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Horror: Vampires at the moviesThe term vampire is believed to be of Slav origin, and refers to a creature returned from the dead to suck the blood of people while they sleep. Bram Stoker's novel draws upon Gothic horror traditions, as well as the emerging Victorian ghost story style. He juxtaposes a fantastic Eastern European setting (Transylvania), part of the classic Gothic pattern, with familiar locations like London and Whitby. The story owes a partial debt to Lord Byron's The Vampyre, which was written at the same European holiday as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It was also inspired by le Fanu's Carmilla about a female vampire ('vamp') who preys on women. The story of dracula Count Dracula, a 500-year-old vampire, leaves Transylvania in search of fresh blood. He sails for England, accompanied by boxes of his native soil in which he must sleep by day. On the journey, he kills the entire crew. Once in England, two young women fal under his spell. Lucy soon becomes a vampire, and Mina begins to fall under his spell but is saved by Van Helsing, a wise scientist. Historical origins There really was a Count Dracula. Vlad Tepes was a 15th Century Romanian prince. His father was known as Dracul (signifying either order of the Dragon or The Devil - possibly both!) and Vlad called himself son of Dracul - Draculea. Vlad was also known as Vlad the Impaler because of his tendency to skewer his enemies on the battlefield. However, it' s impossible to say what debt, if any Stoker owes to these semi-mythological tales. Today Dracula is the biggest-selling novel in the world, translated into many foreign languages and allegedly the inspiration behind more than 700 films. It has always been a difficult challenge to translate to screen, however. Stoker wrote his novel in parallel diary form, not as a linear narrative.
Nosferatu was the first ever vampire movie, and owed a great deal to Bram Stoker's novel. The basic story and characters are all here, but the domestic action has been relocated from Britain to Wisborg in Germany and the characters have been renamed. By making these changes, Murnau hoped to avoid having to pay Stoker's estate for the rights to the story. Max Schreck plays Count Orlok, perhaps the most grotesque cinema vampire ever, an inhuman creation more rat-like than bat-like. Indeed, the word Nosferatu is derived from
the Greek nosophoros or plague carrier, and this element of his character is woven into the plot. Crucially, he lacks any of Dracula's urbane charm: this is a monster, plain and simple. Murnau: an expressionist film-maker Expressionism is 'emotional art' - a form of artistic creation that exagerrates feelings through an artificial or stylised representation of reality. Munch's painting The Scream is one of the best-known examples of expressionist painting - and a perfect visual definition of emotions rendered through art. F W Murnau was an Expressionist cinema pioneer, playing games with light and framing, and using real locations rather than sets whenever he could (a rare expense in those days). He also deployed some of the earliest ever special effects, including a kind of stop-motion to make Orlok rise earily from his coffin, and negative photography for Hutter's mad carriage ride. Interestingly for a silent film, Murnau made very limited use of titles in Nosferatu, believing the story would almost stand on its visuals alone. He took great care to frame Orlok repeatedly in a way that would strike fear into his audience, and his use of shadow has inspired many of his successors as they strived to make the perfect vampire movie. A question of copyright Nosferatu was nearly lost forever, after Stoker's widow took issue with Murnau's plagiarism, and demanded that all prints be destroyed. One survived, allowing us to marvel at this early experiment in the horror genre today.
“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.” There have been countless cinematic Draculas, each presented in their own way and for their own time. But ask any eight-year-old to describe Dracula, and they'll give you a Hungarian accent, a cape and slicked-back dark hair. That is, they'll give you Browning's Dracula, as played by Bela Lugosi. This is not a vampire designed to revolt his audience in the way that Orlok was in Nosferatu. Lugosi, fresh from playing the role on Broadway, plays Dracula as a theatrical gentleman in an Opera cloak, with a penetrating stare lit with pencil-spots which is hard not to snigger at today. In this first ever talking horror film, it is ironic that the Hungarian Lugosi (who had to learn his lines phonetically) delivers more appopriately convincing line readings than many of his fellow cast-members. His delivery is almost a parody of gentility. This Dracula is an hypnotic seducer of women: elegant, exotic and stylish. He may be friends with wolves and be able to transform into a bat, but he also knows how to beguile a women, and none are safe before him. This being the 1930s, there is no blood, and even the characteristic teeth and bite-marks are absent. The genius of the film may lie in what audiences thought they saw, rather than what was actually put on screen. The film came about thanks to Universal founder Carl Laemmle's fascination with the horror genre, and Stoker's novel. He intended Phantom of the Opera star Lon Chaney Snr to take the role, but Chaney died of Cancer in 1930. Browning's legacy The mise-en-scene of Browning's Dracula is a delight. The first look at the castle interior in particular is breathtaking, and the rustic, crumbling, misty version of central Europe became a staple representation in cinema for many years. It owed more than a little to the New York stage play of Dracula from which Browning had borrowed his lead actor. Interestingly, Browning's cameraman, Freund, worked with F W Murnau on The Last Laugh. Institutionally, the film was a huge success for Universal Studios, who built a vampire franchise on its cloak-tales, and added Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and the Mummy to its roster in the years that followed. Lugosi, however, only played the role one more time, in the comedy-horror Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (Barton, 1948) . He died, after a long struggle with substance abuse, in 1956, and was buried in full vampire costume. Ultimately, over-familiarity with horror monsters bred contempt, and the vampire genre sub-died out. It would next rear its head in the mother-country, England, courtesy of Hammer Films...
