The Brides – review

Author: Charlotte Cross

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers  

The Blurb: Told through letters and diary entries, The Brides is a chilling reimagining of Bram Stoker's Dracula – with a devastating sapphic romance at its heart.

'Come to me, and be mine for eternity'

1884. When Mafalda journeys to Budapest to care for her grieving aunt, her secret love, Lucy, hurries from London to comfort her, with chaperone and lady’s maid in tow.

But lady’s maid Alice, blessed and cursed with the Sight, is tormented by terrifying visions. When chaperone Eliza falls prey to a disturbing wasting illness, the women hope to seek the healing waters of Transylvania. At a nobleman’s invitation, they set out for Castle Dracula.

In the depths of the forest, miles from civilization, their host reveals his true intentions; a monstrous ambition which will tear the women apart.

And not all of them will survive.

The review: This is a prequel to Dracula with a touch of sequel. By that I mean that, whilst the majority of the book is an epistolary story from 1893 (and designated 10 years before the events of Stoker’s novel), there are parts set in 1903 as Sir John Seward, as he now is, tales a new position in an asylum and not long later receives charge of Lady Lowell, a zoophagus individual who, it becomes apparent, has a shared history from 10 years before the Crew of Light defeated Dracula.

The rest of the story follows Mafalda Lowell as she and her mother travel to Buda-Pesth to care for her maternal aunt whose husband has recently died in a dual. Mafalda’s orphaned schoolfriend, Lucy North, lives at Mafalda’s parents’ home and the two young women are in a secret sapphic relationship. I had a slight irk in the Lucy character’s name as it sailed too close to Lucy in Dracula. Lucy with chaperone Eliza and maid Alice (who has the second sight) are soon travelling to Buda-Pesth to stay with the family.

Of course, into this comes Dracula and it is obvious from the title that some of the primary female cast will become his brides. In this respect the novel is good at creating a female centric set of characters and still managing to situate them in the timeframe, with the societal misogyny of the time and their responses to that. It is also a rather clever origin story for Dracula’s vampire women and explains small moments from the original novel such as why the vampire women speak English (as Harker understands them). There isn’t much in the way of additional lore introduced except for the use of lemon verveine (or lemon beebrush) which Alice uses to hold off the second sight and which is found to ward off evil. There is a passing mention of hagriding connected with Alice’s grandmother.

The novel is a slow burn – with the vampiric action coming towards the end of the novel (bar some disturbing dreams that Alice has and, of course, Seward’s remembrance). That slowly builds also, with Dracula a shadowy figure on the periphery of the story when he enters the frame until right towards the end. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this, 7.5 out of 10.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Short Film(s): Dead to the Last Drop

So, it was quite some time ago that I looked at Maxx Bloodd – Vampire Spy, a short film directed by and staring Rock Savage. The film, apparently from 1993, had ultra-low video quality and no IMDb page (it still doesn’t) but it has now had a Blu-ray release as part of the Rock Savage Collection Volume 1.

Also on that disc is Dead to the Last Drop – a short anthology of three vampire short films. I considered splitting the three films up, but it is the anthology that has an IMDb page and so I eventually decided to keep them together. Irreverent, with casual racism thrown in (but nothing as shocking as the blackface used in Maxx Bloodd), these are shorts for the viewer who likes their straight to video fare to be as low budget as possible.

Mod Mutilator as himself

The first short is called The Omega Wrestler, a title I assume nodding towards The Omega Man. It features the luchador-mask wearing Mod Mutilator (himself) who has settled down to watch wrestling with a concern that he is running low on beer and that he needs pizza. The last bit is easily solved and he orders a delivery.

death by silver kitchen knife

Meanwhile, a vampire queen (L M Woods) pitches up with her minions – including main minion Ivan (Don Woods), who informs her that this is the home of the wrester who killed her vampire sisters – Santo. After MM kills a random vampire with a silver kitchen knife, with the vampire queen laying siege, it becomes apparent he is not Santo and then, after Ivan suggests Blue Demon and this is refuted, Ivan loses his head for incompetence.

L M Woods as the vampire queen

The vampires decide they will kill the wrestler after he unleashes a racist tirade based on their Mexican heritage, and they eat the pizza delivery guy (Kenny Charnock). Separated from his pizza and down to his last beer, he needs reinforcements and this eventually takes the form of Harry Gross (Rock Savage) a psychic investigator in all three films. MM doesn’t want help with the vampires, he wants Harry to bring beer…

Marvin Kennedy as Dracula

The second short is the Vampire Pierre. Harry Gross is visited by a good vampire called Big D, or simply Dracula (Marvin Kennedy). Dracula made a killing investing in blood banks and doesn’t need to hunt people anymore. However, he was seduced by a French vampire named Fifi (L W Woods) who stole his family ring. The ring has the power to call and control zombies. She has stolen it for a French vampire named Pierre (Frank Vassallo) who wishes to use it to rule the world. Dracula hires Harry to get it back.

Rock Savage as Harry

Fifi is sent to take Harry out – though, luckily, he has a spectral gun that can kill things such as vampires – though he’ll soon discover it doesn’t work on zombies. This one stereotypes the French and has some incredibly crap bat on display but also concentrates on the Harry character, who is more a cameo in the other two shorts.

