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| David J. Skal | |
David J. Skal, author, historian, critic, and an authority on Bram Stoker, Dracula, and monsters in popular culture, died on January 1 of a heart attack after a car accident caused by a drunk driver. He was 71. (The accident also severely injured Skal's life partner, Bob Postawko, who is recovering from multiple rib fractures and a broken leg.)
Skal was best known for his horror movie and biography titles. They include Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (2016), which was recently optioned for film adaptation, Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen (1990), The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993), and Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, co-written with Elias Savada (1995), which is being reissued by the University of Minnesota Press this fall. Other titles include V Is for Vampire: The A to Z Guide to Everything Undead (1996), Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture (1998), Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween (2002), and Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice (2008). Skal also co-edited the 1997 Norton Critical Edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula and compiled the 2001 anthology Vampires: Encounters with the Undead.
Skal also wrote three science fiction novels: Scavengers (1980), When We Were Good (1981), and Antibodies (1988). He regularly contributed film reviews to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and appeared in several TV specials and documentaries.
His longtime literary agent, Malaga Baldi, called Skal "a movie aficionado, horror fan and a monster man extraordinaire. His impressions of Dracula kept adults and children in horrified giggles for hours." Baldi added, "Skal will always be my main monster man: I was never one for scary things--but anything and everything frightening brought to the table by David was presented with panache, delightful writing, an exquisite eye for images and a great sense of humor."