Tag Archives: holidays

Happy Valentine’s Day, Count Dracula!

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Hey, lovers of vampire fiction and supernatural romance, did you know that it was 95 years ago—on Valentine’s Day, of all days!—that the 1931 screen adaptation of Dracula made its theatrical debut? It’s true!

Directed by Tod Browning (Freaks, London After Midnight), with a screenplay by Garrett Fort (adapting the Bram Stoker novel and the then-popular stage play written by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston), and starring Bela Lugosi as the count, Dwight Frye as his crazy minion Renfield, Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing, David Manners as John Harker, and Helen Chandler as Mina Seward, the film proved to be a major box-office success and made Lugosi a household name.

Still, it’s not really a romance—Dracula’s interest in Mina is more along the lines of a predator stalking its prey than a love story; he’s a monster in human form. But maybe it works in a tainted love, psycho-stalker, Lifetime Movie sort of way? Whatever it is, and however you look at it, you do you, Cupid…

So, what’s the best way to celebrate this special Valloween occasion if you’re a horror fan? Well, you could read Dracula, of course, or have your own movie marathon of horror flicks starring the count, starting with the Bela Lugosi classic (or the Spanish-language version, released the same year, starring Carlos Villarias and using the same sets!) and leading all the way up to the most current screen adaptation, Dracula, written and directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), and starring Caleb Landry Jones and Zoe Bleu as the count and his love interest, Mina Murray.

Or you could purchase a book that helped to inspire Bram Stoker in creating the count’s unforgettable debut—especially when it came to the presentation of his vampirie “brides.” In fact, it’s been ranked a “Best of #BookTok” title!

Carmilla is J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century classic vampiric tale of love gone wrong. Laura is so desperate for a friend that when a young woman named Carmilla practically turns up on the doorstep of the castle owned by Laura’s father, she thinks her prayers for companionship have been answered. But as she comes to realize, Carmilla isn’t as interested in making friends as she is in spilling blood…

Regarded as the one of the earliest female vampire tales—if not the first—Carmilla was an influence on Stoker’s Dracula, and remains a popular character in fiction to this day. Our special Illustrated Classics edition contains six exclusive illustrations by the super-talented Eliseu Gouveia (Lorelei: Sects and the City, A Princess of Mars, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1).

“With a cover that looks like it belongs on the paranormal romance shelf in a bookstore and half a dozen illustrations provided by Eliseu Gouveia, this edition stands a good chance of tempting some younger readers to pick up this classic vampire tale…. I wish I’d picked this book up in seventh grade instead of slogging through Dracula.”—The Gothic Library

Carmilla is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.

Beast Wishes for the New Fear!

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Looking for something to watch as you recover from last night’s festivities? Well, here’s a horror movie that might help you get through the day—or make it worse!

Bloody New Year, if you’ve never heard of it before, is a 1987 British horror film about a group of teens who become trapped on an island where it’s New Year’s Eve every day.

If you think that sounds like there’s a time loop involved, you might be right. (I mean, it worked for Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, didn’t it?) But hey, there are zombies involved, so at least the movie poster is somewhat accurate! It’s a low-budget kind of sci-fi thriller that skirts the edge of so-bad-it’s-good territory, so if you want to watch a weirdly festive movie, you could add it to your to-do list of terror flicks.

(If you’re interested in checking it out, head on over to the Flick Vault at Youtube and watch it for free.)

Hope you have a great 2026!

Horror Street: Happy Day of the Dead 2025!

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

A couple weeks back, I hopped on the #7 subway line and headed out to Flushing, a well-known Queens neighborhood in the eastern part of the borough, to visit Flushing Town Hall. My original goal was to check out a comics-themed exhibition, Comics in the City: Sequential Art Is… (which closed October 20), but then I learned there was another exhibition running—one that might be of interest to horror fans…

MexFest 2025: Day of the Dead/Rituals of Resistance is an art exhibition that, according to FTH, celebrates “Mexican culture in NYC—present visual works for a multidisciplinary exhibition honoring Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This year’s MexFest theme, Rituales de Resilience (Rituals of Resilience), centers around memory, cultural ritual, and ancestral connection.”

There were, of course, other pieces than what you see here—some poetic, some spooky, some subtly political, and all worth giving a look to.

