(Warning: SPOILERS!) First, let’s get the criticism out of the way. The Mummy Returns is not as good as The Mummy. It’s repetitive, contains far too much CGI (something that would later overwhelm and derail writer-director Stephen Sommers’ career in Van Helsing), and the plot hinges on absurdities that not even genre films can easily accommodate (even I wince when … Read More
Did Orson Welles make Dracula romantic?
(October, the month of Halloween, conjures one name in our household: Dracula! This is the second of a series of posts on various aspects of Dracula and vampires in general. I’ll be giving away a two-pack of my own vampire novels Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood to one lucky commenter per post, so comment early, comment … Read More
Belatedly, Dracula The Un-Dead
Before we start, a caveat. Sequels to classic novels, written long after the fact by new writers, annoy me. It’s one thing to be influenced by the classics, it’s quite another to co-opt settings, characters and atmosphere (the heavy lifting of writing) to bring life to your own derivative plot. It’s worst of all when capped by the hubris to … Read More
5 cool things about Dracula
As someone whose vampire novel will be published in the spring (Blood Groove, from Tor Books, will be released March 31, 2009), I’m fully aware that the gold standard, the top of the heap, the absolute pinnacle of vampire literature remains Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Without it, the vampire as a popular figure would have a very different image, … Read More