Blood of the Dragon: The Journals of Vlad Draculya the Impaler – review

Author: David T Pudlevitcz

Illustrator: David St. Albans

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers


The blurb: Being the only true journal of Vladislaus Tepes Bassarab called Draculya; Voivode of Wallachia, Knight Order of the Dragon, Defender of the Faith and the Realm of the Holy Roman Empire, Count of Transylvania, Protector of Moldavia, Bey of the Ottoman Sultans, Alchemist, Necromancer, Vampyre! Penned by his own dead hand.

The review: The first thing to say about Blood of the Dragon is that it is a tome of considerable length. Published as penned by Pudlecitcz and illustrated by St Albans the first conceit of the book is that it is a publication of the actual journal of Vlad III, bookended with chapters around the archaeologists forced to do so by the vampire.

This vampire is the creature of Stoker’s novel but it was Stoker who led the fight against the vampire and Dracula is (an inaccurate, according to the vampire) recollection of those events.

The bulk of the novel takes in the events surrounding the birth and life of Vlad III and ties vampirism in at an early stage in his life when Vlad and friends, whilst in Constantinople at age 9, are attacked by a vampire. Vlad is forced to help detect the grave and destroy the vampire – and this includes pouring the vampire’s blood over the boy. Unfortunately blood gets into a cut on Vlad’s tongue and the “vampiric ally” attaches itself to the boy – therefore much of Vlad’s bloodthirstiness in life was due to being a living vampire.

You can see this as a type of vampiric possession and Vlad is lucky to survive with soul/will intact and not become a minor undead. Eventually the ally is exorcised but Vlad will, subsequently, invite another ally to become a parasitic/symbiotic part of himself and this is what allows him to live beyond death.

The book invokes a variety of names and types of vampires, draws in some figures such as Erzsébet Báthory and the Comte de Saint-Germain (as periphery mentions more than anything) and layers fiction onto history (and some pseudo-history) in a satisfying way. The archaic turns of phrase actually work in context – especially compared to other books where they jar. Most fundamentally the book draws on Lovecraftian mythos at its heart.

This version of Dracula can walk during overcast days, when well fed, but temporarily dies in sunlight (the book actually misses, given it was supposedly written at the end of the 19th century, that sunlight was not listed within vampiric myth in any great measure, if at all, until the release of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens). This Dracula feasts on negative emotion as much as the blood it is conveyed on and steals souls for his master as he does so (to reveal more than this is too much of a spoiler).

The most important thing the book manages to do is give the character a strong voice; it is a narcissistic, egoist voice, prone to self-contradiction and repeating salient points – but it is a genuine voice. Worth the entry price, indeed. 7.5 out of 10.

London After Midnight – review

Author: Marie Coolidge-Rask

First Published: 1928

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: "It was the old man… with the long cloak and the fiendish grin!"

The most successful of all the collaborations of director Tod Browning and legendary Lon Chaney, ~ "The Man of a Thousand Faces" ~ was London After Midnight, their long-lost silent "Mystery-Thriller."

But now the novelization based on Browning's original screenplay is back for the first time since its original publication, in its entirety!

Once more mystery haunts the old Balfour House …and Lon Chaney’s gonna get you if you don’t watch out!

Complete with the original photo-illustrations plus additional features exclusive to this edition, including "Transylvania to Prague via London ~ After Midnight" and introduced by your Thriller Theatre host Margali Morwentari.

The review: London after Midnight is for many (including me) one of the most lamented of the lost films, probably more so because we have the remake, Mark of the Vampire, and the bravely constituted reconstruction to hint at what we are missing. That hint is greater still with the re-release of the original novelisation. The story is based on an early draft of Browning’s script and so contains aspects not in the final film, primarily heroine Lucy’s brother Harry Balfour – murdered early on and actually filmed by Browning but cut out of the final edit that made Lucy an only child.

I assume, as you read this, that you are aware of the storyline of London After Midnight (or have seen the reconstruction). At the very least I assume that you have seen Mark of the Vampire and thus it is not a spoiler too far to tell you that the vampires in this story are not actually real. Indeed the logic of having them there at all, whilst wonderful for the atmosphere of the film, demanded a twisted logic that was quite torturous. But, you know what, it doesn’t matter.

