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Dracula

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Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection (1931 – 1956)

Holy hell creeps; here comes the monstrous mother-load…thirty classic Universal released fright flicks all in one handy-dandy Blu-ray collection! Let’s take a very, very deep dive into the Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection as we feast our eerie eyeballs on every film and the eerie extras these devilish discs contain! (Fair warning: this is going to be one hell of an insanely long-ass review!!!) Kicking things of we have the Frankenstein Complete Legacy Collection Frankenstein (1931): Ol’ Doc Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his deformed assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) are up to the totally reasonable and completely sane task of digging up graves and disassembling corpses with the intent of putting the best bits together like a human jigsaw puzzle. Well, thanks to janky science and lightning they succeed, but the end result isn’t the human perfection for which they strove; rather he is a misshapen monstrosity (played to putrid perfection by Boris Karloff) possessed of great strength,a child

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Sep 29, 2018
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: The Bloodthirsty Trilogy (1970 – 1974)

No doubt inspired by the success of Hammer Film’s Dracula series, as well as the popularity of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, Japanese movie maestros Toho (of Godzilla fame) decided to get in on the vein drain biz, the result of which are the three film’s I’ll be turning my eerie eyeballs on today! The Vampire Doll (1970): On your standard dark and stormy night, Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) returns from abroad and heads to the home of his fiance Yuko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi)…a home that would give Barnabas Collins the fucking creeps no less (at times realized with a fantastic miniature in exterior scenes). Once there, Yuko’s mother; the ultra eerie Shidu (Yôko Minakaze) informs Sagawa his love has died. He opts to spend the night and of course has nightmare visions of his lost love…visions that are soon revealed to be reality resulting in Sagawa’s disappearance. Enter Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo) and her fiance Hiroshi (Akira Nakao)

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jun 11, 2018
Horror Fuel

Zombies, Vampires Or Humans: Burying A False Meme

Oh the internet, you give us hours of entertainment and insight into the world around us. Sadly you’re also the home of the misinformed and the gullible. There’s been a meme circulating the web for years showing a gravesite with an iron cage covering it, quite peculiar indeed till you read the text that accompanies it. There’s a lot wrong with this meme. First off, the Victorians (1837-1901) were not as naive and terrified of the world around them as the generations before them. Many Victorians never heard of Vampires till in 1897 Irish author Bram Stoker published ‘Dracula’. After its publication, more Vampire stories showed up in works of fiction and still to this day. Zombies, the odds of a common Victorian knowing about Haitian or West African lore was slim. To a common Victorian, a Zombie was just someone who was brought back to life after being dead for some time; perfect example of this would have been

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 21, 2017
Horror Fuel

Shudder Welcomes The Universal Monsters To Its October Schedule

You can’t have Halloween without the classic Universal Monsters, luckily Shudder has you covered with all of the iconic monsters arriving on their AMC-backed streaming service today. So get cozy with your love and watch a classic! You can now find Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Wolfman (1941) on the network dedicated to things that go bump in the night. About the films: Dracula – Bela Lugosi stars in the Universal’s classic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s essential vampire tale. Frankenstein – Boris Karloff is the screen’s most memorable creature in the story of Dr. Frankenstein, who pieces together salvaged body parts to create a human monster. Bride of Frankenstein – Karloff returns as the screen’s most misunderstood monster and Elsa Lanchester stars as his ill-fated bride in one of horror’s all-time greats. The Invisible Man – Claude Rains stars as a mysterious doctor who discovers a serum that

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 17, 2017
Horror Fuel

Another ‘Nosferatu’ Remake Is One More Nail In The Coffin Of Genre Creativity

Nosferatu- this is a word you’re all familiar with, isn’t that right my Little Monsters? The word has about as many explanations regarding its meaning and origin as there have been films made about the creature the word represents. Frankly, fans of vampire movies aren’t likely to care much about the word’s true origin, as much as they will care about sub-par movie representations of their favorite blood sucking creatures of the night. One can safely say that Vampire movies have always been something of a cash cow for studios. Especially since, for better or worse, filmmakers are always finding new ways to keep said subject matter alive, or perhaps undead would be a better way of putting it. Of course this doesn’t stop the studios from trying to squeeze every last cinematic drop of blood they can from the king of the vampires himself, Count Dracula. The most recent attempt at telling the Dracula story was the origin piece

