Burns Night – review

Director: Dean Hoff

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

This is a low budget, indie flick from Glasgow where the central figure is a vampiric Robert Burns (Joshua Layden) and my initial reaction, after viewing, was that whilst inventive, the budgetary constraints did limit it and it was perhaps a tad confused… or more likely, less confused but more the viewer picked up the pieces from a much larger world that perhaps needed more communication. Then I discovered that it was based on a series of urban fantasy books by Hoff, which also became a two series web serial called Caledonia (or Caledonia Mortal Souls – it looks as though there was a short, Caledonia, that became the beginning of the web serial Caledonia and season 2 was titled Caledonia: Mortal Souls). The viewer confusion in the film probably stems from not knowing the serial (which I will look at separately) and perhaps then an assumption of prior knowledge on behalf of the filmmakers.

Joshua Layden as Burns

After scenes of Scottish countryside (including a very apparent Nessie in Loch Ness), the film cuts to Glasgow. A woman is having a hard time romantically and is on the phone. She is observed from the darkness by Robert Burns – yes, the Scottish National Poet – freaked she arranges to meet her friend as a man in the background is pulled into the darkness. Burns emerges with blood at his mouth. We then see a man, Chief Inspector Benandonner (Jan van der Black), who watches revellers and declares he hates Burns night.

Maria Jones as D.I. Bishop

Moving indoors we see people go to tables. This is a police station of sorts and the underlying problems within the film come into view during this scene. Firstly, it looks little like a police station and is obviously the set they could get – forgivable, it happens often in budget productions – and then there are the guys who look like they’re in cosplay. Actually, this is a monster facing branch of Interpol and they are creatures of folklore, but we are left assuming that. Eventually the only human on the books, Detective Inspector Leah Bishop (Maria Jones), lets us know this but, before that, we are unaware. It isn’t the biggest issue, but it can leave one a tad confused over details that the series and, probably more so, the books have room to expand into.

Burns and Desdemona

A known person of interest, Sebastian Bloodworth (Stephen Bell), comes into the station claiming it is chaos out there and safer in the station. Bishop has to discover what’s going on but her partner, Dorian Grey (Alasdair Reavey) a half-selkie vanishes. Benandonner enlists Burns to work with her – Burns unrequited love Desdemona (Dean Hoff) had appeared back in town and is also said to have vanished. He goes to Bishop, who embarrasses herself by looking to kiss him – assuming his presence meant she was in a dream. Reality seems adrift, people are stepping into their own dreams (more often nightmares), Burns becomes suddenly human again and Bishop finds the monster under her bed (who injured her as a child, leading her into the world of monsters) is now a cute shoulder pet.

Baobhan Sith

The essence of the film centres around the dreams and mostly we follow Burns from dream to dream, starting with a dream of first meeting Desdemona, a Baobhan Sith who was a general in the fae armies at the time, him becoming a poet (and somewhat unable to keep it in his pants – the real Burns had 12 children) and eventually getting Desdemona to turn him. Probably a bit of a spoiler, but later on we discover that, unbeknown to herself, she didn’t turn him. His love for her and belief in her ability to do so made him become a vampire. As they go through various dreams, they discover what has caused the rip in reality but can they fix it?

a bite

This is more fantasy (and urban fantasy at that, with a lot of fae lore) and a whole lot less horror. The film suffered for budgetary issues – the merman’s tail for instance would past muster on stage in a play, perhaps, but not on screen and the monster from under the bed was cute but clear artifice. Some aspects – for instance two guardians of Glasgow one wearing a Celtic and the other a Rangers top and one of them meeting an angel – needed narrative expansion. Other throwaway bits were genuinely amusing, breaking with the primarily Gaelic mythology, we see Jesus (Neil MacKinnon) in a bar, swirling a glass of water that becomes wine and the barmaid pointing at a sign prohibiting drinking beverages not purchased in the establishment. This was a brave use of Scottish lore and history, which seemed to aim at nothing less than proudly celebrating Glasgow as a city in the denouement. If it was let down, it was mostly in the budget and explaining aspects more thoroughly. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vampyros Lesbos – UltraHD – review

Director: Jess Franco

Release date: 1971 (UK disc 2026)

Contains spoilers

I have previously reviewed this Jess Franco film and this is specifically the review of the Severin UK UHD release of the film. As such the score is going to be different to that for the film in and of itself. I have a complicated relationship with the film, and Franco generally. Drawn to his films (and my favourites are a couple of his De Sade films), I do find them perhaps less impressive as some in a cinema sense (and certainly a lot less then those involved in the commentaries on this disc); it is a circle difficult to square. Severin, however, I am most definitely a fan of and deem them as one of the (if not the) best purveyors of physical movies currently in operation.

