Tag: Prince of Darkness

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Biweekly News Roundup 2024-06-09

Personal / Website News

Fan2Fan Podcast Appearances

The Fan2Fan Podcast are doing a themed months for May and June: John Carpenter films! Episodes published during these months are about John Carpenter films, with a few about Pete and Bernie’s travels to locales exploring Carpenter pop culture.

Two of these podcast episodes Michele, Joshua Pruett, and myself got to be guests on The first one is on Christine.

And the second is on Prince of Darkness.

The episodes can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn website (link for Christine and link for Prince of Darkness), via the embedded players below, or through your podcast app of preference. Do check these episodes out!

John Carpenter's Christine – Fan2Fan Podcast

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness – Fan2Fan Podcast

Two New Website Sections

I’ve added two new sections to my website.

The first is a “Support Me” page. For a consolidated list on ways to support me and my writing, this is the page to check out.

Next is a page of CFPs – calls for papers, proposals, and conferences. I like to proliferate other scholars’ CFPs when I can, so here is a resource folks can use. If you have a CFP you need shared around, let me know!

Calls for Papers/Proposals

Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my paths. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.

β€œChildren of the Night” International Dracula Congress 2024

It is our great pleasure to invite you to 2024 double edition of “Children of the Night International Dracula Congress”. This year, participants are invited to join the ONLINE part of the Congress on October 25th and 26th, 2024 (Friday and Saturday) via Zoom.

A few days later, we will gather IN PERSON for further Halloween sessions in BraΘ™ov, Romania from October 31st to November 2nd, 2024. We have decided to hold two parts of the Congress separate from one another, so that BraΘ™ov participants were able to fully engage in academic discussions, get to know each other and discover the wonders of Transylvania outside the conference venue.

October 31st (Thursday) and November 1st (Friday) will be devoted to academic speeches and discussions, with a walking tour of BraΘ™ov and various evening activities. On November 2nd (Saturday), we will set on a one-day trip to Bran Castle, a nearby Dracula related pop-cultural tourist attraction.

Additionally, from October 30th to November 2nd, International Dracula Film Festival is taking place in BraΘ™ov and the Congress participants will be able to join chosen festival events.

We invite everyone who is interested in speaking at the 2024 conference to submit an abstract of 150 – max. 250 words plus a meaningful title indicating the planned content of your presentation to dracongress@gmail.com. The official language of the conference is English. The abstracts must be submitted by email and fit the conference main topics (please, have a look at the slider with 8 workshops on our website). Deadline for abstract’s submissions: August 31, 2024. Please, state if you intend to participate online or in person.

Also, remember to dust your Vampire/Dracula/Gothic costume for our annual Costume Contest (in person and online entries welcome!).

Conference fee

  • 50 euro (physical participation in Brasov)
  • 10 euro (online participation).
  • Listeners join free of charge.

The 2024 COTN International Dracula Congress is organised by:

  • Transilvania University of BraΘ™ov, Romania (Florin Nechita),
  • Maria Curie-SkΕ‚odowska University Lublin, Poland (Magdalena Grabias),
  • State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brasil (Yuri Garcia).
  • In collaboration with The Dracula Fan Club, Mexico (Enrique A. Palafox).

More details will be announced soon. https://dracongress.jimdofree.com/

Preternatural in Popular Culture
Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association 2024

The Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) invites submissions under the general theme of the Preternatural in Popular Culture.

For this year, submissions should focus on creatures and/or creations that exist above, beyond, and/or outside the natural world and the ways these entities are represented in popular culture (anime, comics, fiction, film, manga, streaming video, television, etc.) from across time and space.

The Monsters & the Monstrous Area is among NEPCA’s largest areas, and we often have blocks of sessions running across the full event. To best accommodate everyone, single presentation submissions are preferred over panel submissions.

Please direct any questions or concerns to Michael A. Torregrossa, Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair, at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com, and check out our blog Popular Preternaturaliana: Studying the Monstrous in Popular Culture for ideas and past sessions. The blog can be accessed at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.

Conference Information

The 2024 Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will host its annual conference this fall as a hybrid conference from Thursday, 3 October, through Saturday, 5 October. Presenters will be required to become members of NEPCA for the year.

Virtual sessions will take place on Thursday evening and Friday morning via Zoom, and in-person sessions will take place on Friday evening and Saturday morning at Nichols College, in Dudley, Massachusetts.