MexFest 2025—which is free to attend—ends November 30, so visit the Flushing Town Hall website for more information.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, a Beetlejuice sighting, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and the Demon Door!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

Happy Halloween 2025!

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It’s Halloween! And celebrations can be found everywhere, including in Pan’s home neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens, where I took this spookily decorated window in a local thrift shop. Gee, some of those items might look pretty good in the StarWarp Concepts home office…

It’s also this year’s celebration of Frankenstein Friday, which is observed on the last Friday in October—and fortuitously enough, that just happens to be today! As to the origins of this unusual holiday, according to the calendar site Checkiday:

“Frankenstein Friday was created by Ryan MacCloskey of Westfield, New Jersey, in 1997, to celebrate the birth of the Frankenstein monster, and its creator, Mary Shelley. He created it on a Friday because of the alliteration the name makes, and because it’s easier to be festive on a Friday.”

Works for me! After all, with writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein having had a limited theatrical run a couple of weeks ago (before it heads to Netflix on November 7), who’s to say it’s not a great time to celebrate Mary Shelley’s legendary novel—especially on Halloween! (I got to see the movie during its recent limited theatrical run—definitely watch it when it debuts on Netflix, it’s a fantastic adaptation!)

So while you’re devouring all those sweet treats tonight, spend some time with Frankenstein’s Monster—he’s certainly got enough movies and cartoon appearances to keep you occupied beyond the midnight hour!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

NYC’s Trick or Streets Returns: A Safe Way to Celebrate Halloween

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If you live in a big city, you know how dangerous trick-or-treating can sometimes be, with dodging speeding cars and trucks while you’re trying to make the rounds of your favorite candy-giving haunts—even in the daytime!

In 2022, New York City took steps to try and make trick-or-treating a much safer event, by instituting “Trick or Streets,” an expansion of its “Open Streets” initiative that closes certain streets to vehicular traffic so that NYC residents can walk and bike on them without fear of injury. (It’s a popular program that started in May 2021 as a result of the pandemic lockdown, so that people could finally get out of their homes and apartments to enjoy fresh air.)

Continuing the tradition, tomorrow kicks off Year 4’s Trick or Streets 2025: a two-week festival during which a number of streets will be closed off in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, allowing you and yours to hit the pavement and celebrate the Spooky Season with “live music, fun activities, interactive performances, and more.” (Keep an eye on local weather forecasts, though, so you can dress accordingly.)

For more information on the city’s Halloween plans and a list of family-friendly events being held, head over to the Trick or Streets website.

Have a fun, and safe, October!

Getting in the Halloween Mood

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Halloween is only three weeks (and a few days) away, so it’s the perfect time to get in the spooky mood—unless you’re already in it, of course! If you’re not, though, here’s some ways to spark your inner ghoul:

Horror movies! AMC Fearfest, Turner Classic Movies, the SyFy Channel, Movies! TV Network, Freeform, and Svengoolie (on MeTV) are just some of the cable stations chock full of Halloweeny programming during October, and streaming sites like HBO Max, Tubi, and Pluto are constantly adding horror movies to their lineups. There’s a lot to see before All Hallows’ Eve, so as the old saying goes, check your local listings for more information.

Then there’s Countdown to Halloween, an annual collection of blogs (mostly horror-themed) that commit to posting daily entries every day of the month, on a wide range of topics from comic books to toys, classic horror movies to music, and even wanderings through local cemeteries.

There are also the ghoulish deejays spinning tunes over at Halloween Radio and its five channels (Main, Soundtracks, Atmosphere, Oldies, and Kids), which stream year-round—perfect for when you’re looking for background music to play while you’re decorating your home or apartment, carving pumpkins, or working on your costume.

Are you a comic book fan? Then stop by your local comic shop to check out the latest spooktacular offerings this month, including Archie Comics’ Archie’s Halloween Spectacular, DC’s Zatanic Panic and Harley Quinn x Elvira #1, and Boom! Studios’ Hello Halloween.

But the true meaning of horror can be found this coming weekend on the Hallmark Channel, which is set to debut Haul Out the Halloween, an actual Halloween-themed romance movie, on Saturday night! First it was Hallmark’s annual “Countdown to Christmas” marathons during October, where it’s round-the-clock holly-and-ivy-draped programming in an attempt to distract everyone from the ghoulies and ghosties we enjoy, and now they’re horning in on All Hallows’ Eve itself—does their evil know no bounds?!

