'Arnold Paul' turns up in this recent British documentary, Vampires: Why They Bite, which was broadcast in February on BBC Three, and hosted by historian Lisa Hilton. Unfortunately, it is not accurate, neither concerning 'Arnold Paul' nor a few other subjects, and as usual the focus tends to be on the sexual aspects. Still, I think this is the only documentary in English that actually traces the vampire back to Serbia.
There are a couple of reviews of it online, like the one from Times Higher Education, which not uncorrectly describes it as 'music video masquerading as documentary'.
2 comments:
First of all, welcome back! Thank goodness for poorly maintained RSS feeds, or I might have thought you'd gone away.
I'm about halfway through the doc on YouTube right now, and although I know 10% what you do about the subject, I've already lost count of all the errors of omission and errors of commission. And that's just on the literary side. (Where is Oddyseus and the hungry shades? Polidori? Varney?) And Sheridan LeFanu did more for the sexualization of vampires than Stoker, IMO. I think the most egregious literary error was the portrayal of Lucy Westenra as a sexually liberated woman, instead of the truly horrifying Bloofer Lady, who seduced and devoured small children.
I am curious about the many dramatic scenes from what appears to be a recent Stoker adaptation. Is this a thinly disguised promotion for some new BBC adaptation?
I have been (and still am) caught up in a lot of other business and for that reason have neglected the blog for quite a while.
I think there are a number of scenes from the BBC production of Dracula with Louis Jourdan from 1977 in the documentary, and as you have probably found out, it contains some promotion for the Being Human TV series. This series is, I think, quite popular, but I have myself only seen about ten minutes of an episode which didn't make me come back for more.
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