Frank Vassallo as Scarlett Sheik

The Final Short is Bloodsucking Sheiks. The short starts with Nazi doctor Von Cresse (Marvin Kennedy) – a scientist who developed a youth formula in the 1940s – with terrorist Scarlett Sheik (Frank Vassallo). Von Cresse has developed a new formula that will turn a person into a vampire. It is used on the Scarlett Sheik, and they intend to use it on his men also, creating a vampire terrorist cell.

evil mad scientist makes vampire

Agent Rex Jones (Eric Koger) goes to Tiki Joe’s Bar to get his new mission – finding and stopping the Scarlett Sheik. What he doesn’t know is where the terrorist is or what his plot entails. Luckily Harry Gross comes in – he was offered the job first and recommended Rex – who suggests Tiki Joe (Don Woods) might have info – indeed he has heard a rumour that they’ll attempt to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister…

Pierre takes a bite

All three have moments set around race that is poor – though the stereotyping in the Vampire Pierre is probably the lesser as the other two carry quite offensive wording as well as falling back on lazy stereotypes. The Harry character is drawn as quite cool and, to be honest, felt like a non-vampire version of Maxx Bloodd. One for the low budget aficionados and the vampire completist.

The imdb page is here.

Short Films: Destiny The Vampire Mermaid – Crimson Currents & Death in the Dark

Two short films the first, directed by Rusty Pietrzak and released in 2009, came in at about 13 minutes and the direct sequel, directed by James Panetta and released in 2010, was longer at around 18 minutes. Both starred Debbie D (Vampyre Tales, Deep Undead, Requiem for a Vampire, Around Midnight & Jim Haggerty’s Unnatural Causes) as the eponymous Destiny.

The first short sees a couple of women held by pirate captain Anne Bonny (Laura Giglio, After Midnight and also Deep Undead & Around Midnight). Also held is Destiny and Bonny, with her first mate Mary (Deborah Dutch, 60 Seconds to Di3 & The Vampire Hunters Club), want to know which ship she came from before they fished her out of the sea. Destiny says no ship and, with a trigger word, turns into her mermaid form. Bonny has mentioned that they are trafficking virgins to Prince Dracula (who does not appear in this film but is played by Jim Ewald in the next). Destiny has a score to settle with Dracula (it is implied that he turned her).

Debbie D as Destiny

She was actually searching for a shipwreck with plunder from Atlantis and she and Bonny agree that she can get what she is looking for so long as she brings treasure back to the pirate – do that and she can have anything she wants. She gets an orb that has specks of light representing other mermaids round the globe and gives Bonny a necklace, unfortunately for the pirate, what Destiny wants as a reward is her ship and she strangles then feeds from the pirate – before taking the ship.

Jim Ewald as Dracula

The first film ends there, the next has Mary and Destiny in Transylvania. Despite their uneasy alliance, Destiny’s plan is to be taken into the castle in irons, as a prisoner, and then kill Dracula. Of course, this means they both end up in the dungeon with Peter Van Helsing (James Panetta) whose bag of vampire slaying gear has been left nearby by Dracula, just out of his reach, to torture him. The women team up with Van Helsing… The character of Destiny first appeared in a short from 1999 and was reprised for a short-lived web serial later. The shorts themselves are very much in the straight to video realm.

The imdb pages are here and here.

Guest Blog - “If it doesn’t look like a vampire, or sound like a vampire, can it still be a vampire?” – TMtV 20th anniversary

We’ve come to the end of the 20th anniversary celebration and, last but not least, I’d like to welcome Simon Bacon to TMtV. We met through vampire groups on Facebook, becoming firm pals, and have had many discussions regarding our toothsome friends. An author and editor, I have corresponded over his vampire monograms and have been lucky enough to be included in several of the academic volumes he has edited.

In discussing the mutability of the vampire the much cited vampire scholar Nina Auerbach writes “we all know Dracula, or think we do… .” Although she was using Stoker’s Count as an example of how even the most “recognizable” of the undead doesn’t remain a fixed character in the popular imagination, it is just as true for what constitutes a vampire. Indeed, in many people’s minds Count Dracula is synonymous with the idea of the vampire with the implication that they must all drink blood, can transform into a bat (and possibly a wolf), are very sexy, wear evening dress with greased back, black hair and speak with a broad Eastern European accent—it should be noted that this is predicated far more on Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s 1931 film Dracula, than Stoker’s 1897 novel (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula about to enjoy a night-time snack with Lucy (Frances Dade) in Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. Universal Pictures, 1931.

However, the cinematic vampire, although providing what some see as the quintessential representation of the King of the Vampires (Count Dracula), seems to be continuously unsure about what a vampire looks like or what makes it one. What follows is an idiosyncratic selection of (and some of my favourite) films that have a very non-canonical view of what a vampire is.

Two of the earliest representations of vampires on film aren’t really vampires as we’d think of them now. They were from the early 20th century and both represented the “dark” side of society. The first features what was then known as a “Vamp,” that was a more sexually malevolent form of the New Woman from the end of the 19th Century and who asserted their independence by preying on wealthy men for their money. Theda Bara was one of the most well known of these and A Fool There Was (1915) the best surviving example of her playing her vampy best. In many ways her credentials as a vampire were more explicit in the marketing around the film and of Bara herself so that there was little to distinguish between her on- and off-screen personas. Apart from being called “The Vampire” in the films titles there is nothing else in the film that would really mark her out as one of the undead (see figure 2).

Figure 2. A triumphant Theda Bera (The Vampire) enjoys the sight of her latest victim who has lost his wealth and his family because of her in A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell. Fox Film Corporation, 1915.

Similarly the French serial Les vampires takes another yet equally oblique turn in what constitutes a vampire. Here, the titular “vampires” are in fact a gang of crooks led by the Grand Vampire that prey on the people of Paris and who think nothing of murder, kidnapping, and terrorism to get what they want. Although the film is well known for a sequence featuring a dancer dressed as a bat (see figure 3), once again there is little to connect the film to actual vampires apart from their metaphorical “feeding” on the wealth of their “prey.”

Figure 3. Marta Koutiloff, played by Stacia Napierkowska, dancing as a vampire bat in the ballet “The Vampires” in Les vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade. Gaumont, 1915.