For more information about the conference and to submit a proposal, please visit our NEPCA’s dedicated Conference site at https://nepca.blog/2024-conference-page/. Be prepared to answer the following questions about your proposal:

  • Proposal Type (Single Presentation or Panel)
  • Modality (in person or virtual)
  • Subject Area
  • Working Title
  • Academic Affiliation (if any)
  • Abstract (250 words)
  • Short bio (50-200 words)
  • Accommodations
  • Preferences for when to present

The submissions site will be open until 11:59 PM (EDT) on 15 June 2024.

Toyetic Television: A Companion

From G. I. Joe workout routines and Sailor Moon wedding gowns to Bratz doll make-unders and Ferby modding, toyetic, merchandise-driven television from past decadeshas proved remarkably resilient. Toyetic television clearly holds a far greater and more enduring cultural significance than definitions such as β€œglorified half-hour commercials” (Hilton-Morrow & McMahan 2003, p. 78) might suggest. It is meaningful to individual viewers, it becomes β€œsocial lubricants facilitating communication between one child and another” (Steinberg 2012, p. 90), and it can connect generations through shared viewing and playing pleasures. The idea of the program created to sell merchandise has been reversed in cases where the production of a program is funded through the
sale of its merchandise, such as The Amazing Digital Circus. The boundary between quality and merchandise-driven television is no longer clear, with even educational programs such as Sesame Street now associated with significant merchandising. One of the aims of this volume, then, is to ask how we might define toyetic television as we move into the second quarter of the millennium. Intended for Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companions series, this volume turns a critical eye to the genre of toyetic television and its many transmedia intertexts, exploring the significance and resonance these texts hold for children, adults, and communities. It examines the
movement of toyetic texts cross-culturally, intergenerationally, and between media. It analyses texts and audiences, industry and regulators, to uncover the significance of toyetic television to the contemporary moment.

Children’s programming is the most widely internationally traded category of television, while simultaneously being subject to intensely localized regulatory systems. Sesame Street has had numerous localized versions, for example, including Nigeria’s Sesame
Square, Mexico’s Plaza SΓ©samo, and pan-Arabic collaboration Iftah Ya Simsim. When toyetic television moves transculturally, it encounters new reception contexts. Japanese animation Dragon Ball found a devoted fanbase across Latin American, leading to new merchandise such as Argentinian soccer jerseys featuring Dragon Ball characters. A particular focus of research, advocacy, and debate around toyetic television has been concern about potential negative impacts on children from the blurring of boundaries between entertainment and advertising. While it may seem quaint in the current era of toy unboxing YouTube channels, the fear that toyetic
television would cause rampant consumerism, rigid perceptions of gender roles, increased American cultural imperialism, and actual acts of violence amongst children was widespread in the 1990s. Those fears are mirrored in recent years by hope that the same toyetic franchises could reflect socially progressive ideas such as body positivity in the remake of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020), queer representation in recent seasons of Power Rangers, and greater racial diversity in last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). Toyetic Television: A Companion moves beyond these good/bad media effects binaries to consider how and what meaning is made with, through, from, and by the various networks surrounding toyetic television and its consumers.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Transnational and intercultural approaches to toyetic television
  • Gender, race, disability, and sexualities in toyetic television
  • Material cultures: Collections, cosplay, and toy modification
  • Toyetic television production and consumption in the Global South
  • The future of toyetic television in the streaming age
  • Remakes and reimaginings
  • Nostalgic engagement with toyetic television
  • Afterlives of toyetic television in fan fiction and paratextual play
  • Video games and digital paratexts
  • Theoretical approaches to transmediation, media-mix, and franchising
  • Regulation, national or cultural identity, and children’s television
  • Educational and psychology approaches to toyetic television
  • Music and sound effects in toyetic franchises
  • Toyetic media for adults and intergenerational consumption
  • Ludic approaches to television
  • Fan studies approaches to toyetic television
  • Toyesis and toyetics in unexpected places

Please send 300 word abstracts and a short biographical note (50-100 words) to Dr. Sophia Staite at staitepublications@gmail.com by August 30th 2024, with a view to having a completed essay by early 2025. Finished essays will be approximately 4000 words long (excluding bibliography), should be accessible but touch on the big ideas, and will ideally take a main example as a β€˜lens’ to look at the wider topic.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

The Neverending Streamer – Fallout Episode 1 and 2

My friend, Travis Lakata, has started watching Fallout on Netflix and doing a write up on each episode. Check out his thoughts on episode one and on episode two at his Substack.

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Biweekly News Roundup 2022-11-20

Personal / Website News

Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle CFP

The Call for Papers for the Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and Emmanuelle derivative films is now live!

The CFP can foundΒ on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! I’d be super appreciative to get the word out.

