What hasn’t been about vampires in the last 5 years? Let’s face it, ever since the global obsession with the Twilight franchise, our obsession with the blood sucking creatures we love to hate has been at an all time high. And whilst popular interest in the figures is petering out somewhat at the moment, their presence is still very much felt in the media across the world. Whilst series such as True Blood and The Vampire Diaries sexed up the image of the vampire, giving it a younger, fresher appeal, the legend of the vampire is still associated very much with ancient culture, with figures from the past and dying legends. Taken from the legend of Vlad the impaler, the infamous Romanian figurehead, the vampire has very much taken on a life of its own. Attached so deeply to its Transylvanian roots, it is near impossible to hear a Romanian accent without thinking “I vant to suck your blood”.
Accents aside, there is no denying the longevity of the vampire myth. Since its inception, it has been one of the most cinematic of all of the ‘monsters’, the deep shock of red blood apparently tailor made for the big screen. Over time, the way in which we have perceived the vampire on film has warped. From the hideousness of Nosferatu to the hipster cool of Only Lovers Left Alive, the vampire has undergone more makeovers than your average Hollywood starlet. Skirting the borderline between murder and romance, the creature is perhaps one of our most beloved because it dabbles so seductively with mortal danger. It charms its audiences before devouring their life blood. It sucks the insides of its victims with the most elegant of charms. The vampire has continued to last so long precisely because it allows us to escape our own humanity, allowing us to live forever in a form ever so slightly more suave.
In Nosferatu, the vampire is probably its least recognisable compared to the models from today. Taking the form of a bald, creeping and bulging-eyed man, the vampire has an appearance closer to that of a modern day zombie than anything else. Moving with a swaggering gait, there is no sense that the figure will sweep its victims off its feet. And yet, there is something distinctly nightmareish in the vampire that is so often missing in its modern day counterparts. In Nosferatu’s clenched hands and blood thirst, the monster is always perceptible. The vampire here is always concerned with its next meal; it is a figure entirely at odds with the humans it hunts. Whilst portraying a starker contrast, Nosferatu reminds us of the inherent beastliness of the vampire and why it got its name as a hunter of human flesh.
Moving on somewhat is Christopher Lee’s inimitable portrayal of the ultimate vampire figure, Dracula. The film portrays the leader of all the vampires in its most recognisable form, a model upon which a thousand children based their halloween dreams. Caped, bloodied and slicked back, Lee’s Dracula is perhaps the best remembered of all the vampire’s incarnations and my personal favourite. Balancing the gothic creepiness of the monster with the old school gore of a Hammer film, Dracula is the point against which all other vampires should be judged.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer revamped – no pun intended – the figure of the vampire for the disaffected youth of the ‘90s. Shifting between their beautiful human and twisted vampire faces quicker than there was time to react, the creatures in the TV series were truly the best of both worlds. Of course, allowing the vampire a split personality also meant that, for the first time, the audience was permitted to feel empathy for the creatures. Torn between their blood lust and their need for human warmth, many of the vampires that Buffy encountered were merely tortured sould, trapped in their uglier bodies and attempting to deny their fate. Of course, there were just those who wanted to eat humans. Warping the faces of the vampires, the TV series also developed upon the vampire’s ability as a shape shifter. Whereas, in other versions, they literally changed from quasi-human to animal, in Buffy, there was much less indication of difference. In making the vampire’s ‘true’ and ‘human’ selves so physically similar, series creator Joss Whedon suggested that humans can be dualistic too, deceptive and enticing in equal measures.
Spanish master of the dark Guillermo del Toro tried his hand at the vampire myth in his ‘90s horror Cronos. Adapting the legend of the vampire’s eternal life, del Toro transposed the myth somewhat into the realm of alchemy. Whilst the vampire legend traditionally states that, in order to become a vampire, you must be bitten by another, del Toro takes matters into his own hands. When antique shop owner, Jesus Gris, discovers an ancient mechanical device in his shop, he is subject to an unwitting device. Attacked by the clockwork and injected with a mysterious substance, he soon finds himself filled with a renewed sense of vigour, youthfulness and thirst for blood. Giving the power of the vampire to an apparently inanimate object, del Toro makes the whole legend a much more arbitrary process. The thrill of the hunt is removed and all that remains is eternal life.
The vampire of 2014 is much different. In Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, it is the humans who are parasitic and dead on the inside. Jarmusch’s aptly named Adam and Eve are achingly cool, adrift from the world in which they live, remembering better times over the last few centuries. Of course, the film is not really about vampires as such and so, it should be no surprise that there is only the briefest flashes of any animalism in the central characters. Jarmusch flips the legends. What if, he supposes, it is the humans which prey on the vampires? What if all of our years of obsession have actually placed us as the bad guys and the vampires as superior beings? How can we ever hope to join them when they pity us so desperately?
What will we do when the vampires stop caring about us?