I have been wanting to explore more of Bram Stoker's fiction in order to get a sense of the wider context for Dracula, and chose this book to start with because it is set in Cruden Bay, where I went with the Dracula Society in Bram's footsteps in summer 2018 ( LJ / DW). While we were there, local Stoker researcher Mike Shepherd showed us the places ( Read more... )

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This novel was written by two sisters, of whom the elder, Emily Gerard, was a Polish cavalry officer's wife and spent time living in the Transylvanian Romanian towns of Sibiu and Brașov where he was stationed. It's well known in Dracula circles that she used that time to research an article and book on Transylvania which were used in turn by Bram ( Read more... )

This book was my response to the 'Doesn't belong to me' prompt when I did the book a day meme back in June. I hadn't actually read it yet at that point, but had spotted it on my Dad's bookshelves, and felt it deserved to be read in this year of all years. The cover looks like this, and was at once promising and off-putting:


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I saw this at the Cottage Road cinema last week with the lovely
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Starburst magazine ran a film festival in late August 2016, which I went to with friends and wrote up on my 'starburstff' tag ( LJ / DW). It was badly advertised and organised, but actually the films, the guests and the friends I went with were all great, so we had a brilliant time - something I particularly needed back then, as it was still less ( Read more... )

Last October, Andrew Hickey wrote an excellent blog post to mark the 25th anniversary of the broadcast of Ghostwatch (1992), a BBC production with a rather special place in cult TV history. I have always wanted to watch it, and his post forcefully reminded me why, as well as revealing that it is now available on a DVD two-set along with The Stone ( Read more... )

A little over two years ago, I went to a staged reading of an unproduced Hammer script held at De Montfort University's Cinema And Television History (CATH) Research Centre entitled The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula ( LJ / DW), as part of the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham. This was essentially the same deal - a line-up of actors giving a live ( Read more... )

So! Film festival, day two. Here is the overall schedule for the day:


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This is a British SF comedy, which a neighbour of mine lent to me when I had shingles, on the grounds that he knew I liked Doctor Who and guessed I might need things to watch from my sick-bed. Which was very sweet of him, although in practice it took me until this weekend to get round to watching it. (I'm an academic, so the main thing I actually ( Read more... )