It's Halloween season again, which means I've been revisiting some of my favorite vampire films. I kicked things off the way I usually do, with a viewing of F. W. Murnau's silent 1922 nightmare, Nosferatu. 

A plagiarized version of Stoker's Dracula, it's amazing just how much of the novel Murnau's film manages to get right. The sense of creeping menace. The oppressive atmosphere. The looming evil of the Count himself.

For my money, no other adaptation has come close.

​If you've never seen it, I highly recommend treating yourself. The 100th anniversary of the premiere was just a few months ago, so there's never been a better time.

Just do yourself a favor, and see one of the restored versions. 

Or at least watch this cheap cash-in version, featuring a random introduction by David Carradine, and a soundtrack consisting entirely of Type O Negative songs.

No matter which version you watch, there's just something pure and refreshing about the portrayal of a Count that's an unrepentant monster. Maybe it's because that's the first story element so many modern interpretations discard.

One of the biggest offenders, ironically, is Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 version directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder.
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Don't get me wrong. There's plenty to love about Coppola's movie. 

The practical effects are amazing. The cinematography and costumes are top notch, and the actors all turn out stellar performances. It's a lavish, big-budget adaptation that includes scenes, plot elements, and characters normally cut for brevity's sake.

My main complaint is the "reincarnated love" subplot. It's not just a nit-pick, either. Especially not in a film that works so hard to be true to the source material otherwise. 

Making Dracula a simp for Mina was a massive misunderstanding of the character, and of the Old World evil he represented.

Stoker wrote a story about an ancient and powerful monster that creeps into modern society from the dark corners of the world. It was about men of science and faith standing strong in the face of a supernatural threat.

But Coppola's version discards this timeless theme, and dares to ask: “What if Count Dracula was just heartbroken and misunderstood?”
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Make no mistake, Dracula is a novel open to all kinds of interpretation. It’s been said elsewhere that Dracula was the first techno-thriller. Van Helsing and company chase the Count with every modern tool at their disposal, including telegram, railroad, and phonograph.

There’s a strong subtext of the rational, new world versus the old, of civilization versus superstition.

But one thing the novel is not is the tale of forbidden, timeless romance.

Dracula’s attempt to turn Mina into one of his brides was a calculated act of psychological warfare, not love. 

The heroes were onto him. They'd found him out. He tried to break their will, not just by killing a woman they all loved, but by damning her as well. 

The impact of this scene is lost on modernists.
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​In the novel, Dracula forcing Mina to “drink from him” wasn't a taboo moment between star-crossed lovers. It was an unspeakable perversion of both a bride’s physical love for her husband, and of Holy Communion.

Dracula also timed it so all the men in her life—all of whom had a social and moral duty to protect her—witnessed it.

It honestly puzzles me how modern adaptations reinterpret this as an act of romance and passion. Dracula is spiritually and physically raping Mina, and he’s making her loved ones watch him do it. Then he taunts them over their powerlessness. 

It is, without exaggeration, the most horrific scene in the book.

But in order to truly grasp the horror, you'd have to believe in Damnation, fidelity, and honor.

In the modernist worldview, immortality isn’t a curse. It’s a blessing. After all, why would being denied a place in Heaven matter, if Heaven were nothing but a fairy tale for adults. 

Marriage isn’t sacred. It’s a tool of the patriarchy, and exists only to oppress women. 

And on that subject, how dare you suggest a woman needs men to protect her?

For my money, this is the scene where Dracula’s true Evil is made plain. 

One could argue everything up to that point was the behavior of an apex predator, looking for more fertile hunting grounds. But the pure malice of his attack on Mina can’t be explained in naturalistic terms.
It’s also worth noting that his malice is directed not at Mina, but at the (male) heroes. 

He wants them to see how weak and powerless they are. He wants them to know they've failed. He wants them disheartened, demoralized, and broken. So he attacks their greatest weakness: Mina.

But again, this interpretation is unacceptable to modernists. 

How DARE you suggest a man’s weak spot is a woman? After all, women are strong, and invincible, and fierce, and passionate, and self-actualized, and powerful, and confident, and beautiful, and free-spirited, and smart, and brave and--

Fact is, in order for this scene to work—for this to be the scene the real horror of the book turns on—you have to accept that Mina is an innocent and largely passive victim. Which is one reason modern interpretations do away with it. 

