Shows
FangthologyHalloween Special 2021: The Dracula Thirst-Rankings
Ever wondered what Kayleigh and Catherine sound like without a script? Well, listen in as we finally do our ranking of the most attractive Draculas.
Quality of text and faithfulness of adaptation is not a factor. We’re completely shallow here.
Want to play along as you listen? Use the Tiermaker we made and used during the recording of this ep.
2021-10-311h 25FangthologyLord Byron and the Vampire Myth
Lord Byron, the peer, poet, and great social animal, was one of the leading writers of the Romantic movement and maybe its most notorious. While his poetry remains influential and popular, it is his legend that has taken greater root in the mainstream imagination. He’s influenced everything from poetry to cinema to fashion and beyond. He’s also a key figure in the evolution of the pop-culture vampire myth.
Not to mention an epic-level douchebag.
Further Reading
Was Lord Byron England’s 1st Vampire? John Polidori & the Birth of the Literary Bloodsucker – The Serpent’...
2021-10-3021 minFangthologyThe Brief and Fascinating Life of Lestat: The Musical
We introduced our podcast to the world of the living and undead with a deep-dive into Dance of the Vampires, one of Broadway theatre’s most notorious musical flops. That show will forever stand tall as one of the industry’s costliest errors, a mish-mash of bad ideas, micromanagement issues, and clashing egos that turned a beloved European hit into the laughing stock of New York City. Dance of the Vampires would also go on to become example number one as to why vampire musicals don’t work on the stage, at least in the English language. Of course, that d...
2021-08-2827 minFangthologyThe Death and Afterlife of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
Vampires have never felt themselves restricted to one mere genre, let alone a single form of media. Aside from the thousands of novels in more than a dozen genres (and even more combinations of genres), vampire tales are told through film, television, animation, comics and graphic novels, music, and even theatre. (Although if you listened to our first episode you’re already well aware of how well that last form of media does.)The undead are even part of the ever-growing multi-billion dollar industry that is gaming. They’ve been featured in platformers like Castlevania, point-and-click adventures like...
2021-07-3126 minFangthologyThe Rise (And Fall) Of The Dark Universe
Vampires on the big screen come and go, the trend never fully dying out. After the glut of post-Twilight paranormal fiction tired out the general public in the late 2000s to early 2010s, Hollywood seemed to embrace zombies over their undead brethren for a while. Now, it feels like they’re coming back in style. Vampire YA is in the headlines thanks to books like Renée Ahdieh’s The Beautiful series, Caleb Roehrig’s The Fell of Dark, and, of course, Stephenie Meyer’s return with Midnight Sun. Netflix has the French horror series Vampires, and the BBC adapted D...
2021-06-2626 minFangthologyA Brief History of Nosferatu
Few films have defined cinematic horror as fully as Nosferatu, the 1922 silent film by German director F.W. Murnau. Widely believed to be the first ever vampire movie — or at least the earliest surviving example of one — its influence can be found looming overhead in the genre in the century that followed its release. Its imagery remains iconic and the impact it had on vampire mythos as a whole is indelible. And yet it’s a miracle that Nosferatu is even with us today, not only because the vast majority of silent cinema is missing or presumed destroyed, but becaus...
2021-05-2931 minFangthologyThe Plague: Vampires and Infection
For many centuries, death was a mystery, and dying a fearful force devoid of explanation. Some causes of death were deemed to be rooted in the supernatural or some sort of invading demonic force. Many who suffered from wasting diseases, anemia, tuberculosis, or cholera, for example, were misdiagnosed as the victims of vampiric attacks. After all, the symptoms fell in line with those superstitions: weight loss, coughing up blood, immense suffering. And then there were the epidemics of illness. Whole cities of people were wiped out in the bubonic plague. Outbreaks of cholera and flu decimated countries. Venereal diseases...
2021-04-2427 minFangthologyDracula in Istanbul
Consistently in print for over 120 years, Dracula has been translated into dozens of languages, and it is one of those translations that we’re here to discuss today. What we expect from a translation is a stridently faithful process, nothing changed aside from the words themselves. In reality, the politics of translation are far more complex than that, with heavier questions of historical and cultural context to consider – more a more tangled process than simply going from one language to another. It’s a gateway to reinterpretation and even total recreation of the tale in question. In the case of Dra...
2021-03-2718 min
FangthologyDance of the Vampires
Vampire musicals never work. It’s one of the deep-seated rules of Broadway theatre. There are many examples that prove this assertion, but today, we’re taking a look at the one that started it all. What happens when you take one of German-language theatre’s biggest hits and add a hefty dose of Broadway egos, bad puns, feuding producers, and lifelong grudges? You get one of the biggest financial flops in musical history. This is the story of Dance of the Vampires.
Audio Sources (In Order of Appearance)
The Fearless Vampire Killer...
2021-02-2434 min