Check out Episode 15 of the Flix of Doom podcast, the official movie podcast of Geeks of Doom, with hosts Empress Eve and Justin Vactor.

In this episode, Empress Eve Of Doom gives us the low down on this year’s New York Comic Con, while Justin gives us the scoop on the Beauty And The Beast Blu-ray Edition. We also cover the latest movie news and box office results.

Full Episode Guide is here below, along with player.

Listen now!

E-mail us at flixofdoom [at] gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter – @FlixOfDoom
Subscribe to the Podcast: RSS | iTunes | Zune

We here at Geeks of Doom are big fans of the wave of hybrid novels, taking classic stories or historical figures and adding horrific elements such as zombies, monsters, aliens, and vampires, to name a few.

This crazy idea started with author Seth Grahame-Smith‘s alteration of the classic Jane Austen work, Pride and Prejudice, which was called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Many different types have followed like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and a lot of them even have movie projects in the works.

Being the lead horse it is, a movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies looked to be well on the way, and last December we found out that actress Natalie Portman would be producing the movie through her Handsomecharlie Films banner, and that she would also be starring in the role of Elizabeth Bennett…though sadly not all good things last.

Jane Slayre
Trade Paperback
By Sherri Browning Erwin
Original Story by Charlotte Bronte
Gallery Books
Release Date: April 13, 2010

Jane Slayre takes the approach of books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and takes a classic piece of literature and adds a supernatural twist to it. The original story Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte follows the interesting life of Jane Eyre as she grows up and falls in love. Sherri Browning Erwin puts a twist on this story by asking what if Jane had to do this while protecting the world from vampires, voodoo priests, zombies, and werewolves? Well, I say yes please!

The orphan Jane Slayre starts off her life by being raised by her Aunt Reed and living with her three cousins, John, Georgina, and Eliza, all of whom had been turned into vampires. Jane was terrorized by John, which lead to her being able to leave the house to be sent away to school. At this school called Lowood, Jane realizes that the world is filled with these supernatural beings and that her family isn’t the only afflicted ones. As with the classic tale, t first she spends time at the school as a student and then later as a teacher, but eventually she realizes it’s time for her to move on, so she takes a position as Governess at a place called Thornfield. Through her experiences, she founds out what love is and that she feels it for one man. She also discovers that she actually does have a real family that isn’t evil and might even have the same Slayre instincts that she does.

By Steve Hockensmith

Keeping the undead at bay has never been easier. Thanks to such visionaries as George Romero and the National Rifle Association, we all stand ready for any onslaught of flesh-craving ghouls. My basement bunker is packed wall to wall with automatic weapons, ammo, and grenades, and I’m sure yours is, too.

Bring it on, coffin jockeys! America’s got your brains right here!

Once upon a time, however, fighting off zombies wasn’t so simple. Today, with our common household Glocks, Uzis, and AK-47s, it’s easy to forget the challenges our ancestors faced when fending off their slavering, shambling, brains-craving neighbors. Not only were such miracles of modern science as the tommy gun and the Claymore mine still but wistful dreams, the manners and morays of the day often made zombie-killing even more difficult than it had to be.

I recently found myself with reason to dig into the undead-dispatching ways of our forefathers when I was asked to write Dawn of the Dreadfuls, a prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. As my book would be a lightly fictionalized account of the trials and tribulations of the Bennet family, a real-life clan of English zombie slayers active during the Regency era, I had to acquaint myself with the zombie-killing methodology of the early 19th century. What I found were two very different approaches. On the one hand was the pragmatic if hard-to-master discipline known as “the Deadly Arts” — the Eastern-influenced fighting skills the young ladies of the Bennet family would be forced to learn in the course of my book. On the other hand was the traditional, proper, English approach to dealing with the undead. A few simple comparisons will demonstrate why SPOILER ALERT!!! the Bennets are still alive at the end of Dawn of the Dreadfuls and so many of their acquaintances are not.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
Paperbook
By Steve Hockensmith
Quirk Books
Release date: March 23 2010

Is classic literature your thing? Do you think everything could use a little zombie in it? Well you are in luck, because Quirk Classic have followed up on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, their extremely wild take on Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice, with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.

Quirk has definitely made itself known for these interesting takes on classic tales, especially Jane Austen books, which they’ve infused with zombies. Let me just start off by saying that this concept could have easily been used to pull in zombie fans with no depth or quality in writing, but author Steve Hockensmith definitely does not take this approach and brings a fresh spin to zombifying a classic tale.

Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a prequel to the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies telling the start of the Bennet’s story. Oscar Bennet, the father of the family, had dealt with the dreadfuls — the zombies — in the past when he was in the order and now the dreadfuls are back and he has to prepare his family for their attacks.