Fan2Fan Podcast Appearance

Fan2Fan Podcast is doing a series of John Carpenter-centric episodes. I had the honor, along with Joshua Pruett, to appear on an episode discussing Carpenter’s ode to King and Lovecraft, In the Mouth of Madness.

The episode can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn website or via your podcast app of preference.

Around the time this Fan2Fan episode was recorded, Michele and I did an H. P. Lovecast episode on Carpenter’s Princess of Darkness. That episode can be seen as a companion piece to the Fan2Fan episode, so check both out!

Sincere thanks to Fan2Fan for having me on!

Galactic Terrors Appearance

The New York chapter of the Horror Writers Association does a monthly vidcast called Galactic Terrors which features authors doing readings of their work followed by Q/A.

I was very honored to be asked to appear on the November episode of Galactic Terrors. This episode featured authors Kenneth Cain, Karen Heuler, and myself. It can be streamed at YouTube or the embedded player below. Check it out!

Sincere thanks to James Chambers, Carol Gyzander, and Teel James Glenn for having me on!

Citation News

A few citations have popped up in Google scholar in the last couple of weeks.

First, a journal article called “XVII New Literatures” from This Year’s Work in English studies looks to have cited or referenced Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays. The description makes mentions of Australia, so I highly suspect what is specifically referenced is Naomi Simone Borwein’s essay “Synchronic Horror and the Dreaming: A Theory of Aboriginal Australian Horror and Monstrosity.” However, since I lack institutional access, I can’t confirm this (so if you can, I’d be appreciative!).

Next, Karl Otty’s article “GTA Vice City Created a New Wave of ’80s Nostalgia” at SuperJump looks to have been re-published. This article cites my essay β€œLost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwave” that was published in Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Born of Blood Issue 2 Kickstarter Loot

My swag from the Born of Blood 2 Kickstarter arrived.

I’ll go over the comic and associated paraphernalia in greater detail in a future post. For now though, check out my write up of the issue 1 loot and comic impressions, and also my interview with the writer of Born of Blood.

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Biweekly News Roundup 2022-09-25

Personal / Website News

Welcome to the second instance of my biweekly news roundup. I am digging this schedule more than my prior weekly schedule. There is a lot of content below, so make sure you scroll through it all.

Alicia Carter and Robot #1 Review

The physical first issue of the crowdfunded pulp/sword and planet inspired comic The Astonishing Adventures of Alicia Carter and Robot arrived last week.

Check out my review of the issue here.

The New Peplum Citation News

One of my favorite things is finding new citations of the essays by the authors who appeared in the books I edited.

Dr. Hannah Mueller’s essay, “Male Nudity, Violence and the Disruption of Voyeuristic Pleasure in Starz’s Spartacus,” which appeared in The New Peplum, has been cited in Dr. Amanda Potter’s essay, “From Female Stereotypes to Women with Agency: Elite Women and Slave Women in Howard Fast’s 1951 Novel, Spartacus (1960), and Starz Spartacus (2010–13)” in Gender, Power, and Identity in the Films of Stanley Kubrick, edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Dijana MetliΔ‡, and Jeremi Szaniawski.

Super congrats!

The Kubrick collection has been published by Routledge and the product page can be found here.

H. P. Lovecast Podcast Updates

New episode of H. P. Lovecast is online!

Thumbnail by Michele Brittany.

In this episode we talk about the second film in John Carpenter’s informal apocalypse trilogy, Prince of Darkness. This episode can be streamed at our Buzzsprout page, in the embedded player below, or via your podcast app of preference.

Ep 54 – John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

On the 30th this month our September Transmissions episode will publish. This episode will have Brenda S. Tolian and Ian Welke.

Looking to the future, for October we will be covering the movie Mimic 2 (we covered the first Mimic film almost a year ago – here is the link). We are also solidifying our Transmissions guests as well.

Fan2Fan Podcast Appearance

The folks at Fan2Fan Podcast are collecting top five Halloween season films from their guests and I was honored to contribute mine.

The episode I appear on with my top five was published last Wednesday and can be heard at this Fan2Fan Libsyn page. Present in this episode was also Joshua Pruett. His top five movies can be heard on this Fan2Fan episode. Keep an eye out for Michele’s list!

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Footage Fiends Zine

Evan Jordan of the Void Video Podcast and Madeleine of the Unnamed Footage Festival are launching a brand new zine called Footage Fiends that is devoted to all aspects of the found footage genre of films. Tweet embedded below:

This, of course, inspired me, so now I am working on an essay about the 1950s Italian cosmic horror film, Caltiki: The Immortal Monster (one of the first films to have a found footage scene). If you’re interested in submitting, check out the Tweet thread above for more information.

