New Feminist Dracula

Many and varied are the stage adaptations of Bram Stoker‘s famous novel. Most famous of course is the Balderston-Deane version that brought stardom to Bela Lugosi, Ted Miller’s Count Dracula, the Frank Wildhorn musical (perhaps most famously done in Japan with a female Count), even Orson Wells’ radio adaptation. Theatre 68 (which produces works for…

Review of Not With Monsters

In the region of greater Los Angeles known as NoHo a black box theatre known as Zombie Joe’s makes its home.  They do a variety of plays there, many original as well as solid sprinkling of classics.  A new show opened this last weekend, a one-act musical that includes no less than five vampires in…

Orson Welles’ Dracula

Today Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre of the Air are mostly famous for the broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” in October 1938. Yet that was the seventeenth show performed by the radio repertory company. Ever wonder what the very first was? Dracula! Starring Orson Welles not only as the Transylvanian Count but…

Hamlet – Prince of Darkness

One trend we’ve all encountered by now is the blending of classic literature with the stuff of wonderfully schlocky horror. “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” is clearly the most famous, but let us not forget “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” as well as “Little Women and Werewolves,” “Android Kerenina” and “Queen Victoria, Demon Slayer.”…

Oscar Wilde’s Vampire Play

Vampires and Oscar Wilde seem like they should go together when you think on it. Not something I really had thought about very much. True, Wilde woo’d in his youth the icily beautiful young woman who eventually married Bram Stoker. One cannot also but think Wilde and Lestat might have gotten along fabulously. If vampires…

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead

Turns out that Indican Films has picked up the distribution rights to the popular indie film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead. This hilarious flick will now be shown in select theaters on April 16, 2010. Woo! The movie is about Julian Marsh who is a broke and jobless ladies man who gets lucky and lands…