Back in Hollywood, vampires became one of the pantheon of classic monsters in the 1930s, though even within that there were no strict borders between the various forms of creatures that could be called undead which could range from someone brought back from the dead (by whatever means), to a ghost, a ghoul, a zombie...or even a mummy. As mentioned above Lugosi’s performance solidified the idea of what Dracula was, and consequently, vampires, but even here the Count himself wasn’t sure of what exactly made him a vampire. In House of Dracula (1945), the second film starring John Carradine as the Count, sees the vampire looking for a cure for his vampirism (in reality he wants to sink his fangs into the pretty nurse assisting Dr Edelmann who he seeks help from). What is of interest here is that the doctor takes blood samples from Dracula and under the microscope we see vampiric blood cells attacking human blood cells marking out vampirism as a disease of the blood (see figure 4).

Figure 4. Dracula’s blood under the microscope showing the black tendrils in it is the true vampire as it attacks human blood cells, in House of Dracula, directed by Erle C. Kenton. Universal Pictures, 1945.

We could argue it is Dracula’s blood that is the vampire, not the Count himself. This is a curious idea that has been picked up since in a few screen narratives such as Dark Shadows (1966-71) and the Dracula (2013-14) series by Cole Haddon. The importance of blood, and what we might call the medicalisation of the vampire, is also seen in The Return of Dr X (1939), featuring a rare turn in horror films for Humphrey Bogart. Here at least the “vampire” in question needs fresh human blood, though rather disappointingly for its undead credentials it’s not from biting a beautiful young woman in the neck, but rather transfusing her blood into his own body (the reverse of Stoker’s use of transfusions where they are to combat vampirism rather than promoting it). Here, Bogart as the eponymous Dr X (Maurice Xavier) is brought back from the dead using synthetic blood, however, this no longer works and he needs a special type (type one) of fresh human blood to stay alive. His vampy credentials highlighted by his pale white skin and greased back, black hair--his monstrosity emphasized by a bride of Frankenstein white streak running through it (see figure 5).

Figure 5. Humphrey Bogart as the suitably deathly pale Dr X, in The Return of Dr X, directed by Vincent Sherman. Warner Brothers, 1939.

Post-WWII and the rise of science fiction on film only increased the complications of identifying vampires—even Dracula is affected by the appearance of aliens as seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) where humans are brought back from the dead as zombies and one of these “zombies” is non-other than Bela Lugosi in full Dracula costume. In some ways this was exampled earlier by the science-gone-mad idea in Dr X, but the involvement of aliens would only exacerbate the problematic nature of vampire identity. A good one to start with is The Thing from Another World (1951) where the “Thing” is a Frankenstein’s monster style alien (see figure 6) that has been cut from beneath the Arctic ice where its ship had crashed an unknown time ago.

Figure 6. “The Thing,” played by James Arness, as a vegetal vampire from outer space, in The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby. Winchester Pictures Corporation, 1951.

Once defrosted the creature is driven by a need for human blood, and it exhibits a kind of immortality as parts of it, when cut off, regrow when fed blood. Perhaps more strikingly the creature is in fact a plant of some kind—this correlates to other vegetal aliens that crave human essence such as the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978), and The Queen of Blood (1966). While the creature cannot change its shape in this film—other than its severed parts being able to take on their own lives—later adaptions of the story, The Thing (1982/2011), make such transformations explicit to how it survives and multiplies. Indeed, just as the first “Thing” required human blood to live, the later “Things” require human lives to thrive—oddly echoing the BBC Dracula mini-series from 2020 in which the Count requires blood as “lives” to sustain himself.

Something of this is repeated in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985) where alien vampires, whose spaceship hides in the tail of Halley’s Comet, awaken to feed on human essence each time it returns to the vicinity of the planet Earth (every 74.7 years). The aliens themselves are huge bat-like creatures but can possess the bodies of humans and consume/suck-out soul/lifeforce by putting their mouths over that of their victims (see figure 7).

Figure 7. A guard (John Keegan) having the lifeforce sucked out of him by an unseen Space Girl (Mathilda May) in Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper. London-Cannon Films, 1985.

These are then “sent” back up to the mother ship for the rest of the colony to feed on. An earlier example of a similar kind of vampiric possession as a means of survival was seen in Planet of the Vampires (1965) where the survivors of an alien race are trapped on a barren planet after its sun has burnt out. Using the distress signal of a crashed space ship they attract 2 other ships and then inhabit the bodies of the humanoids piloting them. Of note here is that their vampirism is purely predicated on the possession of humanoid bodies (see figure 8), which although deadly to the hosts—if they’re not already dead—does not provide any kind of sustenance to them (such vampiric possession, though often non-deadly is a more recent feature of vampire narratives such as The Vampire Diaries (2009-17) and The Originals (2013-18).

Figure 8. A deadly game of “guess whose body is possessed by a vampire” featuring Wes Wescant (Ángel Aranda), Sanya (Norma Bengell), and Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan), in Planet of the Vampires, directed by Mario Bava. Italian International Film, 1965.

Returning to Lifeforce, and its idea of feeding off of human essence and “draining” their victims, this is not a million miles away from psychic vampires, most recently and famously seen in the figure of Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows (2019-24) where he purposely bores people to death and/or annoys them to distraction so that he can feed on their emotional energy (see figure 9). This has returned such forms of untypical vampirism back into the popular imagination—it’s actually something that has a longer history in literary vampires seen in The House of the Vampire (1907) by George Sylvester Viereck and “The Transfer” (1911) by Algernon Blackwood.

Figure 9. Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) as the person in the office that everyone tries to avoid, in What We Do in the Shadows, created by Jemaine Clement. FX Productions, 2019-24.

