With people looking for original vampire stories all the time, one public service would be to provide some. The following might not be completely original, but none as far as this author is aware has been the basis for a film or a t.v. series. Not even once. Offered with no strings attached to anyone…
Author: david
David MacDowell Blue blogs at Night Tinted Glasses. He graduated from the National Shakespeare Conservatory and is the author of The Annotated Carmilla. and Your Vampire Story (And How to Write It) as well as a theatrical adaptation of Carmilla.
Wamphyrie
Brian Lumley’s “Necroscope” series pretty much serve as an antidote to anyone disgusted by syrupy sweetness in tales of the undead. Imagine vampires not as fallen angels. Not as darkly mysterious creatures of the night. Imagine vampires as mutated (and mutating) demons. The undead as imagined by H.P. Lovecraft crossed with the more disturbing sexuality…
The Secret Life of Abraham Van Helsing
Last year I was discussing possible casting choices in “Dracula” with a friend. My choice for Professor Van Helsing caused her to do a take. Michael Gambon, she said, was too old. Then I did a take. Van Helsing of course is indeed an elderly man. She didn’t realize that, and was shocked at the…
The Curious Case of Jonathan Harker
Bram Stoker seems like a such a conservative. He pursued a career as a government clerk until a better opportunity in entertainment presented itself. As manager of a hugely successful actor and theatre, he and his primly beautiful wife reveled as they walked amid high society. His novels abound with staunchly Victorian ideas and prejudices.…
The Very Many Faces of Mina Murray
Adaptations of Bram Stoker’s most famous novel often reveal more about the adapters — and about their times — than they do about Stoker or his work. Case in point: Mina Harker, nee Murray. Looking at the novel itself, we find a character who seems very much a yin to her best friend Lucy Westenra‘s…
The Second Most Famous Dracula
No other actor has played the part of Count Dracula in so many films. As a consequence, none other has gazed into so many initially hesitant sets of eyes belonging to beautiful women–Caroline Munro, Barbara Hershey, Linda Hayden, Veronica Carlson to name just a few. So many plunging necklines! So many throats to ravish! Yet–curiously–so…
Why Lesbian Vampires?
For all practical purposes, the trope Vampire Lesbian emerged with Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s novella “Carmilla.” Eventually, with the rise of a new medium–motion pictures–an adaptation of that story appeared. “Crypt of the Vampire” became one of the still-relatively few such. The trope, however, could be seen in “Dracula’s Daughter” as well as the eerie “Vampyr.”…
The Most Mysterious Dracula
It is an iconic movement, an action in vampire films re-created many times. The motion pictures “Fright Night” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” both had their versions. For many, it remains one of the most memorable events in the first great film of one genre–as well as being a landmark in at least two others. Graf…
Night of the Vampire Puppets
Pinocchio the Vampire Slayer was a 2010 graphic novel, with a sequel in the works. The title makes a weird kind of sense, given that the titular hero is in effect a living weapon against the undead. But another thought comes to mind almost immediately. Would Pinocchio have to fight vampires who were also puppets?…
Bad Undead Boys
Honestly, I didn’t like the movie “The Lost Boys.” Yes, the music and cinematography were both fantastic, but like too many movies then and now the lead character was boring. Since he didn’t involve me, I didn’t care what happened to him. More, the story didn’t feel like a story. More like a series of…