Sneak Peak: Styria

We’ve covered the upcoming motion picture Styria for over a year. This marks the first major film adaptation of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla since 1989 (the Nightmare Classics version)! This week I was invited to a private screening of the current edit of the film. A few things remained unfinished. One or two scenes haven’t…

STYRIA A First Look

Post production on the first major film adaptation of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla nears completion.  With that comes a new Facebook Page as well as a teaser trailer online for only 48 hours.  By the time anyone reads this, the teaser will most likely no longer be available.  So we here at Vampires.Com offer…

Elizabeth Bathory the Blood Countess

Of all the candidates for “real life vampire” surely the front-runner must be Elizabeth Bathory. Among the highest nobility in 17th century Hungary, her name comes down to us amid horrified whispers–torture, mass murder, bathing in human blood, Satanism. How much if anything actually happened remains a matter for historians. Fans of vampires know her…

Gilles de Rais – Medieval Vampire

Had Bram Stoker decided to make his vampire nobleman French instead of Eastern European, there lies within that land’s history a model as appropriate as Vlad the Impaler. Looking at the life of Gilles de Rais (1404–1440), one can hardly imagine a better man to deserve the title “Monster.” In fact, it remains curious how…

Interview With “Styria” Director (Part Three)

The last of my three-part interview with Mark Devendorf, one of the writer/directors of the new film “Styria” now in post-production. It is a re-telling of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” but set in 1989 Hungary. You cast British and Polish actors. Tell me about that. Its kind of strange for two Americans to make…

The Man Who Was Dracula

Actually giving birth to legends about oneself is no small feat. Yet Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) managed it. Much of the stories told about him are wrong, which coincidentally gives him something in common with Vlad the Impaler — there’s a lot about him treated as gospel but which are either untrue or at least disputable.…

A Quest For the truth in “My Vladislaus Dracula”

I have always loved a good vampire movie, especially as a teenager, so I can definitely see what the hype is about the newest vampire trilogies. But, for me, saying the word vampire and Dracula’s name are two completely different things. One is a mythical creature, and the other is a real fifteenth century Romanian…

Bathory – 2008 film

Bathory weaves a thought-provoking alternate tale of the infamous Countess Báthory Erzsébet. Was she a victim of religious political conspiracy and greed? Whatever you believe, the movie provides potential answers to the stories of legend about the vampire countess. A sub-plot reveals a romantic relationship between the countess and Caravaggio, yes, the famous Baroque painter.…