To sum up this rather eclectic list of some of my favourite vampire films, and to mangle and repurpose a well known phrase about ducks, “if it doesn’t walk like a vampire, or quack like a vampire, it doesn’t mean it’s not a vampire!”

Bio: Simon Bacon has authored/edited/co-edited 40+ books on vampires, monsters and gothic horror in popular culture and his Amazon Author page can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Guest Blog – Why are Vampires Erotic? – TMtV 20th anniversary

I’d like to welcome David MacDowell Blue to TMtV. I met David through Leila’s forum and we have corresponded on and off since. David has produced an Annotated Carmilla, to which I provided the preface and has written plays based on both Carmilla (twice) and Dracula. David has produced a blog to celebrate twenty years of TMtV, based on a paper he wrote for the World Dracula Congress.

Not everyone finds the undead even remotely sexy. Plenty are baffled by those who do. But denying plenty of people do feel exactly that way? Denial, pure and simple. The sheer number of porn sites and adult movies as well as hardcore erotic novels on this subject make up a thing called “evidence.”

But...why? To be sure nearly anything can be erotic to someone. But what in English culture latched onto the vampire, generation after generation?

Here’s my own theory. Part of this is probably the simple fact that for many pleasure and pain bleed into each other at times, not least during foreplay and especially at the moment of climax. Biting is erotic, a vampire bites, plus the aura of submission, the pleasures many feel entwined with losing control, etc.

There must be more, though. Begin with timing. By the 1800s, specialization and mass production had begun to impact lives in a way the Renaissance never did. Cities in Europe had begun to swell far beyond what they had been. Among other things, this meant people had less to do with basic processes of life. Increasing numbers no longer grew their own food, baked their own bread, and perhaps more importantly, never slaughtered their own meat. This last seems vital because to slice open the throat of a creature with a face, a creature to which we might well have given a name, that is a profound experience. And it reminds us we share something in common with that goose, that pig, that bull. We too will die. This period also saw increasing isolation from the processes of death. Doctors now took care of the very sick. Morticians took over preparing the dead for burial. It took generations, but it happened.

In this milieu The Vampyre by John Polidori emerged, followed by more literary vampires which—unlike their folkloric counterparts—engaged in temptation, seduction, betrayal. But all—from Varney to Carmilla and Dracula—embodies DEATH not as force but a character, someone with whom victims and others had a relationship. A relationship we no longer have with that part of life.

As death itself became repressed, shut aside, pushed down, so the Vampire in art became a forbidden but alluring figure of power. Perhaps more importantly, this was also a time as the idea of sexuality changed, echoing the same suppression about death. Just as we no longer killed our Christmas goose, so we were not supposed to “enjoy” pleasure from our bodies, at least not that kind of pleasure. Especially women. In the Middle Ages, a woman could ask for a divorce—and get it—if her husband did not give her enough orgasms. By the time Victoria had been on the throne for awhile, the idea of women enjoying sex became seen as an unhealthy deviancy! Small wonder as the Vampire became an avatar of forbidden lore of one kind it became associated with another, given the timing. Certainly both Carmilla and Dracula used such themes, exploring taboo desires often in an effort to “cure” such.

 

Carmilla as portrayed in The Vampire Lovers

By the time the twentieth century arrived, and as it progressed, all this became wound up with other aspects of life in some sense forbidden. Church and medical professionals as well as dozens of other institutions portrayed efforts to avoid death as unnatural, as much so as deviant forms of lust (including but not limited to dominance/submission, same sex attraction, fascination with pain or darkness in general). Small wonder then the centers of culture so often seen as “decadent” created many of the most memorable vampires which continue to haunt us. Weimar Germany gave us Nosferatu, while Hollywood turned Bram Stoker’s Count into a sinister sex symbol, and the same country from which the Beatles emerged also brought heaving bosoms as well very bright red blood into a whole slew of cult classic movies. Likewise, it makes such perfect sense New Orleans was the original home of Anne Rice, whose first novel took place in that beautiful, decaying, sensual city!

The pattern I see is how vampires remain entwined across the decades with whatever our culture wants rejected. Addictions, sexual excess, same sex love (all of Anne Rice), polyamory, cults (i.e. alternate spirituality a la Count Yorga or The Strain), interest in shadows and death (Dark Shadows), rebellion against the status quo in so many forms (including Twilight interestingly), power given to women, acceptance of the part of us that is animal (see 30 Days of Night for example), everything our teachers and parents and others insist we don’t “really” feel, at least not unless we are flawed (shades especially of Owen in Let Me In).

We aren’t supposed to feel a connection between ecstasy and agony, between feeling life ever more acutely in the presence of death, the primitive nature of so many of our desires (including the ones which cannot help pervade our lives). Jung called all these things our SHADOW, an archetype within our unconscious minds, the embodiment of all we have been taught to suppress. A figure of repulsion and attraction. Something we fear yet somehow know we need, and which being a part of us cannot be amputated without disfiguring or crippling ourselves.

Orlok as shadow in Nosferatu

Vampires have become one incarnation of that Shadow. Our isolation from death, from death as part of life, from the processes humans now have done by proxy in order to survive, the sexual repression that emerged in the rise of the middle class, the specific shape of female repression and its frankly terrible consequences for all genders—plus maybe a little bit of our acquired idealization of biting into delicious red meat, tasting what seems like blood on the tongue (it isn’t really, but we’re talking visceral impressions here). All these combined into shaping this image—a seductive creature of sensual power, combining life and death, offering horror and freedom, slavery and excess, pleasure side by side with torture. It might not be handsome, although certainly most of the men cast as Dracula have been very good looking, and the voluptuous vampire woman in a translucent gown revealing a lot is an icon in her own right. It might be ugly, like Orlock or the spawn of Barlow in Salem’s Lot. But it remains in some sense attractive, often in the same way a toxic significant other may be, or the thrill of a very dangerous habit like heroin, or simply a temptation to power in one way or another. Achieving it, wallowing in it, or giving it away, releasing oneself into sensation and submission.

