A Retrospective of Vampires in the Movies, Part 1

Does it seem like there are a lot of movies being made about vampires these days? There may be, what with the influence of the Twilight and "True Blood" film and TV series, respectively, (both adapted from book series - making them marketable), and all the levels of release nowadays (wide, limited, cable-TV original movies, direct to DVD). When you think about it though, there have been films coming out involving vampires for quite some time.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Whenever movies have been made with vampires as a major plot point there will always be some element of horror, just because of the fact that traditionally, vampires drink blood. To the casual film watcher the sight of blood being drunk, whether a human character is killed for it or not, equals horror ten times out of ten. But from that starting point, the vampire film has been combined with nearly every other genre besides horror. The exceptions might be the vampire-western (unless you count Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark from 1987, which takes place in the dusty American west, but in the then present-day 1980s) or vampire-musicals (unless you count that Dracula puppet musical within 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall).

Before I get into my individual film discussions, let me say that while this retrospective turned out to be lengthy, it is by no means comprehensive. This is because there are just to many vampire movies out there to see, nor do I want to see them all. There are many that just aren’t any good, not even by cult-film or fun b-movie standards. Even among the ones I do want to see eventually, I did not wish to see all of them as a prerequisite for writing about the subject, although I did see a handful of them for the first time recently just for fun.

To start with I will mention the original vampire movie, F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu (1922) [aka Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror]. Nosferatu is a must-see for fans of the vampire sub-genre, and one should not be scared off by it being a silent film. It is very rewarding to the viewer as Murnau incorporates the speeding up of the film to give his Dracula character an eerie effect. The film isn't exactly black and white, since the print was given tints of varying colors, depending on the scene. I have not yet seen Shadow of the Vampire (2000), which was a dramatized account of the making of Nosferatu, starring John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Defoe as the eccentric Max Schreck, the actor who played Count Orlok/Nosferatu so well that viewers suspected he was a vampire in real life.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu

 There seems to have been at least a few versions of the life story of the Dracula character in almost every decade since the 20's, but I'm not going to dwell on those- except to say I remember (haven’t seen it in close to 15 years) Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992) [aka Bram Stoker’s Dracula], as being and well made and quite chilling, especially the performance of Gary Oldman in the title role. Also, I have to admit that I have not seen the versions starring Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or Leslie Neilsen.

Certain genres tended to dominate vampire movies for whole decades for the most part. Until the 1980s it was mainly melodramatic horror, or even science fiction. Adaptations of Richard Matheson's book "I Am Legend" fit the bill of the latter, as stories of a lone man surviving in a post-apocalyptic world where mutant humans exhibiting at least a few classic attributes and behaviors of vampires that come out in hordes at night. The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price was the first adaptation and the one where the mutants call back the most to classic vampires (can't see their reflection in a mirror, repelled by garlic and crucifixes, as well as having a hunger for blood. The vampires also move around like the running kind of zombies and seem to have lost intelligence in many cases. This vampirism is an infectious disease which caused the downfall of humanity when a cure couldn't be found--a cure which the main character continues to pursue.

The next adaptation, The Omega Man (1971) starring Charlton Heston, keeps this premise, except that the mutants aren't traditional vampires except that they are sensitive to light and only come out at night. The albino mutants act as an anarchist cult called "The Family" with an evil genius type leader played by Anthony Zerbe.  The 2007 version, I Am Legend, starring Will Smith did not bring to mind vampires at all, mainly because the CGI-rendered infected were more animal-like and it wasn't initially apparent that they were once regular people.

The 1980’s brought vampires into comedies. Foremost among these were the teen comedies Once Bitten (1985) starring a young Jim Carrey, My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987) with Robert Sean Leonard as that best friend, and the cult classic Fright Night (1985), starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, and Roddy McDowall. The first two listed above each involved puberty-based themes of young men in high school having run-ins with older women (cougar vampires) in need of their blood. The guys then go through changes...into undead vampires. Hilarity ensues.

I finally saw the other one, Fright Night, on DVD last year. It’s a story of a teenager named Charley who discovers that a vampire has set up shop in the house next door. It’s up to him, his girlfriend, his best friend “Evil Ed,” and his Obi-Wan Kenobi-type mentor, Peter Vincent (the local washed-up actor/scary movie TV host) to stop him. Fright Night does a good job of balancing tense feelings of danger from the suave vampire next door with dialogue-based comedy. Near the climax of the movie, action and make-up and horror effects really take center stage. It works well as a teen horror-comedy and as 80’s nostalgia. I look forward to seeing the remake of Fright Night that came out in 2011 starring Colin Farrell in the vampire role, Anton Yelchin (Chekhov in the 2009 Star Trek film), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin from Superbad), and David Tennant as Peter Vincent (a Vegas magician in the remake).

Vampire's Kiss (1988) is an 80’s movie that has a very satisfying ending that I'll make sure not to spoil in any way. It's main character, played by Nicolas Cage, is a little older than the teens in the above 80’s comedies. He’s a young publishing executive who is slowly going through a change after he has a run-in with a bat in his New York City apartment, followed by repeated encounters with a dominating vampiric seductress played by Jennifer Beals. He has what appear to be mood swings, but could also be his own cruel mysogonistic game that he is playing on his office assistant, played by Maria Conchita Alonso. This subplot is all about the search for a document that has been misfiled. The film is part serious psychological thriller and part dark comedy. Cage dials up the melodrama and weirdness factor way up in this movie, and it totally works. Vampire's Kiss explores themes and tone that give it a strong resemblance to American Psycho (2000), which was set in the 80s, and I'd be a surprised if it didn't have an influence on that movie's director, Mary Harron.

To be continued...