When Britain's Hammer Studios acquired the rights to Dracula in the 1950s, they planned to restore the lordly vampire from the shadows and bring him into the bright of technicolour. Their low-budget approach to film-making used garish colours by today's standards, and were the first to reveal the true bloodiness of Dracula's dining habits. They also weren't afraid to be more overt with the Count's sexuality. Terence Fisher directed Christopher Lee, who, despite recent career revival in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. will go to his grave as the most persistent Dracula on celluloid. Alongside him, an equally notable Peter Cushing as vampire hunter Van Helsing. Lee played Dracula with a mixture of suavity and savagery: one minute a perfectly-spoken gentleman, the next a ferocious monster consumed by blood-lust. However, Hammer knew a golden goose when they saw it, and went on to make another 12 vampire films - roughly one a year until 1973. Lee himself played Dracula another six times, and while he personified the vampire for a generation of movie-goers, the overkill drove a stake through the heart of genre. Dracula had become more camp than vamp.
A recently divorced mother moves to the seaside Californian town of Santa Carla with her two sons. The oldest, Michael (Jason Patric) becomes involved with a local biker gang hiding a dangerous secret: they are vampires led by Kiefer Sutherland. The younger son, Sam (Corey Haim) meets a pair of teenage vampire hunters. While Sam works hard to wipe out the mosters in town, Michael is falling in love with a creature of the night, and slowly becoming one himself. This feature from Joel Schumacher appears to revel in the hedonism that preoccupies the forever teenage vampires of Santa Carla. This is also a funny film - the shocks are calculated for laughs and the vampires are almost as much heroes as villains. In the climactic showdown, the boys use bows and arrows and water-pistols loaded with Holy water as weapons. Stylistically the film is very obviously a 1980s production: the music, the hair, the costumes - it's all here. It's a triumph of (limited) style over substance, but does lay down the foundations for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This was the first time that teenagers had been vampires; it wouldn't be the last.
Although this film is called Bram Stoker's Dracula (to lend it some novelistic authenticity), this is very much Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, and of its time. In many respects it is closer to the novel than its counterparts: the diary form is referred to several times, with character voice-overs narrating letters and so on. It also annoyed lovers of the novel by tacking on a Vlad the Impaler prologue, giving Dracula (Gary Oldman) a history and quest that he does not have in the novel, and having Mina (Winona Ryder) kill the Count as an act of merciful release. Whie purists objected, the origin story gave Dracula pathos, a history which the audience could sympathise with. Despite transforming into a giant bat, a wolf-monster and even a cloud of green mist, he ceases to be a classic monster and becomes a flawed, tragic hero trying to regain a lost love. The movie tagline speaks volumes. This is an operatic film, in which Dracula and his nemesis, Van Helsing, are particularly over the top. Coppola chose to shoot the entire film on sets (exactly opposite to Murnau) and this gives the film a theatrical and claustrophobic feel. This is a film with style, and won Academy Awards and Baftas for costume, make-up and visual design. Intertextuality and contexts Coppola tips his hat to earlie Draculas. His use of shadow repeatdly echoes Murnau, while Jonathan's (Keanu Reaves) journey up the Borgo pass and Oldman's accent are clear nods to Browning and Lugosi. This was also the first Dracula in which the sexuality was explicit. When Mina drinks from Dracula's chest, the sexual connotation is obvious. The abundance of blood is also significant: this was the AIDS era, a disease spread by sex, or the exchange of blood. Becoming HIV positive meant living under a death sentence with no obvious end in sight, which echoes the concept of the undead. Secularism also invaded the film. Whereas Hammer's and Universal's Draculas had always been at the mercy of the Cross, Coppola's Dracula sets the cross on fire. The trouble with Coppola's film is that it isn't very scary. The oppulence and theatricality overcomes the drama, and nothing is left to the audience's imagination. The contrived shooting style calls attention to itself - audiences notice the film-making process, breaking their involvement in the narrative.
