Halloween is upon us, and it is time for the last of my seasonally-themed posts at Women Write About Comics.
I’ve already covered Varney the Vampire, the anti-Halloween tracts of Jack Chick, and Dracula’s Daughter (three times in all!) Now, to wrap things up, here’s a series of two novels that combine Cthulhu, Bram Stoker, Lizzie Borden and ghost stories into one irresistible package: Cherie Priest’s The Borden Dispatches.
The third instalment of my three-part article series on the film Dracula’s Daughter is now up at WWAC. This time I’m looking at the surprisingly substantial afterlife of Countess Zaleska in print and on screen…
Continuing my run of Halloween-themed articles at WWAC, here’s my review of the first ever English-language vampire novel: James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire! And boy has it aged badly.
On a related note, I also contributed to this roundtable about Vampirella’s costume.
Pink News ran this article on Richard O’Brien back in March, but I have seen it being trotted out quite a bit on Twitter lately, presumably due to the Rocky Horror remake that aired on Thursday. The piece is based on comments that O’Brien made to Metro; I assume that the interview ran in the paper’s print edition, as I can find no trace of it online. O’Brien’s statements have led to him being labelled a transphobe, so I thought I would take a closer look at exactly what he is saying.
The second part of my series on Dracula’s Daughter is up at WWAC. This time around, I look at the origin of the film, take a closer peek at its lesbian subtext, and discus the revisionist Renfield that is Sandor…
When I was thinking up Halloween-themed articles for Women Write About Comics, I realised there was no way I could possibly pass up the opportunity to write about the man responsible for one of the most infamous bodies of comics related to All Hallows’ Eve: Jack T. Chick. The resulting article, Jack Chick’s Unhappy Halloween, is now available to read…
The fifth issue of the Horror Honeys’ magazine Belladonna is now available at Magzter and Magcloud, and it’s my first issue as regular contributor. I have two articles: one is a list of the top 5 lesbian couples in British horror cinema; the other is a look back at Hammer’s To the Devil, a Daughter, which is part of a larger feature on all our guilty pleasures and so-bad-they’re-good films (not that To the Devil is bad, exactly, just… odd, as a result of a complete debacle going on behind the scenes.)
ALSO! Head Honey Kat Morris writes about the vanilla/strawberry/chocolate ice cream of slashers: Jason, Freddy and Michael; Musical Horror Honey Brittany Mosley rings in Halloween with 13 eerie albums; director Tonija Atomic spills all about her film Manos Returns; and much more. I’m genuinely proud to be part of such a bubbling cauldron of goodness.
There’s another new award for genre literature on the block, with the Imaginarium Convention holding its inaugural Imadjinn Awards for independent books. The awards caught my eye, as it’s always interesting to see how the fiction world continues to be impacted by the rise of self-publishing.
I’ve been a bit quiet over at Women Write About Comics lately, the main reason being that I’ve been working on a bumper crop of horror-themed articles ready for Halloween. Amongst these is an overview of the 1936 Universal film Dracula’s Daughter, which turned out to be so long that I’ve had to split it into a three-part series. Part 1 is now available for you to read here…
A cold has been disrupting my sleep patterns and making me a tad grumpy, but I was cheered up by the arrival of Wayne Kinsey’s new book: The Hammer Dracula Scrapbook!
For those unfamiliar with his work, Wayne Kinsey is known for his in-depth histories of the Hammer studio. A recent labour of love from his Peveril Publishing outfit is the ongoing Fantastic Films of the Decades series, which mixes detailed information with a sumptuous array of images. The Dracula Scrapbook moves still further along that spectrum: information is sparse, and images take centre stage across the 300-plus pages.
Doris V. Sutherland 