Dracula: The Undead

I love vampire movies and anything related to vampires. So you can trust me when I say, you have got to read Dracula: The Undead. For those of you that are real horror aficionados it really shakes things up. While this book was published in October, 2009, it is just now starting to find popularity. I have tell you it has become my favorite vamp novel.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula are the two novels that gave birth to modern horror as we know it today. This new novel is a sequel to the original Dracula and it is set about 25 years after the demise of Dracula. Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt wrote Dracula: The Undead with the distinction of Dacre Stoker being the great-great-grand nephew of Bram Stoker.

The story here is more about the process of writing this book. The original Dracula was written in 1897 and quickly became fairly popular but not quite as much Bram Stoker had hoped. When Stoker passed away in 1912 his wife Evelyn had a very difficult time getting a handle on the copyrights to Dracula.

Unfortunately his widow did not act in a timely manner and Dracula fell to public domain status and she quickly attempted to gain legal control over Dracula. Regardless of the last of sales for his book, the entertainment value was seen and the play was in the works for Bram's Dracula. Nosferatu was made in Germany and after its release Evelyn Stoker sought to protect her rights by suing the German production company.

A court battle raged and ultimately Evelyn Stoker won her rights but at that point the production company of Nosferatu was bankrupt and all she was able to recover were court costs. The final fight came when the American film Dracula was made with Bela Logosi. Evelyn Stoker tried to move fast enough to obtain her rights to the films rights but she was too late to be effective. In the U.S. Dracula fell to Public Domain and she never saw a dime from the film.

Years later the Stoker Family was still stinging from the loss of these copyrights and they were extremely reticent to involve themselves with a well-meaning Ian Holt. After campaigning to convince the Stoker family of his honorable intentions, Ian Holt finally won over Dacre Stoker (say it like acre) and the result was the sequel to the original, titled Dracula: The Undead. Ian Holt has entered into an agreement with Dacre Stoker that assures the Stoker family the rights to the sequal, both book and film

The sequel is a marriage of fact, fiction and history. It is best to read the sequel after reading the original novel.It gives you a better understanding of the sequel. Hopefully this starts a trend where folks pick up the original novel and read it, however it may very well take a person a couple readings of the sequel to sort out the plot twists.

While the book is a highly entertaining read, the facts surrounding the original novel are a lesson in copyright law. Anyone that has taken film or broadcast courses knows what a hot issue copyright law is, and for good reason. Everyone that writes should protect their ideas and know copyright laws.