“The Dead Undead” was Bram Stoker's working title for Dracula, but the living
undead would be a better description of the current state of the vampire. On
the page and on the screen, the creature who defies death but depends on the
living for sustenance - your basic blood-sucking fiend - is back with a
vengeance. Stephenie Meyer's supernatural romances, which occupy the top
three slots in this week's bestsellers charts, are at the peak of a new
surge of vampire lit - a movement that includes Darren Shan's Demonata
horror tales, Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire mysteries, and Charlie
Huston's series about an undead private investigator. Although fanged
monsters have fascinated us for more than 2,000 years, their shape has
shifted, and the modern vampire, more often than not, is a sexually-charged,
seductively attractive and heroic figure.
The origin of the term “vampire” is clouded in mystery. Before the 19th
century, vampires were viewed as monstrous - literally, the dead risen from
the grave. The 1888 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica described a
typical 17th-century vampire sighting: “When the vampire's grave is opened,
his corpse is found to be fresh and rosy from the blood which he has thus
absorbed. To put a stop to his ravages, a stake is driven through the
corpse, or the head cut off, or the heart torn out and the body burned, or
boiling water and vinegar are poured on the grave.” In 1751, the Bishop
Augustin Calmet wrote a treatise explaining the Church's view on how these
“revenants” with incorruptible bodies were different from saints with
incorruptible bodies.
In 1819 the vampire entered English popular literature. Dr John Polidori,
friend of and physician to Lord Byron, wrote a thrilling tale of Lord
Ruthven, a gentleman vampire with power over women, titled The Vampyre. The
book was an immense success and was adapted several times for the stage. In
1847 Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood (by James Malcolm Rymer, the
probable author of Sweeney Todd), similarly captured the public's
imagination. Again, the central figure was a nobleman, although described as
cadaverous, cold and clammy like a corpse, with fang-like teeth. Then, in
1897, Bram Stoker published Dracula, the classic tale of the powerful,
hypnotic Transylvanian vampire-noble who travels to England to prey on an
unsuspecting public. In the book, Dracula is described as a tall old man
with protruding teeth, hairy palms and foul breath - not the image
remembered today.
While Dracula has remained in print since its first appearance, the iconic
vampire gained its modern power from film. While no copy remains of the
earliest known vampire film, the 1921 Death of Drakula, it reportedly
depicts the familiar theme of a powerful, dynamic man hypnotising (literally
or figuratively) a pure, innocent girl.
In March 1922 arguably the most artistically successful film of Dracula yet
made - certainly one of the scariest - opened in Berlin. Nosferatu, eine
Symphonie des Grauens, directed by F.W. Murnau, has achieved the status of
legend. In particular, Max Shreck, who portrayed Count Orlok (the renamed
Dracula), is magnetic as the vampire, although not in a handsome or
seductive style. Orlok is rat-faced, ugly, emaciated, and horrible,
radiating powerful evil.
Despite the importance of Nosferatu as a work of art, however, it was really
the last major depiction of the vampire as monster. Tod Browning's 1931
“talkie” version of Dracula, made for Universal Studios as the cornerstone
of its series of horror classics, was the most successful, and fixed the
public's vision of the vampire. Based more on the popular stage play of
Dracula from the 1920s (the Broadway production of which starred the
handsome Bela Lugosi) than on the Stoker narrative, Browning elicits a
stunning film performance from Lugosi as the stylised but compelling
vampire. Wide initial distribution, constant rereleases and airing on
television, and an unending stream of exploitative licensing of the film's
images have made the movie the only version ever seen by many, and Lugosi
has been fixed in the public mind as the only “real” Dracula.
