Episode 538 - Vengeance by Proxy

Somewhere someone just shouted 'I'm the king of the rods!'

The War of the Worlds is about a planet full of Draculas come to harvest human blood.

Ben Gilbert

In my head she was a teacher that ended her semester and went home, or got married.

In the spirit of this month, I feel I must share these questions for any Dracula who may be similarly curious: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/12/i-have-not-left-my-castle-ages-i-have-some-questions-about-post-vaccine-guidelines/

Stewart Huntsman

Am I the only one wondering what happened to Miss Sadlowe?

Spurred on by Jamie Brittain's convincing rhetoric I began to wonder which others are long-overlooked Dracula stories. To my shock and delight it's a lot more than you might think! It was really surprising to find I had somehow missed it in many a famous tome, usually staring me in the face on the final page just to really drive the point home. Here, for example, in the final lines of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath:: *The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room and said "By the way, my real name's Dracula."* Really adds an extra layer now that I know it's there.

My take away was definitely "never stop to help anyone; they may be a vampire." Maybe just throw gasoline on them as you speed by.

Peter Larsen

And it's Cthulhu Mythos.... but not?

Peter Larsen

And the UFO Lovecraft pastiche episode "They Were Before, They Are Now, They Will Be After."

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

This made me think of The Hidden (1987). The movie stars Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI agent tracking down a body swapping alien parasite. Interesting for Twin Peaks fans.

David Halstead

If you haven't picked all of your stories for the March of the Draculas, you might look at Robert Aickman's 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal'. Robert Aickman's fiction is truly weird--this story maybe less than most but it would be a great start. And it has several elements your guest identified as key to a Dracula story: an Englishman (girl in this case of course) traveling abroad, epistolary format.

HI! I just had to comment on something unrelated to this particular episode but which I think Lovecraft fans would enjoy. It's the Boston Harbor Horror podcast. I wish you gents would mention it on your show as well, if you like it, it would be wonderful to get them some more subscribers so they could put out more content. Great storytelling, I really loved it, and listened to the whole thing in 24 hours.

Grackles

I'd love for you guys to cover more Wyndham in the future including some his novels. Good contenders include The Day of the Triffids (1951), The Kraken Wakes (1953), and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957). Though I also still want you guys to cover H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The War of the Worlds (1898) first.

The threat posed by draculas and alien bobysnatchers is probably the most credible argument I've heard in favour of Brexit. Make of that what you will.

John Wyndham also wrote a *great* apocalyptic sci-fi novel called "The Kraken Wakes" that's been adapted in audio form a few times over the decades. Highly recommended; it especially has a certain resonance these days...

I've been re-watching the 1970's "classic" television series "The Night Stalker" - and just watched the episode "The Vampire"! Maybe one of next year's Bonus Content contenders? It has a truly bizarre follow up episode "The Werewolf", which takes place on a cruise ship... Love Boat vibes, anyone?

Yes, but of course the Romans were inspired by the Vin Diesel movie which exists outside of time and is a fundamental constant at every point in the universe.

Jamie Brittain

I'd say it's also part of the whole Slavic hordes trope...the idea that the Slavs are progressively less "European" and more "Asiatic" the further east you go.

Speaking of Draculas, and the Cold War has anyone read The Historian? That's easily my favorite Cold War iteration of Dracula

Stewart Huntsman

I'm glad March has become the fittingly eternal month for Draculas - I love me a good vampire story. This one did have a sketchy Eastern European of uncertain but unnaturally elongated age menacing an English couple with his hypnotic powers, so the court will rule him somewhere between a 1/2 Dracula and a 2/3rds Dracula. I look forward to seeing what other Draculas arise to keep us company

Stewart Huntsman

I beg to differ, it was the next film - "DracVIa" - that really spiked the series to the next level.

William Rieder

I think a large part of the fear of Eastern Europe is anti-Semitism.

Steve

John Wyndham's books are often on the school syllabus in England which is why they turn up in their libraries, even in Dionne Warwickshire.

Steve

Amazing sound engineering, Chad - I could really hear the eye-roll!

Christine M

I'm sure you've realized this by now, but XXX is the Roman numeral 30. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXX_Corps_(United_Kingdom). No doubt you feel deep shame over this terrible, terrible faux pas, but please be comforted by the knowledge that you've learned something new.

Eh, 2 Drac 2 Draculous is fine I guess, but everyone knows the series doesn't really get good until Drac Five.

