bloodthirsty, hunger and bloodlust
Adam Sandler is a fantastic actor and comedian, but when I think Dracula I sure don’t think of him. Yet he just landed a role as Dracula in an upcoming flick. Can you picture him as this smooth and deadly creature, drinking blood and seducing the ladies? No? Well don’t worry, it’s an animated film, …
When vampires first drifted, shadow-like, into popular literature in the early 1800s, this denizen of ancient folklore became an incarnation of the Nightmare Stranger–the alien ‘other’ who presented a threat to civilization itself. It was death reaching out to infect the living. The foreigner who defiled virtuous women. A pagan invader thriving where the light …
One of the big things in superhero comics these days is an over-arching story spread across multiple titles. Recently “The Curse of the Mutants” was an arc that covered an attempt by vampires to take over the world, starting with mutants like the X-Men (figuring that super-powered vampires would make it easier to take over). …
Kim Newman is the brilliant man behind the innovative novel Anno Dracula, a book which not only earned high praise from Neil Gaiman himself but also won the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award, the Lord Ruthven Assembly’s Fiction Award, and the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel, and was even short-listed for …
Every now and then I come across something that makes my inner child giggle with glee, like today, when I discovered Van Helsing, a board game from Mayfair Games. Ooh yeaah, an old school board game! Maybe not as sweet as a vampire video game, but hey, any type of game with vampires in it …
Vampire Studies: Bold New Future? This is an update to the August 3, 2010 post, ‘University Offers Course in Vampiric Literature’. If you believe education is the future, you’re going to love this. As previously mentioned, the University of Hertfordshire in the UK has decided to offer courses in Vampiric Studies. But now, the course …
Someone asked why I thought vampires remained so popular and intriguing. My answer: Because the undead make such a fluid metaphor. Consider; when they first entered into the Western literature and art–with John Polidori’s “The Vampyre.” For much of the next century, vampires popped up in art and theatre as well as different stories. “Varney …
Dracula’s Guest is a deleted chapter from Bram Stoker’s legendary novel Dracula which was written with the rest of the story but omitted from the final version published in 1897. Even though it was left out of the book, Dracula’s Guest was eventually published in 1914 in Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Tales. While it’s …
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the most popular novels of all time, this ground-breaking and highly influential story has sold millions of copies and has been in print for over a hundred years, which means there are dozens, if not hundreds, of editions of this one book. Out of all of these editions nothing …
Way back in 2008 Double Helix Games teased all of us vampire-lovin’ gamers with “Harker,” a game featuring a badass vampire hunter loosely based on Jonathan Harker from Bram Stoker’s legendary novel “Dracula.” The developers waved a badass little promo in front of our bloodthirsty eyes and then they just took it all away! According …
I’m so excited! Colin Firth is going to put some fangs in, and he’ll be joined by Nicole Kidman, and the super-cute Mia Wasikowska, –which is a more complicated way of saying “that adorable chick from Alice in Wonderland”. I’m excited because duh, not only is this a new vampire movie with big names in …
J. Forrest Ackermann, or “Uncle Forry,” had many claims to fame within the annals of horror. Apart from his magazine, the tours of his memento-brimmed home up until his death, his ownership of both the Dracula and Mummy rings, he also created an iconic character who wanders in the imaginations of countless fans. She of …
Burned into the collective memory of our age, it is an image of great power. The vampire looms menacingly, but then the hero reaches up and pulls away the curtains. SUNLIGHT! Like laser beams, the purifying rays of the sun sear the undead creature’s flesh. The foul thing dissolves into the dust it should already …
Back in 1972, Hammer Studios found itself in a good and bad place as far as vampire movies go. On the one hand, they were pretty close to having squeezing every drop they could out of both “Dracula” and “Carmilla.” Yet audience demand remained. One solution they hit upon was a series of original films …
I’m going to go ahead and assume that director David Slade is crazy in love with vampires since he has filmed two vampire flicks in a row and is now working on a third – “The Last Voyage of the Demeter.” Slade, who directed the vampire horror “30 Days of Night” and the vampire bore …
I have finally joined the Kindle masses! Yes, at long last I own a Kindle! After I was finished staring at it, petting it and whispering compliments to it’s pretty screen, I decided it was probably time to actually put something to read on it, so I hit up Amazon and, well, my love for …
It remains one of the iconic images of the vampire. Lengthened, piercing teeth, usually (but not always) the bicuspids or eye teeth. Sometimes they stretch to the point of becoming tusks or the saber-teeth of the extinct Smilodon. Other times just a subtle increase in length and reshaping creates the effect. Especially since the Hammer …
Wildclaw Theatre in Chicago (the name is in memory of Ray Wild aka “The Claw,” a writer/director/actor) specializes in what they proudly call Horror Theatre. Their avowed mission is to “…bring the world of horror to the stage. We intend to attract a new kind of audience which does not usually go to the theatre, …
While scanning the latest vampire blogs and news I came across a list of the top vampire movies, and well, it was horrible (Van Helsing should never be on a top 10 vampire movie list). So I got my google search on and looked up other vampire movie lists, and of course, those were all …
Go to virtually any bookstore and a seemingly odd decision awaits your eyes. Amid Biography, Western, Romance, Self Help and loads of other genres, two invariably get lumped together–Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yet as fans of either (or both) can tell you, many are the differences between the two. Why then group them together? An …