The Warrior and the Sorceress Re-Release

Shout Factory, under their Scream Factory label, is did a re-release of the Roger Corman 1980s sword and sorcery (sword and planet since it takes place on another planet?) film, The Warrior and the Sorceress.

My copy of The Warrior and the Sorceress with the poster.

I have not seen this film before, even though it is included in the four movie DVD release Shout Factory did a few years ago that contained Deathstalker, Deathstalker 2, and Barbarian Queen (side note: if you want to hear me talk Deathstalker 2 with the Fan2Fan Podcast crew, click here). Of course I had to pre-order the Blu-ray incarnation, plus it comes with a poster and the cover is reversible to a Cthulhu-looking one.

Reverse sleeve.

Here is a link to the Shout Factory product page for The Warrior and the Sorceress. My copy arrived extremely quickly.

Just Jaeckin Releases from Cult Epics

Emmanuelle director Just Jaeckin passed away earlier this month.

The filmmaker may be gone but his legacy lives on. Later in September Cult Epics released two Blu-rays of Jaeckin’s work: Madame Claude and The Last Romantic Lover. Commentary on the discs is done by Jeremy Richey who wrote Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol (read my review here). Check out the Cult Epics website for more info on these releases.

Artist Gilead Kickstarter Campaign

Sword and sorcery artist Gilead has started a Kickstarter campaign for his Sketch book and print art.

Check out the campaign on Kickstarter and consider supporting!

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Biweekly News Roundup 2022-09-11

Good day everyone!

I am revamping my news roundups for the time being. I don’t think I am quite prolific enough to merit a weekly aggregation, so instead I’ll be switching to biweekly. Think that will also help reduce the clutter of news articles at my website. I’m doing some other changes as well, so read on!

Personal / Website News

Not changing anything in the “Personal / Website News” section. If anything, they might get longer (such as this week’s) as I’ll be sharing more news in each biweekly post.

New Website Articles

I’ve published two articles at my website over the past two weeks.

First is my write up of the Bacardi Mai-Tai recipe that appears in the 1973 Bacardi Party Book.

I haven’t quite written enough essays here on cocktail and tiki culture, so I felt one was overdue. I’ve got a handful of other cocktail pamphlets like this from the 70s, so expect some more write ups of a similar ilk in the future.

Next, there is a new issue of Weird Tales that will be coming out very soon. This issue will focus on the sword and sorcery genre so I thought it would be awesome to help do my part to promote the issue by doing some micro interviews with some of the authors and poets within. I put out a call on social media for interested parties and this aggregation of short-form interviews is the result.

The article currently contains interviews with Brian W. Matthews, Teel James Glenn, Dana Fredsti, and Dave Fitzgerald.

H. P. Lovecast Podcast Updates

For August we got a little off track with H. P. Lovecast as we had to hunker in and prep for CoKoCon (see below) and other projects. This means that while August had only one episode of H. P. Lovecast (our dive into Douglas Wynne’s collection Something in the Water and Other Stories), September will have three episodes!

First, we have a Fragments episode that contains our interview with Wynne about his new collection, Something in the Water. The episode can be streamed at the H. P. Lovecast Podcast Buzzsprout page, via your podcast app of preference, or via the embedded player below.

HPLCP Fragments – Ep 18 – Douglas Wynne Interview – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

Second, our primary episode for September will be on the movie, Prince of Darkness, direct by John Carpenter. This episode will drop on Sunday the 18th. This episode will act as a companion episode to an upcoming Fan2Fan appearance (see below).

Personal collection.

Finally, for September’s Transmissions episode, we will be interviewing Ian Welke about his new novel, Union Station, and Brenda S. Tolian about her debut short story collection, Blood Mountain. That will drop the last day of September.

Other Podcast News

I met up with Bernie Gonzalez and Joshua Pruett to record some back-to-back Fan2Fan Podcast episodes.

In no particular order, three episodes were recorded:

  • Discussion on John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness
  • Top Five Vampires Films
  • Top Five Halloween Films

Our forthcoming H. P. Lovecast Podcast episode on Prince of Darkness will act as a companion episode to the Fan2Fan In the Mouth of Madness. Check out both episodes when they are online!

For Scholars at the Edge of Time later this month, (Thursday, September the 22nd), Michele and I will be discussing Son of Samson.

Personal copy of the recent Kino release.

Finally, to have on the radar, I’ll be doing a reading on the HWA New York Chapter’s Galactic Terrors vidcast. That will be in November.

