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Brother Blood
The classic vampire "blaxploitation" novel from author Donald F. Glut (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, TRANSFORMERS). A vampire stalks 1969's groovy Sunset Strip. The police are clueless but a trio of true believers know the horror in their midst. Written in the same style as the original Dracula, Brother Blood is a bloodsucker for the Groovy Age.
- GenresHorror
372 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2010
4 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Donald F. Glut
237 books51 followersDONALD F. GLUT has been professionally active in both the entertainment and publishing industries since 1966.
Born in Pecos, Texas, Don grew up in Chicago, IL. At age nine, already bitten by the film-making “bug,” he made Diplodocus at Large, the first of 41 amateur movies featuring dinosaurs, human monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Teenage Werewolf, etc.) and superheroes (Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, etc.) Some of these films made during the late 1960s (e.g., Spy Smasher vs. the Purple Monster) were eventually shown in theatres and on TV.
Moving to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California, Don professionally entered show business as an “extra” (a POW) in the movie Von Ryan’s Express (1965), the first of several such “roles.” He began his professional writing career in 1966, writing articles for and finally editing the magazine Modern Monsters. In 1967, after graduating from the University of Southern California with a BA degree (for Cinema) in Letters, Arts and Sciences, Don worked as a musician, singer and songwriter in The Penny Arkade, a rock band produced by “Monkee” Michael Nesmith. Shortly after that he briefly furthered his acting career, having a speaking role in a national television commercial starring Dick Clark.
However, most of Don’s professional life has been as a freelance writer. To date he has authored numerous motion picture and television scripts (Shazam!, Land of the Lost, and animation, e.g., Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, Transformers, G.I.Joe, Duck Tales, Jonny Quest, X-Men, others), comic-book scripts (Captain America, Tarzan, etc., including creating for Gold Key Dagar the Invincible, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor and Tragg and the Sky Gods), more than 35 novels and nonfiction books, also numerous short stories, articles, songs, album-liner notes, etc. The Dinosaur Dictionary (1972) and Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia (1997), two of Don’s many non-fiction books about dinosaurs, both were listed by the American Library Association among the best reference books of their years of publication. With The Dinosaur Dictionary Don created the much-imitated book format based upon an alphabetical listing of dinosaur names. Perhaps Don is best known for his novelization of the movie The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the nation’s No. 1 bestseller for almost two months, which to date (still in print) has sold over 3.5 million copies. In 1982 he created characters and back story for Mattel’s “Masters of the Universe” toy line. Among his more recent books is Chomper, an entry in the popular “Dinotopia” series.
Don produced, wrote and directed various videos (including the documentaries Dinosaur Movies and Hollywood Goes Ape! and the music-video compilation Dinosaur Tracks®), theatre and movie projects. He has worked as a consultant on numerous other video, film and TV projects, and was “Dinosaur Consultant” on Roger Corman’s movie Carnosaur (1993).
In 1990, Don and Pete Von Sholly founded Fossil Records, which has already produced a half dozen albums. These include Dinosaur Tracks®, More Dinosaur Tracks® and Dinosaur Tracks® Again, featuring paleontology-related rock music written mostly by Don (Dinodon Music/BMI), performed by Don and Pete (as the Iridium Band).
More recently, Don became president of Frontline Entertainment (www.frontlinefilms.com), for which he wrote, directed and co-produced the comedy/fantasy motion picture Dinosaur Valley Girls™, which has already achieved “cult movie” status, and Before La Brea, a documentary commissioned by the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Los Angeles. In 2000, he was commissioned by Irena Belle Productions to direct the movie The Vampire Hunters Club, featuring an all-star genre cast.
Born in Pecos, Texas, Don grew up in Chicago, IL. At age nine, already bitten by the film-making “bug,” he made Diplodocus at Large, the first of 41 amateur movies featuring dinosaurs, human monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Teenage Werewolf, etc.) and superheroes (Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, etc.) Some of these films made during the late 1960s (e.g., Spy Smasher vs. the Purple Monster) were eventually shown in theatres and on TV.
Moving to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California, Don professionally entered show business as an “extra” (a POW) in the movie Von Ryan’s Express (1965), the first of several such “roles.” He began his professional writing career in 1966, writing articles for and finally editing the magazine Modern Monsters. In 1967, after graduating from the University of Southern California with a BA degree (for Cinema) in Letters, Arts and Sciences, Don worked as a musician, singer and songwriter in The Penny Arkade, a rock band produced by “Monkee” Michael Nesmith. Shortly after that he briefly furthered his acting career, having a speaking role in a national television commercial starring Dick Clark.
However, most of Don’s professional life has been as a freelance writer. To date he has authored numerous motion picture and television scripts (Shazam!, Land of the Lost, and animation, e.g., Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, Transformers, G.I.Joe, Duck Tales, Jonny Quest, X-Men, others), comic-book scripts (Captain America, Tarzan, etc., including creating for Gold Key Dagar the Invincible, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor and Tragg and the Sky Gods), more than 35 novels and nonfiction books, also numerous short stories, articles, songs, album-liner notes, etc. The Dinosaur Dictionary (1972) and Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia (1997), two of Don’s many non-fiction books about dinosaurs, both were listed by the American Library Association among the best reference books of their years of publication. With The Dinosaur Dictionary Don created the much-imitated book format based upon an alphabetical listing of dinosaur names. Perhaps Don is best known for his novelization of the movie The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the nation’s No. 1 bestseller for almost two months, which to date (still in print) has sold over 3.5 million copies. In 1982 he created characters and back story for Mattel’s “Masters of the Universe” toy line. Among his more recent books is Chomper, an entry in the popular “Dinotopia” series.
Don produced, wrote and directed various videos (including the documentaries Dinosaur Movies and Hollywood Goes Ape! and the music-video compilation Dinosaur Tracks®), theatre and movie projects. He has worked as a consultant on numerous other video, film and TV projects, and was “Dinosaur Consultant” on Roger Corman’s movie Carnosaur (1993).
In 1990, Don and Pete Von Sholly founded Fossil Records, which has already produced a half dozen albums. These include Dinosaur Tracks®, More Dinosaur Tracks® and Dinosaur Tracks® Again, featuring paleontology-related rock music written mostly by Don (Dinodon Music/BMI), performed by Don and Pete (as the Iridium Band).
More recently, Don became president of Frontline Entertainment (www.frontlinefilms.com), for which he wrote, directed and co-produced the comedy/fantasy motion picture Dinosaur Valley Girls™, which has already achieved “cult movie” status, and Before La Brea, a documentary commissioned by the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Los Angeles. In 2000, he was commissioned by Irena Belle Productions to direct the movie The Vampire Hunters Club, featuring an all-star genre cast.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 12, 2018
First off, I really liked this book.
This is what vampires are about. Not sparkling, not emo, angsty, misunderstood teen icons.
No, this book is about an inhuman predator that feeds on human blood.
A monster lurks on Sunset Strip, and the swinging 60's provide a groovy backdrop to a piece of horror that predates Blacula.
Brother Blood weighs in at bit over 350 pages, but reads fast.
Donald Glut creates a world that takes psychedelic beauty and covers it in bloody action.
The story is fleshed out in enough detail to paint the scene, but no so much as to slow it down.
This is a fun read, a pulp read.
If you like old school monsters, and getting creeped out late at night when you hear the creak of a door slowly opening, then you will like this book.
This is what vampires are about. Not sparkling, not emo, angsty, misunderstood teen icons.
No, this book is about an inhuman predator that feeds on human blood.
A monster lurks on Sunset Strip, and the swinging 60's provide a groovy backdrop to a piece of horror that predates Blacula.
Brother Blood weighs in at bit over 350 pages, but reads fast.