But I will say, VERY similar literary tone in this story to Dracula, I totally get the comparison.

During Dorian Grey I misread the joke about Chad being replaced as Chad being murdered, but come on now. Jamie suggesting a body snatcher story? HIGHLY SUS. Chad, my vow stands:. I shall have knowing comments AT THE READY during meet and greet events. Chris: don't worry, I'll continue to support the pod at this membership level or higher.

A couple of thoughts... People in the real world really would react like the “main”character. Hey, someone acts weird first thought - “Mind swap!”. We tend to forget the real world and all it’s distractions would seriously impede our ability to see the “weird”. The other quick thought - why do people from the UK and the US have so much self loathing. I’ve been around the world and I just don’t see the reason for it.....

Andrew Brown

Agreed. Can we get a story with some fainting and a good cleansing bolt of lightening?

Great story. Glad to be back to the wierd.

I have a friend whose parents emigrated from Croatia, then went back after she was an adult. Every time she goes to visits them, she comes back with a new personality, so Wyndham got some particulars right but missed the crucial bit. She gets to argue with herself in different languages, so that's kind of cool.

Peter Larsen

His gibbon name?

A more obviously vampiric Wyndham tale is his short story “Close Behind Him”, in which we learn the inadvisability of burgling a black magician. You can find it in “The Essential John Wyndham: The Pulp Fiction Collection” which is available as a Kindle book from Amazon—there are 19 other short stories too.

Triple-X corps made me chuckle. It's 30 corps :-)

Peter Mellett

I’d say this story is ‘Draculas-adjacent’. I would see it as a take on Dracula itself though - it’s notable that Vengeance by Proxy is referred to as Wyndham’s take on Dracula, not Wyndham’s vampire story. To my mind, it’s like if someone made a film about a radioactivity-spawned mutant virus named GD(Zi)LL-A that emerged after atomic bomb testing and ravaged Japan - you’d know it was a take on Godzilla, but it’s not a monster movie. Vengeance by Proxy definitely ‘vampirises’ the Dracula text; you mentioned the pastiche of Dracula’s epistolary form, the Eastern European setting and antagonist, the superstitious (but correct) locals and the Van Helsing-lite. Jamie commented on the British Imperial fears present in this story, like the Victorian fin de siècle fear of ‘reverse colonisation’ in Dracula - in Vengeance by Proxy you have the Vlanec literally colonising the bodies of others, and like Dracula turning decent men and women of England into what he was (a dying/soon to be executed criminal). Interesting that you mention the communist threat, Chris – I think you can see some similar themes around the ‘hidden enemies among us’ in both this and next week’s tale. Whilst both Vengeance by Proxy and The Man Upstairs are too early to be inspired by the ‘red scare’ as both were written during WWII, certainly concerns around foreign invaders and spies were rife at that time, and the early signs of what would become McCarthyism had already begun to show – 1940 saw the American Communist Party reach its peak membership, and the introduction of the Alien Registration Act (1940) requiring the Federal registration of all foreign nationals, so I think it’s a fair parallel. It’s especially serendipitous that Chad had just watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers, given that it is probably the most famous sci-fi red scare allegory (though depending on your viewpoint it could represent the insidious spread of communism, the mass hysteria of McCarthyism, or both). When it comes to the eternal battle of vampire vs automobile though, I prefer E.F. Benson’s ‘Mrs. Amworth’.

A story about mind transfer, and not one mention of 'The Shadow out of Time?'

Not that Jamie really needs an extra "This Is Dracula!" point given that ending, but I think you guys missed that the protagonist was communicating with the locals through what little German he had, much like Harker was forced to do at the start of Dracula.

Lord Rancid

Really, it would be more accurate to describe their deaths as a vehicular misadventure.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

I'm not at all sure if the title is apt. Is it really vengeance by proxy if the vengeance is being carried out directly by someone inhabiting another body?

On a tangential note, ever since I realized I was trans, I figured out I found "Thing on the Doorstep" so upsetting not because it was skillfully written, but because it's an egregious trans panic narrative. This isn't directly relevant to the story, but the psychic transference reminded me of it.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

God. All I can think is how nightmarish the dysphoria from bodyswapping is. No wonder the guy is so lassaiz faire about throwing his stolen bodies away.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

Yay! Candide started on a droll footing, but was a bit irksome by the end. Back to the good shit, blood sucking fiends and graveyard ghouls!