Saturday 19 October 2024

Dracula's Daughter

For today's countdown to Halloween I come back again to J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle. The book that was the basis for the Dracula Game of my childhood. I was obsessed about Count Dracula before I got my hands on the gamebook, but it certainly helped me develop my fascination for classic horror and it allowed me to explore it while I was still not allowed to read the original text. I am sharing two images from it. The first one is of a beautiful maiden whom you meet in the castle when you play Jonathan Harker. She is afraid of you and you think she might be an innocent victim lost in that dreadful place...


...until she turns out to be a vampire. Well of course. And not just any vampire, as you have guessed reading this post's title. When you explain to her that you came here to slay Dracula, she answers: "You want to kill Daddy?" I could have guessed right away, but apparently Harker could not. It makes for a nice bit of dramatic ironu. Anyway, I half expexted to see this unnamed daughter of Dracula when I read the novel about a year later. But she was nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed. The source material is better in every way and the female vampires invented by Stoker are far more terrifying. be that as it may, this was my very first lady nosferatu, depicted both as lovable and fiendish, which is pretty much how they are traditionally depicted. And since I love the pictures, I thought I would share them here.

3 comments:

  1. Female vampires have always been into equal rights to bite and drink!

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  2. I'm going to have to go on a hunt for this gamebook...it looks excellent!

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