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 15, 2017
Horror Fuel

‘Sherlock’ Brain-trust To Create A New ‘Dracula’ Series

Hello again my Little Monsters, as you may have read in the title, it appears that a new Dracula series is in the works from the folks at the BBC (that’s The British Broadcasting Corporation to you and me, Rusty). After their monumentally successful modernization of the tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary sleuth in the television series Sherlock, the writers and producers of the popular series are focusing their gaze on a new incarnation of Bram Stoker’s equally legendary “Prince of Darkness”. Sherlock series writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat will be on board again to handle writing duties, while Sue Vertue’s company Hartswood Films will handle all producorial aspects. This will be a reunion of sorts for Gattis and Moffat, who haven’t collaborated on a project since Series 4 of Sherlock. Despite their present work on solo projects, Gatiss and Moffat have begun talks with the BBC on this new series. Granted, there will likely be no

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jun 21, 2017
Horror Fuel

Heritage Auctions Unleashes A Horde Of Vintage Horror Comics At Upcoming Auction

Whether you’re an avid collector of rare, pre-code horror comics or just someone who enjoys reading about Spider Man duking it out with Count Dracula, this Sunday’s upcoming internet comic sale from Heritage Auctions will have something for you. Though the auction giant holds weekly internet sales in their comics/comic art department, this one stands out due to the plethora of near-forgotten horror titles from the “anything goes” days before the Comics Code toned down comic book terror. No issues of beloved EC titles like ‘Tales from the Crypt’ or ‘The Haunt of Fear’ are on offer, but in their place collectors can find slabbed and CGC-graded issues of highly sought rarities ‘Beware’, ‘Chamber of Chills’, ‘The Thing!’, ‘Out of the Night’, and several others. Also on the auction block are multiple issues of Neil Gaiman’s seminal ‘Sandman’, Marvel’s ‘Tomb of Dracula’, ‘The Munsters’ from Gold Key, and a copy of Marvel Spotlight #5, which features the first appearance of

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jun 21, 2017
Horror Fuel

Dracula Is Back For New Modern Series

Nick Wechsler and Joni Sighvatsson are teaming up to produce a new edgier, more political, adaption of ‘Dracula’ as a 10-episode series, Variety reports. Otto Geir Borg, whose film ‘Undercurrent’ won six Edda awards (Iceland’s version of an Oscar) will pen the series. The series, titled ‘Dracula Now’, is based on Valdimar Asmundsson’s reworking of ‘Dracula’ titled ‘Powers of Darkness‘, translated to English by Hans de Roos. The edition features a preface by Dacre Stoker, the great-grand nephew of Bram Stoker, and an afterword by horror scholar John E. Browning. In ‘Dracula Now’, the epic character will be a manipulative, seductive, megalomaniac who has come from Transylvania intent on conquering modern day Europe. Dracula Now will be an allegory of what’s happening today in the U.S., in the U.K. and in France,” said Sighvatsson, who is based in Los Angeles and heads up Scanbox with Thor Sigurjonsson and Chris Briggs. “It won’t be like a ‘Dracula’ spinoff because there’s no

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Feb 22, 2017
Horror Fuel

Frankenstein is Not My Name

At my day job, I dress up in a shirt, tie and polished shoes. I am not a shirt, tie and polished shoes kind of guy. Therefore, I have found fun little ways to break out of the tie-noose, things like various colors of shoelaces and funky belt buckles. No, I’m no Wolowitz, but I am happy with my little collection. Among my favorite are a couple of different skull buckles, Freddy Krueger’s claw and the head of Frankenstein’s monster. I know, by now you are asking “what’s the point?” But here it is. In my opinion, in the monster world there are the big four: Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, and Frankenstein’s Monster. I do believe that there are very close second tier villains like Kruger, Voorhees, Ghost Face, Swamp Thing, and then spirals down into an infinite number of characters, but I want to focus on the Big Four. Here’s the point: The monster has no name? Yes, people

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 29, 2016
Horror Fuel

Cynema: Ed Wood–Hollywood’s Whipping Boy

No Respect Apparently Michael Medved, the respected film critic gets the credit with dubbing Edward Wood, Jr. the “worst director of all time” by referring to Wood’s crowning film achievement, Plan Nine From Outer Space as perhaps the worst motion picture ever made. This is not only to come to the late Mr. Wood’s defense, but to also show how off the mark Mr. Medved was in his 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards. Wood is the antithesis of Cynema–his passion and love for film makes him one of Hollywood’s greatest directors. Say what you want about Plan Nine, Bride of the Monster or Glen or Glenda…bad films, yes. Bad directing, absolutely. However Ed Wood was not a cynic. This column will show why films like Jaws The Revenge, Godzilla 1998 and other big budget films are far worse than anything Ed Wood ever put out, including Plan 9. By many accounts, including his own, Plan 9 From Outer Space

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 14, 2015

More from Dracula

Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection (1931 – 1956)

Holy hell creeps; here comes the monstrous mother-load…thirty classic Universal released fright flicks all in one handy-dandy Blu-ray collection! Let’s take a very, very deep dive into the Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection as we feast our eerie eyeballs on every film and the eerie extras these devilish discs contain! (Fair warning: this is going to be one hell of an insanely long-ass review!!!) Kicking things of we have the Frankenstein Complete Legacy Collection Frankenstein (1931): Ol’ Doc Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his deformed assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) are up to the totally reasonable and completely sane task of digging up graves and disassembling corpses with the intent of putting the best bits together like a human jigsaw puzzle. Well, thanks to janky science and lightning they succeed, but the end result isn’t the human perfection for which they strove; rather he is a misshapen monstrosity (played to putrid perfection by Boris Karloff) possessed of great strength,a child

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Sep 29, 2018
Horror Fuel

Blu-ray Review: The Bloodthirsty Trilogy (1970 – 1974)

No doubt inspired by the success of Hammer Film’s Dracula series, as well as the popularity of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, Japanese movie maestros Toho (of Godzilla fame) decided to get in on the vein drain biz, the result of which are the three film’s I’ll be turning my eerie eyeballs on today! The Vampire Doll (1970): On your standard dark and stormy night, Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) returns from abroad and heads to the home of his fiance Yuko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi)…a home that would give Barnabas Collins the fucking creeps no less (at times realized with a fantastic miniature in exterior scenes). Once there, Yuko’s mother; the ultra eerie Shidu (Yôko Minakaze) informs Sagawa his love has died. He opts to spend the night and of course has nightmare visions of his lost love…visions that are soon revealed to be reality resulting in Sagawa’s disappearance. Enter Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo) and her fiance Hiroshi (Akira Nakao)

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Jun 11, 2018
Horror Fuel

Zombies, Vampires Or Humans: Burying A False Meme

Oh the internet, you give us hours of entertainment and insight into the world around us. Sadly you’re also the home of the misinformed and the gullible. There’s been a meme circulating the web for years showing a gravesite with an iron cage covering it, quite peculiar indeed till you read the text that accompanies it. There’s a lot wrong with this meme. First off, the Victorians (1837-1901) were not as naive and terrified of the world around them as the generations before them. Many Victorians never heard of Vampires till in 1897 Irish author Bram Stoker published ‘Dracula’. After its publication, more Vampire stories showed up in works of fiction and still to this day. Zombies, the odds of a common Victorian knowing about Haitian or West African lore was slim. To a common Victorian, a Zombie was just someone who was brought back to life after being dead for some time; perfect example of this would have been

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 21, 2017
Horror Fuel

Shudder Welcomes The Universal Monsters To Its October Schedule

You can’t have Halloween without the classic Universal Monsters, luckily Shudder has you covered with all of the iconic monsters arriving on their AMC-backed streaming service today. So get cozy with your love and watch a classic! You can now find Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Wolfman (1941) on the network dedicated to things that go bump in the night. About the films: Dracula – Bela Lugosi stars in the Universal’s classic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s essential vampire tale. Frankenstein – Boris Karloff is the screen’s most memorable creature in the story of Dr. Frankenstein, who pieces together salvaged body parts to create a human monster. Bride of Frankenstein – Karloff returns as the screen’s most misunderstood monster and Elsa Lanchester stars as his ill-fated bride in one of horror’s all-time greats. The Invisible Man – Claude Rains stars as a mysterious doctor who discovers a serum that

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Oct 17, 2017
Horror Fuel

Another ‘Nosferatu’ Remake Is One More Nail In The Coffin Of Genre Creativity

Nosferatu- this is a word you’re all familiar with, isn’t that right my Little Monsters? The word has about as many explanations regarding its meaning and origin as there have been films made about the creature the word represents. Frankly, fans of vampire movies aren’t likely to care much about the word’s true origin, as much as they will care about sub-par movie representations of their favorite blood sucking creatures of the night. One can safely say that Vampire movies have always been something of a cash cow for studios. Especially since, for better or worse, filmmakers are always finding new ways to keep said subject matter alive, or perhaps undead would be a better way of putting it. Of course this doesn’t stop the studios from trying to squeeze every last cinematic drop of blood they can from the king of the vampires himself, Count Dracula. The most recent attempt at telling the Dracula story was the origin piece

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 15, 2017
Horror Fuel

‘Sherlock’ Brain-trust To Create A New ‘Dracula’ Series

Hello again my Little Monsters, as you may have read in the title, it appears that a new Dracula series is in the works from the folks at the BBC (that’s The British Broadcasting Corporation to you and me, Rusty). After their monumentally successful modernization of the tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary sleuth in the television series Sherlock, the writers and producers of the popular series are focusing their gaze on a new incarnation of Bram Stoker’s equally legendary “Prince of Darkness”. Sherlock series writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat will be on board again to handle writing duties, while Sue Vertue’s company Hartswood Films will handle all producorial aspects. This will be a reunion of sorts for Gattis and Moffat, who haven’t collaborated on a project since Series 4 of Sherlock. Despite their present work on solo projects, Gatiss and Moffat have begun talks with the BBC on this new series. Granted, there will likely be no

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jun 21, 2017
Horror Fuel

Heritage Auctions Unleashes A Horde Of Vintage Horror Comics At Upcoming Auction

Whether you’re an avid collector of rare, pre-code horror comics or just someone who enjoys reading about Spider Man duking it out with Count Dracula, this Sunday’s upcoming internet comic sale from Heritage Auctions will have something for you. Though the auction giant holds weekly internet sales in their comics/comic art department, this one stands out due to the plethora of near-forgotten horror titles from the “anything goes” days before the Comics Code toned down comic book terror. No issues of beloved EC titles like ‘Tales from the Crypt’ or ‘The Haunt of Fear’ are on offer, but in their place collectors can find slabbed and CGC-graded issues of highly sought rarities ‘Beware’, ‘Chamber of Chills’, ‘The Thing!’, ‘Out of the Night’, and several others. Also on the auction block are multiple issues of Neil Gaiman’s seminal ‘Sandman’, Marvel’s ‘Tomb of Dracula’, ‘The Munsters’ from Gold Key, and a copy of Marvel Spotlight #5, which features the first appearance of

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jun 21, 2017
Horror Fuel

Dracula Is Back For New Modern Series

Nick Wechsler and Joni Sighvatsson are teaming up to produce a new edgier, more political, adaption of ‘Dracula’ as a 10-episode series, Variety reports. Otto Geir Borg, whose film ‘Undercurrent’ won six Edda awards (Iceland’s version of an Oscar) will pen the series. The series, titled ‘Dracula Now’, is based on Valdimar Asmundsson’s reworking of ‘Dracula’ titled ‘Powers of Darkness‘, translated to English by Hans de Roos. The edition features a preface by Dacre Stoker, the great-grand nephew of Bram Stoker, and an afterword by horror scholar John E. Browning. In ‘Dracula Now’, the epic character will be a manipulative, seductive, megalomaniac who has come from Transylvania intent on conquering modern day Europe. Dracula Now will be an allegory of what’s happening today in the U.S., in the U.K. and in France,” said Sighvatsson, who is based in Los Angeles and heads up Scanbox with Thor Sigurjonsson and Chris Briggs. “It won’t be like a ‘Dracula’ spinoff because there’s no

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Feb 22, 2017
Horror Fuel

Frankenstein is Not My Name

At my day job, I dress up in a shirt, tie and polished shoes. I am not a shirt, tie and polished shoes kind of guy. Therefore, I have found fun little ways to break out of the tie-noose, things like various colors of shoelaces and funky belt buckles. No, I’m no Wolowitz, but I am happy with my little collection. Among my favorite are a couple of different skull buckles, Freddy Krueger’s claw and the head of Frankenstein’s monster. I know, by now you are asking “what’s the point?” But here it is. In my opinion, in the monster world there are the big four: Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, and Frankenstein’s Monster. I do believe that there are very close second tier villains like Kruger, Voorhees, Ghost Face, Swamp Thing, and then spirals down into an infinite number of characters, but I want to focus on the Big Four. Here’s the point: The monster has no name? Yes, people

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 29, 2016
Horror Fuel

Cynema: Ed Wood–Hollywood’s Whipping Boy

No Respect Apparently Michael Medved, the respected film critic gets the credit with dubbing Edward Wood, Jr. the “worst director of all time” by referring to Wood’s crowning film achievement, Plan Nine From Outer Space as perhaps the worst motion picture ever made. This is not only to come to the late Mr. Wood’s defense, but to also show how off the mark Mr. Medved was in his 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards. Wood is the antithesis of Cynema–his passion and love for film makes him one of Hollywood’s greatest directors. Say what you want about Plan Nine, Bride of the Monster or Glen or Glenda…bad films, yes. Bad directing, absolutely. However Ed Wood was not a cynic. This column will show why films like Jaws The Revenge, Godzilla 1998 and other big budget films are far worse than anything Ed Wood ever put out, including Plan 9. By many accounts, including his own, Plan 9 From Outer Space

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 14, 2015
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