Vampire Films

Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema took a look at vampire films. Given the recent release of Dracula Untold, the first half of the show considered some notable adaptations of Bram Stoker’s character and the second half looked at a variety of vampire movies, demonstrating the flexibility of this subgenre.

Here is a summary of the films discussed on today’s show as well as a few other titles.

Blacula (1972)
Dir. William Crain

The Blaxploitation movement of the 1970s primarily produced street movies in which African American characters fought mobsters and corrupt cops. But there was also a series of black-themed horror pictures including Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde and Black Frankenstein. Among the most popular of these films was Blacula and its sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream. In this film an African prince is bitten by Dracula and turned into a vampire who haunts 1970s Los Angeles.


Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Dir. Frances Ford Coppola

One of the most high profile versions of Dracula was 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the film featured terrific production design, a memorable music score by Wojociech Kilar, and a prestigious cast of A-list stars including Gary Oldman as Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, Tom Waits as Renfield, and Anthony Hopkins as Doctor Van Helsing. Despite its title, the movie takes a lot of liberties with Stoker’s novel and is really no more or less faithful than most adaptations of the book. Among its contributions to the vocabulary of Dracula movies was an explicit link between the vampire myth and the historical Dracula, an innovation that has been seized upon by later filmmakers.


Dracula (1931)

Dir. Todd Browning

The original Universal production of Dracula is still among the best adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel. There are actually two versions of this movie – one shot with an English speaking cast and featuring Bela Lugosi’s classic performance in the title role and another version featuring Spanish speaking actors. In those days subtitles and dubbing weren’t viable so in order to make a version of Dracula for the Spanish speaking markets, Universal had a second crew that worked the opposite shift of the English speaking production. The Spanish crew was able to look at what the English filmmakers had done during the day and make improvements, resulting in a movie that is cinematically superior to the version that most people are familiar with.


Fright Night (1985)
Dir. Tom Holland

In the 1980s horror and comedy began to bleed together in movies like Return of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Among the films mixing laughs and frights was 1985’s Fright Night. In this movie a teenager discovers that his neighbor is a vampire and when he fails to convince anyone of the truth, he turns to an aging horror actor who hosts a late night television horror broadcast. Fright Night was remade in 2011 is a version starring Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell and it was surprisingly good.


Horror of Dracula (1958)
Dir. Terence Fisher

1958’s Dracula (titled Horror of Dracula in the United States to avoid confusion with Universal’s film), was the first of a long running series of vampire pictures produced by Britain’s Hammer film studio and the first to feature Christopher Lee in the title role. Lee would play the vampire in nine films and—along with Bela Lugosi’s turn in Universal’s 1931 film—his performance is generally considered the definitive Dracula.


The Hunger (1983)
Dir. Tony Scott

The Hunger was an early directorial effort by Tony Scott, who would go on to make Top Gun and Days of Thunder. This film told a sensuous story of an elder female vampire who turns both young men and women into her undead lovers but lets them perish when she tires of the affair. The movie was extremely stylized and revitalized the vampire genre by introducing these creatures into an urban environment. 


Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Dir. Neil Jordan

Adapted from Anne Rice’s novel, Interview with the Vampire starred Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise as vampire companions Louis and Lestat and twelve year old Kirstin Dunst as a girl that they turn. The film remains one of the most popular vampire movies ever made and it features one of Cruise’s best performances. Ironically, novelist Anne Rice initially protested the casting of Tom Cruise but upon seeing the film she changed her mind and took out an ad encouraging her fans to see the movie. 


Let the Right One In (2008)
Dir. Tomas Alfredson

One of the most popular vampire films of recent years has been the Swedish film Let the Right One In. The movie is led by two child actors, one of them playing a centuries-old female vampire and the other a lonely boy. The picture is one of those rare horror pictures that is not only frightening but is also emotionally resonant because of the bond between the two young characters. The movie was subject to a largely needless American remake with the shortened title Let Me In. 


The Lost Boys (1987)
Dir. Joel Schumacher

A product of the 1980s, The Lost Boys was a horror-action hybrid. The movie is in some ways an undead version of Rebel Without a Cause in which a teenager gets caught up with the wrong crowd, the wrong crowd in this case being a gang of vampires led by Kiefer Sutherland. Like most movies led by teenage characters, The Lost Boys is very much a product of its time but it remains a lot of fun. 


Nosferatu (1922/1979)
Dir. F.W. Murnau/Werner Herzog

One of earliest surviving vampire films is the silent picture Nosferatu, directed by F.W. Murnau. The film was adapted from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula but without obtaining legal permission. The Stoker estate filed a lawsuit and as a consequence all negatives and prints of the film were supposed to be destroyed. However, Nosferatu survived to become one of the most influential horror films of all time. In 1979, Werner Herzog directed a remake of Nosferatu starring Klaus Kinski as the vampire. Kinski’s makeup included very long fingernails and his performance would later inspire Robert Englund’s portrayal of Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street. 


Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)
Dir. Jim Jarmusch

Channeling The Hunger, Only Lovers Left Alive is a really interesting vampire film. In keeping with more nuanced ideas about vampirism, the film portrays a pair of vampire lovers who reunite after a long separation but their lives are disrupted by the arrival of their unpredictable younger sister. The movie locates them in Detroit and the decaying urban landscape is a fitting background for the contemporary undead.


Twilight (2008)
Dir. Catherine Hardwicke

Among the major cultural phenomena of the past decade was the Twilight series. Adapted from the novels by Stephanie Meyer, the films chronicle a young woman’s love affair with a vampire. One of the strange things about Twilight is its underlying social conservatism. Most vampire movies have an undercurrent of sexual deviance but the values of Twilight are very traditional. They court, abstain from sex until their wedding night, and subsequently form a nuclear family. Perhaps by the time Twilight came around these ideas were unfashionable enough to be considered in their own way deviant.


Vampires (1998)
Dir. John Carpenter

John Carpenter often mixed horror and action in his movies. His 1998 film Vampires was essentially a Western with vampires in which a crew of vampire hunters must recover an ancient artifact that will allow the undead to withstand sunlight. It’s a goofy movie and was part of a trend of action heavy vampire films from that time including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Blade.