Vampires and werewolves

[pecksniff]

And Shelley never explained how Frankenstein brought his creature to life -- the lightning was another Hollywood thing. In one early silent short I saw, Frankenstein made the creature by putting substances in a vat, like an alchemist.

 

[mayfly13]

Many say that the legend was in fact born with Elizabeth Báthory.

However, many historians claim she was innocent, that the story had been conjured up by King Matthias the 2nd, to expunge the Crown's debt to her family and seize her properties.
On the other hand her grave was repeatedly desecrated at the time by angry locals, I think it was true.

the original vampires also preyed mainly on kin, not virgins in negligees and they smelled like corpses. "nosferatu" is more true to the legend than "dracula". a vampire's breath was supposed to cause plague. and it wasn't just were-wolves...there were weretigers, the fox women of japan-most cultures had a being who turned into an animal. but who wouldn't want to be bitten by nastasia kinski?

Japan has similar folk stories?

 

[pecksniff]

Many say that the legend was in fact born with Elizabeth Báthory.

The Blood Queen

 

[KeithD]

The notion of a silver weapon being required to kill a werewolf appears to be a Hollywood invention -- i/QUOTE]

Everything about vampires and werewolves is an invention. And nobody owns a "correct" explanation of what they are and what they can/cannot do.

 

[pecksniff]

As for the Creature from the Black Lagoon -- that's all Hollywood anyway, with no fokloric antecedents (the gill-man being something fundamentally different from the mermaid), so whatever is in the movies is canon.

OTOH, it is bad SF -- because there is no conceivable evolutionary process that would produce an aquatic, piscine bipedal humanoid.

 

[butters]

As for the Creature from the Black Lagoon -- that's all Hollywood anyway, with no fokloric antecedents (the gill-man being something fundamentally different from the mermaid), so whatever is in the movies is canon.

OTOH, it is bad SF -- because there is no conceivable evolutionary process that would produce an aquatic, piscine bipedal humanoid.

try telling that to aquaman

 

[pecksniff]

try telling that to aquaman

Aquaman is a lamo, Namor the Submariner is kewl.

I've never been able to figure out why.

 

[rae121452]

And Shelley never explained how Frankenstein brought his creature to life -- the lightning was another Hollywood thing. In one early silent short I saw, Frankenstein made the creature by putting substances in a vat, like an alchemist.

that's the edison short, the first filmed version. it was lost for years and then finally re-discovered. i love the look of his monster (charles ogle, apparently).

doesn't my av of edison's frankenstein look like every drunken demented drag queen you ever met?

 

[rae121452]

elizabeth bathory was accused of draining the blood from young girl's bodies so that she could bathe in it, not drink it, and she was never 'undead'. in fact, she died a miserable death walled up in a dark room. she's closer to gilles de rais than dracula.

 

[pecksniff]

elizabeth bathory was accused of draining the blood from young girl's bodies so that she could bathe in it, not drink it, and she was never 'undead'. in fact, she died a miserable death walled up in a dark room. she's closer to gilles de rais than dracula.

Gilles de Rais -- a dandy who dyed his beard blue -- apparently was the basis of the Bluebeard legend, though IRL he killed (and sodomized) boys, not wives. Sometimes legend bowdlerizes certain things.

 

[rae121452]

yep. also a close confederate of joan of arc, another strike against him at the time.

 

[pecksniff]

yep. also a close confederate of joan of arc, another strike against him at the time.

He was also (like Joan) charged with witchcraft, and in his case it appears to have been a fair charge. You can read his story in Spirits, Stars and Spells: The Profits and Perils of Magic, by L. Sprague de Camp.

 

[rae121452]

from what i've read he was more of a sexual pervert than a witch. his murders were for sexual gratification, like an ancestor of john wayne gacy.

 

[pecksniff]

from what i've read he was more of a sexual pervert than a witch. his murders were for sexual gratification, like an ancestor of john wayne gacy.

But he hired at least one wizard, who promised to help him find gold if he would sacrifice boys to the Devil. Gilles scrupulously kept his part of the bargain, but when he dug at the spot indicated, the deceitful fiend had changed the gold to tinsel.

In those days there was not much a lord couldn't do to his peasants -- he had to go pretty far to risk the law's punishment. But Gilles crossed that line.

 

[pecksniff]

BTW, in the legends (and in Dracula), what repels vampires is garlic flowers, not bulbs.

 

[pecksniff]

And, of course, Hollywood zombies have very little in common with those of Haitian folklore.