Subsequent Dracula films have starred such charismatic, compelling, and
romantic figures as Christopher Lee, Louis Jordan, Frank Langella and Gary
Oldman in the title rôle. Other vampire films and television series have
featured a multitude of handsome actors, including Jonathan Frid (Bramwell
Collins in the TV series Dark Shadows), Tom Cruise (Lestat in Interview with
the Vampire), David Boreanaz and James Marsters (in Buffy the Vampire
Slayer). Many blame the trend on Anne Rice's splendid series of ten tragic
novels, beginning with Interview with the Vampire (1976), in which soulful
vampires prey only on evildoers and struggle to find redemption, chaste love
and meaning among their own kind.
In current popular fiction (and especially romance fiction), vampire lovers
seem to occupy an immense portion of the bookshelf. Charlaine Harris's
series of Southern vampire-mysteries has been made into HBO's very
successful True Blood (2008). The series imagines vampires living on
artificial blood and contrasts a romantic, lonely gentleman vampire and
beast-like rogue vampires. Stephenie Meyer's hugely popular Twilight series
of books (the first was filmed last year) introduces glamorous “vegetarian”
vampires who shun the drinking of human blood. Super-strong, super-fast and
apparently indestructible (except when another vampire tears them apart and
burns the pieces), Meyer's vampires don't eat, don't breathe and need no
sleep (and no coffins). However, their primary occupation (with the
exception of the clan's sire, a highly-skilled physician) seems to be
attending high school.
An early critic of Dracula said that a summary of the book would “shock and
disgust”, but owned that “though here and there in the course of the tale we
hurried over things with repulsion, we read nearly the whole thing with rapt
attention”. Victorian audiences probably saw the book as soft-core
pornography, reeking of sexual innuendoes with several highly-charged scenes
of kissing, sucking, and biting. Certainly the subsequent film versions -
even the horrifying Nosferatu - all emphasise the powerful sexual aspects of
the vampire. The application of lips to body parts and the subsequent
exchanges of fluids are simple metaphors for sexual intercourse . But the
appeal of the vampire seems to go well beyond the voracious appetite of the
creature.
The contemporary vampire represents the sensitive, lonely outsider, apart from
“normal” society, moving among humans, appearing human, but never really
fitting in. Anne Rice's Lestat, who struggles to find heaven while playing
at being a rock star, is a modern (only a few hundred years old) version of
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain, a 2,000-year-old vampire who
seeks to live the path of righteousness. Of course, many - especially
teenagers - like to see themselves in such an outcast rôle. In this respect,
the vampire has come to resemble the romanticised cowboy, riding off into
the sunrise with a canteen filled with blood.
Ulitmately, the vampire has become the embodiment of the “bad” boy or girl;
the sensitive, beautiful rogue, deliciously frightening yet attractive. He
is a James Dean (Stephenie Meyers's hot male teen heart-throb Edward) or a
waif-like Bardot (Geneviève Dieudonné, the creation of Jack Yeovil). In
Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Blake - despite
her job-description - seems to spend as much time in bed with vampire-
lovers as she does fighting the creatures of the night, and the same may be
said of the wildly successful television heroine Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Today's vampire is not inherently evil, he or she is - like a boyfriend or
girlfriend of whom mum and dad won't approve - merely misunderstood. Perhaps
my tastes were fixed by an early exposure to Bram Stoker, but this modern
breed leaves me cold - not with terror, but with boredom. For the thrill of
a real literary horror story - for the ancient monster in all its homicidal
glory - only Dracula will do.
The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker, edited by Leslie S. Klinger
with an introduction by Neil Gaiman
Norton, £28; 672pp Buy
the book
The vampire in the television series Dark Shadows was Barnabas Collins, played by Jonathan Frid. The series used time-travel as a plot device and Jonathan did play a Bramwell Collins, but the character was the son of Barnabas and not a vampire.
fstclss, Butte,
I'm reading a short ghost story by Bram Stoker at present - little known in the horror genre - it is called THE JUDGE'S HOUSE.
The story is in a paperback compilation of ghost story's from 1964 edited by the late great Dennis Wheatley !!!
I found it in a charity shop for 10p.
IAN PAYNE, WALSALL,