Welcome to Dark Discussions podcast. Your place for the discussion of horror film, fiction, and all that's fantastic.As the modern vampire haunts cinemas, video games, and graphic novels, the best selling author Charlaine Harris creates within the written page a mind reading woman named Sookie Stackhouse who lives in an alternate yet present day world where vampires, werewolves and witches roam through a land unhidden and unafraid of humans and their superstition. True Blood, HBO’s riveting television series, created by producer Alan Ball takes Charlaine Harris’s stories to the small screen. With its elements of extreme exploitation and violence but having the traits of soap opera and romance, the series has reinvented vampires and the classic monsters once more. Paying homage to 1970’s blood and boobs drive-in fair and the violent yet romantic novels of Anne Rice, True Blood has been so successful that the production of a fifth season has begun. Dark Discussions discusses the success of the show and how it has taken television by storm. But what about less familiar vampire films? Your hosts, Mike and Philip, cite some films and programs that any vampire fan should know about. Mike mentions the Nicholas Cage film Vampire Kiss, the short lived television show Kindred the Embrace, Mario Bava’s classic film Black Sunday, and the Hammer Film Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter. Philip speaks enthusiastically about the movies Vampyres, Daughters of Darkness, and The Blood Spattered Bride, three of the most influential drive in horror vampire films of all time. Also discussed are the two Ingrid Pitt Hammer Films, Countess Dracula and the Vampire Lovers, possibly two of the best takes on the vampire. But what of other media? Two of the better vampire novels Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark and The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon are discussed. Anime has been a staple of the vampire. Such shows as Dance of the Vampire Bund, Blood+, Vampire Hunter D, and Trinity Blood have large audiences. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel brought producer Joss Whedon to stardom. The CW's The Vampire Diaries has been a huge hit. The Vertigo/DC Comics graphic novel Preacher was highly influential and a throwback to the old horror comics of bygone years. Some new vampire films have become available such as the Japanese film Blood starring Aya Sugimoto and the German film We Are the Night. And two upcoming additions to the vampire film are soon to hit the big screen, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s Dark Shadows and Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D. Dark Discussions brings to light all these topics and more. Take out your rosary beads and pray that you can finish listening before the night falls. As always we welcome your comments: [email protected] (written email or attached mp3 files)WWW.DARKDISCUSSIONS.COM