A biography chronicling the tumultuous personal and professional life of horror icon Bela Lugosi.

The critically-acclaimed biography chronicling the tumultuous personal and professional life of horror icon Bela Lugosi. “Poignant…. Shadmi smoothly blends characterization with chiaroscuro to perfectly spotlight Lugosi’s uncanny magnetism. On the screen—and in this fine portrait—his legacy lasts.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Starred Review) “Haunting… Shadmi’s deeply absorbing and moving biography will appeal to Dracula afficionados of all ages.”—NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS LUGOSI, the tragic life story of one of horror’s most iconic film stars, tells of a young Hungarian activist forced to flee his homeland after the failed Communist revolution in 1919. Reinventing himself in the U.S., first on stage and then in movies, he landed the unforgettable role of Count Dracula in what would become a series of classic feature films. From that point forward, Lugosi’s stardom would be assured...but with international fame came setbacks and addictions that gradually whittled his reputation from icon to has-been. LUGOSI details the actor’s fall from grace and an enduring legacy that continues to this day.

A fully updated edition of David J. Skal's Hollywood Gothic, "The ultimate book on Dracula" (Newsweek). The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. Most of us can recite without prompting the salient characteristics of the vampire: sleeping by day in its coffin, rising at dusk to feed on the blood of the living; the ability to shapeshift into a bat, wolf, or mist; a mortal vulnerability to a wooden stake through the heart or a shaft of sunlight. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David J. Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all. includes black-and-white Illustrations throughout, plus a new Introduction.

A biographical tale that follows Hollywood revolutionary Rod Serling's rise to fame in the Golden Age of Television, and his descent into his own personal Twilight Zone.

Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster are horror cinema icons, and the actors most deeply associated with the two roles also shared a unique friendship. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff starred in dozens of black-and-white horror films, and over the years managed to collaborate on and co-star in eight movies. Through dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, this greatly expanded new edition examines the Golden Age of Hollywood, the era in which both stars worked, recreates the shooting of Lugosi and Karloff's mutual films, examines their odd and moving personal relationship and analyzes their ongoing legacies. Features include a fully detailed filmography of the eight Karloff and Lugosi films, full summaries of both men's careers and more than 250 photographs, some in color.

The cobwebs of time and space are finally cleared. Drawing on years of research across four countries, excavating and analyzing thousands of yellowed documents in archives as well as every digitized source, Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger shine light from their candelabrum onto a long-forgotten past, onto the creation of a legend. Becoming Dracula is a two-volume biography covering Bela Lugosi's life from his birth to 1930, when he first played the famous vampire onscreen. "No one has chronicled the life and career of Bela Lugosi with more precision than Gary Rhodes. With Becoming Dracula: The Early Years of Bela Lugosi, Volume One, Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger detail Lugosi's heretofore obscure early life in Austria-Hungary with a level of focused research akin to literary paleontology. As fascinating as the future Count Dracula's journey through Europe to America is, Lugosi-philes everywhere will rejoice that there will be a Volume Two continuation!" - Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film (2017) "The path to becoming a vampire is simplicity itself: one need only fall victim to the notorious Count Dracula. The path that led to becoming Count Dracula, though, was lengthy, arduous, and fraught with disappointment, especially for the noble bloodsucker's initial cinematic portrayer, Bela Lugosi. Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have returned to focus their impeccable research and unimpeachable historicity on that path. 'Tis a path that begs to be followed." - John Soister, author of Conrad Veidt on Screen (2009) and Many Selves: The Horror and Fantasy Films of Paul Wegener (2017)

String garlic by the window and hang a cross around your neck! The most powerful vampire of all time returns in our Stepping Stone Classic adaption of the original tale by Bran Stoker. Follow Johnathan Harker, Mina Harker, and Dr. Abraham van Helsing as they discover the true nature of evil. Their battle to destroy Count Dracula takes them from the crags of his castle to the streets of London... and back again.

Dracula -both the legendary blood-thirsty vampire and his historic inspiration, Vlad The Impaler- has terrified and fascinated the world via a myriad of films and books ever since Bram Stoker's original 1809 novel. Tales of the vampiric Prince of Darkness have been adapted to every format including a number of graphic novels. But just as Stoker's 1809 novel ever holds its historic place, so too does the original Dracula graphic novel. The premier, 1966 graphic adaptation of Stoker's classic was edited and packaged as a paperback by legendary Creepy magazine founding editor, Russ "Unca' Creepy" Jones. Creepy launched as a full-sized, uncensored black and white horror comics magazine in 1964. It ran, most-famously adorned with covers by Frank Frazetta, for near 300 issues over two decades, spawning a tsunami of imitators and competing horror magazine lines including from Marvel. From 2008-2019 Dark Horse released a complete library of Creepy Archives hardcovers which often made the New York Times bestseller list.After leaving Creepy magazine, for the landmark Dracula graphic novel, Jones enlisted Supergirl co-creator/writer Otto Binder and Star Trek, Twin Earths and Creepy artist Alden McWilliams to adapt Stoker's novel. Legendary Dracula actor, Christopher Lee even provides an Introduction!For Halloween 2021, Vanguard has enlarged, revised, and expanded, this historic but long-out-of print classic in a luxurious hardcover edition with a new historic essay by How To Draw Chiller Monsters author, J. David Spurlock, examples of historically related art by Neal Adams, Gene Colan and a new cover by the most celebrated Creepy artist of all, and a new cover by the most celebrated Creepy artist, Frank Frazetta. The package makes a surprisingly tastefully terrifying addition to every library and horror fan's bookshelf.

Behold the history of a film so scandalous, so outrageous, so explosive it disappeared from print for over a quarter century! A film so dangerous, half its cast and crew met their demise bringing eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes’ final cinematic vision to life! Starring All-American legend John Wayne in full Fu Manchu make-up as Mongol madman Genghis Khan! Featuring sultry seductress Susan Hayward as his lover! This is the true story of The Conqueror (1956), the worst movie ever made. Filmed during the dark underbelly of the 1950s—the Cold War—when nuclear testing in desolate southwestern landscapes was a must for survival, the very same landscapes were where exotic stories set in faraway lands could be made. Just 153 miles from the St. George, Utah, set, nuclear bombs were detonated regularly at Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat in Nevada, providing a bizarre and possibly deadly background to an already surreal moment in cinema history. This book tells the full story of the making of The Conqueror, its ignominious aftermath, and the radiation induced cancer that may have killed John Wayne and many others.

Revised and updated since its first publication in 1990, this acclaimed critical survey covers the classic chillers produced by Universal Studios during the golden age of hollywood horror, 1931 through 1946. Trekking boldly through haunts and horrors from The Frankenstein Monster, The Wolf Man, Count Dracula, and The Invisible Man, to The Mummy, Paula the Ape Woman, The Creeper, and The Inner Sanctum, the authors offer a definitive study of the 86 films produced during this era and present a general overview of the period. Coverage of the films includes complete cast lists, credits, storyline, behind-the-scenes information, production history, critical analysis, and commentary from the cast and crew (much of it drawn from interviews by Tom Weaver, whom USA Today calls "the king of the monster hunters"). Unique to this edition are a new selection of photographs and poster reproductions and an appendix listing additional films of interest.