King, vampires and porn

Wikipedia

Two items caught my attention in Everlost's latest post. Firstly, 'Stephen King is writing a sequel to The Shining, and its going to have vampires in it!' Say what?

Stephen King's original 1977 novel was about a bloke who slowly loses his marbles (with some supernatural provocation) in an isolated hotel. Here's there with his family. The kid's psychic. You know the story. 'Redrum'. The film version—notably directed by Stanley Kubrick—was released in 1980.

My reaction—apart from 'Vampires? In The shining? What the hell?'—was frustration. After all, King's already written a bloody vampire novel. It was meant to get its own sequel, too. Shouldn't he have concentrated on writing that, rather than shoehorning vampires into The shining?

Well, all's not as it seems. I'm sure that many of you, like me, would've thought the vampires in question were the bloodsucking corpse variety. Nope. Turns out they're a different breed: 'Danny now uses his psychic powers to literally ease the minds of terminally-ill patients in hospice care. Things get twisted when “psychic vampires” show  - and Psychic vs. Vampire battle ensues?'

Oh, well, that's different. I like the idea of psychics battling psychic vampires and in light of the telepathic element in King's ghost story, it's probably not too much of a stretch to throw psychic vampires into the mix. However, I can't help but be reminded of Dan Simmons' Carrion comfort (1989), which also deals with 'mind vampires'.

The second item that caught my attention, was the Dracula porno. No, not for those reasons and not because it's novel, either. After all there's many 'dirty' Dracula flicks out there, including William Edwards' Dracula (the dirty old man) (1969), Phillip Marshak's Dracula sucks (1979) and Mario Salieri's Dracula (1994). No, what got me about this one, was the title: This ain't Dracula XXX. 

Hustler's got a range of titles 'parodying' popular franchises, including This ain't Avatar, This ain't Curb your enthusiasm and This ain't I dream of Jennie.¹ Clearly, they're trying to cover their asses (so to speak) by making it blatantly obvious that their flicks are not the originals and merely parodies, which ok under US law. A similar 'deal' was made about the Twilight—oops, not Twilight porno.

But why's Dracula (1897) in with that lot? Unlike the other franchises 'parodied', the novel's not copyrighted. That's long since expired. And, funnily enough, it's always been public domain in the US due to a technicality: 'Stoker had never complied with the requirement that two copies of the work be deposited with the American copyright office.'²

However, going by the video's trailer (barely safe for work), it looks like it owes a few favours to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) more than the novel:

That'd explain the Ain't disclaimer. Either way, it's a shame Hustler's 'parody' is burdened with such a clinical title. Even Dracula sucks shows more wit.

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^{1. See: Hustler's parodies. Note, link not safe for work, under-18s, or church groups. Features adult content.↩}

^{2. DJ Skal, Hollywood gothic: the tangled web of Dracula from novel to stage to screen, W.W. Norton & company, New York, 1990, p. 180.↩}