Linda and the Countess

So, the film looks gorgeous – it is not going to look any better methinks. It has been scanned in 4K from the original camera negative and is presented in German – which was the fuller cut, the Spanish version edited on release and later restored but I understand dialogue was changed. I mention in my original review the soundtrack and it sounds great on this presentation. The set comes with a slipcase and both a UHD and standard Blu-Ray disc. Both carry the full range of extras.

blood spattered

The extras include a short archival interview with Franco, an interview with Stephen Thrower – who has written on Franco – and an interview with Amy Brown who is a Soledad Miranda historian. It has in the Land of Franco part 12 – a series over several Severin Franco releases, German trailer and opening title sequence and a career appreciation by Sean Baker. There are two commentaries, one by Kat Ellinger and the other featuring Aaron AuBuchon, John Dickson and Will Morris.

the sun worshipping vampire

I doubt any of the commentators would be impressed with my review of the film, but they have a much less complicated relationship with his films than I. Both commentaries recognise that, in many respects, Franco creates a flipped version of Dracula; in a gender sense Countess Carody (Soledad Miranda, Count Dracula) is Dracula (though Dracula, within the story, turned her), Linda Westinghouse (Ewa Strömberg) is a solicitor travelling to her client and so Harker, and Agra (Heidrun Kussin) can be read as Renfield. However other inversions (from the filmic tradition as well as the novel) are the fact that the film is a sun-drenched affair with the Countess a sunbather, who definitely reflects in the mirror and the method of vampire killing is achieved by giving the brain a deadly blow rather than a stake to the heart (perhaps cerebral rather than emotional). The commentators explore the transgressive nature of the text and, whilst I think that both assign happy accidents in filmmaking to deliberate decisions (and I recognise it is likely a case of column A and B), both were really worth listening to.

strange shooting angle

You are not going to get a better-looking print of the film, plus there are plenty of extras with much to pick through for the student of media studies, and aficionados of both Franco films and vampire films more generally. For the set, 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On UHD Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On UHD Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Guest Blog - “If it doesn’t look like a vampire, or sound like a vampire, can it still be a vampire?” – TMtV 20th anniversary

We’ve come to the end of the 20th anniversary celebration and, last but not least, I’d like to welcome Simon Bacon to TMtV. We met through vampire groups on Facebook, becoming firm pals, and have had many discussions regarding our toothsome friends. An author and editor, I have corresponded over his vampire monograms and have been lucky enough to be included in several of the academic volumes he has edited.

In discussing the mutability of the vampire the much cited vampire scholar Nina Auerbach writes “we all know Dracula, or think we do… .” Although she was using Stoker’s Count as an example of how even the most “recognizable” of the undead doesn’t remain a fixed character in the popular imagination, it is just as true for what constitutes a vampire. Indeed, in many people’s minds Count Dracula is synonymous with the idea of the vampire with the implication that they must all drink blood, can transform into a bat (and possibly a wolf), are very sexy, wear evening dress with greased back, black hair and speak with a broad Eastern European accent—it should be noted that this is predicated far more on Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s 1931 film Dracula, than Stoker’s 1897 novel (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula about to enjoy a night-time snack with Lucy (Frances Dade) in Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. Universal Pictures, 1931.

However, the cinematic vampire, although providing what some see as the quintessential representation of the King of the Vampires (Count Dracula), seems to be continuously unsure about what a vampire looks like or what makes it one. What follows is an idiosyncratic selection of (and some of my favourite) films that have a very non-canonical view of what a vampire is.

Two of the earliest representations of vampires on film aren’t really vampires as we’d think of them now. They were from the early 20th century and both represented the “dark” side of society. The first features what was then known as a “Vamp,” that was a more sexually malevolent form of the New Woman from the end of the 19th Century and who asserted their independence by preying on wealthy men for their money. Theda Bara was one of the most well known of these and A Fool There Was (1915) the best surviving example of her playing her vampy best. In many ways her credentials as a vampire were more explicit in the marketing around the film and of Bara herself so that there was little to distinguish between her on- and off-screen personas. Apart from being called “The Vampire” in the films titles there is nothing else in the film that would really mark her out as one of the undead (see figure 2).