All of these appearances, along with their publish dates (if known) have been added to the Podcast Index page. As always, if you feel like I’d make a great guest on your podcast, please feel free to reach out to me at vnvdiak@gmail.com.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

I am going to cease doing peplum-specific news go forward. While one of my expertise is peplum, my interests run in a variety of subject matters. Instead, I’ll have a section called “Miscellaneous Tidbits” (temporary name until I can think of another) where I’ll post news relevant to my research or projects I’m working on. Could be peplum, could be something else.

However, if folks do have their own peplum news they want to share with me to promote here, I am still very much available to do that. I am here to help others.

Blog and Adventures

I’ll be adding a new section that will appear time-to-time, and that will be “Blog and Adventures.” I’ll kick it off for this post with a re-cap of CoKoCon.

CoKoCon 2022 Experiences

CoKoCon is a Phoenix fan convention in the old school sense of the early days of fandom: smaller, more intimate crowd taking over a bit of hotel convention space. This is the first in-person version of CoKoCon since 2019 due to the pandemic.

Hal C. F. Hastell and Dee Hastell are the two primary folks behind CoKoCo. Despite us being still fairly new to the Phoenix area and not really knowing anyone, they extended an invitation to us to be on a few panels. We are both extremely flattered and appreciative. Michele and I wound up on two panels: Pre-Code Hollywood Horror Films, and Swords, Sandals, Sorcery, Planets and Other Worlds.

Our first panel was Saturday and we got to the Tempe Double Tree around 9am-ish. This was our first appearance at any sort of public event, let alone a con, since the Covid Pandemic started. We were a little bit nervous as we both have evaded getting Covid thus far. We were so relieved that CoKoCon has strict mask mandates and vaccination or negative Covid test requirements. We felt so much better: everyone was masked, all spaced out. We felt super safe.

We also got a cool swag bag filled with books, stickers, and other goodies. There was also a nice program booklet which had our brand new H. P. Lovecast Logo as an advert! We were pumped.

The Pre-Code Hollywood Horror Films panel started at 10:0am. Hal was the moderator with Michele and I as panelists. Michele is an expert on silent cinema, particularly the city symphony genre, but because of her interest in mummies, she had seen a lot of Universal Horror films. So, she was the big subject matter expert. I’m not too much of a specialist of the period, but know enough since it is all precursor to my Italian genre film/exploitation film studies (but I do love Busby Berkeley musicals). We spent all August prepping for the panel by watching quiet a few Pre-Code horror films: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Kongo (1932), King Kong (1933), Island of Lost Souls (1932), and Life Returns (1934). Michele watched a plethora of even more films.

Pre-Code Horror from our collection.

I suspect this might have been a panel that Hal had wanted to do for a while, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We talked about how transgressive and ahead of their time these movies were compared to the films released in the years following the Hayes Code going into proper effect. We all agreed that Life Returns was a terrible film while Kongo was the most controversial and squeamish film we all saw. Definitely worth an experience.

After the panel we meandered around the con for a little bit. We ran into Beth Cato, steampunk author and baker extraordinaire. She gave us ooey gooey delicious cookies and a ribbon for our con badges that proclaimed we had taken part of her baked delectables.

We visited the dealers’ room which housed a handful of authors with tables along with the art that was up for auction. We met authors Adam Gaffen and David Lee Summers.They were cool folk and of course, we had to pluck up some books (can’t walk away empty handed!).

Michele and I returned Monday for the Swords/Sandals/Sorcery/Other Worlds Panel which was at 1:00 pm. This is a panel of Michele’s own creation which she has moderated at other cons, such as Long Beach Comic Con and LA Comic Con. I brought the sword and sandal knowledge while artist Gilead brought the sword and sorcery expertise. I believe this was the first time Michele had an artist instead of a writer on her panel, so it was nice to get a different perspective.

Gilead is an amazing artist. I had to purchase his original painting “Ziggurats and Tentacles” which was part of the art gallery/auction.

“Ziggurats and Tentacles” by Gilead. Now hanging in our living room.

This panel was a lot of fun. Gilead brought a list of sword and sorcery resources (websites, podcasts, Discord servers, etc.) and invited folks to copy it and check them out. He was super knowledgable about all facets of sword and sorcery.

Overall, CoKoCon was. a blast. It was a low-key event for us, which is exactly what we needed during these pandemic times. The 2023 conference is already being planned and has GoH information at the CoKoCon website. We will definitely be back!

The CoKoCon Facebook page is uploading photos, so keep an eye there for photos of the event.