Countess Draculas

Arguably starting with the film Dracula’s Daughter, the notion of the famous Count’s distaff side attracted audience members and storytellers.  Ingrid Pitt of course starred in a film titled Countess Dracula, although the character in question was in fact Ezebet Bathori (quite famous in her own right). In fact, the original source material, i.e. Bram…

Lets Remake Dracula’s Daughter

As before, I formally give anyone at all the right to use any of the ideas that follow. Go for it! With the economy being what it is, and the huge competition from the internet and direct-to-dvd, small wonder Hollywood studios look to established stories for investing purposes. Here’s a suggestion for a remake: Dracula’s…

10 Best Vampire Victims in Film

A superhero is nothing without an archnemesis.  Likewise each detective needs a crime.  For vampires, they remain pale-faced immortals without someone upon whom they feed–the Victim!  Behold a list of ten exemplary victims in vampire films.  Keep in mind the criteria here involves much more than a good bite.  That’d be a different list.  Here…

Search For a Cure

Way back in the 1840s, the penny dreadful (rightfully named–each chapter cost a penny and most had all the literary merit of an insurance company’s internal memo) Varney The Vampyre introduced a brand new idea in vampire fiction.  Given the youth of the genre, that doesn’t sound quite so impressive.  On the other hand, it…

Vampires – An Avatar of Sin

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…

Top Ten Lesbian Vampires

Go to any search engine of your choice and type in the phrase “Lesbian Vampire.” The results will include a fair amount of scholarly essays, pure porn, a Wikipedia article, reviews to more than a few very cheap movies (as well as some of much higher quality), places where you can purchase anthologies as well…

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.”…

Dark Shadows – Ahead of its Time?

Fans of haemovores everywhere probably already know that Johnny Depp has plans to reunite with Tim Burton in a motion picture adaptation of the cult t.v. series “Dark Shadows.” The whole idea of Depp as a vampire no doubt has sent many a heart aflutter. Quite understandably! It is one of those ideas that seems…

Film Flashback: Dracula’s Daughter

There may be a handful of new vampire movies being released every month, but we can’t forget about those old school vamp flicks. So it is film flashback time, and today’s vamptastic film is Dracula’s Daughter. Dracula’s Daughter is a 1936 vampire horror movie that was a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula; it was…