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There are many film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula; many, of course, that are rubbish. If you need fresh blood and your faith restored that there is still life to be drained from the vampire trope, here are ten recommendations for films that rework Stoker’s vampire in innovative and inventive ways.

The post Roger Luckhurst’s top 10 vampire films appeared first on OUPblog.

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This year is the 250th anniversary of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, first published on Christmas Eve 1764 as a seasonal ghost story. The Castle of Otranto is often dubbed the “first Gothic novel” due to Walpole describing it as a “Gothic story,” but for him the Gothic meant very different things from what it might do today. While the Gothic was certainly associated with the supernatural, it was predominantly a theory of English progress rooted in Anglo-Saxon and medieval history — effectively the cultural wing of parliamentarian politics and Protestant theology. The genre of the “Gothic novel,” with all its dire associations of uncanny horror, would not come into being for at least another century. Instead, the writing that followed in the wake of Otranto was known as the German School, the ‘Terrorist System of Writing’, or even hobgobliana.

Reading Otranto today, however, it is almost impossible to forget what 250 years of Gothickry have bequeathed to our culture in literature, architecture, film, music, and fashion: everything from the great Gothic Revival design of the Palace of Westminster to none-more-black clothes for sale on Camden Town High Street and the eerie music of Nick Cave, Jordan Reyne, and Fields of the Nephilim.

And the cinema has been instrumental in spreading this unholy word. Despite being rooted in the history of the barbarian tribes who sacked Rome and the thousand-year epoch of the Dark Ages, the Gothic was also a state-of-the-art movement. Technology drove the Gothic dream, enabling, for instance, the towering spires and colossal naves of medieval cathedrals, or enlisting in nineteenth-century art and literature the latest scientific developments in anatomy and galvanism (Frankenstein), the circulation of the blood and infection (The Vampyre), or drug use and psychology (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).

The moving image on the cinema screen therefore had an immediate and compelling appeal. The very experience of cinema was phantasmagoric — kaleidoscopic images projected in a darkened room, accompanied by often wild, expressionist music. The hallucinatory visions of Henry Fuseli and Gustave Doré arose and, like revenants, came to life.

Camera tricks, special effects, fantastical scenery, and monstrous figures combined in a new visual style, most notably in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror (1922). Murnau’s Nosferatu, the first vampire film, fed parasitically on Bram Stoker’s Dracula; it was rumored that Max Schreck, who played the nightmarish Count Orlok, was indeed a vampire himself. The horror film had arrived.

Mid-century Hollywood movie stars such as Bela Lugosi, who first played Dracula in 1931, and Boris Karloff, who played Frankenstein’s monster in the same year, made these roles iconic. Lugosi played Dracula as a baleful East European, deliberately melodramatic; Karloff was menacing in a different way: mute, brutal, and alien. Both embodied the threat of the “other”: communist Russia, as conjured up by the cinema. Frankenstein’s monster is animated by the new cinematic energy of electricity and light, while in Dracula the Count’s life and death are endlessly replayed on the screen in an immortal and diabolical loop.

It was in Britain, however, that horror films really took the cinema-going public by the throat. Britain was made for the Gothic cinema: British film-makers such as Hammer House of Horror could draw on the nation’s rich literary heritage, its crumbling ecclesiastical remains and ruins, the dark and stormy weather, and its own homegrown movie stars such as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Lee in particular radiated a feral sexuality, enabling Hammer Horror to mix a heady cocktail of sex and violence on the screen. It was irresistible.

The slasher movies that have dominated international cinema since Hammer through franchises such as Hellraiser and Saw are more sensationalist melodrama than Gothic, but Gothic film does thrive and continues to create profound unease in audiences: The Exorcist, the Alien films, Blade Runner, The Blair Witch Project, and more overtly literary pictures such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula are all contemporary classics — as is Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV.

And despite the hi-tech nature of film-making, the profound shift in the meaning of Gothic, and the gulf of 250 years, the pulse of The Castle of Otranto still beats in these films. The action of Otranto takes place predominantly in the dark in a suffocatingly claustrophobic castle and in secret underground passages. Inexplicable events plague the plot, and the dead — embodying the inescapable crimes of the past — haunt the characters like avenging revenants. Otranto is a novel of passion and terror, of human identity at the edge of sanity. In that sense, Horace Walpole did indeed set down the template of the Gothic. The Gothic may have mutated since 1764, it may now go under many different guises, but it is still with us today. And there is no escape.

The post “There is no escape.” Horace Walpole and the terrifying rise of the Gothic appeared first on OUPblog.

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Looks like I am not taking off as much time as I thought. I have signed up for two small one day shows in the coming weeks; I go a bit nuts if I stay in my studio for too long.

The first show I am doing is Carnival Noir in downtown Los Angeles this weekend on July 12th. This is a wild event at the Club Monte Cristo; there will be DJs, dancing, magic, burlesque, and plenty of vendors there. This is a 21 and over event only with drink specials and good times for all. Tickets are on sale here.

