“The day the letter arrived, I was due in court…” So begins Stephen Fry’s best work this side of Wilde.
Please take note of the comment left by “Lena Klaric,” who points out that “Now, if you turn your captions on, at around 2:55 the captions will say ‘cunt Dracula’s manservant.’ That is all.”
I dream of having this range and control over my vocal modulations. C’est magnifique.
Yesssss. This video was the birth of my Fry and Laurie obsession. Almost ten years ago. How time does fly.
Cape on, sir.
Me too; this is the sketch that my partner used to introduce me to Stephen! Congrats on ten years of Fry/Laurie happiness – what a lovely anniversary!
So many good lines
“And I tipped the delivery boy…out of the window with more than ordinary generosity”
“Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of this man’s nose remain forever pasted into the album of my memory”
also the subtlety of the pun in “A matter of great legal delicacy”
“I couldn’t see myself spending a month in a house without mirrors.”
The smirk that follows that line was where I irrevocably lost it.
It’s so beautifully high-brow/low-brow. Very Firesign Theatre.
I kept a straight face until “…made my toilet; sat on it…” because I can never, ever refrain from giggling at toilet humor.
*gets glasses*
*puts glasses on*
*pushes glasses upward with one finger*
Actually, Dracula was not vulnerable to the sun. That aspect of vampires was introduced in the movie Nosferatu because the writers were lazy and couldn’t come up with a satisfying, non-deus-ex-machina resolution.
*removes glasses*
*puts glasses away where they can be found the next time someone is technically wrong about something*
Well, if I recall Dracula accurately (and I don’t know that I do) he was weakened by the light of the rising sun.
Of course, this is like saying that werewolves don’t change during a full moon, or aren’t especially vulnerable to silver because these traits were first introduced in 1941’s The Wolf Man. Since then, though, they’ve gone on to become core parts of the werewolf mythology.
I’m still betting that in 50 years “vampires sparkle in sunlight” will be a thing that everyone knows was always part of the myth.
He was either mad or both.
He was either mad or both.
“the sign of the very cross indeed…”
Oh, YouTube auto-captions. They tried so very, very hard on this one. Probably the best I’ve ever seen that poor benighted algorithm manage to do thanks to Stephen’s marvelous enunciation, and yet occasionally still so very hilariously far from the mark. “Leaving his cake behind him in his hungry” (7:16) is perhaps my favorite near miss, followed by the three distinct ways it managed to mis-caption “cape on” earlier.
Never leave cake! Especially when hungry
“Walking with a pronounced limp. L- I- M- P. Limp.”
And the character names. Tulkinghorn is the lead lawyer in Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Bleak House, and of course Lord Melchett is Fry’s character in series 2 of Blackadder.
“Oh shit.”
DEAD.
DEAD AS DRACULA.