Drakula Istanbul’da (1953) Director: Mehmet Muhtar Dracula: Atif Kaptan The first direct identification of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Vlad the Impaler came (unsurprisingly, in retrospect) from the Turks, who after all were on the receiving end of Vlad’s hobby. In 1928, Ali Riza Seyfi wrote a novel called Kazikli Voyvoda, or Impaler Voivode, xeroxing Stoker’s novel with […]
Category Archives: General
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) Director: Peter Sasdy Dracula: Christopher Lee For reasons unknown to me, film critics enjoy belittling the later Hammer Dracula series. While it’s true that no later Hammer film approaches the artistic or emotional impact of Fisher’s 1958 original, it’s also true that by expanding their “Dracula Mythos” (and by […]
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1973) Director: Dan Curtis Dracula: Jack Palance If you had always wondered where that trope of “Dracula falls in love with Mina because she resembles his centuries-dead true love” came from, well, it came from two places. First, it comes from The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932), but Dan Curtis moved it from mummies […]
Drácula (1931) Director: George Melford Dracula: Carlos Vallarías Once silent films went the way of the stereopticon, Hollywood studios had to make foreign-language films for foreign markets. In 1930, while filming the Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi Dracula we’ll get to later, Universal hired (non-Spanish-speaker) George Melford to shoot a Spanish-language Drácula simultaneously on the same sets as […]
Count Dracula (1970) Director: Jesús Franco Dracula: Christopher Lee In between refusals to ever wear the cape again for Hammer and wearing the cape again for Hammer, Christopher Lee occasionally tried to get other studios’ adaptations of Dracula off the ground. Often, like Lucy (Van Pelt not Westenra) pulling away the scarlet, dripping football he […]
The scene: your Trail of Cthulhu game. The speaker: A player. “All right, I’m sick of being fed bafflegab by these mystic jerks, and I don’t want to read any more books that will keep me up for a calendar month with waking nightmares. We take the train to Providence, Rhode Island, go to” [quick […]
This week, Tales of the 13th Age GMs receive The Battle of Axis — an adventure that brings the first season of 13th Age organized play to a thundering conclusion! The fact that 13th Age organized play exists at all is a minor miracle wrought by ASH LAW. Rob Heinsoo originally believed that 13th Age’s […]
“I think that Varna is not familiar to any of us …” — Van Helsing In my defense, not a lot of stuff happens in Varna. I mean, in the novel. Lots of stuff happens in Varna, including a disastrous Crusade in 1444 that killed the King of Poland and nearly killed Vlad Tepes’ brother […]
By Rob Heinsoo Welcome to the first-ever 13th Age Trivia & Miscellany 7-Question Non-Contest Experience. If you’re into trivia contests, oh happy day, hooray. Make your answers to one more questions as comments below and we’ll give a shout out later to the first person who correctly answered each specific question. If puzzling over obscure […]
Check out Nook Harper’s alternate Night’s Black Agents setting over on the Illuminerdy. Thanks, Nook! “Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent’anni ‘mpaci” “He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace”