Judging Books By Their Covers: The Vampire Curse

Today in aesthetic central: Marcia Goes Gothic. Let’s get lost with her.

The Vampire Curse by Daoma Winston

Published: 1971, Paperback Library

Cover Artist: Victor Kalin

Just looking – ♪ Oh yes, I wonder / What she’s doing tonight / Oh-oh, I wonder what she’s doing tonight ♪

What it makes me think – Nancy Drew meets The Brady Bunch meets Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, and it’s all as camp as it could possibly be in a 1970s kind of way. What a mouthful, right? Yes, I know, that’s not supposed to be Marcia Brady, but that’s the impression I get. I can see the tagline now: She used to just want her own room, now she wants something dark, something sinister…something cursed.

Victor Kalin was the cover artist, and one website associated some of the following tags with him: Mystery, Skull, Paperback, Dangerous Women, Temptress, Crime, and Adult Reading, among others. Well, not all of them would apply here, but the mystery element is strong. The illustration is dark, detailed, and rich with the subliminal macabre we find in Gothic pulp covers, and…what do you know? Look up there in the upper left-hand corner. Yes, we’re working with Gothic fiction. I still dig it. Maybe I should create another section for Gothic to go with the Fang and Bullet categories.

It looks like they used Bookman Swash for the title. I associate this font with words like psychedelic and tacky, and that would make sense because Bookman Swash was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. I don’t like yellow for titles, but given the illustration’s color palette, what else are you going to do? It works here.

Would I buy it? I don’t think so, but you can find it here.

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