Trivia
One of the most impressive effects in the series happens in episode one, with Dracula ripping his way out of his wolf form. "For this version, we thought it would be fun for Dracula to literally rip his way out of a Wolf's body," Dave recalled. "So we talked about how we were going to do it, and we needed an elaborate set up for it. We needed to build the whole thing on a raised stage so that we could get everybody underneath the set to puppeteer the various bits of the Wolf, but also to get the performers to come through." The Elseys had to decide how Dracula would look during the transformation. The result is a fantastic and complex concept. "We made a mask out of Claes' lifecast, but we made it so that the lips haven't formed around his teeth yet, so he's like an unborn shark," explained Dave. "We then had a membrane that went over the top. It was very tricky to get this thing to cast up perfectly with no air bubbles and be perfectly clear silicone." Dave, Lou, and the team then had to construct a wolf puppet with moving mouth, legs, and tail, with an open mid-section so the performers could push through. "The idea was that as he comes through, Dracula's not fully formed," said Dave. "So we got some contortionists who are very thin and can do unbelievable stuff with their bodies. We got a woman and a man for this, so we could have two stages of this transformation." To make sure the woman didn't look female, "she had a chest piece and wore the mask of Dracula not quite formed yet," explained Lou. To add to the effect of the performers coming through the Wolf, wet and bloody, the Elseys decided to add a membrane layer they could rip through. "We thought maybe we could use latex or lycra. Then we decided to see if we could get something super stretchy so that the performers could do really strange stuff as they came through," said Dave. "We found this vinyl that you could use. But the trouble was that you could only buy a gigantic drum of this stuff, more than we'd ever need for the rest of our lives, and we just couldn't justify spending that money. Then our moldmaker Brian Rae said, 'ya know, they use [the same material] for these sex toys for these things called Fleshlights, we could take out the piece you need, melt it down and we could use that, and then you won't have to buy so much.'" The Elseys thought Rae's plan was brilliant. "He even went and bought them for us," laughed Lou. "We were so impressed." On the shoot day, Claes Bang also insisted on doing the stunt himself, which made for an even better result in the final sequence. "The director was like, ok, let's go for it. [Claes] pretty much stripped down," remembered Lou. "We slimed him up, and he did the whole thing and came through [the wolf]. I'm so glad they did because it made it so good."
