Vampires
A Silent Masterpiece
Originally released in 1922 as "Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens," director F.W. Murnau's chilling and eerie adaption of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is a silent masterpiece of terror, which to this day remains a striking and frightening portrayal of the legend.
The film features Max Schreck as Count Orlock. Though based on Stoker's novel, the names were changed in a transparent attempt to disguise blatant plagerism.
Still, Nosferatu does great credit to the Dracula myth. In many ways, it is a unique vision.
First of all, this version of Dracula is no suave, tuxedo-wearing dandy. As film critic Roger Ebert noted, "Schreck plays the count more like an animal than a human being; the art direction by Murnau's collaborator, Albin Grau, gives him bat ears, clawlike nails and fangs that are in the middle of his mouth like a rodent's, instead of on the sides like on a Halloween mask."
To watch it, click here.
A Shadowy
Soap Star
From 1967 to 1971, ABC-TV aired a popular soap opera call Dark Shadows that starred Canadian actor Jonathan Frid as a 175-year-old vampire named Barnabas Collins.
The series was a cult hit and remains available in DVD sets.
Vampire Humor
What did the vampire's bartender say?
"This blood's for you."
Rising from their coffins, they prey upon the living to feed their dark thirst. Blood is the elixer that gives them eternal life and powers far beyond the reach of mortal men and women.
Vampires own the night. Sometimes they slice through it in the form of a bat or wolf. Sometimes they prowl through it in human form, using their unholy charm to seduce their victims.
Dracula and His Kin
In 1897, an Irish writer named Abraham Stoker produced the most famous vampire novel of all time, Dracula. With its haunting quality and epic sweep, it has thrilled readers to this day, earning itself a place among the classics. It went on to be adapted into more than 160 films.
Vampire Myths Vary
Among the discoveries Bram Stoker encountered in his research, undoubtedly, is that vampire myths vary somewhat from place to place. For instance, one staple of the vampire myth is that vampires sleep during the day (usually in coffins), though some, including Dracula himself, were able to wander around in the daylight without bad effect. For less fortunate blood-drinkers, the cause them to burst into flames, melt and/or evaporate into a wisp or smoke.
In most cases, the best time to get the drop on a vampire is when he or she is zonked out.
Dracs of the Big Screen
Perhaps the most famous movie Dracula was Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi (right), who starred in the 1931 Universal film directed by Tod Browning. With his pronounced accent and a genuinely spooky quality, Lugosi indelibly cast the mold for screen portrayals of the count. Among the highlights of the film is the scene where the count first appears. After introducing himself, he pauses to listen to the sound of wolves howling in the distance. "Listen to them," he says with a smile. "Children of the night. What music they make."
On Oct. 20, 1882, Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezso Blaskó in what was then Austria-Hungary and is now Romania. He ran away from his upper middle-class family at the age of 12, working odd jobs before getting work in local theaters and, eventually, enrolling in Budapest's Academy of Performing Arts. He became a successful stage performer, as well known for his singing voice as his acting. A decorated veteran of World War I, he went on after the war to appear in several films in his home country, before moving to Germany in 1919 and then to New York in 1921. In his early years as an actor in America, Lugosi, unschooled in English, learned to speak his lines by memorizing the sounds of the words. He played Dracula on Broadway for two years before later going on to appear in the film.
For Lugosi, the role of Dracula represented the pinnacle of his popular-film success. That may be due, in part, to his famous rejection of the role of the monster in Frankenstein. Lugosi reportedly didn't like the fact that the monster had no lines. He also didn't want to have his features buried under layers of makeup. The role he turned down made a star of Boris Karloff.
Lugosi worked in many films after Dracula, but his portrayal of the count would always overshadow his career, limiting his options. Still, he seemed to enjoy his association with vampires and the supernatural, sometimes adopting a playful tone. "I have never met a vampire personally," he once said, "but I don't know what might happen tomorrow."
He went on to star in low-budget melodramas, including films made with director Ed Wood that enjoy something of a cult following. He suffered through financial and marital difficulties, and battled drug addiction in his waning years. Still, he lived to be 73, dying of a heart attack. At his wish, Lugosi was buried in his Dracula costume.
The sensual underpinnings of the vampire myth did not escape Universal studio executives, who insisted that in the film Dracula only attack women, for fear an attack on a man would appear homosexual.
To chat online with Bela Lugosi fans, visit the official Bela-Blog.
Other noteworthy screen Draculas include Max Schreck, Peter Cushing, Klaus Kinsky, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lee (who, in 1958, starred in the first color version of "Dracula"), Jack Palance and Frank Langella.
Dracula's Ancestors
Irish journalist
Sheridan Le Fanu's novella "Carmilla" predated Stoker's "Dracula" and, some claim, influenced it. Indeed, Stoker once wrote theater reviews for the Dublin Evening Mail newspaper, which Le Fanu partly owned. "Carmilla," which originally appeared in the three-volume collection "In a Glass Darkly" (1872), is markedly erotic and features subtle but unmistakable lesbian themes. M.R. James considered Le Fanu a master storyteller, and is largely credited with rescuing Le Fanu's fiction from obscurity with the 1923 publication of an anthology of Le Fanu's stories under the title, "Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery." To read "Carmilla," click here.Dracula Reinvented By King
•The Vampires of New Orleans
Of course, no discussion of the vampire myth would be complete without mentioning the contribution of New Orleans writer Anne Rice (right).Her Vampire Chronicles is a series of books that create a secret world in which vampires who have lived for hundreds of years move between the societies of humans and nonhumans. At its best, her prose is saturated with a palpable sensuality and hypnotic quality. She seems to own the vocabulary that describes this world, and the characters who populate it range for the outlandish to the deeply haunted, and many are vividly memorable.
Beginning in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire, her Vampire Chronicles include The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Dead, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, The Vampire Armand, Merrick, Blood and Gold, Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle.
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