The vampires are connected with bats and can turn into mist. As well as being cited as vampires, they are referred to in text by the genus names Vukodlak and Murony (according to Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology a Murony is both a variation of the Romanian Muroni and is a vampiric spirit or a Walachian/Moldavian variant of living vampire).

The writing is very melodramatic and certainly of an age – you couldn’t mistake this for a more modern written volume. But hey, you know what… it’s London After Midnight and that should be all the encouragement you need. 8 out of 10 for its historical value in the genre. The re-release of this volume was notified to me by a blog reader, Fenris, and so my thanks for the heads up.

The Dracula Papers – Book 1: The Scholar’s Tale – review

Author: Reggie Oliver

First published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: ”I must solemnly warn people not to scan these pages in a spirit of idle curiosity. I place this work before them to shed some light on the darkness which hides in every human breast…” Dr. Abraham Van Helsing

Bram Stoker’s immortal DRACULA told us of Count Dracula as an undead vampire. But how did this come to be? Who was Dracula in real life? There has always been speculation, but THE DRACULA PAPERS now offers the ultimate answer in a story as extraordinary as the Stoker classic. Battles, intrigues, sorcery, sexual passion, hauntings, a mechanical tortoise and a burning rhinoceros all have their part to play in a thrilling narrative that plunges deep into the mystery of evil.

The Review: The Dracula Papers is Reggie Oliver’s “great Gothick tetrapytch” that follows the story of he who would become Count Dracula. Now, in fairness, I dislike theorems in reference books that draw too much kinship between Dracula and Vlad Ţepeş. However, we cannot deny the words of Nina Auerbach in ‘Our Vampires, Ourselves’ when she suggests that “In Search of Dracula, which claimed to give Stoker’s character historical authenticity, in fact inspired a new Dracula myth for the late twentieth century.” In other words so long as it remains grounded in the fictional, and doesn’t suggest that Stoker did it intentionally, its fine.

Oliver’s Vlad is certainly grounded in the fictional, the entire familial set-up is fictionalised (no younger brother, father named Xantho etc.) The events are fictionalised, even the land – as Xantho is the King of Transylvania and Wallachia. Indeed the book is (initially) set some 99 years after the historical Vlad died. The book is also a joy of Gothic fiction, this is pure gothic prose in the eighteenth century format, with fantastical events, great lumbering castles, death defying feats and the Wandering Jew. Indeed Oliver captures a feel within the book that makes you imagine that you are reading a fiction composed centuries ago- - absolutely no bad thing. I could also imagine the film as I read the book and it was screaming for Terry Gilliam to be at the helm.

The book takes the idea that Oliver has found papers belonging to Van Helsing, who in turn discovered this manuscript penned by Dr. Martin Bellorius. Bellorius was hired by Xantho to school his sons Mircea and Vladimir and the novel follows the doctor's trip to Transylvania, the events within the castle, the Ottoman invasion and going to the point when Vlad escaped from being a hostage of the Sultan and returned to Transylvania (note, as this is entirely fictional, that his father and elder brother are both still alive at this point).

This does not take us to the point of vampirism (there are three more volumes due) but it would have been – due to the direction it will go in as a series – suitable for review here anyway. That said there was a lovely moment of traditional vampire fare when Bellorius is sent to deal with a murony, described as “a most frightful creature, half way between a vampire and a werewolf.” The murony, which can change form to the shape of any beast, was a man named Pojok, a blaspheming farmer hung for murdering his young wife. He had been preying on his mother-in-law. They go to her house and see it enter in the form of a rat and watched it climb up the old lady’s skirts before emerging with blood on its snout. Verney, one of Bellorius’ companions at the time, threw a jar of spirit of phosphorus at it and they followed its glow until it reached its grave, turned to smoke and disappeared into its grave. Having dug up a bloated, un-putrefied corpse it was then placed on a pyre and burnt, dancing a macabre dance in the flames.

The young Vlad is witness to all this.

Vlad will also be aware of the rumours surrounding the Old Queen, who allegedly slaughtered women to bathe in their blood - in other words we get a Báthory inspired tale within the novel as well. Interestingly, though the surname is not mentioned in the book, historically Sigismund Báthory was historically Prince of Transylvania when the novel is set.

As well as containing those vampiric moments, the book is a gothic tour-de-force and I await the next volume with anticipation. 8 out of 10.