(Actually, it’s pretty well known that horror and Hallmark have a weird relationship. For all the counter-Halloween programming they do, Hallmark does have a following for their Christmas movies among horror fans, and then there’s the fact that not only have a number of horror writers and directors contributed to the yuletide filmfests (Fred Olen Ray, David DeCoteau, Michael Varrati), but even horror icons like Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead), Natasha Henstridge (Species), and Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy) have starred in them!)

Whatever it is you do to get ready for Halloween, have a fun time doing it!

(Collier’s cover image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Spooky Season Is Here!

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Fall has officially arrived, and with it comes…well, yes, the annual onslaught of pumpkin-spice whatevers that flood grocery stores and coffee houses, and sure, Christmas decorations have already taken over the majority of shelves at retail stores, but October 1st is still the start of the holiday season celebrated by horror fans and monster kids around the world: Halloween!

So, carve those pumpkins, hoist that 20-foot-tall skeleton decoration high, create a marathon of your favorite horror movies, and ignore the Hallmark Christmas programming! There’s plenty of creepy, eerie fun to be had this month—so get out there and enjoy it!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

Happy World Dracula Day 2025!

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While it’s true that today is Memorial Day in the United States—an annual remembrance of the country’s fallen military members, held on the last Monday in May—it also happens to be World Dracula Day, which was launched in 2012 by the Whitby Dracula Society 1897 (based in Whitby Abbey, England), to mark the day in 1897 when Bram Stoker’s seminal novel was first released by publisher Archibald Constable & Co.

So, what’s the best way to celebrate the occasion if you’re a horror fan? Well, you could read Dracula, of course, or have your own movie marathon of horror flicks starring the count—there are certainly enough of those to watch, from the original Bela Lugosi classic to Christopher Lee’s Hammer films, and from Frank Langella (Dracula) to Gary Oldman (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) to Luke Evans (Dracula Untold). Not to mention movies in a more comedic…vein (c’mon, I had to say it!): George Hamilton in Love at First Bite; Leslie Nielsen in Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Nicholas Cage in Renfield; and even Richard Roxburgh’s scenery-chewing performance in Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing.

Or you could purchase a book that helped to inspire Stoker in creating the count’s unforgettable debut—especially when it came to the presentation of his vampirie “brides.” In fact, it’s recently been ranked a “Best of #BookTok” title!

Carmilla is J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century classic vampiric tale of love gone wrong. Laura is so desperate for a friend that when a young woman named Carmilla practically turns up on the doorstep of the castle owned by Laura’s father, she thinks her prayers for companionship have been answered. But as she comes to realize, Carmilla isn’t as interested in making friends as she is in spilling blood…

Regarded as the one of the earliest female vampire tales—if not the first—Carmilla was an influence on Stoker’s Dracula, and remains a popular character in fiction to this day. Our special edition contains six exclusive illustrations by the super-talented Eliseu Gouveia (Lorelei: Sects and the City, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1).

“With a cover that looks like it belongs on the paranormal romance shelf in a bookstore and half a dozen illustrations provided by Eliseu Gouveia, this edition stands a good chance of tempting some younger readers to pick up this classic vampire tale…. I wish I’d picked this book up in seventh grade instead of slogging through Dracula.”—The Gothic Library

Carmilla is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.

Happy National Tell a Fairy Tale Day 2025!

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No one seems to know where it came from, or whose idea it was, but today is National Tell a Fairy Tale Day, a time “to celebrate those beloved stories that we all loved as children, those fictional stories that told about characters such as fairies, talking animals, princesses, elves, witches, trolls, and giants,” according to the site Giftypedia.

Well if that’s the case, then perhaps you might be interested in one of StarWarp Concepts’ snazziest-looking fantasy titles:

Snow White is the classic story by the Brothers Grimm, and one of the titles in our Illustrated Classics line. Featuring full-color illustrations first published in 1883 (and they really are beautiful drawings), this digital-exclusive title is available for immediate download for the wickedly low price of just 99¢!

Snow White is a digital exclusive that’s available right now for download, so visit its product page at DriveThru Fiction for ordering information and sample pages.