Imagine a movie is being shown of a person who is casually minding their own business while taking a stroll through the woods somewhere. Suddenly, there is eerie and suspenseful music playing in the back of the character’s mind and they think, “What in the world is that?” They think A. It must be a song they heard a long time ago, B. Some cute and fuzzy cartoon characters are about to come out and start singing, or C. They’re about to run into a scary monster or murder. Odds are, if the watcher know how suspenseful movies and novels go, they would probably pick C. People are able to pick out certain aspects of a novel or movie and know that something bad is about to happen. Same as in the movie Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, originally written by Seth Grahame-Smith, and then produced into a movie by Burr Steers. Vampires and zombies, such as in these novels and movies, would make someone scared, mostly because of how strange and different they are from us, also known as “The Other.” The ideas of suspense, monstrous or scary beings, and “The Other” shown throughout Pride and Prejudice and Zombies were all influenced by the classic novel Dracula, written by Bram Stoker.
The idea of suspense is represented differently depending on what the movie or novel is about. Movies that have characters that are considered to be fictional would more likely have stronger suspense than a movie that has characters that were living in real times. An article relating to the movie Pride and
It’s never exactly rare to find an iconic vampire in vampire literature. Dracula, from Bram Stoker's novel, and Lestat, from Interview with the Vampire, are far from the same but they do appear as similar in readings. They both appear as powerful leaders in the novels. As vampires they share very similar characteristics but the novels surrounding them show less similarities. For example the other turned vampires don’t share the same characteristics and have different outlooks of being a vampire. Although these two novels can be seen as similar, they possess many differences through formatting, setting, and the vampires’ perception of their lives.
In literature there are many different genres, one of the older and more established genre is the horror genre. This genre has been known for beyond centuries. Since humanity has existed we have always had an urge to be scared. It has always been exciting to get a so called “adrenaline shock”. In today’s society there are a lot more options to get the adrenalin pumping such as skydiving or bungee-jumping etc. Before all this technology came in hand people told horror stories to each other. One of the most mentioned horror stories is probably Dracula. The original story is written by Bram Stoker and has been adapted for the screen as an American romantic horror film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. On the following pages, I have analyzed the horror film “Dracula”.
A querying of normative gender behaviour and sexuality pervades the 19th century gothic fiction text. What does this reveal about the cultural context within the tale exists?
Desire and fear some of the most prominent emotions exhibited in Dracula. Bram Stoker, Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, Dracula, Tod Browning, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola. “Human characters are caught up in the struggle between these emotions when it comes to vampires; this opposition drives forward the different plots… vampire attributes such as physical attraction, sexuality, power and thoughtless violence are common threads throughout the studied works. Characters in these stories fear the powerful abilities of vampires, yet show an unmistakable pull towards them. The vampires in all of these works incorporate physical attraction, sensuality, and awesome power. They often use this superhuman strength
A horror classic by Abraham Stocker, Dracula, may be one of the most notorious villain stories of all time. Bram Stocker is a Irish writer who changed the view of what to read in his time. He shows dark and twisted situations and metaphors throughout Dracula and many other of his horror novels. This novel was released in the Victorian era, which saw his type of writing as equivalent to the devil. This era was a long time of peace and bright minded people. Stockers style surprised many readers, because he always has you thinking it can’t get any darker than it is but it always exceeds the previous twisted situation or event. Bram Stocker shows Dracula as an iconic creature, with many reasons to be feared, but displayed in the wrong time era.
In the 19th century, this basis of scary and thriller books started to emerge. This essay will be about who Dracula enticed women, how his detainer was unsettling and demonic. How the era in which the novel was written plays a part in the ideas of Dracula and how behaves; with such things as women, food, and Harker. The Victorian era definitely influenced the writing of the time through reflections of exploitation of women and a certain darkness in ones self, also explains of mystery and suspense.
The people of the Philippines believe in a creature called the mandurugo, a vampiric creature that takes form of a beautiful girl by day, but grows wings and a hollow, thread like tongue used to suck the blood of the sleeping at night. The Cape region in Africa has the folklore of the impundulu, which has the ability to transform into a large taloned bird that can control thunder and lightning. Vampires are seen in stories and folklore throughout civilizations and generations. Even though people knew of vampires, Bram Stoker’s novel made people fear them by terrifying his reader’s with his persona Dracula. The Count has been known to be a very complex character with many odd quirks and traits. Nowadays these have been changed or kept by
The world of copyright was just as convoluted in the 1920’s as it is in our world today. The film studio Prana Film, which produced the 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu, was sued for copyright infringement by the estate of Bram Stoker, the author of the 1897 Gothic Horror novel Dracula, and ended up filing for bankruptcy after only distributing one film. While this may seem like an immense failure for the studio behind the silent film, it ended up influencing almost a century of vampires, in novels, television, and other films, and made the name ‘Nosferatu’ synonymous with the equally influential novel that it was based upon. On the surface, Nosferatu is a blatant copy of Dracula, from it’s plot, to the characters (besides the change in names), to the portrayal of vampires in general; in reality, many aspects of both bodies of work differ immensely from one another, providing both Stoker and director F. W. Murnau pieces that have influenced generations of vampire media. The structure, characterization and overall tone of Nosferatu is developed differently than Dracula in order to differentiate itself from it’s source material and provide an alternate adaptation of an iconic tale.
