Great-Grandnephew of Dracula

In addition to my traditional October dips into Lovecraft, Bradbury, and the Hammer and Universal horror movie classics, I have consumed a handful of newer horror specimens. First up is Dracula: The Un-Dead, a quasi-official sequel to the granddaddy of vampire tales, Bran Stoker's Dracula. It's co-written by Stoker's great-grandnephew, Dacre (pictured; not even a direct grandson: bad sign #1), who has no previous writing experience (bad sign #2), and Ian Holt, who claims to be a "screenwriter," (bad sign #3) though his only credit is a direct-to-video horror movie called Dr. Chopper (bad sign #4) with Costas Mandylor and a star-free supporting cast (bad sign #5).

There is some promise as we begin by picking up the stories of the main characters from the first book (Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dr. Seward, Van Helsing) several years later, 1912 to be exact, but by page 150, Dracula is still nowhere to be found (bad sign #6), and the main villain is Elizabeth Bathory, a historical figure who supposedly murdered hundreds of virgin girls and bathed in their blood to stay young. There have been books and movies with her as the lead, but when you're expecting THE Count Dracula, substitutions, even a strong, sexy, bloody lesbian, just won't do. The writing is incredibly pedestrian; Holt and Stoker don't even try to replicate Stoker's style (and let me just say I think the original book is on the boring side, but it does have atmosphere to burn). Instead they substitute Multiplex Movie Rollercoaster style instead, clearly aiming for a big screen adaptation--apparently Holt based his part of the book on an unfinished screenplay.

I read the book all the way through and it doesn't get better. They manage to bring in Jack the Ripper in a moderately clever way, beginning with a cop who is sure that Van Helsing is the Ripper because of how he chopped up the vampire Lucy, and a plotline about Mina Harker's past relationship with Dracula is interesting, but everything else is pretty sad sack or worse: 1) the writing remains terrible; 2) Dracula does indeed crop up under a different name, but he not only isn't the star of the book, he's turned into a good guy; in other words, just another boring brooding conflicted post-Anne Rice vampire; 3) almost everyone of interest dies, and not in interesting ways; 4) the last sentences of the book are a laugh-out-loud punch line, but I don't the authors intended them to be funny.

Don't bother. Wait for the inevitable over-budgeted, over-CGI'd piece of crap movie in a couple of years from now, more like the horrible Van Helsing movie with Hugh Jackman than Lugosi or Langella.