DRACULA REVISITED

Time stood still! Fright kept the eyes behind drawn shades fastened over the windows. The wheels crunched into the ruts and the horses’ hooves beating rhythmically against the ground were never lost to the other sounds of the more powerful elements. Blackness and total despair took its toll of mind-bursting horrors.

Then the wild, terrifying ride into darkness was over. There had never been a sign of the vintage vehicle slowing nor was there a change of pace from the horses. The coach simply was speeding into infinity one moment and the next it had come to a complete stop. Then there was only complete and total silence. There was not even the sound of the thunder or the heavy breathing which should have been audible form the horses after their long run. It was as if one had entered completely into another world… a foreboding void where neither sound nor light existed. This is an experience only the deaf and blind could fully comprehend… or the dead!

The silence was not to last long. It was an eternity in one’s anxious mind, but only moments in reality. The first sound was the opening of the carriage door from the outside. And the remaining sense speedily returned into their proper place with the human sphere. It was a beastly cold wind which poured through the door… bitter, mountain cold and it was not soundless. There was an eerie quality which could only have accompanied the wind when it had crossed through the tombs and markers of some ancient, musty cemetery. It was the crying of lost and damned souls. The screams for release from their everlasting pits of hell.

………

And the hour of midnight silently overcame me. The coffin lid had a strange sound as it opened… a sound like the beating of my own heart back in the black carriage. It was all together yet separated… both were there… and the fingers came out of the slight opening.

The last of the twelfth minute enveloped me as I hynpotically held my gaze on the raising coffin lid.

The legend had been dispelled as a legend. The realness of reality had to leave my mind. There was no longer any reason for being. The dead arose from his coffin. His funeral suit was as it had always been described. His lips were red. His fangs were those of the wolf. His blue eyes were mirrors…

BLOOD SPLATTERS QUICKLY The Collected Stories Edward D. Wood, Jr. Even if you think you don’t know him, you know him. Few in the Hollywood orbit have had greater influence; few have experienced more humiliating failure in their lifetime. Thanks in part to the biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp and bearing his name, Ed Wood has become an icon of Americana. More

Blood Splatters Quickly was a great surprise this year—the collected short works of Ed Wood, one of the most infamously horrendous B-movie directors of the twentieth century. We’ve all seen, or at least heard of, Plan 9 From Outer Space, but have you read “Scream Your Bloody Head Off,” “Come Inn,” “The Day the Mummy Returned,” or “The Whorehouse Horror: A Touch of Terror?” The director mainly wrote these stories for nudie mags to make ends meet, and while they lack sophistication or tact, Mr. Wood offers readers a glimpse at the inner id of American schlock.

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Another B-moviemaker has his own, incredibly unique book out this year: Ed Wood. The late cross-dressing director of “Plan 9 From Outer Space” published horror stories in the pulps, sometimes under a pseudonym. They’ve been collected in the anthology “Blood Splatters Quickly” (OR Books, $45), being issued for the holidays in a special angora edition. While the stories won’t be the most literary fiction of the year, the book is certainly the only one adorned with a tiny fluffy faux-angora pink sweater.

Which is all the sweater Angelenos will need for our Southern California Christmas.

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