Vampires in popular culture

There is an entire genre of literature dedicated to vampires.

Vampires in popular culture includes vampire ballet, films, literature, music, opera, theatre, opera, paintings and video games.

Comic books and graphic novels

Vampirella #1 (September 1969). Cover art by Frank Frazetta.

Films

Main article: Vampire films
A promotional poster for the 1922 film Nosferatu.
The 1956 Vampire Moth was the first Japanese film in the vampire genre.
Christopher Lee portrayed Count Dracula in the celebrated Hammer Horror series of films, starting with Dracula in 1958.

The Vampire (1913, directed by Robert G. Vignola), also co-written by Vignola, is the earliest vampire film.

These were derived from the writer Rudyard Kipling who was inspired by a vampiress painted by Philip Burne-Jones, an image typical of the era in 1897, to write his poem 'The Vampire'. Like much of Kipling's verse it was incredibly popular, and its refrain: A fool there was . . . , describing a seduced man, became the title of the popular film A Fool There Was that made Theda Bara a star, the poem being used in its publicity. On this account, in early American slang the femme fatale was called a vamp, short for vampiress.[1]

A vampire features in the landmark Nosferatu (1922 Germany, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau), an unlicensed version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Stoker estate sued the production and won, leading to the destruction of most copies of the film. It would be painstakingly restored in 1994 by a team of European scholars from the five surviving prints that had escaped destruction. Nosferatu is the first film to feature a Vampire's death by sunlight, which formerly only weakened vampires.

The next classic treatment of the vampire legend was in Universal's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. Five years after the release of the film, Universal released Dracula's Daughter, a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, Son of Dracula, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. followed in 1943. Despite his apparent death in the 1931 film, the Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: 1944's House of Frankenstein, 1945's House of Dracula and 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. While Lugosi had played a vampire in two other movies during the 1930s and 1940s, it was only in this final film that he played Count Dracula onscreen for the second (and last) time.

Dracula was reincarnated for a new generation in the celebrated Hammer Horror series of films, starring Christopher Lee as the Count. The first of these films Dracula (1958) was followed by seven sequels. Lee returned as Dracula in all but two of these.

A distinct subgenre of vampire films, ultimately inspired by Le Fanu's Carmilla explored the topic of the lesbian vampire. The first of these was Blood and Roses (1960) by Roger Vadim. More explicit lesbian content was provided in Hammer Studios Karnstein trilogy. The first of these, The Vampire Lovers, (1970), starring Ingrid Pitt and Madeleine Smith, was a relatively straightforward re-telling of LeFanu's novella, but with more overt violence and sexuality. Later films in this subgenre such as Vampyres (1974) became even more explicit in their depiction of sex, nudity and violence.

Beginning with the absurd Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) the vampire film has often been the subject of comedy. The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) by Academy Award winner Roman Polanski was a notable parody of the genre. Other comedic treatments, of variable quality, include Old Dracula (1974) featuring David Niven as a lovelorn Dracula, Love at First Bite (1979 USA) featuring George Hamilton and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995 USA, directed by Mel Brooks) with Canadian Leslie Nielsen giving it a comic twist.

Another development in some vampire films has been a change from supernatural horror to science fictional explanations of vampirism. The Last Man on Earth (Italy 1964, directed by Ubaldo Ragona) and The Omega Man (1971 USA, directed by Boris Sagal), both based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, are two examples. Vampirism is explained as a kind of virus in David Cronenberg's Rabid (1976 Canada), Red-Blooded American Girl (1990 Canada, directed by David Blyth) and Michael and Peter Spierig's Daybreakers (2009 United States).

Race has been another theme, as exemplified by the blaxploitation picture Blacula (1972) and several sequels.

Since the time of Bela Lugosi's Dracula (1931) the vampire, male or female, has usually been portrayed as an alluring sex symbol. There is, however, a very small subgenre, pioneered in Murnau's seminal Nosferatu (1922) in which the vampire is depicted in the hideous lineaments of the creature of European folklore. Max Schrek's disturbing portrayal of this role in Murnau's film was copied by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's remake Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). In Shadow of the Vampire (2000, directed by E. Elias Merhige), Willem Dafoe plays Max Schrek, himself, though portrayed here as an actual vampire. Dafoe's character is the ugly, disgusting creature of the original Nosferatu. The main tradition has, however, been to portray the vampire in terms of a predatory sexuality. Christopher Lee, Delphine Seyrig, Frank Langella, and Lauren Hutton are just a few examples of actors who brought great sex-appeal into their portrayal of the vampire.