The following week I will be at the Egyptian Theater for the 4 Hour Film Festival Double Feature and Carnival Masquerade on July 19th. The films being shown are the two classics Freaks and Nosferatu, both amazing and creepy films to chill you to the bone. There will be the Cirque Berzerk along with other live performances. This is also a 21 and over event and tickets are available here.

Have fun and keep creating…

–Diana

The post Some new shows coming up soon… appeared first on Diana Levin Art.

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The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova


Wow, when I dared to open Blogger to post my review of Kostova's, The Historian, it had been so long since I'd posted that Blogger had a new interface site. Yeesh. Leave cyberspace for a few months and it remodels entirely. I feel old.

But not as old as the villain in Kostova's book, Dracula. I've have this thing about Dracula since my graduate years back in Kiel, Germany (which predates the vampire fad by over a decade, which really dates me), when I first met the villain in Murnau's classic silent film, Nosferatu: Eine Symfonie des Grauens. 

Knowing my penchant for the Eastern European Undead, my best friend bought The Historian for me two years ago, Pre-MFA. It sat waiting for me like its villain. I resisted for two years, toiling away at that blasted MFA. As soon as it was over, this was my reward - a really really really long read with lots of twisted plots and complicated storylines and intergenerational information sharing. 

Not your basic five-character-chronicle.

Kostova's work bridges centuries, familial generations, multiple countries, you name it. She introduces so many characters I...well, I forgot one, a crucial one, when he reappeared at the end of the story, at the climax to be exact. I may need to work on my spatial reasoning for retaining complex, three-dimensional, non-kid stories.

I'd like to say there's a basic plot, but there are so many plots interwoven. Here's a go - Dracula's assassination...maybe.

If you like history, this story will pay out in spades. Kostova did an amazing amount of historical research to take her characters from the U.S. to England to Turkey, France, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Italy across centuries.

Like Stoker's version, this is predominantly a book of letters. That began to wear. Stoker's tale is about 200 p. long. Kostova's is 642. I had a hard time believing that the main character could read three hundred pages of her father's handwritten letters to her in one night. Plus, the form slowed down the pacing because it was a retelling within a retelling.

When the family (two of whom are Dracula's descendants) trying to kill Dracula finally catches him, his death is rather...well, quick. The resolution ultimately did not feel earned or catalytic. This may be because the story is just so long. Sheer length draws out the action and slows down tempo such that when the telling speeds up for the climax, it feels as though the author just wanted to get through it. 

However, the history in this book makes it well worth the read. If you are a Dracula hobbyist, this book incorporates many of the legends about him across continents and cultures. And, Kostova can write. She does wonderful descriptive work. I want to visit Romania now!

For more great reads, hop over to Barrie Summy's site. Happy Fall reading.

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Editor Interview: Ben Schrank...

Before joining Razorbill in 2006 as President and Publisher, Ben Schrank wrote novels, served as fiction editor at Seventeen, and edited bestselling YA series (Gossip Girl and The Clique). Now at the helm of Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group that specializes in young adult and middle grade books, Schrank oversees 30 plus titles a year, mostly contemporary commercial fiction

What attracts you to writing and editing material for a YA audience?

I love the arc that happens in a story for young readers-kids learn and change so fast and working on embodying that experience in novel form is what keeps me interested in the area.

Spud, A Wickedly Funny Novel by John van de Ruit that was a huge seller in South Africa will be released in the U.S. by Razorbill this month. How did the book end up at your imprint? Please tell my readers what you love about the title.

Susan Petersen Kennedy brought it back from Penguin South Africa and thought it would be right for us. We read it and loved it and while we waited to publish, it grew into a phenomenon in South Africa that shocked everyone involved. There are now bus tours of Michaelhouse, the boarding school that John van de Ruit went to and based the story on. I love the book because it's funny and true and it teaches us a lot about ourselves and shows us a way of life that a lot of us know nothing about.

Why do you think Spud (which is being called the "South African Catcher in the Rye"), will appeal to readers in the U.S.?

It's a universal story. As I noted above, it's hilarious and honest and I have to believe that U.S. readers will relate to Spud, will love the voice, and will embrace both its foreignness and its charm.

What makes a book-and an author-right for Razorbill?

We love a book that is conceptually strong and has a voice that supports the concept. The book demands attention from the reader. The author supports the book, builds a great website, understands what the publisher can and can't do, and remembers that we're all in it because we love books.

Your website says "you can count on our list to be short and razor sharp." Why a short list?

We're a small group and we want to give our books the care they deserve. We never want to sign off on a cover we don't love or let a book go into the bookstores that we don't think is perfect. A short list gives us better control and keeps us, well, sharp.

I see at least a couple of debut books featured on Razorbill's website (Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why and Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead). How can a new author break in at Razorbill? Do you consider only agented work?

A new author breaks in because their novel is great. There's no other reason. We've only bought agented work up to this time, but you never know...

Can you offer a few pieces of advice to aspiring YA authors?

The market is a shifting target that changes all the time. Don't write for it. Write to please yourself. If you are relentless and work hard, the reader will come to your work.

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