeth Miller, a scholar specializing in Dracula studies.

A mistaken idea that "Scholomance" was a neologism first reported in 1885 by Emily Gerard was at one time current in English-speaking circles. The terms "Scholomance" and "Scholomonariu" appear in the Austrian journal Österreichische Revue in 1865.

[geneweigel]

I still have the 1975 Annotated Dracula that was given to me by my begetter Richard Weigel around 1979 (When I was about 10 or 11). The dust jacket is long gone and it looks like a beaten murky black grimoire. The dust jacket had his inscription unfortunately but I recall a full image of Dracula drawn with a calligraphy pen. He had mocked it up as an invitation from Dracula. It looks like the "annotater" Leonard Wolf died in 2019.

[GRWelsh]

I just saw it and I'd give it about a 6/10. The sets, cinematography, and creature design were the best parts of the movie. There were a few CGI moments that looked weak. Writing was just okay with no real strong characters and nothing particularly original.