Posts Tagged Dracula
High Voltage
Posted by Chris Niblock in art/drama, Fiction on January 6, 2024
A reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein penned by Robin Glover
It’s dangerous to play with electricity or so they say, but that’s how Victor Frankenstein gets his kicks. He doesn’t care if it’s AC or DC as long as it delivers enough of a jolt. And it takes quite a jolt to put some life back into the dead!
It’s high jinks and even higher jolts all the way when Victor journeys to London to create a bride for his monster. No easy task when the groom looks like he stepped out of a Hammer Horror movie! But failure isn’t an option or Victor and his fiancee Elizabeth will find themselves on a mortuary slab. An acute shortage of female cadavers, a pair of incompetent grave-robbers and a series of shocks of the non-electrical kind, keep Victor in a spin right up to the final curtain,
Casting: 4 Women 5 Men (with doubling)
High Voltage is available from amazon.co.uk priced £5.00 https://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Voltage-reimaging-Shelleys-Frankenstein/dp/1916108296/ref=sr_1
Note: Robin Glover is a pen name I use when writing adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and mashups of gothic classics.
Dr Jekyll & Mrs Hyde
Posted by Chris Niblock in art/drama, Fiction on December 4, 2023
A gothic comedy based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde penned by Robin Glover
Dr Jekyll & Mrs Hyde is a monster mashup of fun at the expense of those gothic classics: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the infamous real-life villain, Jack the Ripper. Yet amidst the murder and mayhem, below stairs romance blossoms between housemaid Molly and stable boy Jack. Above stairs too for Utterson’s nephew Dickie and heiress, Miss Lily Castleton.
Can Dr Jekyll overcome his nemesis, Edwina Hyde? Will inspector Asinine manage to arrest the right man? Can any of them survive the arrival of the Prince of Darkness and learn to dance the Monster Mash!
Casting: 4 Women 6 Men (with doubling)
Dr Jekyll & Mrs Hyde is available from amazon.co.uk priced £5.00 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dr-Jekyll-Mrs-Hyde-gothic/dp/1916108288/ref=sr_1
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is perhaps best known for his novel Treasure Island, published in 1883. In it he created the classic pirate tale of buried treasure and a colourful collection of characters including: Long John Silver and the castaway, Ben Gunn and it has provided the template for all the pirate tales that have followed it.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, published in 1886, is a bit of an oddity amongst Stevenson’s other tales of romance and adventure. A gothic novella about a kind and caring physician who, after drinking a drug intended to separate good from evil, inadvertently releases his psychopathic alter ego.
Note: Robin Glover is a pen name I use when writing adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and mashups of gothic classics.
Start screaming Kate – Hammer Horror is back!
Posted by Chris Niblock in Movies on July 25, 2011
I was amused to read that Hammer Films is back in business with the news that Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe is to star in ‘The Woman in Black‘ for them. Rather like most of the characters featured in their movies, I’d assumed that the company was long since dead. But it seems they simply became the undead and were just biding their time until a fresh crop of victims came along. In their heyday (1955 to 1959) the films were considered quite scary, but compared to later shockers like’ The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and’ Nightmare on Elm Street’, there was more ‘ham’ than horror in classics like ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’. These films made stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and much later Ingrid Pitt, most fondly remembered for her role in ‘Virgin Vampires’ alongside Kate O’Mara.
As a teenager, singer/songwriter Kate Bush dubbed the screams for Hammer, and featured a song entitled ‘Hammer Horror’ on her second album ‘Lionheart’.
But what I found even more interesting is the news that Hammer have gone into the publishing business with a series of gothic horror novels. Award winning author of ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’, Jeanette Winterson is to pen a novella for them. Imagine the creative possibilities this opens up for the audio book versions of these horror stories. Let’s hope they can persuade Kate Bush to provide the screams . . . we haven’t heard much from her lately and as a big fan, I’d welcome any new sounds from her even if it is just a blood curdling scream of terror.
Chris Niblock
A Stirring in the Blood
Buy it from amazon.co.uk
A Kyndle in the Mynd 