Dracula’s Daughter: From Script to Screen
The success of Universal’s Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi made not only a cycle of similar horror films inevitable, it virtually demanded the studio turn their attention to a direct sequel.
As had happened with Lon Chaney in the silent era, MGM was quick to top Universal at its own game. They secured the services of Lugosi and director Tod Browning for a remake of Chaney’s silent classic, London After Midnight (1927). Browning had directed that notorious lost classic and having Lugosi fill Chaney’s shoes as the faux vampire seemed an inspired choice.
Browning’s remake, Mark of the Vampire would wing its way to theaters in 1935. Joining Lugosi’s Count Mora was Carroll Borland as his incestuous daughter, Luna. Borland was heavily featured in publicity photos with Lugosi despite not having much of an acting career (the following year she was reduced to a bit part in the first of Buster Crabbe’s Flash Gordon serials for Universal), but her portrayal of Luna was enormously influential on the cinematic female vampires who followed.
Borland contributed more than just the definitive screen depiction of a female vampire, however. Several years before Mark of the Vampire was born, she began a longstanding (and allegedly unconsummated) relationship with Bela Lugosi. She remained obsessed with the actor long after his death and had written a lengthy treatment for a Dracula sequel to star both of them entitled Countess Dracula.
Bitch Slap the (unrated) film relates to fantasy fiction how, you may ask?
The Woman Who Loved Reindeer, by Meredith Ann Pierce
I don’t know what makes a novel great. Maybe every great book is great in its own way. I suspect, though, that a novel’s greatness resides most often either in its structure (not just its plot, but its balancing of themes and elements, its division into units like chapters, and its decision of what to describe and when) or its prose (its ability to make every word count, not only in depicting character and setting, not only in moving forward story, but in advancing the theme of the book, what it’s about, the idea that prompted the telling of the tale in the first place).
Anyone who has been reading these entries with any regularity knows that the word “minimalist” will never be used in the same sentence with my name. I seem to be visually starved, needing to be perpetually surrounded by interesting if not strange things to look at. This can easily be proven by the fact I cohabitate with a voodoo doll collection and three German Shepherds.
Night of the Necromancer
The lead story for the
complete artwork comprising all the issues in 2010) is “Mannikin” by Paul Evanby. The story opens in July 1776, the date of American declared independence from British colonial rule (sidenote: the writer is Dutch and the magazine is published in the U.K.). But this isn’t about Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, and doesn’t even take place in the colonies, but rather signifies the irony of a revolution that resulted in freedom for white Protestant male landowners who relied on the exploitation of African-American slaves to maintain economic autonomy.
The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly
All right movie fans, its here! We’ve been telling you about it for months and today is finally the day when