The Indian letter-writers, awaiting clients, fresh paper and carbons rolled into their machines, greeted Victor Crabbe with smiles and waved hands.

Indeed Cain hated his Brother, becauſe his own works were evil, and his Brothers righteous; and if thy Wife and Children have been offended with thee for this, they thereby ſhew themſelves to be implacable to good; and thou haſt delivered thy ſoul from their blood.

[…] an incensed political surgeon, who is not in much renown for his mercy, upon great provocations: who, without waiting for his death, will flay and dissect him alive; and to the view of mankind lay open all the disordered cells of his brain, the venom of his tongue, the corruption of his heart, and spots and flatuses of his spleen: and all this for threepence.

Like the deathless vampire who must repeat its stalk-and-kill cycle in order to satisfy a recurring blood hunger, the earliest film horrors cannibalized its literary ancestry again and again.