Another new monster has been added to the Universal horror stable with the recent pick up of "Dracula Year Zero".
Screenplay is by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.
Premise chronicles the origins of 'Dracula', weaving vampiric mythology with the story of historical 'Vlad the Impaler', changing the mass murderer into a kinder, gentler 'flawed hero' in a love story set in a dark age of magic and war, repositioning him as a vengeful victim rather than the beast of Bram Stoker's Victorian novel:
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man.