Figure 2. A triumphant Theda Bera (The Vampire) enjoys the sight of her latest victim who has lost his wealth and his family because of her in A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell. Fox Film Corporation, 1915.

Similarly the French serial Les vampires takes another yet equally oblique turn in what constitutes a vampire. Here, the titular “vampires” are in fact a gang of crooks led by the Grand Vampire that prey on the people of Paris and who think nothing of murder, kidnapping, and terrorism to get what they want. Although the film is well known for a sequence featuring a dancer dressed as a bat (see figure 3), once again there is little to connect the film to actual vampires apart from their metaphorical “feeding” on the wealth of their “prey.”

Figure 3. Marta Koutiloff, played by Stacia Napierkowska, dancing as a vampire bat in the ballet “The Vampires” in Les vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade. Gaumont, 1915.

Back in Hollywood, vampires became one of the pantheon of classic monsters in the 1930s, though even within that there were no strict borders between the various forms of creatures that could be called undead which could range from someone brought back from the dead (by whatever means), to a ghost, a ghoul, a zombie...or even a mummy. As mentioned above Lugosi’s performance solidified the idea of what Dracula was, and consequently, vampires, but even here the Count himself wasn’t sure of what exactly made him a vampire. In House of Dracula (1945), the second film starring John Carradine as the Count, sees the vampire looking for a cure for his vampirism (in reality he wants to sink his fangs into the pretty nurse assisting Dr Edelmann who he seeks help from). What is of interest here is that the doctor takes blood samples from Dracula and under the microscope we see vampiric blood cells attacking human blood cells marking out vampirism as a disease of the blood (see figure 4).

Figure 4. Dracula’s blood under the microscope showing the black tendrils in it is the true vampire as it attacks human blood cells, in House of Dracula, directed by Erle C. Kenton. Universal Pictures, 1945.

We could argue it is Dracula’s blood that is the vampire, not the Count himself. This is a curious idea that has been picked up since in a few screen narratives such as Dark Shadows (1966-71) and the Dracula (2013-14) series by Cole Haddon. The importance of blood, and what we might call the medicalisation of the vampire, is also seen in The Return of Dr X (1939), featuring a rare turn in horror films for Humphrey Bogart. Here at least the “vampire” in question needs fresh human blood, though rather disappointingly for its undead credentials it’s not from biting a beautiful young woman in the neck, but rather transfusing her blood into his own body (the reverse of Stoker’s use of transfusions where they are to combat vampirism rather than promoting it). Here, Bogart as the eponymous Dr X (Maurice Xavier) is brought back from the dead using synthetic blood, however, this no longer works and he needs a special type (type one) of fresh human blood to stay alive. His vampy credentials highlighted by his pale white skin and greased back, black hair--his monstrosity emphasized by a bride of Frankenstein white streak running through it (see figure 5).

Figure 5. Humphrey Bogart as the suitably deathly pale Dr X, in The Return of Dr X, directed by Vincent Sherman. Warner Brothers, 1939.

Post-WWII and the rise of science fiction on film only increased the complications of identifying vampires—even Dracula is affected by the appearance of aliens as seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) where humans are brought back from the dead as zombies and one of these “zombies” is non-other than Bela Lugosi in full Dracula costume. In some ways this was exampled earlier by the science-gone-mad idea in Dr X, but the involvement of aliens would only exacerbate the problematic nature of vampire identity. A good one to start with is The Thing from Another World (1951) where the “Thing” is a Frankenstein’s monster style alien (see figure 6) that has been cut from beneath the Arctic ice where its ship had crashed an unknown time ago.

Figure 6. “The Thing,” played by James Arness, as a vegetal vampire from outer space, in The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby. Winchester Pictures Corporation, 1951.

Once defrosted the creature is driven by a need for human blood, and it exhibits a kind of immortality as parts of it, when cut off, regrow when fed blood. Perhaps more strikingly the creature is in fact a plant of some kind—this correlates to other vegetal aliens that crave human essence such as the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978), and The Queen of Blood (1966). While the creature cannot change its shape in this film—other than its severed parts being able to take on their own lives—later adaptions of the story, The Thing (1982/2011), make such transformations explicit to how it survives and multiplies. Indeed, just as the first “Thing” required human blood to live, the later “Things” require human lives to thrive—oddly echoing the BBC Dracula mini-series from 2020 in which the Count requires blood as “lives” to sustain himself.

