More than a century after his arrival in the pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Count has never stayed buried. He rises again and again, reinterpreted, reimagined, and rewritten for new readers and new eras. While Dracula has become a cinematic icon and a Halloween fixture, his roots are deeply literary—and it is in literature […]
For a character born in Gothic literature and made immortal by the silver screen, Count Dracula has also left a sizable—and often surprising—bite on television. From live anthology drama to romantic melodrama, Saturday-morning cartoons, prime-time reboots and streaming horror, Bram Stoker’s vampire has proven remarkably adaptable to the small screen. Television gave Dracula a different […]
There was a time when you pretty much knew what you were getting when you picked up a vampire novel. There would be blood, darkness, probably a cape or two and, depending on the era, either a terrifying monster or an impossibly attractive immortal yearning for someone he probably shouldn’t be. Not anymore. If the […]
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 […]
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 […]
In 1973, Dan Curtis (1927-2006), the creator of Dark Shadows, traveled to England and Yugoslavia to direct his acclaimed version of Dracula, based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. The film, sometimes known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Dan Curtis’ Dracula, aired on CBS-TV on Friday February 8, 1974, after the fifth episode of Dirty Sally […]
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 […]
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 […]