DRACULA PART I: THE LITERARY LEGEND — From Bram Stoker’s Novel to Modern Vampire Canon DRACULA PART II: THE VAMPIRE TAKES THE STAGE — Count Dracula in Theatrical History If literature gave Dracula immortality, cinema gave him form. Over more than a century of filmmaking, Count Dracula has become one of the most frequently portrayed […]
Universal’s legendary monsters may be returning to television — and this time, they may be entering the kind of serialized supernatural drama that defined early 2010s genre television. Writer-producer Kevin Williamson, co-creator of The Vampire Diaries and the architect behind the Scream franchise, recently revealed that he is developing a new series set within the […]
This interview with Forever Knight star Geraint Wyn Davies was conducted back in September 1995 when the show was early in its third season. Forever Knight (1992–1996) was a Canadian-produced supernatural crime drama that blended police procedural storytelling with gothic romance. The series followed Nick Knight, an 800-year-old vampire working as a homicide detective in […]
Listen to this Article: From the outside, Collinwood —home base to the horror soap opera Dark Shadows — just looks like another grand New England estate. Sunnydale of Buffy the Vampire Slayers, appears to be an ordinary California town with a decent high school and an alarming mortality rate. True Blood‘s Bon Temps is a […]
Based on reporting from Playbill and New York Theatre Guide More than three decades after Joel Schumacher’s 1987 cult classic helped redefine youth-oriented vampire mythology, The Lost Boys are riding their motorcycles straight onto Broadway. The long-awaited musical adaptation begins previews March 27 at the Palace Theatre, with an official opening set for April 26 […]
Based on reporting by Stanley Stepanic for The Conversation (via Citizen Tribune) For more than a century, Count Dracula has refused to stay in his coffin — and according to a recent essay by Stanley Stepanic of the University of Virginia, that’s largely because he keeps evolving along with us. Once depicted as a revolting […]
Based on reporting by Erik Piepenburg for The New York Times According to a recent New York Times feature by Erik Piepenburg, vampires have proven to be one of pop culture’s most durable monsters — endlessly reinvented, endlessly revealing. Since the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897, the vampire has survived every cultural shift […]
When Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) first stepped out of his coffin on Dark Shadows in 1967, viewers were introduced to a different kind of vampire. More than a predator, Barnabas was a tragic figure, forever haunted by the memory of Josette Du Pres, the 18th-century woman he once loved and inadvertently doomed. His longing for […]
A new vampire film is quietly taking shape overseas, and if its premise is any indication, Crave is aiming for atmosphere and unease rather than familiar gothic comforts. Currently in production in Spain, Crave brings together a cast that spans genre veterans and rising talent, including Nell Verlaque, Jason Isaacs, Paulina Chávez, Kieron Moore, Eoin […]
Vampires have adapted to the modern world before, but Vampires of the Velvet Lounge–reaching theatres on March 20—takes the concept to deliriously wicked extremes. Set deep in the American South, the film unfolds inside a shadowy back-alley absinthe bar where Countess Elizabeth Báthory and her glamorous coven of vampires have found a very contemporary hunting […]
While the name John Karlen may not register with today’s television viewers, there are a couple of generations of them that will surely remember him for two very distinct roles: Willie Loomis on the Classic TV daytime soap opera Dark Shadows (the show’s answer to Bram Stoker‘s Renfeld in Dracula) and Harvey Lacey, the epitome of the […]
Before leather-clad Daywalkers and teenage Slayers wielded stakes and sarcasm, there was a vampire hunter who fought with holy water, ancient knowledge and an unshakable moral compass. His name was Abraham Van Helsing, and for more than a century he has stood as the archetypal vampire slayer—part scientist, part mystic and relentless adversary of the […]
When The Lost Boys arrived in theaters in 1987, it reinvented vampires. Gone were the capes and castles and in their place were motorcycles, leather jackets, boardwalk neon and a seductive promise of eternal youth. Nearly four decades later, that same mix of danger, desire and outsider longing is preparing to take center stage as […]
There’s one inescapable conclusion: vampires — those bloodsuckers that go bite in the night, whether in movies or on TV — aren’t going anywhere, which is perfectly fine with us. To celebrate, we’re presenting mini-interviews with the stars of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Moonlight, Angel, Midnight Texas, Dark Shadows and more. David Boreanaz as Angel […]
After haunting the pages of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Count Dracula didn’t stay locked in literature for long. By the early 20th century, he had found a new home: the stage. Theater was where Dracula’s image solidified—from the lurking, caped aristocrat to the hypnotic figure clad in evening wear. These stage portrayals not only brought […]
Harry Turtledove has spent most of his career reimagining history—altering outcomes, bending timelines, and asking how the world might look if one crucial detail changed. With his City of Shadows novels, he turns that instinct inward, away from grand geopolitical shifts and toward the streets of postwar Los Angeles, imagining a city where the supernatural […]
There was a time when vampires were easy to define: monsters lurking in the shadows, feeding off the living, heartless, soulless and terrifying. But over the years—particularly across television and film—that picture has changed. A lot. Somewhere along the way, the creatures of the night started showing signs of something deeper. Not just bloodlust, but […]
Carmilla, or Countess Mircalla Karnstein, is one of the most influential and enduring sympathetic vampires in all of fiction. First published in serialized form in The Dark Blue magazine in 1871–72, J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella precedes Bram Stoker’s Dracula by more than two decades. Yet its legacy continues to echo through literature, film, television […]
If you were Jerry Lewis in 1956, he odds are pretty strong you’d still be trying to wrap your head around the fact that your 10-year partnership with Dean Martin had come to an end. But to deal with whatever he was feeling, he forced himself back into work and his first film as a […]