In San Francisco, a young journalist follows is enticed into an anonymous room whose resident tells him that he is a vampire, and more than 200 years old. Louis (Brad Pitt) unfolds the story of his youth when, as a dissolute land-owning 24-year-old in 18th Century New Orleans, he was found by Lestat (Tom Cruise), a vampire, who bit him. But even after becoming a vampire, Louis remains miserable, until Lestat turns a little girl, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), into an undead companion for him. By telling the story from the point of view of the vampire, Anne Rice's 1976 novel invited readers to feel sympathy for vampires, condemned to walk the earth by night, inhabit never-aging bodies, and murder to live. Neil Jordan's film version invites similar sympathies. Starring two of the 'prettiest' actors in Hollywood, it also presented a bisexual subtext that was toned down from the novel. The film was a one-off modest success, but had significant influence. The relationship between Buffy's vampire quartet: Angelus, Spike, Darla and Drusilla closely echoes that of Lestat, Louis and Claudia, and in the brooding reluctant vampire of Louisewe find our template for Angel, the vampire with a soul. IMDB on Interview With The Vampire
Blade started life as a Marvel comic-book character created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan as early as 1973. The premise for his power as a vampire/human hybrid ('Daywalker') is that his mother was bitten while in labour, leaving him immune to vampirism. He was also originally a black British Londoner, an origin changed for the feature film. The comic book narrative also has him joining forces with the descendents of Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing at various times, elements not used in the film which was relocated to Chicago. The character was reinvented in other ways for the film, not least by making him a vampire/human hybrid with the strength of vampires but none of their weaknesses. This narrative decision endowed the character with super-human strength, making him a more fantastic character, and more credible superhero to mainstream audiences. Like so many superheroes, he has a sidekick (Whistler) and a bunch of mortal (or relatively immortal, as it happens) enemies - the contemporary vampire society. Modern vampires While Blade is represented as someone brought up in the ghetto streets (the terse dialogue, swagger and back-story provided by Whistler), the campires he fights are part of a very different sub-culture. We meet them first in a slaughterhouse that they have converted into a nightclub in which hundreds of ever-young vampires shower in blood. Their leaders, meanwhile, sit around boardroom tables in business suits, their winged, high-backed chairs a visual echo of Dracula's iconic cloak. Teenagers and fat-cat businessmen, then, are 'bloodsuckers', focused on their own desires to the exclusion of all else. The vampires are also given a mythology, with the story of the first in the Blade trilogy constructed around a search for the 'blood god', La Magra, which Blade's enemy Deacon Frost (who sired his mother) aims to become. This is a reversal on more traditional vampire narratives, in which it is the vampire hunters who have the rich mythology. Blade is not encumbered by any trappings of spirituality or destiny: to him, vampirism is a genetic mutation, not a supernatural phenomenon. Is this a reflection of our increasingly secular society? Generically and Institutionally, Blade's success at the box office ($130million domestic) was hugely influential: had it flopped, it's doubtful that X-Men would have proceeded, and the modern renaissance of the superhero genre (with its dependence on Marvel characters) might have spluttered and failed. Conicidentally, his appearance also made vampires darkly fun, a direction that Buffy would gradually head in in the years that followed. The artistic look of the film was also influential: The Matrix (1999) in particular is costumed in a similar way (Blade's long black coat, the all-white costume of a secondary female character) and Deacon Frost dodges bullets in a way that Neo would later turn into an art form. It's also worth noting screenwriter David Goyer's obsession with bats - he would return to even greater success as the writer of Batman Begins in 2005.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Sarah Michelle Gellar starred as Buffy Summers, a 16-year-old girl with the strength and skill to hunt vampires. She lived in Sunnydale, a suburan Californian town conveniently built over 'The Hellmouth', a focus for demonic energy. With the help of her close friends, Willow (Alyson Hannigan ) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon), the guardianship (and fractured love) of vampire-with-a-soul Angel (David Boreanaz) and the guidance of school librarian-cum-demon expert Rupert Giles (Anthony Head) she spent seven years putting her back into the notion of 'girl power'. Buffy was created by Joss Whedon, who'd seen his original idea for a vamp-dusting teen turned into a lacklustre feature film starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland and Ritger Hauer. In colliding the worlds of shallow teenage-hood and ancient evil, his script was clearly influenced by Schumacher's Lost Boys. However, Whedon played with stereotypes in Buffy. Willow was a female nerd while Xander was a handsome, loyal coward. Buffy herself was a stunningly attractive former bimbo who was adapting to her destiny, while repeatedly falling for the worst kind of men. Alongside these pivotal characters were a posse of empty-headed bimbos (two of whom evolved into regulars on Buffy and then Ange) and a nervy, British intellectual straight out of the Hugh Grant school of awkwardness.
