The ground-breaking show Being Human has breathed its last, at least in the UK. Such is the news this week. A program whose premise–a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf all become roommates–fairly reeked of sitcom a la The Munsters, yet proved itself a popular and compelling drama! It touched on things like addiction, personal…
Tag: bbc
Make Believe
Shoulda Woulda Coulda… Make believe is fun. In fact without it this delightful thing we call fiction simply would not exist. So let us now make-believe–as in “let us create a belief”–some beloved or well-known characters to be undead. Why not? For one, Sherlock Holmes. Leaving aside that the physical description of him is perilously…
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.”…
What to do with Dracula?
Draculas have begun to feel like a dime a dozen. Starting with the milestone silent film “Nosferatu” (i.e. skeletal, rat-fanged, pointy-eared) we’ve seen Eastern European versions, Spanish ones, porn Draculas, English Draculas, at least one female Dracula, effete Draculas, etc. We’ve seen the world’s most famous Transylvanian as suave, brutal, silent, wordy, young, old, Byronic,…
Adaptations of Carmilla
For fans of the undead, a favorite topic of debate remains comparing the various film versions of “Dracula.” Even limiting oneself to those explicitly based upon Stoker’s novel, over a dozen versions exist from “Nosferatu” (original and remake) to both Universal versions in 1930, both adaptations that starred Christopher Lee, all three BBC Draculas, the…