Inspired by BBC Radio’s “Desert Island Discs,” the Peter Lang Group presents \u2018Peak Reads & Playlists\u2019.
Join us on a journey to the mountain peaks near our Lausanne headquarters where we speak with our esteemed series editors.
In this interview format, our guests usually share the books, music, and food that would keep them company if they were whisked away alone to this beautiful mountain setting.
However, in acknowledgment of the fantastic series mentioned below we’ve swapped out music for film! Simon Bacon explores the reasons behind these choices, revealing the impact and influence each has had. Get a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the Peter Lang community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Name: <\/strong>Simon Bacon > Which FICTION title would take the coveted first spot on your list? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m terrible at doing \u201ctop tens\u201d and the like, as it\u2019s always changing! The most influential would have to be Dracula<\/em>, as I quote it so much, but would I want to be stuck on a Swiss mountain too with it? Not necessarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll go with something new, as it\u2019s way more likely to keep me entertained for longer and it\u2019s an unfinished series so I\u2019d be able to air-drop the latest instalments. So my choice would be the graphic novel series #DR<\/em>CL<\/em> Midnight Children<\/em> by Shin\u2019ichi Sakamoto. It\u2019s so beautifully drawn and imagined and it does all these crazy, genre-bending things with canonical texts that only manga can do! If you didn\u2019t think Dracula was a Folk Horror Eco-story before, you will once you start on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n > If you were offered the chance to take a NON-FICTION title, which would you choose?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oddly, this is easier to choose than the previous question: A Thousand Plateaus<\/em> by Deleuze and Guattari, which I was reading when I met my wife (both life-changing experiences). It really changed how I read everything afterwards in terms of trajectories, change and futurity (unsurprisingly my first monograph was called Becoming Vampire<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n > We\u2019re feeling generous so we\u2019ll allow you one more book, your choice of FICTION or NON-FICTION \u2013 which one makes the list? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m going to be cheeky here and list a few that are from both lists and then make a final choice. For non-fiction, the important ones that would make any list are Stacey Abbott\u2019s Celluloid Vampires<\/em>, Jeffrey Weinstock\u2019s Vampire Cinema<\/em>, Rob Latham\u2019s Consuming Youth<\/em>, Ken Gelder\u2019s Reading the Vampire<\/em>, Jack Halberstam\u2019s Skin Shows<\/em>, and Paul Barber\u2019s Vampires, Burial, and Death<\/em>. For fiction, I\u2019d go with Let the Right One In<\/em> by Lindqvist, The Strain Trilogy<\/em> by del Toro and Hogan, The Maltese Falcon<\/em> by Hammett, Blood of the Vampire<\/em> by Marryat, and Lost Girls<\/em> by Moore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the winner would be \u2026 Let the Right One In<\/em>, as it\u2019s so different from any of the film adaptations and it is beautiful, scary and outright weird in equal amounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n > It\u2019s hard to tear your eyes away from the panoramic views, but everyone loves their screen time. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Which 5 FILMS OR TV SHOWS would you take to enjoy whilst up on the summit and why? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Again, trying to choose 5 is almost impossible, as on another day it would be 5 completely different films! Unlike most horror\/vampire fans, I really didn\u2019t like horror at all when I was growing up and it wasn\u2019t until I went back to university in my 40s that it became a thing for me. For my MA dissertation, I decided to write about vampires as a site of memory for America, starting with Browning\u2019s Dracula<\/em>. However, the film that has remained with me, and the one I actually owned before turning to the dark side, is Blade<\/em>. It\u2019s such a great film and only Wesley Snipes, at that time, could make the character work that well on screen. It\u2019s a film I\u2019ll happily watch anytime it\u2019s on (and the two sequels of course). 2. Another film that falls into the category of \u201cI\u2019ll watch it anytime it\u2019s on\u201d is Constantine<\/em> (2005). It\u2019s one of those films \u2014 not unlike The Thing<\/em> (1982), Aliens<\/em> (1986), AVP<\/em> (2004), Hellboy<\/em> (2004), Silent Hill<\/em> (2006), Legion<\/em> (2010), and The Autopsy of Jane Doe<\/em> (2016) \u2014 that has no right to be as good as it is. Keanu Reeves as the lead looks absolutely nothing like the comic character it\u2019s taken from, but he owns the part, and brilliant performances from everyone (especially Peter Stormare) just pick you up and drag you along with it until the end. I could spend a lot of time on the mountain top watching this over and over. 3. I should choose a TV series, both because there\u2019s been some great vampy ones over the years and because some have been extremely long running: Dark Shadows<\/em> (1966-71), Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em> (1997-2003), True Blood<\/em> (2008-14), and The Vampire Diaries<\/em> (2009-17), including various spin-offs for most of them. There have been newer ones of note, namely the extremely popular What We Do In the Shadows<\/em> series (2019-24), and the more vampirically ambitious Dracula<\/em> miniseries (2020-20) from the BBC, and there is much about both of these which repays repeated watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, for my third choice I shall go for a somewhat more problematic production that offered much more than it was ultimately able to give yet still created moments of brilliance, and that\u2019s the Dracula<\/em> (2013-14) series by Cole Haddon. Here, the Count becomes something of an eco-warrior fighting the imperial \u201ccrew of light\u201d to break their hold over the world through the exploitation of fossil fuels. In a steampunk London, Dracula, under the guidance of Van Helsing, creates a generator to produce wireless electricity (an idea borrowed