Thereby confirming my suspicion that nothing much has changed when it comes to Seattle and Tacoma sniping at each other. :)

For the record, the Seattle/Tacoma rivalry stuff is dead on, or at least that’s how I remember it from when I lived in the area, some thirty years ago.

Maybe things have changed . . . but I doubt it.

Let’s hope Cisco is not allergic to feathers.

I confess: every time I see that title in a headline I keep thinking they’re remaking the Twilight Zone episode of the same name. :)

I’m sure I’ll get over that eventually.

And far be it from me to mention another book coming out this month . . .

Perhaps, but DARK SHADOWS, BLACULA, the various 1970s versions of DRACULA starring Palance and Langella and Jourdan and Kinski and George Hamilton were on-screen as well, just a generation or so earlier.

The Seventies were actually something of a boom period for vampires on screen, and even more so when you consider…

Whereas my inner curmudgeon balked at the idea that anything made before 1990 didn’t matter to modern audiences . . . )

To be clear, the “lost love” thing was introduced by the 1974 version with Jack Palance, NOT the 1977 version with Jourdan.

Jourdan’s Dracula is purely evil . . . .

One nitpick: the “man-shark” thing is teased throughout the episode, not just at the beginning. It’s just that nobody takes its seriously and brushes it off over and over, even after Barry tests the “shark” teeth and finds human DNA in it . . ..

But, yeah, that was a great scene.

You can add Alice Krige to that list.

And are there really “hundreds” of cable-access horror hosts these days? I thought they were pretty much dying out aside from a few diehards like Elvira and Svengoolie . ...

Let’s not forget THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER. No, not the recent Johnny Depp movie, but the dreadful 1981 one with its torturous rhyming narration . ....

Up until 1987 or so, it was maybe possible to read every vampire novel ever written, and I gave it a good shot, but then things just . . . exploded. Vampire romances, vampire murder mysteries, science fiction vampires, alternate-history vampires, steampunk vampires, children’s books about vampires, TV tie-in novels,…

Would it help if I mentioned that I couldn’t finish TWILIGHT?

The book, I mean, not the movie.

To my mind, the 1977 BBC version starring Louis Jourdan is still the most faithful adaptation of the novel . . ..

At the time, back in 1975, the idea of, er, revamping DRACULA was still reasonably new and refreshing. And, yes, Saberhagen eventually wrote a whole series of Dracula adventures, as well as the novelization of the Coppola movie. (Yes, there was a novelization of a movie titled BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA.)

Anybody else notice that one of the red herrings in this country-themed murder mystery was a boy named “Sue”?

Somebody’s a Johnny Cash fan . ...

The Dracula Tapes is my favorite of his vampire books: a clever riff of the original novel, told from Dracula’s POV for once.

Oh, those ideas all predate the Coppola movie. The reluctant vampire redeemed by love is at least as old as Barnabas Collins back in the seventies, and the idea that Dracula is searching for the reincarnation of his lost love dates back to the 1974 TV-movie version of DRACULA (scripted by Richard Matheson), which…

I remain forever grateful to Hambly’s book for getting me through an otherwise hellish, standing-room-only train ride from New York to Baltimore years ago . . . .