Donald Glut creates a world that takes psychedelic beauty and covers it in bloody action.
The story is fleshed out in enough detail to paint the scene, but no so much as to slow it down.
This is a fun read, a pulp read.
If you like old school monsters, and getting creeped out late at night when you hear the creak of a door slowly opening, then you will like this book.
June 26, 2024
An homage to blaxploitation horror films such as Blacula. Glut sets his story in the late 1960s LA and makes the period feel pretty accurate. Told by three different first-person narrators the story begins with a conservative real-estate agent refusing to sell a run-down mansion in a white neighborhood to Black vampire Preston Duval because of redlining, bringing down a terrible vengeance.
Glut's novel is disturbing and problematic in so many interesting ways. The racial issues aren't ducked; they are out in front and profoundly uncomfortable. Redlining is bad, but in this case, the victim of the redlining is a sadistic vampire bent on mass murder. The almost all-white band of vampire hunters invading Watts to save the world from the evil Black man raises all sorts of disturbing resonances, especially today. Glut laces the text with enough anti-racist dialogue to indicate that he doesn't intend his book to be read as a Black Peril novel, but... The same vampire hunter driving a stake through his undead girlfriend is also the white man honor-killing his girl after she allows herself to be seduced by a powerful Black man. The titular Brother Blood doesn't have any of the noble gravitas of William Marshall's Prince Mamuwalde in Blacula. Brother Blood is a vicious gang thug who gains supernatural powers and intends to annihilate the white race. The white supremacist Chicago cops who assassinated Black Panther leader Fred Hampton probably thought they were the good guys, too. And yet Brother Blood is an all too plausible villain for a vampire novel. If Glut had made his vampire hunters Black Panthers, say, probably no one would have any problems with the story. But he didn't. In the final analysis, I don't read horror novels to be comfortable, and any fiction depicting the 1960s that deals with race should make the reader squirm.
On a separate issue, Glut's book brings up a perennial question about pastiche. This is a very competent, suspenseful horror novel. It is also incredibly derivative. His reworkings of period works are so obvious it's almost collage. In addition to Blacula, he's lifted tropes from Dark Shadows, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and many others. The typical reader of pastiches wants more of the same but refreshingly unique. Brother Blood is more of the same. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, but wish Glut had put a more unique spin on it.
Glut's novel is disturbing and problematic in so many interesting ways. The racial issues aren't ducked; they are out in front and profoundly uncomfortable. Redlining is bad, but in this case, the victim of the redlining is a sadistic vampire bent on mass murder. The almost all-white band of vampire hunters invading Watts to save the world from the evil Black man raises all sorts of disturbing resonances, especially today. Glut laces the text with enough anti-racist dialogue to indicate that he doesn't intend his book to be read as a Black Peril novel, but... The same vampire hunter driving a stake through his undead girlfriend is also the white man honor-killing his girl after she allows herself to be seduced by a powerful Black man. The titular Brother Blood doesn't have any of the noble gravitas of William Marshall's Prince Mamuwalde in Blacula. Brother Blood is a vicious gang thug who gains supernatural powers and intends to annihilate the white race. The white supremacist Chicago cops who assassinated Black Panther leader Fred Hampton probably thought they were the good guys, too. And yet Brother Blood is an all too plausible villain for a vampire novel. If Glut had made his vampire hunters Black Panthers, say, probably no one would have any problems with the story. But he didn't. In the final analysis, I don't read horror novels to be comfortable, and any fiction depicting the 1960s that deals with race should make the reader squirm.
On a separate issue, Glut's book brings up a perennial question about pastiche. This is a very competent, suspenseful horror novel. It is also incredibly derivative. His reworkings of period works are so obvious it's almost collage. In addition to Blacula, he's lifted tropes from Dark Shadows, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and many others. The typical reader of pastiches wants more of the same but refreshingly unique. Brother Blood is more of the same. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, but wish Glut had put a more unique spin on it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews