Feel true terror with this vintage clip of Gerard Butler auditioning to be Dracula
Unquestionably the best month, October allows all horror fans to impose scary movies on everyone around them. Don’t like body horror, spectral presences, and viscera? Too bad, it’s fucking October.
It’s with this in mind that we present a rarely seen treat from the spookiest end of the film spectrum. Released in 2000 to withering critical disdain, Dracula 2000 was Gerard Butler’s first major role after a brief, failed career as a lawyer. Still seven years out from his breakout role in 300, it allowed the chiseled, manly actor a chance to try out the very chameleonic skill with accents that he’d later use to such wonderful ends in Gods Of Egypt. But it’s his audition tape that truly makes it worthwhile. Behold, if you dare:
Lusty, menacing, and full of supplemental vowel sounds, Butler breathily muses over the terror of a restless immortality. As he recedes into his coffin, you possess a deeper understanding of both why he got the role and what terrors might lurk within the darkened corners of the earth. View it this and every Halloween season to come.