Carmilla vs Dracula?

Isn’t it just too cool for words that both Countess Karnstein and Count Dracula are haunting stages in Los Angeles this Halloween? Forget Godzilla vs. King Kong – this is the crossover we’d really like to see! Dracula continues at the NoHo Arts Center (reviewed here). Carmilla debuts tonight at the Lyric Hyperion Theatre & Cafe.

By the way, J. Sheridan LeFanu’s novelette Carmilla was an influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula: in an abandoned early chapter (later published as “Dracula’s Guest”), our English protagonist encounters a “Countess Dolingen of Gratz in Styria,” who was supposed to be revealed later as one of the three female vampire Jonathan Harker meets in Castle Dracula. Styria was  Carmilla’s hunting ground, so it’s almost as if Stoker were making LeFanu’s Countess into one of Dracula’s brides. It’s not quite a share universe, but a tenuous connection is there.