“” this is the definition of folklore, and from these stories we get a multitude of myths and speculation of what happens to us when we die. They range from just disappearing into nothingness to becoming a higher being or going into a higher plain of existence. There are ideas however, of a life on this earth after we die for those who have committed crimes or have not been buried properly, we become the other, the supernatural or ultimately the undead. The most common of which is the vampire. One of the most known vampires from literature is Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ (1897) who is portrayed as a blood thirty, emotionless monster, which is the idea most often portrayed in folklore. This is a stark contrast from Anne Rice’s (1976) portal of a “” . The traditional idea of a monstrous creature who haunts the night is seen as an old idea and that people’s views of the supernatural are changing to a more humane, beautiful creature, not of a demon. This could be due to the popularity in teen and young adult fiction that happened in the late 1900’s. This change from traditional folklore is due to “” the way we perceive things are changing due to the influence of different cultures and ideas. Most of our ideas of vampires have changed from the traditional views to a beautiful human creature: seen in ‘Twilight’, ‘Vampire Knight’, ‘Vampire Academy’, and ‘Anita Blake’. These novels do have some elements of the monster portrayed in ‘Dracula’ and folklore but the main characters are the
After reading the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, we learn many things about the style of writing he used to capture the reader’s attention. We also learned about the main ideas Stoker brought in his writing, like how evil is all around us and how when humans join together, they could overcome the evil. In addition, he also describes the protagonist of the story and the way it behaves throughout the whole story and how it gets involved with all the characters. Last but not least, Stoker shows the reader what he used as a symbol to defeat evil, which helped developed the outcome of the novel.
There’s a reason why Bram Stoker’s Dracula is arguably one of the greatest gothic novels of all time, and Michael Pink’s readaptation of the classic certainly does not disappoint. Pink’s Dracula, performed by the Colorado Ballet on Sunday, October 15, 2017, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House at Denver Center for the Performing Arts with music composed by Philip Feeney left me feeling spooked and desperately wanting more. Prevailing themes of rising tension, suspense, and terror made for an intriguing experience that was executed beautifully by a talented cast and crew. The effortless blend of horror and romance is captivating and offers a range of elements each individual audience member can appreciate.
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, we are introduced to the monster that is Dracula. Throughout his Stoker touches on several themes of Dracula’s monstrosity. This paper will explore Bram Stoker’s Dracula under the theory of, “The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference” The rejection of modernity, sexual expression, and the xenophobic threat from Old World Europe are all gates of difference that Stoker touches on.
Percy D’Aco claimed, “The word suspense is related to the word suspended. When a story keeps us in suspense, we feel almost as if we are suspended in midair.” Suspense is often used in horror films. Suspense allows we as viewers to feel connected and apart of the work, whether that is a book or a movie. W.F Harvey creates suspense by foreshadowing, using reversal, and by withholding information.
Lucy is fully aware that she is desired by many men and she lets that get into her head, essentially she is feeding off the attention. This vulnerability and openness is why Lucy Westenra is Count Dracula’s first and easiest target. The first time the Count starts to get into Lucy’s head is after her and Mina see the wrecked boat upon shore, containing the containers of dirt. These were Dracula’s sleeping quarters. This fact was not known by the women at the time, but soon after this event is when Lucy starts to sleep walk. This sleep walking is not a coincidence but is psychologically connected to her sinful desires of lustfulness. Count Dracula only has the power the attack willing victims, which could only mean Lucy knew in her subconscious what she was doing by going out to the cemetery at nights. This spell Dracula puts on Lucy is the same spell he put on the three women who now life in Dracula Castle with him. These women were just as innocent and virtuous as Lucy was and are now sex crazed and evil just as the Count is. This “spell” was a way to undermine women so that Dracula would feel powerful and controlling over them.
It’s strange trying to think about these original film properties—Frankenstein and Dracula, respectively—as serious pictures, void of camp and cheese. However, most of this comes from age. It’s interesting then, watching the Hammond-era films, and trying to view them as anything remotely serious. They aren’t. However, they do, at times, manage to disguise themselves as such. In reality, these movies are no Rosemary’s Baby, but rather the birth of a new brand of gothic horror—the gore filled, B-movie, spin-off franchise films; a weird series of twisted exploitation reboots, upping the ante and upping the ridiculous names. The two things that immediately came to mind when watching these films is the obvious influence they had on the work of Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro, and Kate Bush’s song “Hammer Horror” — I admire both artists greatly, so I went in the Hammerverse with my eyes wide open.