This is the first of three articles examining the history of Vampire films. First is a look at the basis of vampire mythology and the archetypes they created.
Vampires have been a mainstay in America’s horror culture for quite some time. Dating back hundreds of years, the vampire has been a nuisance both fictionally and realistically to countless cultures. Because of the fictionalization of the vampire, the tale became widespread.
John Polidori’s 1819 story, The Vampyre, started the modernization of the vampire we know today. But, it wasn’t until 1897 that the vampire lore came into full swing. It was in this year that Bram Stoker released his modern classic, Dracula, which stands as the basis for the majority of vampire films around today. While classic literature has laid the basic ground work for vampire mythology, film is responsible for manipulating it into the phenomenon we currently know.
Vampires on the Big Screen
The earliest cinematic appearance for a vampire was Robert G. Vignola’s 1913 film, The Vampire. However, because of the variation of the films lead vampire as a femme fatale, she is considered to be more human and less vampire. The film was loosely based off a Rudyard Kipling poem and featured the anti-protagonist (a most evil main character) as a seductress and hunter of sorts. Seduction as an archetypical attribute of cinema’s modern vampire was developed further with the 1915 film, A Fool There Was. Once again, inspired by Kipling’s poem, the movie focuses on a man drawn into the grasp of a seductress (Theda Barra). While both films are deviant to the modern vampire, they were created in a style reminiscent to Stoker’s tale of seductive vampires.
From here, vampires gained their first major break with the 1922 silent classic, Nosferatu (often referred to as the first vampire movie). The film, created by German expressionist F.W. Murnau, brought the supernatural edginess of vampires to forefront. Because of legal battles, the plot followed Stoker’s Dracula respectively, but was forced to change many little details, including the names of many characters (Max Schrek’s Count Orlok in place of Count Dracula). Here we see the vampire portrayed as a living corpse with rat-like features. Orlok was not one to keep his victims alive, and this stays true to subsequent vampires created in his image. Because of legal issues relating to Stoker’s widow not relinquishing the rights to the movie, all copies were destroyed (except a few which were already distributed). Fortunately for modern cinema, this particular portrayal stands as one of the two archetypes for interpretations of modern vampires.
Bela Lugosi Recreates Dracula
1931 brought horror fans the second archetypical envisioning of the vampire. Casting Bela Lugosi as the lead, Dracula (this time with permission from the Stoker estate) brought us the refined, sophisticated vampire we know today. This archetype, much like Stokers original, used seduction as a means to harvest humans for food. However, unlike Orlock, Dracula would let his prey live, bringing them back to life as vampires. This stands as a parallel to Nosferatu in terms of how the vampire views the rest of humanity. Lugosi was an elegant portrayal of Dracula, which contrasted Shreck’s version so greatly that the two films will always contest each other for the top spot in vampire cinema. However, Dracula had such great success, that Universal Studios sparked two sequels (Dracula’s Daughter in 1936 and Son of Dracula in 1943) and four other vampire-related films prior to 1950 (the most popular being Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein which featured Lugosi’s last portrayal of Dracula and the first of many absurd vampire-themed comedies).