It could have been something else. The Hunger in some other timeline might have been about djinn. Abigail could have been a werewolf. Sinners could have been about zombies. From Dusk Till Dawn might easily have been about Minotaurs or Mermaids or even Elves!

Yet in the specific cultural stew of England in the early 1800s, the ingredients took the folkloric Vampire and simmered for centuries with the sexual neuroses of the Victorian Age into what we have today--a version of Jung’s Shadow within us all, tempting with danger and sin and truths we’ve been told are lies.

Guest Blog – Rusalka, A key to Early Vampire Film – TMtV 20th anniversary

It’s with great pleasure I welcome David Anwnn Jones to the blog. Whereas with other guest bloggers for this 20th anniversary celebration I have put a little forward of how I met the guest, with David he wrote something on that himself and so I’ll hand straight to him:

It is a great pleasure to be asked to write a post for Andy Boylan’s ‘Taliesin meets The Vampires’ twentieth anniversary year. I have long admired this vampire film expert’s writing with its wide knowledge of vampire lore and cinematics. In 2016, I convened the World Vampire Congress, Whitby where Andy delivered his fascinating talk on Stoker and vampire bat iconography. Since then, I have followed his blogs which spread an awareness of film vampires over a wide range of transnational environments, often remote from Hollywood. I have also enjoyed our extensive correspondence.

In his appreciation of Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy’s The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead (2018) from 9 Sept 2019, Andy writes:

 

Now mermaid is a misnomer here and it is what the title has been translated to from the Russian title Rusalka: Ozero myortvykh. The rusalka is from Slavic lore and is a form of restless dead. Zelenin (in Russian Folk Belief) suggests it is a suicide or murder victim who, in either case, was drowned. There is an entry in Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology that has it as a type of fae created when a child dies before baptism or an adolescent dies a virgin.

The foundation myth here is that of the malefic underwater female who lures handsome men beneath the surface to enjoy them sexually and then drains them of life. Andy certainly reads the Rusalka as an energy vampire. Bane goes on to write she’s a ‘vampiric fae’ and member of the Unseelie Court. Vladimir Propp and Linda Ivanits called the rusalka one of the ‘unclean dead’, a revenant. Thomas J. Garza in The Vampire in Slavic Cultures writes that the boundary between vampires and the rusalka as predatory outsider was porous in village lore. Such links reveal that the Rusalka is the oldest surviving vampire figure in cinema history in an extant film, predating F W Murnau’s Nosferatu by over a decade and Lugosi’s Dracula by 21 years.

The rusalka myth is perennially fascinating. galvanising directors and writers today. Podgaevskiy’s film is surrounded by other cinematic she-vampires of the deep: Petr Weigl and Václav Kaslik’s respective versions of Dvorak’s opera, 1963 and 77, Aleksandr Petrov’s animated Mermaid Rusalka 1996, Gary Whitson’s Destiny: Vampire Mermaid 1999, Sebastian Gutierrez’s She Creature 2001, François Rousillon’s Rusalka 2002 TV movie, Anna Melikyan’s Mermaid/ Rusalka 2007, Don E. Fauntleroy’s Bering Sea Beast / Beast of the Bering Sea 2013. Milan Todorovic’s Mamula /Nymph/ Dark Sea /Killer Mermaid 2014 and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, 2015. Nearer to the present, Perry Blackshear, Lona Fontane, Dale Thomas Cizmadia and Claudiu Mitcu’s have all made Rusalka films. Though the primary means of predation in these films is drowning, there is no shortage either of feeding, directly and by osmosis, strangulation, sharp fangs, blood-letting and sucking, and other vampiric depredation

I wish to make a bridge from these films, stretching back to the early dawn of Russian horror cinema. Vasili Goncharov’s foundational Rusalka film of 1910 is based on the play by Alexander Pushkin and stars Andrey Gromov as The Prince, Vasili Stepanov as The Miller and Aleksandra Goncharova as Natalya, the miller’s daughter and subsequently the Rusalka queen.

 

The film starts with Natalya, visibly longing for her lover, the Prince, who, when he arrives, throws her aside to marry a woman of royal blood. Distraught. Natalya drowns herself in the river. Yet, at the wedding feast, her ghost appears accusing the Prince, even within the nuptial bedroom. For eight years, the Prince obsesses over the dead working-class girl and finally rides back to mill, encountering her father who, driven mad with grief, imagines that he is now a raven. Led by Natalya, the rusalka spirits appear, amongst them a young girl who could be Natalya’s unbaptised daughter (unborn when her mother committed suicide). Natalya and the young girl and others lure the prince into the Dnieper river. His present wife arrives later only to find his clothes. On the riverbed, in what initially seems to be a Mélièsan tableau, Natalya, now queen of the Rusalka, caresses his corpse while other her maidens perform a swaying dance. For 1910, the same year as Frankenstein, the film, (which can be viewed here) is a considerable achievement, more indebted to the structure and rhythms of Pathé early films than Edison.

