Vampire movie

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Vampire films have been around since the silent era . Most cinematic adaptations of vampire literature are based on Bram Stoker's Dracula , with over 170 different versions. The second most popular film was the novel Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu . The legend of Elisabeth Báthory also had a great influence on vampire films. By 2005, Dracula was the fictional character with most films.

In popular belief, vampires are viewed as blood drinkers with manipulative characteristics; a topic that spanned several film adaptations. While vampires are mostly associated with horror films and sometimes zombie films , they can also fall into categories like action , science fiction , romance , comedy, or fantasy .

history

The Vampire by Philip Burne-Jones (1897)

The vampires in early vampire films, such as The Vampire (1913) by Robert G. Vignola , were not undead blood-sucking fiends, but vamps . These femmes fatales were inspired by Rudyard Kipling's 1897 poem The Vampire . This poem was published as a kind of commentary on a painting of a female vampire. This painting by Philip Burne-Jones was exhibited that same year. The lines from Kipling's poem read : A fool there was ... (A fool was there). This describes a man seduced by vampires. The lines were used as the title for the film A Fool There Was (1915). Theda Bara played the vamp in question and the poem was used in public for the film.

An authentic, supernatural vampire appears in the film Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror (1922 Germany, director: FW Murnau ) with Max Schreck as Count Orlok. The film was an unlicensed version of Bram Stoker's Dracula . It was so closely based on the novel that the agency sued the makers and won, so all copies had to be destroyed. Five recordings survived the destruction. In 1994 the film was painstakingly restored by a team of European scientists. The destruction of the vampire by sunlight, instead of a wooden stake through the heart, also influenced the upcoming vampire films and became an integral part of vampire representations.

The next classic portrayal of the vampire legend was an adaptation of the play to Stoker's Dracula novel, Universal's film Dracula . In the film, Béla Lugosi played Count Dracula . Lugosi's portrayal was so popular that his Hungarian accent and sweeping gestures became characteristics that are still associated with Dracula today. Five years later, Universal released a sequel to the film called Dracula's Daughter (1936), which starts right after the first film. A second film, Dracula's Son , starring Lon Chaney, Jr. followed in 1943. Although he appeared to have died in the first film, the Count returned to life three more times in the 1940s, in the films Frankenstein's House (1944) and Dracula's House (1945) - both with John Carradine - and Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (1948). During the 1930s and 1940s, Lugosi played a vampire two more times. However, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the second and final film in which Lugosi played Dracula.

There was a transition between the traditional vampire film adaptations by Universal and the later film adaptations of Hammer in the Mexican film El Vampiro in 1957 . Here the fangs are shown for the first time in an American film. These have not yet been seen at Universal. The first film ever to show the fangs of a vampire was the Turkish Drakula Istanbul'da in 1953 .

Dracula was reborn for a new generation as the series of films by Hammer , with Christopher Lee as the Earl. In the first of these films, Dracula (1958), with the death of the title character from exposure to the sun, the part of the vampire belief that originally came from Nosferatu was taken back into the vampire legend. After that, this topic was in many other vampire films. Lee played Dracula in all but two of the sequels. A faithful adaptation of Stoker's novel appeared with Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola , who, however, connects Count Dracula with the notorious medieval ruler Vlad the Impaler from the Balkans.

Another sub-genre of vampire films was inspired by Le Fanus Carmilla and is about lesbian vampires. Though the subject was already hinted at in Dracula's Daughter , the first openly lesbian vampire appeared in the film ... And Die Of Lust (1960) by Roger Vadim . More explicit lesbian scenes were in the Karnstein trilogy of Hammer shown. The first film adaptation, Tomb of the Vampires (1970), with Ingrid Pitt and Madeline Smith , was a relatively simple retelling of LeFanu's novella, but with more overt violence and sexuality. Later films in this subgenre, such as Vampyres (1974), became more explicit in their portrayals of sex, nudity, and violence.

Starting with Abbott and Costello meeting Frankenstein (1948), the vampire became part of comedies. Dance of the Vampires (1967) by Roman Polanski parodied the genre. Other comedic adaptations include Vampira (1974) with David Niven as love-hungry Dracula, Love at First Bite (1979) with George Hamilton , My Best Friend Is a Vampire (1988), Bloody Marie (1992), Buffy - The Vampire Killer (1992), and Dracula - Dead But Happy (1995) directed by Mel Brooks with Leslie Nielsen .

Another development of some vampire films is the shift from supernatural horror to scientific fictional explanations for vampirism. The Last Man on Earth (1964, directed by Ubaldo Ragona ), The Omega Man (1971, directed by Boris Sagal ) and two other films are all based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend . In these films, vampirism has a natural cause. As a type of virus, vampirism is described in David Cronenberg's Rabid (1976) and David Blyth's Red-Blooded American Girl (1990). The Blade Trilogy also takes this topic to a limited extent.

Speed ​​is another theme in vampire films and is illustrated in the blaxploitation film Blacula (1972) and its sequel, The Scream of Death .

Vampire films have always represented passion and lust. Since the time of Béla Lugosis Dracula (1931), the vampire has generally been portrayed as a seductive sex symbol. Christopher Lee , Delphine Seyrig , Frank Langella , and Lauren Hutton are just a few examples of actors who portrayed the vampires with sex appeal. Lately, the implicit sexual themes in the vampire films have become much more open. For example in pornographic, all-male vampire films such as Gayracula (1983) and The Vampire of Budapest (1995), or lesbian vampire films such as the lesbian adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic Lust for Dracula (2005), a kind of softcore porn.