from Nikola Tesla), taking society by storm. Featuring a very rare black Renfield and a fabulous female vampire hunter, the series does much to overturn expectations but allows itself to get bogged down in an unnecessary eternal-love story that drains energy out of the narrative. However, not unlike its vampiric lead, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, when it\u2019s good it is very, very good. 4. I want to go for something older for the fourth pick, if only to mix it up a bit while I\u2019m stuck on the mountain. Again, there\u2019s so many great early vampire films (and vampire-less vampire films) that it\u2019s difficult to choose just one. Apart from the obvious biggies (Nosferatu<\/em>, Vampyr<\/em>, Dracula<\/em>), films like Condemned to Live<\/em> (1935), The Return of Doctor X<\/em> (1939), The Devil Bat<\/em> (1940), The House of Dracula<\/em> (1945), and Blood of Dracula<\/em> (1957) are all largely overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To continue with that idea, I\u2019ll choose The Vampire Bat<\/em> (1933). It\u2019s another of the vampire-less vampire films with a killer covering his tracks by pretending there is a killer vampire bat on the loose. It stars Melvyn Douglas and Fay Wray, but our reason for choosing this is none other than Dwight Frye. Only a few years on from playing amazing roles in Browning\u2018s Dracula<\/em> and Whale\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>, he was already a victim of the \u201cvampires curse\u201d that is alleged to have affected many from Browning\u2019s film and was typecast as a lunatic or disfigured servant, severely limiting his cinematic career (Lugosi of course suffered a similar fate in relation to the roles he was offered). He\u2019s great in this and, as expected, plays the village idiot who is wrongly accused of the crimes and eventually gets staked \u2013 all due to his fondness for bats. Meanwhile, the evil Dr Niemann has created a new lifeform in a tank and needs fresh blood to feed it on, bringing a suitably left-field plot to a close, just so Melvyn and Fay can end the film together. 5. To finish, I want to choose something more recent, not least because there have been some great vampire films since 2000, even while the zombie seems to have consumed the popular imagination around the 2010s. Netflix has kept the vampire as a staple during that time, though not always producing the best films, but Blood Red Sky<\/em> (2021) was interesting and Vampires vs the Bronx<\/em> (2020) was hugely entertaining. Lower budget, general release films like Strigoi<\/em> (2009) by Faye Jackson, Carmilla<\/em> (2019) by Emily Harris, and Bliss<\/em> (2019) by Joe Begos have taken the vampire mythos into newer directions. The recent upturn in interest in all things vampy has seen big-budget projects produced like Morbius<\/em> (2022), The Last Voyage of the Demeter<\/em> (2023), and Renfield<\/em> (2023), although these have not quite returned on their initial promise. Abigail<\/em> (2024), however, while maybe setting its bar slightly lower, kept its vision and performances tightly together and moving in the right direction to produce a highly enjoyable film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having said all this, I\u2019m actually going to return to a much smaller production from 2014 that gets nowhere near the attention it should and that is Nosferatu in Love<\/em> by Peter Straughan. It\u2019s part of the Playhouse Presents TV series and tells of an actor (Mark Strong) sent out to the Czech Republic to make a film about Murnau\u2019s Nosferatu<\/em> and using some of the original locations. However, the actor has just split from his long-term partner and is going through something of a breakdown. Through an odd mirroring of parts of the original film, the actor, still dressed as Graf Orlok, meets a Renfield\/Knock who takes him round the local dives of the town, gets drunk, and attempts to release thousands of rats from the film set into the town on his road to redemption. Then he vanishes in the light of day. I had the good fortune to speak to the director himself, who was as lovely as the film itself, and it\u2019s a short movie I will never not enjoy. > We couldn\u2019t let our community feed their souls but not their bodies, so which FOOD DISH would you choose to take with you on the mountain retreat?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Marzipan. I know it\u2019s not a dish, but I have an insanely sweet tooth and if I\u2019m going to be stranded anywhere the only way to ensure my sanity is a ready supply of marzipan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you for joining us up on the mountain!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Discover the series here: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20737,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"category":[201],"topic":[187],"language":[188],"class_list":["post-29190","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-peak-reads-playlists-de","topic-allgemein","language-englisch"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Job Title:<\/strong> Independent Scholar
Series:<\/strong> Genre Fiction and Films Companions<\/a><\/em> and Vampire Studies: New Perspectives on the Undead<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nBooks<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Film & Television<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Film trailer here:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/video\/vi2746876185<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Film trailer here:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/video\/vi2357507609<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Series trailer here:<\/strong>\u00a0 https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/video\/vi3827148313<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Film trailer\/clips here:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jd1GxHgiaHM<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The short film can be watched here:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=a02r2DmzPec<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFood<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Genre Fiction and Film Companions<\/a><\/em>
Vampire Studies: New Perspectives on the Undead<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n