The cinematic Rusalka has survived perhaps because, whatever the seismic pull from Western horror cinema, it has proved difficult to Dracularize a Slavic female water-fiend. (Yet, the ‘feeding of the beast’ in Luc Besson’s Dracula (2025), whereby a feral mer-maiden rises to threaten horrified fairground visitors might hint that pressure is now being exerted in the opposite direction), The rusalka’s miraculous survival from a fractured and decimated Russian film industry also opens the gate for an awareness of the first female age of vampire films. She was originally part of a constellation of film’s female vampires, a whole distinctive age 1901-21: the Lilith of Lilith and Ly, Vera in Afterlife Wanderer (1915) the Pannochka of Goncharov’s Viy (1909) and the cat vampire of Nabeshima (1912), all notorious female monsters in their time but starring in films now lost. Yet their early dominance is still attested in surviving stills, scripts, reviews and posters.

I do not wish to be politically glib, but the story of a young woman mis-used by a prince and who subsequently commits suicide but takes her revenge from beyond the grave is not without strong resonance in 2026. Like any vivid revenant of the screen, even after 115 years and against all the odds, Aleksandra Goncharov’s vampiric mer-demon still rises towards us from the shadows of pre-Soviet cinema with a flickering intensity. She points at the feckless prince over his wedding feast. She follows her faithless lover right into his marital bedroom accusingly. She and her daughter stalk the shores of the Dnieper. They lure the royal philanderer into the river-depths. In her underwater apotheosis, she will instate her revenge and caress her man’s prone body, absorbing all his former strength. She will not lie down. Happy Anniversary ‘Taliesin meets the Vampires.’ Long may you run. The first age of vampire cinema was female.

David Annwn

David Annwn is author of Gothic Machine, Sex and the Gothic Magic Lantern and Gothic Effigy. He is also author of the first book on vampires in early film: Vampires on the Silent Screen, Re-envisaging the First Age of Cinematic Horror and essays in each volume of The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic series. A magic lanternist, David is a recognised authority on E-G Robertson’s Phantasmagoria show, being the first to locate its original site. Sir Christopher Frayling called David’s work ‘fascinating materials and connections: Vampire archaeology.’ Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney has called his writing: ‘wonderfully sympathetic and accurate.’

Guest Blog - Has Ireland become the new Transylvania? - TMtV 20th anniversary

It’s with great pleasure that I welcome Dan Klefstad and Eva Vertrice to the blog. I met them individually through reviewing their books, A Fury by Eva and Fiona’s Guardians by Dan. But as well as authors, Dan and Eva are co-hosts of Vamp Chat with Dan & Eva and they have been as good as to invite me on the podcast not once but twice. Without further ado, here’s their blog.

When you hear the word “vampire” you might envision centuries-old revenants from Romania or other eastern European countries. They might have a Slavic accent similar to Béla Lugosi or perhaps Count von Count of Sesame Street. They might wear a long black cape and have a gentlemanly air about them. But what if this perception was changing? What if modern vampires had an origin story more Celtic than Slavic?

In recent years pop culture brought us Angel, the title character in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff which ran from 1999-2004. In 2016, AMC adapted the comic book series Preacher that casted Joseph Gilgun as the vampire Cassidy, best friend of the main character, a pastor with a criminal history. From 2011-2014, the vampire Aidan Waite roomed with a ghost and werewolf in the BBC series Being Human. And then there’s Remmick, the banjo picking, jig dancing vampire from the film Sinners, played brilliantly by Jack O’Connell.

What do these vampires have in common? They all hailed from The Emerald Isle. 

But Ireland is not a new hotspot for vampires. In fact, it has a rich history of undead lore.

The 1870 book, The Origins and History of Irish Names and Places, by Patrick Weston Joyce, introduced 19th Century readers to Abhartach, a chieftain Joyce describes as a “dwarf” who lived in Londonderry:

This dwarf was a magician, and a dreadful tyrant, and after having perpetrated great cruelties on the people he was at last vanquished and slain by a neighbouring chieftain; some say by Fionn Mac Cumhail.

They buried Abhartach in a standing position, but the next day he returned to his haunt. The chieftain who slew him the first time, did so again and buried him as before. Abhartach again rose and terror spread throughout the county. Joyce continues:

The chief then consulted a druid, and according to his directions, he slew the dwarf a third time, and buried him in the same place, with his head downwards; which subdued his magical power, so that he never again appeared on earth. The laght raised over the dwarf is still there, and you may hear the legend with much detail from the natives of the place, one of whom told it to me.

Some modern versions have Abhartach rise from his grave to drink the blood of his subjects {Ed – Abhartach is at the centre of the Irish film the Boys From County Hell}. In Bob Curran’s book, Was Dracula an Irishman?, the chieftain who slays the revenant consults an early Christian saint instead of a druid, and is told that Abhartach is one of the neamh-mairbh, or walking dead, and that he can only be killed with a sword made of yew wood. Then he must be buried upside down with thorns surrounding his grave and a large stone placed on top.

The Dearg Due is another vampiric entity in Irish folklore. Pronounced DAH-ruhg DU-ah, it means “red bloodsucker,” and refers to a female demon that seduces men and drinks their blood.

According to this legend, a beautiful young woman fell in love with a local peasant, which was unacceptable to her father. A greedy man, her father forced her to marry a rich chieftain who imprisoned her and treated her terribly. The only path out of such abuse, she reasoned, was death, so she killed herself and was buried near Strongbow’s Tree in Waterford. On the anniversary of her death, she rose from her grave to seek revenge. She attacked her evil husband first, then her father, sinking her teeth into their necks and draining them dry. Now with an unquenchable thirst for human blood, she continued to prey on young men, enchanting them with her beauty, and luring them to her grave, sparing none.

Dracula author Bram Stoker, an Irishman, would’ve been familiar with these tales. So why did he decide to take his story down a different path instead of relying on this known local lore? Instead, he set much of his story in Transylvania, a place he had never visited. He leaned heavily on Emily Gerard’s 1885 essay, “Transylvanian Superstitions” and its expanded book form, The Land Beyond the Forest to introduce us to Vlad Dracula, aka Vlad III or Vlad Tepes which means “Vlad the Impaler.” Stoker was intrigued with the name “Dracula” which meant “son of Dracul” but also translated to “devil.” Blend these two, “Son of the Devil,” and you have the perfect name for a monster.