In modernist ideology, women cannot be either of those things. 

Dracula doesn’t "attack" her. She wants him. 

And this, in turn, reduces Dracula. 

He is not an ancient evil, stooping to depraved lows solely to attack his enemies. He’s a heartsick orbiter who’s creeping on his neighbor’s wife. 

The real villains in this new interpretation? The boring, stick-in-the-mud husband, and the other men trying to come between Mina and Dracula's forbidden relationship.

Dracula's death in book is the triumph of faith, science, and courage against an unspeakable evil. Dracula's death in the Coppola film it the tragic and final sundering of a timeless love.

Like Mina, viewers are meant to question whether or not she made the right choice.
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Doubtless, the filmmakers were trying to make Mina a "stronger" character. The changes were meant to give her a more active role in the story, and to give her more personal agency over the final outcome.

Ironically, if they wanted to see how it's done, they should have just looked at Nosferatu. In Murnau's film, Ellen—the copyright-friendly version of Mina—is the only character strong enough to stop the Count.

Murnau's film doesn't sacrifice the novel's central theme to make Mina/Ellen a stronger character. Nor does it sacrifice the Count's evil.

Of all filmmakers to tackle Dracula, F. W. Murnau got the point. 
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I've been curious about Royal Road ever since I first heard about it, so a couple months back I started lurking/reading.

For those unfamiliar, Royal Road is a site for publishing web serials. It's similar to Wattpad, but with a greater focus on the Gamelit, LitRPG, and Isekai genres.

Admittedly, I dig the serial format. I've been enjoying the "one chapter at a time" release schedule. In a world of instant gratification, the daily anticipation is kind of a novelty.

I'll share a list of some of the other serials I've been enjoying soon. But for now, I'll leave you with a link and description for my own new serial, THE ISEKAI DETECTIVE:
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The storytelling trope I hate most is that the hero needs a personal reason to get involved ("Refusal of the Call," if you wanna get all Campbellian about it).

​It's such a prevalent trope, it even works its way into genres where it isn't traditionally needed.

One of the biggest culprits? Modern detective stories and crime thrillers.

As Weird Fiction author Misha Burnett once pointed out, there's a trend in modern detective stories for saddling the protagonist with some personal loss or trauma that drives them to catch killers. Mom/Dad/Sis was murdered by the infamous Bay Street Butcher, a case that remains UNSOLVED TO THIS DAY!

But in older stories, the detectives just want to catch killers because they're killers.

That's a noble goal in isolation, and it needs no further justification for the reader to buy into it.

Sometimes, the best reason for your hero to get involved is that it's the right thing to do. But with a few notable exceptions (indies, some action/adventure series, etc.) we seem to be losing that in our fiction. Heroes motivated by nothing more than a personal code or a sense of justice aren't seen as compelling or "realistic."

To put it succinctly, we've turned into an audience that can understand Batman, but not Superman. Avenging a personal tragedy is seen as a realistic motivation. But standing for Truth, Justice, and the American Way is seen as hopelessly quaint and outdated.

At a minimum, it's a sign that something is deeply wrong with our notions of what constitutes a Good Man.

Maybe that's why I hate the trope so much. It's a glaring reflection of the nihilistic selfishness permeating modern American society.

For my part, all I can do about it is try and tip the scale a little with my own work. We write what we believe, after all. And for all my cynicism, I do believe the world changes for the better when Good Men see an injustice, and try to do something about it.

With Christmas behind us and the New Year just around the corner, it's a pretty safe assumption that most of my readers have watched Die Hard sometime in the last few weeks. 

Based loosely on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, Die Hard almost single-handedly redefined what an action movie could be. While stars like Schwarzenegger and Stallone dominated the 80's box office as invincible super commandos, Die Hard broke the mold in giving us Bruce Willis as Regular Guy John McClane. It also confined the action to a single, claustrophobic locale, creating a high-octane game of cat and mouse between McClane and the heavily armed villains.

"Unique Location + Everyman Hero + Over-the-Top Action" proved to be a winning formula. It changed the genre forever, spawned countless imitators, and created a film so memorable that it was successfully memed into a bonafide holiday tradition decades later.

