It’s hard to think, as an autumnal chill descends and the hue of green outside starts to degrade, that something horrible is happening! At the time of year when summer fades and daylight falters at an earlier and earlier hour, it is no wonder that horror films take on an especially potent dimension. There are many ghouls and critters lurking in the elongating shadows, but a personal favourite of mine is the vampire.
Existing as a mythical figure in Europe for centuries, it was not until Bram Stoker penned his novel Dracula in 1897 that the vampire figure launched a whole genre. It didn’t take long before this fanged creature started to haunt the screen. Ever since those earliest appearances, vampires have loomed large in cinematic history.
The earliest film in the vampire genre is, to this day, still one of the best. Nosferatu was directed by F.W. Murnau in 1922. Pioneering the horror genre, Nosferatu features images of terror that continue to disgust and disturb even today: the pallid and lizard-like Count Orlok is capable of crushing you and corrupting you with only his shadow.
In 1931 the Dracula film was made. Famous actor Bela Lugosi, who had already been playing the Dracula role on stage, was tasked with finally bringing to the screen this formidable character. In what has become renowned as one of the finest performances of early cinema, Lugosi depicts with great vigour this cold undead being.
These early vampire films are some of the most classical horror films in cinema. The originally tropes of horror were established through these films. When we think of the horror genre, it is usually the conventions that were established in these films that we think of first: the creepy figure who hides in the shadows; the incarnation of evil that might corrupt and penetrate the innocent civilian; someone wagering with the devil for an immortal pleasure-filled life on earth.
Jump ahead 60 or 70 years and vampire films have taken on quite a different dimension.
Some of my favourite vampire films come from the 1990s and early 2000s:The Addiction (1995), Trouble Every Day (2001), Nadja (1994) and Let The Right One In (2008). In the decades both before and after the turn of the millennium, vampires seem to make an unusual return to popularity in cinema, becoming a favourite recurring subject for more auteur, independent film productions. In these films, the perspective and the emphasis of the “horror” has changed from the films of early cinema. The “horror” of the vampire seems now to be located somewhere slightly different.
One of the primary differences one notices in these newer vampire films is the protagonist. In the 1920s and 30s the vampire was a hidden away character. The main characters would visit an old castle or a haunted house. It was evident that something or someone terrible was lurking, but it took a while before the actual vampire character would erupt from the dark.
Compare that with, for instance, Trouble Every Day and The Addiction. In these films the central characters are themselves vampires from almost the very start of the film. In Trouble Every Day, Vincent Gallo plays one of the newlywed main characters. The film begins on a plane as this couple travel to Paris for their honeymoon. It is implied that Gallo’s character has already started feeling some strange symptoms of vicious desire before the film has even begun. Similarly, in The Addiction, Lili Taylor plays the role of a philosophy grad student who is attacked on the street at night in one of the opening scenes and develops a hunger for human blood that she feels increasingly ambivalent about.
As these films progress through the story, we see the remorse of each character grow. These films make the vampire the main character of the film so the audience is more likely to identify with these horrid characters. What is compelling about each film is the immense feeling of tension and self-disgust that these characters feel. The charming evil of the earlier vampires is replaced by a kind of anguished guilt.
These more recent vampire movies reveal a strange shift in our cultural anxieties about evil. Vampire films of the 20s and 30s seemed to locate the terror of evil and sin in a creepy figure who exists locked up far away in the mountains. Evil was something “over there” that we should try to avoid. Contemporary vampire films seem to locate that source of evil more close by, as if it might emanate from the bodies of everyday people: our brothers, cousins, friends, or ourselves. Theyreveal the extent to which nowadays we harbour a greater fear that we ourselves might be the wretched horrid ghouls scorching the earth and causing devastation everywhere. The desires that pour out of our own bodies are those for which we might be most afraid.
Regardless of how you see it, there will always be something frightening about these garlic-fearing immortals, and they will likely haunt our screens for many years to come.