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Post by dem bones on Feb 25, 2011 9:58:16 GMT
Peter Haining - The Vampire Hunters' Casebook (Warners, 1996) Introduction-Peter Haining Preface: Bram Stoker (extract from “Dracula”)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The Strange Investigator [extract from Carmilla] Arabella Kennealy – The Beautiful Vampire Alice and Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire Uel Key -The Broken Fang Seabury Quinn - The Man Who Cast No Shadow Sydney Horler – The Bloodsucker Of Portland Place [extract from The Vampire] Manly Wade Wellman – The Last Grave of Lili Warren Peter Haining – The Beefsteak Room Jeff Rice – The Night Stalker [extract] Karl Edward Wagner – Beyond Any Measure Robert Bloch – The Undead Anne Rice – The Master of Rampling Gate David J. Schow – A Week in the Unlife Peter Tremayne – My Name Upon the WindMercifully, a celebration of the fictional vampire hunter as opposed to their self-styled (chortle) real-life counterparts otherwise, Peter Haining or no Peter Haining, i would have given this a miss. Obviously conceived to cash in on the Bram Stoker’s Dracula hype, there are a number of decent stories in here, but most of these seem to have been imported from other anthologies the vampire junkie would only have just bought. We've met several of these - Wagner’s masterpiece, the Seabury Quinn and Manly Wade Wellman pulps, Schow's take on a deluded psycho, etc - elsewhere on the board, so will restrict this to some notes on those that have yet to be commented upon. Peter Tremayne – My Name Upon the Wind: Tremayne's lovable The Hound Of Dracula has always struck me as an imaginary novelisation of the greatest Hammer film never made, and this 40 pager would make for a decent Hammer House Of Horror episode. Directly following his Transylvanian adventure, Van Helsing makes a mercy dash to Ireland to answer an SOS from his former pupil, Dr. Pier Mountcarbery of Castle Carbery, who is wasting away from a mystery virus - yet another victim of the family curse! Much to the embarrassment of his University Colleagues, Van Helsing has a roving eye for a pretty girl, so the sight of the beautiful young Sarah Mountcarbery, Pier's sister, soon sorts him for a quick letch though he's not so taken with Draigen, the sinister coach-driver and general factotum. They arrive back at the 'castle' - it's actually a "sedate Georgian country mansion" with delusions of grandeur - to be met by the housekeeper, Mrs. Bebinn, with the awful news that they're too late - Piers is dead! Van Helsing examines the corpse and, sure enough, Piers sports the tell-tale elongated canines, twin puncture marks to the throat, etc. At the hastily arranged funeral, Minister Bell, a staunch protestant, raves and drools about Papists and seemingly denounces his Catholic counterpart, Father MacCarthy as the vampire! Van Helsing enters the Mountcarbery family crypt and is just about to learn the name of the King Vampire from his undead friend's lips when MacCarthy fires an arrow through Piers' heart. There's no use crying over spilt milk, so Van Helsing busies himself with decapitating Piers to prevent his rising when who should burst in on them but the mad minister! What follows reads like a horror equivalent of a bedroom farce as no sooner does one suspected King Vampire arrive at the crypt to to meet his doom than another takes its place until we've fast run out of potential culprits. With the bodies staking up around him, Van Helsing at last learns the identity of his prey - or so he thinks. Could too much thinking about bosoms have blinded him to the screamingly obvious? Peter Haining - The Beefstake Room: According to the introductory note, Haining's first ever short story, although thinking back to some of the dubious entries in previous anthologies, you tend to wonder. Anyway, the elderly Van Helsing pays a visit to the Lyceum for an evening performance. He wants to locate the Beefstake Room where Bram Stoker and Sir Henry Irving first entertained traveller and folklore expert Arminius Vámbéry, immortalised by Van Helsing in Dracula as "my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University". It must be his lucky night as not only does he creep into the hidden chamber but who should be there to greet him? "I have been waiting for you for several years" growls Stoker, brandishing the all-too familiar tools of the trade .... Alice & Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire: Hereditary vampirism in the Scottish Highlands. Paul marries beautiful redhead Jessica MacThane, the last of her clan. Jessica bears a striking resemblance to her ancestress, Zaida the witch, the wife of a murderer. Since Zaida’s day, the legend has persisted of “a pale woman clad in white, flitting about the cottages at night, and where she passed, sickness and death were sure to intervene …” So it proves as Jessica falls under her spell. As we've seen from the Wordsworth reissue of his adventures, Vance doesn't have a great track record in thwarting supernatural entities, so will he finally do something right or is Jessica doomed to feast on the blood of her beloved? Robert Bloch – Undead: Carol is about to shut the bookshop for the night when the customer arrives. His card reveals him to be none other than Abraham Van Helsing, the great-great-grandson of the legendary vampire hunter. Van Helsing is on the trail of the hush-hush Dracula manuscript – the one containing a hundred pages omitted from the published work detailing the Count’s plans for world domination. Needless to say, a second interested party is pursuing the same work with equal determination. C. Barker Petrie, Jr ( Weird Tales, Feb. 1927).