It's hardly surprising people still find so much to say when discussing the film.


What I find odd is that people hardly ever talk about the novel that inspired the movie. Well, this year I decided to read it for myself. And while I enjoyed the book immensely, I can see why it rarely gets talked about.


Folks, Nothing Lasts Forever is dark. 

Tonally, it's almost the polar opposite of the movie it inspired, focusing on themes like isolation, extreme violence, and how exposure to both can dehumanize you.

Minor spoilers ahead.

Nothing Lasts Forever is the story of Joe Leland, ex-WWII aviator, retired detective, and semi-retired PI and security consultant. 

Joining his estranged daughter Stephanie at her company Christmas party, Joe is looking forward to a chance to reconnect. He's also looking forward to spending some time with his two grandchildren, who are at the party with their mother.

His plans are quickly shot down when a group of German terrorists led by Anton Gruber take over the building. Outnumbered, barefoot, and armed with nothing but a 9mm Browning Hi-Power, Joe manages to evade the terrorists and hide.

And while that set-up might be identical to the film's, Joe Leland's inner narration reveals him to be a starkly different character than John McClane.
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​In other words, Joe Leland isn't a cop trying to end the situation peacefully and bring the terrorists to justice. 

From the outset, it's clear he's an armed professional forced into a one-man war. He gives no quarter to his enemies, shooting from ambush, setting booby traps, and relying on the same kind of hit-and-run tactics the terrorists themselves use against governments.

He fights dirty because the stakes are high. He knows if he doesn't win, the LAPD's heavy-handed tactics—which he helped develop—will put the hostages at risk. It's a race to kill the terrorist before the LAPD comes in, guns blazing.

As I mentioned above, Nothing Lasts Forever uses the action to explore themes like isolation, extreme violence, and how rapidly both can change a man. After his first kill in the novel—a woman—Leland experiences shock and second thoughts. This war, he realizes, may have too high a price. By the end, he's so desensitized to the act that he'll mow down both male and female terrorists without a second thought. 
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The book takes this idea several steps further. In his broken, beaten, and bloody state, Joe resembles a primitive savage. When his own granddaughter spots him near the climax, she mistakes him for one of the terrorists he's been shooting into hamburger for 200 pages. 

It's an important scene, and one that dramatically illustrates the novel's central theme.

After playing both hunted and hunter, the only thing separating Joe from the likes of Gruber and his butchers is his single-minded goal of saving the hostages. But to an innocent bystander, that crucial difference is impossible to see.

Indeed, it's interesting to see how such a familiar story plays out, when the action is serving a radically different purpose than the one we've grown used to. 

The film has John McClane running through broken glass, crawling through the ducts like a rat, and rappelling off an exploding tower on a firehose to show us what he's willing to do to save his wife. The novel uses those same set-pieces to show us just how small the dividing line is between a man like Leland and the militant terrorists.

The other thing the novel explores—and that is almost entirely absent from the movie—is the relationship between news media and big disasters like terror attacks. Like international terrorism itself, this was new territory in 1979. "If it bleeds, it leads" might be an old saying, but by 1979 Americans were learning just how ghoulish the camera's fixation on sensational violence could be.

Leland eventually figures out how to use the live news coverage to his advantage, manipulating events on-camera so the terrorists watching see exactly what he wants them to. 

It's makes for yet another interesting contrast between Leland and the terrorists, and another illustration of how similar they really are. Once again, Leland isn't using the methods of a Law Enforcement Officer. He's using the tactics of international terrorism against the terrorists.

All in all, Nothing Lasts Forever is a memorable read, a solid entry into the action thriller genre that tackles heavier issues than the film it inspired. It's an exploration of the "Wolves vs Sheepdogs" dichotomy, written long before the phrase gained popularity. It also refuses to give the reader easy answers.

It's very good, but it's about as far from the bombastic, feel-good action of Die Hard as you can possibly get.

Recommended? 

Absolutely.

Just don't go in expecting the same experience you get from the movie. 
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Elf Hard is a fast-paced, hard-hitting novella of Christmas action. A paperback is forthcoming.   The Kindle edition is available now.

You can order it here.