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"Dracula" Is One of the Oddest, "Most Mentally Unstable" Horror Novels

Book critic Maureen Corrigan takes a look at Bram Stoker's 19th century novel, "Dracula," and finds it weirder than any Hollywood version of the vampire tale. She considers it's place in literary and film history.

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Other segments from the episode on November 13, 1992

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, November 13, 1992: Interview with Bapsi Sidhwa; Interview with Tom Kalin; Review of the film "Bram Stoker's Dracula"; Commentary on Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula."
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22:23

Pakistani Writer Bapsi Sidhwa

Sidhwa's latest novel is "Cracking India," which tells the story of the Partition of India through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl named Lenny. She also wrote the novels "The Bride," and "Ice-Candy-Man," both of which are narrated by women. She'll talk with Terry about her books and women's rights in Pakistan.

Interview
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12:03

Director Tom Kalin's New Film on the Leopold-Loeb Murder

Kalin wrote, directed and co-produced the new movie,"Swoon." It explores the lives of "thrill killers" Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. They were Jewish and homosexual; the film looks at how anti-semitism and homophobia figured into their 1920s trial. "Swoon" is Kalin's first feature film. He worked for three years as a producer for AIDSFILMS and is a founding member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury.

Interview
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03:47

Francis Ford Coppola's "Dracula"

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new film version of Bram Stoker's novel. Schiff says the director's vision of the story dominates over the author's. The movie, he claims, is lacking in almost every respect -- except for a unique insight on love.

Review

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44:15

Canadian Filmmaker Guy Maddin

He's best known for his cult films Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1998) and Careful (1992). In 1995, Maddin was the youngest person to receive the Telluride Medal for Lifetime Achievement. His short film The Heart of the World won a special award from the National Society of Film Critics and was voted one of the 10 best films of the year by J. Hoberman of The Village Voice and A.O. Scott of The New York Times. His new film, Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary, transforms the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic story into a silent film.

Interview
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35:01

The Undead Dracula Lives On

Writer Leonard Wolf. His latest book "Dracula: The Connoisseur's Guide" is about our attraction to vampires and the curiosity they have provoked over the past 100 years. Wolf is thought of as a specialist on the subject, having written such books as "The Essential Phantom of the Opera," "The Essential Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde," "The Essential Dracula," and a number of other horror related books. Wolf is also the winner of the O.

Interview
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22:33

Dracula Through the Lens of Criminal Psychology

Psychiatrist and novelist Roderick Anscombe. He oversees a psychiatric ward at a hospital outside of Boston, and has written a new novel that retells the Dracula myth, called "The Secret Life of Laszlo: Count Dracula." Anscombe says he wanted to "humanize" Dracula by making him more a man than a monster. In writing the book, Anscombe drew on his previous experience working with the criminally insane.

Interview

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