Dracula: Review,commentary (Sitting Up With the Undead)
To enter the world of Dracula as born in the pages of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel is sleep walk into a night world of mysteries. Every good vampire story, and no less, its Undead Lord, unveils itself in a unhurried tease of facts. I attempted to take myself back to the readership which did not know what was coming next, nor the nature of the menace itself. Only Van Helsing suspects and researches the truth of what they face, and in an age of Victorian reliance on science and common sense, he holds this close to the vest as long as possible, lest none believe him. I realize most of us followed the introduction of the character through his famous movie incarnations, not to mention the proliferation of his and other vampire imagery throughout popular culture. Vampires were long part of folklore, in Japan, India, and the Balkan states from which Stoker drew his gypsies, his Transylvania. Thanks to Stoker, and most of all Legosi, Hammer Films and all that followed, they are part of our...