Buffy was a rare television treat, in that comedy and tragedy were never far apart. Witty one-liners and idealised teen-speak sat side-by-side with saving the world and the growing angst that the heroine began to feel as the weight of the world bore down on her youing shoulders. The series ran for seven years, and Whedon gained plaudits for taking brave risks with his show. One episode (Hush) was conducted in complete silence, while another was a musical. Buffy magically gained a teenaged younger sister (presumably to keep younger viewers happy as the cast aged) and a second re-ensouled vampire as love interest. Willow discovered her lesbian side, and a talent for dangerous, addictive witchcraft, and the stories became so dark that, towards the end, when Buffy was brought back from the dead, she repeatedly wished she'd been left to rest in peace.
Whedon is said to have wanted Buffy to be a "feminist role model for kids". Her courage, strength and wit certainly support that reading - although casting Sarah Michelle Gellar in the role encouraged a great many males happy to be dominated by anyone who looked like she did! See Buffy the Patriarchy Slayer or slayage.tv for more thoughts on this topic. Vampires do not do well out of Buffy! By the time that Buffy comes along, vampires have been weakened almost beyond recognition. They're good for a quick fight, but for all their inhuman strength they remain surprisingly vulnerable to any sharp splinter of wood. Their debt to The Lost Boys was obvious both in the regular presence of teenagers-turned-vampires, but also in the way they 'vamped up', their faces transforming to reval the demon within. Arguably Whedon's greatest contribution to vampire lore, however, was his decision to give one - and then another - a soul. Angel received his courtesy of a gipsy curse, and is now haunted by the evil he did as Angelus, the worst of vampires. By contrast Spike, a former hunting partner of Angelus, requests a soul after falling in love with Buffy. Both encouraged the audience to view these blood-sucking beasts with sympathy, and encouraged an ideological reading of forgiveness and redemption. Angel After three years on Buffy, the character of Angel got his own show. Angel, a vampire cursed to wander the earth with his human soul intact, is on a quest for redemption. With the help of fellow Buffy cast-offs Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) and another Brit-twit, Wesley Wyndham-Price (Alexis Denisof) he sets up a mystical detective agency seeking to put right the wrongs of the world. Many of these are perpetrated by corporate law firm Wolfram & Hart, whose 'senior partners' are unseen, heavy-duty demons opposed to the 'powers that be' who attempt to guide Angel's path through prophetic visions given to Cordelia. A vampire who can't go out by day and is almost self-flagellatory in his desire to put right the many wrongs he committed as 'Angelus' made for an unlikely but appealing hero. The series was darker than Buffy, and lacked its quick wit. The hero frequently doubted himself, and the audience was frequently reminded of his past in historic flash-backs that owed much to Interview with the Vampire. As the series matured, Angel gained a reluctant black side-kick, gained - and gave up - a petulant teenage son, alienated his friends and watched as three of his fellow vigilantes were killed in the line of duty. Just as Buffy arguably presented a feminist ideology, so Angel challenged traditional storytelling and character devices. Notably, Angel comes to realise that he can never earn back his humanity, and must be satisfied by the good he can do now, regardless of what waits for him in the hereafter. Also, after several apocalypses have been averted, it becomes clear that the real apocalypse is the slow, gradual degradation of society. IMDB on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
Stephen Sommers had already resurrected the classic Universal Mummy (The Mummy and The Mummy Returns) when, in 2004, he decided to return the rest of the family. Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) was here re-cast, not as a figure of science, but as a Catholic action-man, a Victorian Indiana Jones. Make no mistake - this is an action-adventure film borrowing from horror conventions, not a horror film. The wolfman makes a brief, tragic appearance, and Frankenstein's monster is presented with nobility and courage, but Dracula remains the monster to be defeated. Richard Roxburgh lacks the stature to really sell the Count, but some neat special effects reveal the monster within. Sommers also sets the seal on our secularisation - his Dracula grabs hold of a cross as though it's some kind of dare, and it melts in his hand.
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