THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (“De-Meet-Er”) is an embellished version of a short incident reported in Bram Stoker’s gothic horror novel DRACULA, where the vampire Dracula uses coffins of dirt to secretly board a sailing ship from Bulgaria to England and ravages the crew (the novel reproduces the ship captain’s log). THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER is a well-made horror movie and has lots of bloody and scary violence, but the filmmakers insert modern, anachronistic additions to Bram Stoker’s novel, including three new characters and a silly theme about racism, and the movie gives the original novel’s brief but positive Christian references in the captain’s log a mixed treatment.

The movie begins with the Demeter running aground off the coast of England. A coastguard officer reports that the captain’s body was found tied to the wheel. No other bodies are found, but the authorities do find the Captain’s log.

The Captain’s voice starts reading the beginning of his log. The log begins with a warning. Cut to four weeks earlier, off the coast of Bulgaria, in the Black Sea coastal city of Varna. A team of carriages from Romania delivers 50 coffins to the Demeter, a ship headed for England. Meanwhile, the first mate hires three men to complete the nine-man crew. However, when one of the men, a Romanian, sees the dragon crest on one of the crates, he declines to join the crew. So, Captain Eliot hires a black man from England named Clemens, who says he has a medical degree from Cambridge, but no one will let him practice medicine because of his skin color.

Strange, gruesome things begin to happen while the ship sails toward England. First, all the ship’s livestock, which are overseen by the Captain’s young son, Toby (a character not in the book) are found slaughtered. Their necks are all cut open in what looks like a vicious biting attack.

Next, Dr. Clemens finds one of the coffins has tumbled over, leaving a massive bit of dirt on the floor of the ship’s hold. Clemens finds a young female stowaway in the dirt. He diagnoses that she has some kind of blood disease. So, he starts giving her blood transfusions from his own arm.

The crew begins seeing a demonic looking man roaming about the ship. However, he’s very good at keeping himself hidden, and the crewmen can’t find him.

The crewmen start getting killed one by one, just like the livestock. The woman eventually wakes up. She tells Clemens that the people in her village call the demonic creature on the boat Dracula.

Will anyone survive the last voyage of the Demeter?

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER is a well-made horror movie. As such, it has lots of bloody and scary violence.

However, the filmmakers decide to turn the addition of the black doctor and the female victim of Dracula into anachronistic, politically correct themes about racism and, to a lesser extent, sexism. Also, the movie depicts the black doctor as a skeptical atheist naturalist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. He recognizes by the end, however, that Dracula is some kind of demonic evil with supernatural power.

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER depicts Dracula as some kind of demon, not as a dead man who’s become a living vampire. This is rather disappointing, not to mention false to Bram Stoker’s original novel. Also, the movie’s humanist and politically correct themes dilute the original novel’s brief but positive Christian references in the captain’s log. Even though the filmmakers add more such Christian references, it depicts the ship’s Christian cook as a fanatic who starts raving about the crew’s godless, immoral behavior. In addition, the filmmakers show that the images of the Christian crucifix in two rosaries on the ship seem to have no effect on Dracula at all. This contradicts the positive Christian spirit in Stoker’s novel.

Advice to Hollywood leftists: Please create your own new Marxist, leftist, atheist stories and legends. Leave the traditional stories and legends alone!