Customer Reviews

Dracula's Daughter

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This is the first time I've read a novel 'inspired by [a] classic film' and I quite enjoyed the experience. Of course 'Carl Dreadstone' is a pseudonym for John Ramsey Campbell, who is one of our generation's leading writers of the supernatural, so "Dracula's Daughter" isn't the hack job it could have been from a lesser pen.

Even characters that horror film aficionados know will spend five minutes on screen then die horribly, are treated with respect by this author. I was made to care that they died. The horror of falling victim to a vampire is made stomach-churningly explicit (especially in the final chapters of this book) by the author's adoption of the victim's point-of-view. There were places in the foggy streets of London and the cobwebbed corridors of Castle Dracula where I was almost too afraid to continue reading.

However, I was also led to believe that Mr. Campbell did a bit of speed-writing in places, when I came across phrases like "his polished dome twitched like a hatching egg" or "with a smile as sweet as a skull's..."

There are an overabundance of meaningful glances and mesmerizing stares, but I expect they came directly from the movie, which was filmed in 1936. Vampire films from the early decades of the 20th Century were inevitably loaded with hypnotic stares à la Bela Lugosi.

Be sure to read the introduction to "Dracula's Daughter" which Mr. Campbell writes under his own name. He shares some interesting opinions on the casting and direction of this early vampire film.

I think vampire buffs will impressed by the personalities and relationships that this author manages to imbue with life (even Dracula's daughter!) within the frame of what was already becoming a clichéd movie theme.

Draculas Daughter by Carl Dreadstone (Ramsay Campbell) novel inspired by the film with stills from the film included. One of the nine (9) book series published by Berkley books in the "Universal Horror Library". The books were adapted from screenplays under the Dreadstone house/penname, many of which were completely written by Ramsay Campbell.