Unfortunately I was unable to deliver my talk at this year’s Bram Stoker International Film Festival. Happily, however, I will be at the Fear in the Fens event in Downham Market, Norfolk, this Saturday (November 5th) where I have the honour of being the day’s keynote speaker. I was initially asked to deliver my popular talk on Vlad the Impaler, Who are You Calling a Count?, which I first gave at Bram Stoker last year. However, upon reflection and discussion, I have updated and adapted the lecture to better suit the film I will be introducing. The film in question is Hammer’s toothsomely cheesy Dracula AD 1972, with my talk now entitled The Midlife Crisis of Dracula. In it, I investigate the strange case of what happened when legend’s immortal Prince of Darkness collided with the decade that taste forgot…

For further details of the event, click here for the official site, or indeed here for my own preview of Fear in the Fens. Meanwhile, for anyone who can’t make it to East Anglia this weekend, I shall soon be delivering another of my inimitable addresses on the opposite side of the country in Aberystwyth. More details presently…