However, there is only one very small subgenre that began with Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), in which the depiction of the vampire resembles the hideous beings from European folklore. Max Schreck's unsettling portrayal of this role in Murnau's film was inspired by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's remake Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night (1979). In Shadow of the Vampire (2000) directed by E. Elias Merhige , Willem Dafoe plays Max Schreck as a vampire. Dafoe's character is the ugly, disgusting creature from the original Nosferatu. Stephen King 's Salems Lot (1979), shows vampires primarily as frightening, simple-minded beings, without eroticism, and with the sole desire to feed on the blood of others. This type of vampire is also featured in the movie 30 Days of Night .

An important character in most vampire films is that of the vampire hunter. Stoker's Abraham Van Helsing is a prototype of these vampire hunters. However, the way of killing vampires has changed. While Van Helsing gets rid of the vampire with a stake through the heart, Jack Crow ( James Woods ) in Carpenter's Vampire (1998) uses heavily armed troops to hunt down the vampires. In Joss Whedon's Buffy: The Vampire Killer (1992), the vampire slayer works together with guards and uses her supernatural powers.

Dracula in movies and his legend

By far the most famous and popular movie vampire is Count Dracula. A large number of films have been made with the Evil Count, some of which have been voted the best vampire film adaptations. Dracula has been portrayed over 170 films so far, making him the most frequently portrayed character in horror films; he also has the highest number of film appearances overall, followed by Sherlock Holmes .

Vampire series

Real film

In addition to vampire films, there are also some vampire series on television. One of the first series with a vampire as the main character was the comedy series The Munsters . Lily Munster and Grandpa, also known as Vladimir Dracula, Count of Transylvania, were the vampires in the series. In 1966 the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows followed , in which the vampire Barnabas Collins became one of the main characters. In 1985 there was the first series for children with The Little Vampire . The story tells the adventures of the vampire child Rüdiger and his human friend Anton. From 1992 to 1996 the series Nick Knight - The Vampircop was broadcast on television. This was the first vampire detective series. Similar series followed, such as Angel - Hunter of Darkness , Moonlight , Blood Ties - Bite on Blood or Vampire Prosecutor . In 1997, the youth series Buffy - The Vampire Slayer was successful around the world. Buffy is a high school student who finds out she is a vampire slayer. This keeps getting her into trouble because she really wants to lead a normal high school life. In addition, she falls in love with a vampire of all people. In 2008 the vampire series True Blood started , in which the mind-reading waitress Sookie Stackhouse falls in love with a vampire. That same year, the BBC's three series Being Human became a hit in the UK. The series is about an unconventional trio of vampire, ghost and werewolf who share an apartment in Bristol . In 2009 Vampire Diaries told the story of the school girl Elena Gilbert, who falls in love with the two brothers Stefan and Damon Salvatore. The vampire series The Strain from 2014 is based on the novel by Guillermo del Toro of the same name .

animation

One of the first animated vampire series was Count Duckula from 1989, a parody of Dracula. In 1997 the anime series Vampire Princess Miyu became a success in Japan, and many other series followed.

Vampire web series

From 2001 onwards, vampire web series became known all over the world. One of the first vampire web series was The Hunted from 2001. The series is about a group of vampire hunters who have been bitten by vampires (but have not yet turned into vampires) and are trying to fight the bloodsucking vampires. This was followed by 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails (2007) and 30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust (2008), which are based on the films 30 Days of Night and 30 Days of Night: Dark Days . In 2009, the online series Valemont was shown on MTV . This tells the adventure of Maggie Gracen, who goes to the fictional Valemont University to look for her missing brother. She soon realizes that the university is teeming with vampires. In 2009 the web series I Heart Vampires , produced by T180 Studios and the Walt Disney Company , was released. The series is about two teenagers who are vampire fans and soon find out that vampires are more than real. In 2011, the Being-Human spin-off Becoming Human appeared on the BBC-Three website. The series is about a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf who go to school together and try to solve a murder. The web series Carmilla , published in 2014, tells the story of the vampire Carmilla Karnstein, who goes to university and falls in love with a human girl.

See also

literature

  • Alain Silver, James Ursini: The Vampire Film. 4th edition. 2010, ISBN 978-0-87910-380-4 .
  • Christopher Frayling : Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula. 1992, ISBN 0-571-16792-6 .
  • Cynthia A. Freeland: The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Westview Press, 2000.
  • James Craig Holte: Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations. Greenwood Press, 1997.
  • C. Leatherdale: Dracula: The Novel and the Legend. Desert Island Books, 1993.
  • J. Gordon Melton: The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Visible Ink Press, 1999.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vampire n. In: Catherine Soanes, Angus Stevenson: The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. 12th edition. Oxford University Press, 2008. (Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. York University. October 23, 2011)
  2. ↑ According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word comes Vamp from English and was first reported by GK Chesterton needed, it was the American silent film to a wider audience The Vamp , with Enid Bennett known
  3. ↑ a b Nina Auerbach: Vampires in the Light. In: Nina Auerbach (Ed.): Dracula. (= A Norton critical edition ). Norton, New York 1997, ISBN 0-393-97012-4 , pp. 389-404.
  4. ^ Erik Butler: Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film: Cultural Transformations in Europe, 1732-1933. Boydell & Brewer, Rochester 2010, ISBN 978-1-57113-432-5 .
  5. ↑ Wayne Bartlett, Flavia Idriceanu: Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth. Sutton, Stroud 2005, ISBN 0-7509-3736-X , p. 42.
  6. ^ Dracula - imdb.com
  7. ↑ Sherlock Holmes - imdb.com