Dracula’s Cinematic Psychohistory

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.

Steven J. Walden is a film theorist and social historian, UK certified 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.