Still, there’s no evidence that Stoker based his character on the Wallachian warlord. In her essay, “Filing for Divorce: Count Dracula vs Vlad Tepes,” Professor Elizabeth Miller points out that Stoker’s research notes for Dracula fail to indicate that he had detailed biographical knowledge of Vlad III. Miller adds there’s no current evidence that Stoker had knowledge of Vlad III’s reputation for cruelty, his use of impalement as a punishment, or even his full name. This absence of a direct connection between Count Dracula and Vlad III makes it easier to conclude that the world’s most famous vampire may be more Irish than we thought.

Perhaps Bram Stoker did draw on his Irish roots a bit more than originally believed, and that Count Dracula hailed from a lush, green glade, surrounded by fairies & leprechauns with pots of gold.

Dan Klefstad & Eva Vertrice

Dan & Eva will moderate a panel discussion titled, “Has Ireland become the New Transylvania?” This will take place at The Imaginarium Convention, July 17-19, 2026, at the Holiday Inn Louisville East in Kentucky. They are excited to welcome Dacre Stoker, great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker, to the panel along with several other authors and vampire creatives. For more information visit entertheimaginarium.com or vampchatwithdanandeva.com or reach out to Dan & Eva at vampchatwithdanandeva@gmail.com. It’s going to be an exciting discussion.

Franky and His Pals – review

Director: Jerald Cormier

Release date: 1991

Contains spoilers

We are in straight to video territory here, with a monster mash that generally fails to provide more than the most very basic of plot and relies instead on dubious humour to carry it forward. Nevertheless, with an appearance of Drak (Jerry Cormier Jr.) – Dracula, of course – there is a need to watch, document and review.

the mad scientist

It starts with a mad scientist (director Jerald Cormier under the adjusted name spelling Gerald Cormier) talking to whoever he works for on the phone and explaining that he can’t test the time machine yet. He needs gold to make the inner workings work. He is also distracted by the cleavage of his assistant (I think Kelli Gianettoni whose character is named Blonde Bimbo). After credits (that are designed to be self-effacing) we meet grave diggers Calvin (Russ Lowe) and George (Robert Lowe). As they dig, the legend of the monsters is told.

Jerry Cormier Jr. as Drak

Apparently the Monsters were reputed to have been in the area and became trapped in a cave by a landslide. Cutting to the monsters they are still in the cave and are Drak, Franky (Eric Weathersbee), Wolfie (Wilson Smith), Humpy (Keith Lack) the Hunchback, and the Mummy (Richard Sumner). The Mummy is mute but a midriff level parasite it carries, called Apophis, can speak. They pass their time playing poker. Elsewhere the town council have met and the town is in a bind – they owe over a million in property taxes to the IRS.

grave diggers

Playing poker (with multiple decks it seems), one of the stakes is a map that Humper has, showing the town and an x where a cache of gold is hidden. Drak wants the gold and, following a bean binge, fortuitously Franky’s fart clears the cave entrance. It is night (or so they suggest) and the monsters leave. They have been trapped so long they are astounded when they see horseless carriages. In one of an interminable number of musical interludes we get a “rap” (really not well done) that explains the plot thus far.

bite

Beyond scaring a driver and his date and the grave diggers, the monsters get to a hotel, where the gold is hidden and a Halloween party is going on. Of course this means they fit right in and start looking for the gold, sort of… they do tend to just wander around firing off crudely drawn gags and the base layer of misogyny in the script/gags is not supported by any true layer of sexploitation (the closest we get is a bikini contest) or any underlying funny humour. From a TMtV point of view, Drak at least manages to bite two women, the barmaid (Hester Simonis) and a party goer in Egyptian garb (Pauline Elliott). Both suffer no more ill effects beyond feeling weak and the slight amount of blood seen on one neck is really the only blood seen.

dancing Drak

And weak is what the film is but, the makeup seemed ok (at a distance at least) and there was an underlaying something that kept we watching, morbidly fascinated. The vast majority of the film is focused on the party, the grave diggers are scared occasionally, the town council appears right towards the end and the time machine is almost a coda, lining up a sequel that looks to have never happened. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Complete Dracula – review

Adapters: Leah Moore and John Reppion

Artwork: Colton Worley

First published: 2010 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Writers Leah Moore and John Reppion are joined by painter Colton Worley for a fully painted series, reprinted here in this softcover collected edition. All of the stunning covers by John Cassaday are included, along with script pages, annotations by Leah Moore and John Reppion and samplings of the original text by Bram Stoker!

The review: Another graphic novel adaptation of Dracula and one that underlines the idiom "never judge a book by its cover". The cover was by John Cassaday and I absolutely love it, a stark comic graphic that absolutely drew me in. The inner art, however, not so much. A painted style I was not wowed. The panel layout is, for the most part, pedestrian and the palette muted, it was at best utilitarian in my eyes – which is not the best way art for a graphic novel should be described. I disliked the character designs too. Art, of course, impacts different people in different ways, there will be those out there who love the style – it really wasn’t for me.

