I constantly quoted it to others, including the pivotal scene when the werewolf (oddly not the Wolfman but Vincent von Frankenstein’s girlfriend Erika-Wolfwoman, I guess) attacks the Count, causing him to become enraged and reveal himself by declaring, “You dare!! You dare lay your paws on me! On me?! Low beast, you’ll die for this, die at the hands of the Prince of Darkness…FOR I AM DRACULA!” Recently, when I was working on this introduction, I dug out the record to engage in nostalgia and left it on my coffee table. I played this record over and over again and still have my copy today.
This fabulous 33 1/3 record came with a read along book in graphic novel form (we called them comic books back then) and it combined into one dramatic tale the stories of its title characters. Again, I was always Dracula.Īnd perhaps best of all, I owned the wonderfully dramatic record The Story of Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein from Power Records. Nor did I ever miss going through a Haunted House at the fair, and my friends and I commonly played haunted house, turning our bedrooms or the family room into a mansion of monsters and ghosts. In fourth grade, I was Dracula for Halloween-I remember still the thrill of running so my cape would flap in the wind, and I can still taste the plastic vampire teeth. I was the proud owner of the Weebles Haunted House complete with Weebles that “wobble but they don’t fall down”-including the witch with a removable pointy hat, a glow-in-the dark ghost, two Weeble children to be scared, secret panels, trapped doors, and a treasure chest with bats inside.
My introduction to gothic literature tv#
I remember the “Creature Feature” film being shown Saturday afternoons on TV50 from Detroit, and I loved Love at First Bite (1979) starring George Hamilton as Dracula-when it was broadcast on TV for the first time, my brother and I had a big fight over the TV (we only had one in the house in those days) because it was aired opposite Yogi’s First Christmas, which he wanted to watch. I was always fascinated with the Gothic-commonly called horror, or simply, when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, what was “scary.” I didn’t know the term Gothic and wouldn’t know it until well into high school, but I knew the Munsters, the Addams Family, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Broom-Hilda the Witch, and countless other characters in popular culture from that time who were often watered down children’s versions of the Gothic. But more importantly, Gothic literature reveals much about who we are, what we fear, and to what we aspire. I love to be scared-I don’t go for the gory horror films of today, but I love suspense and the greatest Gothic literature builds up such suspense. We love the Gothic partly because we have a fascination with being scared. Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and several others. And a smaller percentage of us might think about classic Gothic literature-the great eighteenth and nineteenth century novels of Mrs. Some of us might think of the Goth look where teenagers wear all black. It may mean different things to all of us, yet those things are closely related. Most of us do, even if we don’t know exactly what the term “Gothic” means. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,Īnd starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped If you’re curious about my new book The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Gothic Fiction from 1794-Present, here is the introduction to the book, giving insight not only into what the book is about but also why the Gothic is so popular and why it matters today.
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