Something of this is repeated in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985) where alien vampires, whose spaceship hides in the tail of Halley’s Comet, awaken to feed on human essence each time it returns to the vicinity of the planet Earth (every 74.7 years). The aliens themselves are huge bat-like creatures but can possess the bodies of humans and consume/suck-out soul/lifeforce by putting their mouths over that of their victims (see figure 7).

Figure 7. A guard (John Keegan) having the lifeforce sucked out of him by an unseen Space Girl (Mathilda May) in Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper. London-Cannon Films, 1985.

These are then “sent” back up to the mother ship for the rest of the colony to feed on. An earlier example of a similar kind of vampiric possession as a means of survival was seen in Planet of the Vampires (1965) where the survivors of an alien race are trapped on a barren planet after its sun has burnt out. Using the distress signal of a crashed space ship they attract 2 other ships and then inhabit the bodies of the humanoids piloting them. Of note here is that their vampirism is purely predicated on the possession of humanoid bodies (see figure 8), which although deadly to the hosts—if they’re not already dead—does not provide any kind of sustenance to them (such vampiric possession, though often non-deadly is a more recent feature of vampire narratives such as The Vampire Diaries (2009-17) and The Originals (2013-18).

Figure 8. A deadly game of “guess whose body is possessed by a vampire” featuring Wes Wescant (Ángel Aranda), Sanya (Norma Bengell), and Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan), in Planet of the Vampires, directed by Mario Bava. Italian International Film, 1965.

Returning to Lifeforce, and its idea of feeding off of human essence and “draining” their victims, this is not a million miles away from psychic vampires, most recently and famously seen in the figure of Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows (2019-24) where he purposely bores people to death and/or annoys them to distraction so that he can feed on their emotional energy (see figure 9). This has returned such forms of untypical vampirism back into the popular imagination—it’s actually something that has a longer history in literary vampires seen in The House of the Vampire (1907) by George Sylvester Viereck and “The Transfer” (1911) by Algernon Blackwood.

Figure 9. Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) as the person in the office that everyone tries to avoid, in What We Do in the Shadows, created by Jemaine Clement. FX Productions, 2019-24.

To sum up this rather eclectic list of some of my favourite vampire films, and to mangle and repurpose a well known phrase about ducks, “if it doesn’t walk like a vampire, or quack like a vampire, it doesn’t mean it’s not a vampire!”

Bio: Simon Bacon has authored/edited/co-edited 40+ books on vampires, monsters and gothic horror in popular culture and his Amazon Author page can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Guest Blog – Two Big Changes in Ten Years – TMtV 20th anniversary

This isn’t the first time I have solicited guest blogs to celebrate a TMtV milestone, I did the same for the 10th anniversary, and one contributor was Anthony Hogg. Anthony’s article that time (linked below) actually details where our friendship sprang from and since then – as he sets out below – we started working together on a journal. Anthony is a tenacious editor and researcher – as both his work on the Highgate Vampire and the Journal of Vampire Studies attests to. So, without further ado I’d like to welcome Anthony back to TMtV...

I can’t believe it’s been ten years since the last retrospective and twenty years since the blog started. Time flies. For the blog’s tenth anniversary, I discussed Andy’s incomparable output, our friendly banter and the significance of his work to vampire studies.[1] To be honest, not much has changed—except for two things.

At the time I wrote it, I was secretly devising a vampire studies organisation. One that would have its own journal.[2] The year before, I had even helped organise an event called There Are Such Things! Vampire Studies Symposium 2015. Held at North Central Texas College’s Corinth campus on October 31 that year, the event was a “tester” for my idea.[3]

By 2018, I was in now-or-never mode. I had settled on a name. Contributions to the proposed journal commenced the year before. I had a constitution drawn up. The inaugural meeting of the Vampire Studies Association took place on October 31, 2018 at City Library, Melbourne. Nominating myself as president, Andy seemed the natural choice as Deputy President, so I nominated him too. We both won.

The association, as I mentioned at that meeting, was a “front” for the proposed journal. I had been soliciting and receiving contributions from 2017 onward. A good chunk of the journal was good to go. Its publication was supposed to mark the hundredth anniversary of Montague Summers’s seminal The Vampire, His Kith and Kin (1928). I even presented a dummy cover of the intended journal, mostly compromised of Monty’s studio portrait. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it finished on time.

Several false starts followed before, at long last, the first issue of the Journal of Vampire Studies was published on December 17, 2020 (without Monty on the cover). The person who’d been accompanying me on that journey, reviewing submissions—and determining which ones made the cut—was my mate (and Assistant Editor), Andy. 

It was his experience reviewing material and fast turnaround that made him a natural choice for the gig. His turnaround’s still remarkable. Andy’s even written several reviews for the journal. Two appear in our latest volume.[4] I can always count on him to deliver his inciteful takes on the books he reviews and the submissions we receive. That’s why he’s still my Assistant Editor. I couldn’t ask for a better colleague and his readers are definitely in good hands. So, here’s to you Andy, and another ten years!

Copies of the journal are available through various online retailers including Amazon, Waterstones and Blackwell’s. For more information on the association, visit here.


Notes
[1] Anthony Hogg, “Ten Years of TMtV: Guest Blog: A Scholar and a Gentleman—My Mate, Andy,” Taliesin Meets the Vampires (blog), March 2, 2016, https://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2016/03/ten-years-of-tmtv-guest-blog-scholar.html.
[2] The closest contemporary examples were the Canadian chapter of the Transylvania Society of Dracula’s Journal of Dracula Studies (the society became the North American chapter, then the central one); Slayage, published by the Whedon Studies Association (now the Association for the Study of Buffy+); or Cercle V’s L’Upir. Only the latter is no longer published.
[3] For more information on the event, see Anthony Hogg, “Vampire Studies Symposium 2015: The ‘Lost’ Footage,” The Vampirologist (blog), December 8, 2017, https://thevampirologist.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/vampire-studies-symposium-2015-the-lost-footage/.
[4] Andrew M. Boylan, review of The Vampire: An Edinburgh Companion, edited by Nick Groom and William Hughes, Journal of Vampire Studies 5 (2025): 104–11; review of Unlocking Dracula A.D. 1972: A Classic Horror Film in Context, by David Huckvale, 112– 13.

Bio: Anthony Hogg is the president of the Vampire Studies Association and editor of the Journal of Vampire Studies. He lives in Melbourne.

Guest Blog – Why are Vampires Erotic? – TMtV 20th anniversary

I’d like to welcome David MacDowell Blue to TMtV. I met David through Leila’s forum and we have corresponded on and off since. David has produced an Annotated Carmilla, to which I provided the preface and has written plays based on both Carmilla (twice) and Dracula. David has produced a blog to celebrate twenty years of TMtV, based on a paper he wrote for the World Dracula Congress.

Not everyone finds the undead even remotely sexy. Plenty are baffled by those who do. But denying plenty of people do feel exactly that way? Denial, pure and simple. The sheer number of porn sites and adult movies as well as hardcore erotic novels on this subject make up a thing called “evidence.”

But...why? To be sure nearly anything can be erotic to someone. But what in English culture latched onto the vampire, generation after generation?

Here’s my own theory. Part of this is probably the simple fact that for many pleasure and pain bleed into each other at times, not least during foreplay and especially at the moment of climax. Biting is erotic, a vampire bites, plus the aura of submission, the pleasures many feel entwined with losing control, etc.

There must be more, though. Begin with timing. By the 1800s, specialization and mass production had begun to impact lives in a way the Renaissance never did. Cities in Europe had begun to swell far beyond what they had been. Among other things, this meant people had less to do with basic processes of life. Increasing numbers no longer grew their own food, baked their own bread, and perhaps more importantly, never slaughtered their own meat. This last seems vital because to slice open the throat of a creature with a face, a creature to which we might well have given a name, that is a profound experience. And it reminds us we share something in common with that goose, that pig, that bull. We too will die. This period also saw increasing isolation from the processes of death. Doctors now took care of the very sick. Morticians took over preparing the dead for burial. It took generations, but it happened.

In this milieu The Vampyre by John Polidori emerged, followed by more literary vampires which—unlike their folkloric counterparts—engaged in temptation, seduction, betrayal. But all—from Varney to Carmilla and Dracula—embodies DEATH not as force but a character, someone with whom victims and others had a relationship. A relationship we no longer have with that part of life.

As death itself became repressed, shut aside, pushed down, so the Vampire in art became a forbidden but alluring figure of power. Perhaps more importantly, this was also a time as the idea of sexuality changed, echoing the same suppression about death. Just as we no longer killed our Christmas goose, so we were not supposed to “enjoy” pleasure from our bodies, at least not that kind of pleasure. Especially women. In the Middle Ages, a woman could ask for a divorce—and get it—if her husband did not give her enough orgasms. By the time Victoria had been on the throne for awhile, the idea of women enjoying sex became seen as an unhealthy deviancy! Small wonder as the Vampire became an avatar of forbidden lore of one kind it became associated with another, given the timing. Certainly both Carmilla and Dracula used such themes, exploring taboo desires often in an effort to “cure” such.

 

Carmilla as portrayed in The Vampire Lovers

By the time the twentieth century arrived, and as it progressed, all this became wound up with other aspects of life in some sense forbidden. Church and medical professionals as well as dozens of other institutions portrayed efforts to avoid death as unnatural, as much so as deviant forms of lust (including but not limited to dominance/submission, same sex attraction, fascination with pain or darkness in general). Small wonder then the centers of culture so often seen as “decadent” created many of the most memorable vampires which continue to haunt us. Weimar Germany gave us Nosferatu, while Hollywood turned Bram Stoker’s Count into a sinister sex symbol, and the same country from which the Beatles emerged also brought heaving bosoms as well very bright red blood into a whole slew of cult classic movies. Likewise, it makes such perfect sense New Orleans was the original home of Anne Rice, whose first novel took place in that beautiful, decaying, sensual city!

The pattern I see is how vampires remain entwined across the decades with whatever our culture wants rejected. Addictions, sexual excess, same sex love (all of Anne Rice), polyamory, cults (i.e. alternate spirituality a la Count Yorga or The Strain), interest in shadows and death (Dark Shadows), rebellion against the status quo in so many forms (including Twilight interestingly), power given to women, acceptance of the part of us that is animal (see 30 Days of Night for example), everything our teachers and parents and others insist we don’t “really” feel, at least not unless we are flawed (shades especially of Owen in Let Me In).

We aren’t supposed to feel a connection between ecstasy and agony, between feeling life ever more acutely in the presence of death, the primitive nature of so many of our desires (including the ones which cannot help pervade our lives). Jung called all these things our SHADOW, an archetype within our unconscious minds, the embodiment of all we have been taught to suppress. A figure of repulsion and attraction. Something we fear yet somehow know we need, and which being a part of us cannot be amputated without disfiguring or crippling ourselves.

Orlok as shadow in Nosferatu

Vampires have become one incarnation of that Shadow. Our isolation from death, from death as part of life, from the processes humans now have done by proxy in order to survive, the sexual repression that emerged in the rise of the middle class, the specific shape of female repression and its frankly terrible consequences for all genders—plus maybe a little bit of our acquired idealization of biting into delicious red meat, tasting what seems like blood on the tongue (it isn’t really, but we’re talking visceral impressions here). All these combined into shaping this image—a seductive creature of sensual power, combining life and death, offering horror and freedom, slavery and excess, pleasure side by side with torture. It might not be handsome, although certainly most of the men cast as Dracula have been very good looking, and the voluptuous vampire woman in a translucent gown revealing a lot is an icon in her own right. It might be ugly, like Orlock or the spawn of Barlow in Salem’s Lot. But it remains in some sense attractive, often in the same way a toxic significant other may be, or the thrill of a very dangerous habit like heroin, or simply a temptation to power in one way or another. Achieving it, wallowing in it, or giving it away, releasing oneself into sensation and submission.

It could have been something else. The Hunger in some other timeline might have been about djinn. Abigail could have been a werewolf. Sinners could have been about zombies. From Dusk Till Dawn might easily have been about Minotaurs or Mermaids or even Elves!

Yet in the specific cultural stew of England in the early 1800s, the ingredients took the folkloric Vampire and simmered for centuries with the sexual neuroses of the Victorian Age into what we have today--a version of Jung’s Shadow within us all, tempting with danger and sin and truths we’ve been told are lies.

Guest Blog – Why Don't Vampires Act Their Age (A Theory) – TMtV 20th anniversary

It’s with great pleasure that I welcome E.H. Drake to the blog. I met her when I reviewed the first book in her vampire trilogy, Blood Herring, and subsequently reviewed the sequels, Blood Renegade and Blood Renegade. But as well as an author, Drake is the host of a podcast and did me the honour of inviting me on, where I took part in a panel discussion. Without further ado, here’s Drake’s blog:

Why is it that Edward Cullen, a man pushing a hundred years old, goes absolutely coocoo bananas for a seventeen-year-old girl? Why doesn’t he simplify things by pretending to be in college, living with roommates, and investing in some index funds?

Meanwhile, in Interview with the Vampire, Claudia is stuck in the body of a child, yearning for the adult life she’s been robbed of. Yet, she still behaves with the emotional volatility of a toddler.

What gives?

Let’s eliminate the obvious first. No writer (that we know of) is immortal. Therefore, writing immortality is just a mental exercise in virtual reality. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about why these "ancient" beings are so immature. As a vampire author, I have a couple of theories.

Limits of the Human Mind

We tend to overestimate our minds. We believe we remember things as sharply as a 4K clarity, despite the fact that I can’t even remember why I walked into the kitchen five minutes ago.

Think about it. Nobody reading this remembers their own birth or the specific struggle of learning to walk. Every day, I take my ability to talk or write for granted, while my toddler takes forever to form a single sentence.

Even you, reading this blog right now, will likely only remember the gist of it when you’re done. You’ll remember how it made you feel or think, but the specific words will fade.

When you compound this limited mental space with hormones, personal bias, and trauma, we humans basically forget more than we remember.

We also know that the older we get, the more selective our memories become. Even putting aside conditions like Alzheimer's or dementia, if we make it to a hundred, we’re liable to hear stories about our own lives and have zero recollection. We'll have lived experiences we simply cannot access.

Now, crank up the dial. What if you were a thousand years old? Five thousand? As old as the pyramids of Egypt?

In this context, it makes sense that Claudia forgets the nuances of her human life. Is it any wonder she only starts rebelling against her "forever child" role in her sixties, while simultaneously throwing massive tantrums? She’s old enough to be a grandmother, but she’s working with a brain that has been deleting files for decades.

The "Frozen Brain" Theory

To really understand the lack of maturity, we have to look at the medical reality implied by becoming a vampire.

Take Edward. He was a young man on the edge of death, forced into an excruciating change and turned into a monster without so much as a “How do you do?”

Research on arrested psychological development suggests that severe trauma, especially in youth, can "freeze" a person's emotional maturity at the age the trauma occurred. It impairs emotional regulation and leads to poor impulse control.

The Peter Pan Problem

We've discussed the emotional side, but let's go a step further.

In most vampire lore, when you turn, your physical development stops. You are a snapshot in time. If your whole body stops aging, what does that mean for the brain?

Neuroscience tells us that the Prefrontal Cortex, the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and rational decision-making, doesn't fully mature until your mid-20s. If you are turned at 17, your brain never reaches the finish line. Your hormones stay the same. The logic center of your brain will forever be under-construction.

We often conflate age with wisdom, but medical history (like the famous case of Phineas Gage) shows that if the frontal lobe is damaged or stunted, personality and emotional regulation shift dramatically. Seriously, just look into head injuries with American Football. I'll wait.

This could be why Edward runs off to other countries at the drop of a hat or tries to flounce in sun. He isn't some old soul; he's just a teenager with a very long memory.

Even Claudia, yearning for an adult life, makes such irrational, impulsive choices. Her betrayal of Lestat is understandable, but it's executed with the short-sightedness of a child.

So, is it any wonder the mighty creatures of the night never really grow up? Every vampire story is a cocktail of physical and medical trauma, which is the perfect recipe for developmental stagnation. By the time we meet them, they have more in common with Peter Pan than they do with us, sad, aging mortals. I mean, think about it. Dracula doesn’t even cast a shadow.

But hey, I’m just a silly human woman exploring the trope.

Bio: E.H. Drake is an indie author living in the United States with her family. She loves dogs, almost anything with vampires, and reading three books at a time. 

Her debut trilogy is a vampire-buddy cop mystery series, The Blood Herring Chronicles. She is currently working on young adult superhero and zombie western. You can find her books, podcast, and events at EHDrake.com.

Guest Blog – Thousand Year Old Vampire – a role playing game – TMtV 20th Anniversary

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Adrien Party to TMtV, we’ve been online friends for at least a dozen years through our shared love of the vampire genre and Adrien is both behind the French site Vampirisme and the author of the acclaimed volume Vampirologie. Adrien has written a guest blog about the game Thousand Year Old Vampire, which is a game I too have played and enjoyed.