The story itself followed Stoker, but sometimes strangely. Aspects seemed glossed over or, in some cases missing, which might be fine in an adaptation as there is only so much that will fit into the format (though they have called this complete) and yet other moments of completeness that I’d have missed out are included. Moments of crates being shifted and located round London just slowed the pace of the graphic down, for instance. They included the Dracula’s Guest sequence, presumably to be complete (though Stoker chose to expunge that from the final novel) and I was curious about their decision to move to Stoker’s rejected ending connecting the collapse of castle Dracula with his demise. I love Stoker’s novel but didn’t feel this did it justice, for me at least. 5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

X-Men: Apocalypse Vs Dracula – review

Author: Frank Tieri

Illustrator: Clayton Henry

First published: 2018 (TPB)

Contains spoilers  

The Blurb: One is a villain that has been plaguing civilization since the time of the Pharaohs. The other is the deadliest vampire to ever walk the earth. Enemies since the Crusades, they've met again in 19th century London. It's the battle to end all battles as Apocalypse confronts Dracula!

The review: An interesting stand-alone story that jumps between timelines but, mostly, is set on the 19th century. This has Dracula – as a mortal Vlad Ţepeş – faced with Apocalypse’s forces during his war with the Ottoman Empire. It then outlines an attempt to take over a secret society descended from Apocalpyse, based at the London mansion Alexandria House, who eventually summon Apocalypse from suspended animation, but the mutant is bitten by Dracula and no-one knows if he can resist the vampire’s dominion – not even Abraham Van Helsing who joins the society’s survivors to help defeat his nemesis.

And this is quite good fun, a little bit of Dracula action in Marvel is always welcome and this time he was mixing it up with an X-Men antagonist. The artwork was good enough throughout. The story was a good bit of a side hustle and did fairly much what it said on the side of the tin, as it were, but didn't do anything too left field. 6 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

On Kindle @ Amazon UK

Dracula Eternal – review

Director: Alan Smith

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Another reimagining of Dracula, this one struggles. It cites Bram Stoker in the opening credits and lifts names… or modified versions thereof… but uses the love story background from Dracula (1992). Not that the love story aspect was the issue, more it was sloppy scriptwriting and the twist. I’m going to spoil the twist as the film broadcast that punch pretty darn early on.

So it starts on Monday evening and a couple are wandering the streets, bored and wanting a drink. First he is attacked by a grey thing – the vampire is seen in man-bat form when attacking but never for so long that the rubber mask is obvious – but the attack is unsatisfying cinematically. CGI blood and then we see him on the floor, a fence by him is then seen to have a huge amount of blood (smear not spatter/spray), with nothing between the close body and fence, and massive bloody handprints. It’s the opening moment of horror in the film and it is badly executed. The woman is then attacked.

Mina and Lucy

Tuesday, and Mina Harker (Cody Renee Cameron, the Neon Demon, Ravenwolf Towers, Verotika and the Obsidian Curse) is walking with her friend Lucy West (LeeAnne Bauer) and let us talk names for a minute. That Westenra is shortened to West is no surprise. More surprising is giving Mina the surname Harker, given that her fiancé is listed as Jonathan Harker (Cardon Ellis) in the credits, one wonders why both had the surname. The other name to mention is Mr Fields (Nathan Smith-Finley); we finally hear his name towards the end of the film but given the character’s dishevelled look, repeated references to “the Master”, and appropriation of Dwight Frye’s laugh he is clearly Renfield.

Nathan Smith-Finley as Mr Fields

Anyway, Mina’s profession is unknown (though mention is made of a photoshoot and studio) but Lucy is an old friend who is there to interview her. They are having a laugh when they are approached by Mr Fields, who grabs Mina and says she is for the Master. Lucy offers a judicious knee to his privates and he leaves. They drive to Mina’s home (to be fair we don’t know if they went elsewhere first) and when they get there Mr Fields is stood by the door. He offers creepy words and then leaves. Lucy follows but loses him immediately, Mina calls the cops.

at the crime scene

So, elsewhere, Detective Mills (Denise Milfort) is at a crime scene. We see fang marks in the neck of the deceased. With a skull on his car hood and covered in tattoos, Detective Paller (Mike Ferguson), does look a tad more gang member than detective but he is Mills partner. This is far from the first victim. Paller is convinced there is a serial killer, Mills has talked to her priest and has come to the conclusion that there is something demonic going on, like vampires. Apparently the only cops in LA, they are sent to Mina’s to discuss the stalking.

Drake and Mina

I mentioned broadcasting punches. Jonathan is at Mina’s when the detectives arrive. Paller waits for an actual invitation before entering and once in is overly attentive to Mina, who asks if she knows him. Later that night Jonathan is attacked by the vampire whilst going home (and there is an alarming lack of concern when he goes incommunicado) and we see Lucy dragged through the house – so the vampire has already been invited (back to alarming, despite Lucy screaming and bleeding wounds on her neck, Mina does not call Mills about the attack in her house till the next morning). Oh, and we discover Paller’s first name is Drake… yeah, he’s Dracula, posing as a detective and working the homicide case where he is the killer.

Lucy turning

It is the laxness in the script that concerns most. With Lucy acting odd (and the film letting her have a gyrate for no real reason after her lesbian advances are rebuffed and before pounding on Mina’s door), Mina decides to contact a priest, picks the first random one she spots online, Father Connor (William 'Bill' Connor, Bloodthirst), and he happens to both believe in vampires and know Dracula’s backstory. Strangely, after he tells Mina about the 15th Century Prince Vlad, who turned from God because his wife died and struck a deal with the devil for immortal life, she uses the name Dracula – though he never mentioned it. You could argue she remembered the name (being his wife reincarnated) but beyond the vague recognition there are no other suggestions of past life memories.

Dracula attacks

Lore is pretty standard, other than Connor telling Mina that Dracula is immortal but can be destroyed if he falls in love again and renounces his pact with the devil, which will lift the curse. Beyond that we get stakes, a silver dagger, and holy items. This was hampered by the lax script and by the fact that they really didn’t put any effort into building a meaningful relationship between Dracula and Mina. This is far from the best, but I have seen a whole lot worse. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK