By the end of the 1980s, the best days of the slasher movie were in the rearview mirror. The Friday the 13th series was long in the tooth, and A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t far behind. In general, horror was hitting a lull by the end of the decade. But the straight-to-video market allowed […]
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While horror continues to boom in 2023, two releases based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter – have seriously underwhelmed at the box office.
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At this point, horror fans have plenty of big screen adaptations of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, Dracula. Both Universal Studios and Hammer Films gave us beloved versions of the character. Filmmakers from Andy Warhol to Francis Ford Coppola to Werner Herzog have put their own twist on the iconic character. Prequels, sequels, comedies, animated versions […]
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a timeless classic of Gothic horror. It has inspired countless adaptations and re-imaginings on the big and small screen alike. To date, it’s estimated that the character Count Dracula has appeared somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 different movies. Arguably, Dracula remains the archetypal horror villain as he continues to inspire […]
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Once upon a time, Renfield was intended to be one of several movies comprising a shared Universal Monsters universe. That idea got pushed back following the lukewarm reception to Dracula Untold. And then the Tom Cruise vehicle, The Mummy put a shared monster-verse on ice. After years of ideas and development hell, Robert Kirkman of […]
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At the time of its release, Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a risky venture. Coppola was coming off the disappointment of The Godfather Part III, which capped off his mafia trilogy on a somewhat sour note. And Dracula hadn’t been on the big screen since the moderately success 1979 adaptation starring […]
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You’d be forgiven if you thought The Invitation was another quiet attempt at re-booting a ‘Dark Universe’ of classic monsters. The premise sounds like a contemporary spin on a ‘Brides of Dracula’ concept complete with its Gothic British manor setting. But this is a Sony Pictures release, not Universal Pictures, so if there’s vampires no […]
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Hollywood has always loved sequels. But the early 2000s saw studios pursue a new direction for franchise-building – prequels or origin stories. Ever want to know why Hannibal Lecter is a cannibal? How about Michael Myers’ childhood? Or what about Father Merrin’s first encounter with The Exorcist demon, Pazuzu? Though Rob Zombie’s Halloween has its […]
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