Since Ravenloft was published in 1983, vampires have always been an important part of the roleplaying industry. In 1991, Vampire: the Masquerade pushed for another evolution, and opened the way for players who wanted to play such characters. In 2012, Nights Black Agent provided a game without fixed world or vampire characteristics, leaving its entire creation in the hands of the gamemaster.

Thousand Year Old Vampire (2019) seems to be a new extension of this genealogy. Here, the player embodies a vampire through its entire lifespan. The vampire characteristics start with its social contact, resources and skills, with these constantly evolving as the game progresses. But the most important part of the character’s journey relies on its memories, and the event he’s confronted with. Contrary to classical multiplayer roleplaying games, Thousand Year Old Vampire is in fact a solo-RPG, a game where the player is also the gamemaster. If there are dice rolls during game, those are only used to help the player progress in their own history. The main part of the game is constituted by numerically ordered prompts that set the basis for events the vampire is confronted to: meeting new immortals, losing links with mortals, enduring the passage of time. The dice roll guides the player to move forward or backward in the prompt list. Each prompt number provides at least three possible starts, in case the dice roll leads the player to read again an already used prompt number. And here come the main work for the player: it’s up to them, drawing with current resources, connections and skills, to decide how the drafted event proposed by the prompt is lived by their character… and write it. The main part of the game pushes the player to write their character experiences, with a limit: a vampire being an immortal within a mortal envelope, he’s unable to retain memories from everything he has lived. He must then choose to forget things from time to time, in order to make room for new experiences. The only way to keep those lost memories is to add them in a journal (an object the vampire can own in the game), also with some limitations.

Thousand Year Old Vampire is an impressive game for vampire lovers that enjoy writing. The system imagined by Tim Hutchins perfectly succeeds in conveying the idea of the vampire solitude, and the difficulty he has to live for centuries. Experiences stay, but their roots in the vampire’s own existence is often lost from memories. This game is also a fascinating tool to explore history, with countries, political regime and science never stop changing. For example, you can start your existence as a vampire in Antiquity and die during Cold War. For all these reasons, it’s also a game that requires commitment. Because as already stated, the main part of the game is based on the player writing a lifespan history for their vampire character. Some will take more pleasure in writing small and short sentence, others will enjoy writing huge paragraphs to describe with many details what happens.

If the examples given in the game are classical, Dracula-type, there are no obligations in being faithful to a particular sort of vampire. There’s an Anne Rice vibe, with the idea of recording your memories through a journal, but there’s no restriction to play psychical vampire, alien vampires or other vampire types. The book provides a definition of what is a vampire but at the same time explains it’s up to the player to define the vampiric traits of his character. Your vampire will bear marks of its condition, but where are those marks is up to you.

The book in itself is magnificent. It’s a hardcover book, with two ribbon bookmarks, and an old diary or strange book flavour. The layout is amazing, and there are plenty of illustrations in there to dive into the system and get inspirations.

Among all the independent roleplaying game that have been published through the years, Thousand Year Old Vampire must, without any doubt, be set apart. It can be used as a basic way to entertain yourself but can also help you write vampire fiction, and testing ideas.

Biography: In 2006, after traveling to Transylvania in search of the historical Dracula and his fictional counterpart, Adrien Party founded Vampirisme,com, a webzine devoted exclusively to vampires. He also served as president of the Lyon Beefsteak Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to vampire-themed events, whose highlight was the Salon du Vampire (four editions held between 2010 and 2016).

After five years of research and writing, he published Vampirologie with ActuSF Editions in 2022. The book won the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (Best Non-Fiction/Essay category) in 2023. A revised paperback version of Vampirologie was published at the end of 2024. Vampirologie explores the vampire as a fiction character, through books, movies, tv shows, RPGs, video games, etc. The main idea is to underline the connections between different media and to show how authors and creators use the vampire metaphor to translate the anxieties of their time. The book also includes many interviews with authors and specialists such as Anne Rice, Mark Gatiss and Dacre Stoker.

In 2025, Adrien Party published his second book, Stoker et Dracula: La fabrique d'une Légende with Nouvelles Éditions ActuSF. This second book is an exploration of the writing of Dracula, dealing with publishing history, themes, Stoker's biography and bibliography, etc.