A major character in most vampire films is the vampire slayer, of which Stoker's Abraham Van Helsing is a prototype. However, killing vampires has changed. Where Van Helsing relied on a stake through the heart, in Vampires 1998 USA, directed by John Carpenter, Jack Crow (James Woods) has a heavily armed squad of vampire hunters, and in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992 USA, directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui), writer Joss Whedon (who created TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spinoff Angel) attached The Slayer, Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson in the film, Sarah Michelle Gellar in the TV series), to a network of Watchers and mystically endowed her with superhuman powers.

The 1973 Serbian horror film Leptirica ("The She-Butterfly") was inspired by the story of Sava Savanović.

Other notable Vampire movies also include the following, but not limited to:

Folklore

Gaming

GURP games

Trading Card games

Video games

The 1986 French video game Vampire was one of the first video games to feature vampires.

Video game series featuring vampires primarily use Dracula or Dracula-inspired characters. Konami's Castlevania series is the longest running series which uses the Dracula legend, though its writers have made their own alterations to the legend. An exception to this trend is the Legacy of Kain video game series, which features vampires set in an entirely fictional world called Nosgoth. Video game series such as Konami's Castlevania and role-playing games such as Vampire: the Masquerade have been especially successful and influential. Other vampires seen in games include:

Manga

Music

Artists

Theatres des Vampires is a gothic black metal band fully concentrating on vampire themes.

Songs

"Vampires Are Alive" was a Swiss entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2007.

Paintings

The Vampire, by Philip Burne-Jones.

'The Vampire' (1897) by Philip Burne-Jones depicts an alluring female vampire crouched over a male victim. The model was the famous actress Mrs Patrick Campbell. This femme fatale inspired a poem of the same name (also 1897) by Rudyard Kipling. Like much of Kipling's verse it was incredibly popular, and its inspired many early silent films whose 'vampires' were actually 'vamps' rather than being supernatural undead blood-suckers. The poem's refrain: A fool there was . . . , describing a seduced man, became the title of the popular film A Fool There Was (1915) which made Theda Bara a star, and the archetypal cinematic 'vamp'.[2]

Television

(This isn't an exhaustive list, as it is not including all the Netflix, and Cable TV vampire series, past, present or current available on DVD, streamed or watched by many live).

Theatre

Other vampire references

Many regional vampire myths, or other creatures similar to or related to vampires have appeared in popular culture.

Darkseekers

Moroi

Penanggalan

Film

Both Penanggalan and Mystics in Bali feature actor W.D. Mochtar as the priest who fights the Penanggalan. Both The Witch With Flying Head and Mystics in Bali depict an innocent transformed into a Penanggalan against her will. In the former film, there is an effort to save her, and her attempt at suicide upon learning her condition is thwarted. In the latter film, she is considered irredeemable, and her neck is spiked to destroy her. Both characters are monstrous only at night and unaware of their nocturnal behavior until informed.

Print media

Other

Shtriga

Strigoi

Books

Games

Movies

Music

Television

Strix

The Stirge was presented as a popular monster in Dungeons and Dragons. In the game it took the form of a many-legged flying creature which sucked the blood from its victims through a sharp, tubular beak.

A version of the striga makes an appearance in The Witcher (video game) based on the works of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. As a demonic undead creature, which transforms from the corpse of a dead child conceived via incest, striga in the Witcher's universe doesn't look like insects or vampires but looks similar to a ghoul with a muscular quadrupedal body, big claws, and a fang-filled mouth.

The strix make an appearance in the Vampire: the Requiem historical book Requiem for Rome. In contrast to the more traditional vampires presented in the line, the strix are disembodied spirits who commonly take the shape of owls and can possess both humans and torpored vampires. It is rumored that the strix restored Remus to undeath, and corrupted a sixth clan of vampires who were destroyed en masse. The strix believed themselves to be betrayed by the vampires of Rome, especially those of the Julii clan, and swore to bring about their ruin. They reappear in Night Horrors: Wicked Dead as heralds of disaster, mainly unbound by their former oath (although they still occasionally pursue such activities for personal reasons). Immensely amoral libertines, they view vampires clinging to humanity as weak, and as such will often serve as tempters in order to make them lose themselves to the Beast.

Strix are also described in the GURPS third edition Sourcebook for Vampires Blood Types. They are described as witches who, having made pacts with dark entities gained the ability to become blood drinking birds at night. What their pacts with these dark forces require of them is not described.

Wurdulac

See also

References

  1. ↑ Per the Oxford English Dictionary, vamp is originally English, used first by G. K. Chesterton, but popularized in the American silent film The Vamp, starring Enid Bennett
  2. ↑ David J. Skal "Fatal Image: The Artist, the Actress and "The Vampire" in David J. Skal (ed) (2001) Vampires: Encounters With The Undead: 223-257
  3. ↑ Legend of the Five Rings,Five Rings Publishing Group, 1997

External links

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