Dracula's Cinematic Psychohistory

by Steven J. Walden

Overview

Dracula is a recognized, resilient and recurrent cultural property. He is idolized, loved, vilified and hated as a multifaceted, perennial narrative focus that involves the interplay between film-as-art and its psychosocial milieu. Dracula's movies can thus be read as a cultural barometer, reflecting the culture we create and re-create in his many cinematic guises: an object of attraction and terror, antihero and villain, lover and monster, even victim and stooge. This book follows Dracula's cinematic journey, exploring how he continues to tap into the ever-changing collective psyche of his viewers. Many of those viewers may have entertained the thought that the fearful bite of the vampire might just be a worthwhile price to pay for the empowerment of being one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476693064
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	09/11/2025
Pages:	275
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Steven J. Walden is a film theorist and social historian, UK CertFAIII forensic anthropologist, Royal Society of Biology chartered biologist, and registered intellectual disabilities nurse. He is a PhD advisor with wide ranging research interests, holds PhDs in forensic anthropology and film history, and currently teaches intellectual disabilities nursing at the University of South Wales, Pontypridd, where he is a member of several research groups and works with the USW Cold Case Unit on found human remains casework.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface
Section I—Introducing Dracula’s Cinematic Psychohistory
1. Introduction
Resurrections and Repercussions
Why This Book?
2. Historicism and Psychohistoricism
Reading Movies from the Psychohistoricist Perspective
3. Dracula and Vampire Theory
Section II—Universal Dracula: The 1930s and 1940s
4. The Universal Dracula Cycle
5. Psychoanalytic Symbolism in Browning’s and Melford’s 1931 Dracula Movies
The Penetrating Gaze, Abusive Scopophilia, Sublimation and Retribution
Dracula and Other Gangsters from the Id
6. The Psychological Drama of Son of Dracula
Bad Father, Worse Daughter
Freud’s Psychopathic Femme Fatale on the Stage
7. The Monster Rallies: Locating Dualism in Kenton’s Universal Horror Films
Personas, Shadows and Uncanny Doubles
Monstrous Queer Pathology and Persecution during World War II
8. The Universal Dracula Movies: The Psychohistoricism of the Cycle
Section III—Dracula Reinvented: The Long 1960s
 9. The Hammer Dracula Cycle: 1958–1972
Hutchings, Psychohistoricism and Hammer’s Dracula
Coalescing Psychoanalytical Symbolism in Hammer’s Dracula Cycle
10. Dracula at the End of the Long 1960s
Psychosexual Symbolism in Franco’s Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula (1970)
Outlining Narcissistic Rage in Dan Curtis’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1973)
Threads of Commonality
11. A Trajectory of Narcissism: Hammer’s Dracula and the Cult of the Vampire Libertine
Franco’s Ageless Dracula: Preserving the Self by Controlling Others
Narcissistic Leaders’ Rage in Three Draculas of the Long 1960s
Benign Narcissism and a Counterculture Fear of Death
Malign Narcissism and the Fear of the Cult Leader
12. Fear of Death and Fear of Dracula in the Long 1960s Cycle of Movies
Section IV—The Long 1980s: Obsolescence, Reconstruction and Sympathy for the Vampire
13. The Long 1980s Dracula Movie Cycle
14. The Return of Repressive Symbolism in John Badham’s Dracula (1979)
The Superphallic Patriarch versus the Polyphallic Feminist
The Ego State of Vampirized Feminism at the Beginning of the Long 1980s
15. Symbolizing the Monstrous Feminine in The Monster Squad’s Narrative
An Oedipal Voyage Around Three Fathers
Therapy Culture for Dracula’s Diminished Self? No Fear for Generation X
16. Blood Sacrifice in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Dracula’s Freudian Melancholy Resolved
Dracula, Degenerative Disease and the Fin de Siècle
17. Loss of Fear: The Long 1980s Dracula Movies as a Cycle of Change
Section V—The Postmillennial Cycle: Dracula Becomes the Hero
18. Traitors, Dictators and Superheroes
19. Dracula 2000: The Dead Father’s Return and the Birth of a Superhero
A Hollow Oedipal Victory over Millenarianism
Dracula’s Neofascist Millenarianism
20. The Return to Dyadic Repression in Sommers’ Van Helsing (2004)
A Problematic Recovery from Repression
Somatizing Guilt in Unjust Wars
21. Freudian Totemic Oedipality in Dario Argento’s Dracula (2012)
The Omnipotence of Argento’s Narcissistic Benevolent Dictator
Dracula and the Neofascist Legacy of Italian Populism
22. Superhero Identity in Gary Shore’s Dracula Untold (2014)
The Repressed Superhero Unmasked
Dracula Retold as a Mythic Tragedy of Leadership
23. The Postmillennial Dracula Cinematic Cycle: Lost Fear and the Leadership of the Other
Conclusion: Loss of Fear and Gaining Sympathy as Cycles Intersect
Filmography
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book is an important and useful review of the figure of Dracula in popular culture, applying a fascinating combination of historicism and psychoanalysis to many diverse examples of the character's portrayal. This work reflects both cultural and societal shifts in representations of Dracula over time, making space for the application of vital contemporary contexts such as queer theory and versions of the ‘Dracula’ character in forms of media beyond cinema itself.”—Diane A. Rodgers, senior lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University

From the Publisher