What's a Vamp Gotta Do

by Jason Adams

It's been a lousy couple of weeks for Vampires and the people who love them -- first there was Morbius, full stop. Then there were those pretty iffy-looking photos from the upcoming AMC series adapting Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire. And then this week the bloodsuckers we love to watch suck have taken two more great big hits...

Click to read more ...

Universal Horror: Ranking the Classic Monsters

by Cláudio Alves

Halloween may be (technically over) but the spooky season continues (if you'd like) via various streaming services. The Criterion Channel programmed a selection of titles from Universals' Horror canon from the 1930s through the 1950s. Universalhelped typify the American horror genre while also creating screen monsters whose iconography prevails. Six creatures stand above the others – Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the mummy, the invisible man, the wolfman, and the gill man. That sextet is represented in this Criterion Channel collection, so it's an excellent opportunity to delve into those horrific franchises. Consequently, I spent the better part of October watching all the movies in each of those classic monster's series, seeing every feature they starred in from 1931 to 1956. In the end, since everyone loves lists, I decided to rank the creatures…

Click to read more ...

Showbiz History: Meg & Dennis, Clarice & Hannibal, Wayne & Garth

6 random things that happened on this day, February 14th, in showbiz history...

1931 Tod Browning's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi arrives in US theaters, two days after its NYC premiere. The studio wisely publicized that people had fainted at the premiere and the movie was a huge success. Sequels and spin-offs and endless remakes or, rather, adaptations of the Bram Stoker source material follow...

Click to read more ...

Horror Costuming: Bram Stoker's Dracula

by Cláudio Alves

For the past few weeks, I've been exploring the greatness of costume design in the realm of horror cinema. None of the movies we discussed, not even those somewhat embraced in the awards circuit, got many golden laurels for their feats of costuming. That's, unfortunately, what usually happens to cinematic excellence that happens to manifest outside the boundaries of prestige drama. However, there are always a few exceptions that prove the rule. Such is the case of Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The picture won three Academy Awards, including the prize for Best Costume Design.

The creations of the late Eiko Ishioka are some of the weirdest and most spellbinding costumes ever made for cinema and, as far as I'm concerned, she's the greatest recipient of my favorite Oscar. Michael has recently explored his first foray into the dark marvels of Dracula, and Jason has previously explored Eiko's Oscar win. Nonetheless, I couldn't let Halloween go by without revisiting this most wondrous of big-screen wardrobes. Join me on this deep dive into the nightmarish fantasy of Eiko Ishioka's Dracula…

Click to read more ...

Horror Actressing: Elizabeth Allan in "Mark of the Vampire"

by Jason Adams

1935's Mark of the Vampire reunited director Tod Browning with Bela Lugosi four years after they had you know some success with a little film called Dracula. In those four in-between years Browning made the infamously disturbing Freaks (still disturbing to this day!), which was censored and banned everywhere, totally derailing his career. Nobody wanted to work with him after Freaks. But he did eventually manage to round up financing for a remake of one of his most successful silent films...

Click to read more ...