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Post by andydecker on Feb 25, 2011 11:22:28 GMT
Obviously conceived to cash in on the Bram Stoker’s Dracula hype As I read just this week chances are that there will be a new Dracula movie. Dario Argento does Dracula 3D with Rutger Hauer as the count. Somehow this fills my head more with visions of Jess Franco´s Dracula than Coppola´s Dracula. But maybe this news is one of these internet-rumors. I sure hope so
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 25, 2011 12:50:51 GMT
Rutger Hauer is to play Van Helsing, not Dracula.
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 25, 2011 14:04:52 GMT
Rutger Hauer is to play Van Helsing, not Dracula. Makes sense, both being Dutch. Not sure I really need yet another Dracula though - 3D or not.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 25, 2011 20:10:50 GMT
i think the only thing that would make me rush out to see another Dracula film was if it was based on Robert E. Lory's magnificent series. This is turning out to be more fun than i'd anticipated. it's just a shame that Peter become so keen on padding his anthologies with extracts as the pages devoted to recycling itsy bits of Carmilla and Dracula could have been put to better use (Ramsey Campbell's sneakily hilarious The Dead Don't Die and the third entry in Brad Strickland's Three Tales For The Horrid Of Heart would have admirably suited the collection). Anyway, next up: Arabella Kennealy - The Beautiful Vampire: "For Heaven's sake, do not let her get hold of any more children." Haining tells us he found this in The Ludgate Magazine for May 1896, one of several Lord Syfret adventures although, if this entertaining romp is anything to go by, the canny investigator preferred to shove somebody else into the firing line when the going got sticky. The small community of Argles, Southern England is pleasantly scandalised out of his slumbers by news of young Dr. Andrew's attempted throttling of twice-widowed Lady Deverish. If her butler had not intervened there's no question Andrew would have killed her - he admits as much - but her ladyship laughs the incident off as a "misunderstanding" and refuses to press charges. Lord Syfret, his nostrils all a-quiver, interviews Lady D.'s housekeeper, Mrs. Lyall, who says her only regret is that Andrew didn't finish the job as no jury would convict him "when they knew". Lord Syfret is shocked at Mrs. Lyall's deteriorating physical condition - in the few months since he last saw her she's become gaunt and deathly pale - and when Lady Deverish's young nurse collapses in the street, he sends in a replacement from his network of spies. This requires Nurse Marian to don the Victorian equivalent of a fat suit and rouge her cheeks as Lady D. likes 'em young, plump and healthy. Her Ladyship has just ensnared the young Earl of Arlington - the poor bastard is besotted with her despite himself, and has even thrown his true love overboard in the rush to take the beautiful black widow up the aisle - but fortunately he comes to his senses on the eve of the wedding and blows his brains out. Lady Deverish now takes to her bed an overnight invalid and insists on having little kids brought to visit her that their happy laughter might replenish her strength. This seems to do the trick as soon she's up and about, feasting on the blood and energy of full grown adults again, until she's reduced all in her immediate vicinity to half dead husks. Dr. Andrew fancies another crack at murdering her - poison, this time - but Nurse Marion hits on a less obvious means of killing off the terrible vitality thief!
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