Vampire Films and the Rise of the Undead

The recent phenomenon of US vampire film Twilight along with the Swedish Let the Right One In shows our enduring thirst for the blood-sucking undead. Kay Weston looks at the rise of the vampire movie.

Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the past month or so, you can’t have failed to notice the hype around the screen adaptation of US writer Stephenie Myer’s debut novel Twilight, the love story of two teenagers, Bella and Edward, with a twist. Bella’s love interest, Edward, is a vampire.

The book itself has achieved phenomenal success both in its author’s homeland and abroad since its publication in 2005, scooping the New York Times’ Editors Choice Award and is the bestselling book of 2008 says USA Today. It has also been translated into more than 20 languages.
The film took more than $35.7 million on its opening day and you only have to cast a glance at the papers to see pictures of adoring fans queuing for hours to catch a glimpse of the movie’s two stars, Robert Pattinson and Kerstin Stewart. Twilight fever has well and truly taken hold and fans are thirsting for the sequel almost as much as the fictitious vampires themselves are thirsting  for blood.

But the vampire film hasn’t always been so popular. Until recently they were widely regarded as cheesy B Movies, neatly pigeonholed alongside zombies and aliens in terms of cinematic appeal. Roman Polanski's 1967 Dance of the Vampires poked fun at the genre's melodrama and obsession with the innocent damsel in distress.

But the screen adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire in 1994 went some way to changing the perception of vampires in cinema. The film, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise tells of vampire Louis, who agrees to be interviewed by a journalist to recount his story of life as one of the undead. It grossed around $223,664,608, making it a huge hit. But more significantly, it took the vampire film from a niche genre favoured by Goths to a mainstream phenomenon. Vampires have since featured heavily in fantasy films, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a TV hit after its conception in the 90s.

Twilight isn’t the only recent film to explore the genre. Swedish film Låt den rätte komma in is set to be released in the UK in April under the title Let the Right One In. Based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the story documents the unorthodox relationship between Oskar, a lonely, bullied 12 year old, and his neighbour Eli, a young vampire girl, in a Stockholm suburb.
Already bestowed with an impressive number awards, including Best Film of 2008 at the Fantasia Festival, the Rotten Tomatoes Critical Consensus Award 2008 and Best Narrative Feature at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival to name but a few. It also frequently appeared in the critic’s top ten lists of 2008 films. But make sure you catch it when it’s released- Hollywood are set to remake the film into an English language version, news of which has not been well received by fans of the original.

So what is it about vampires which captures our imaginations?  They have been a part of folklore and mythology for centuries under different guises, but the concept of vampires today hails from 19th century literature, namely John Polidori’s influential novel The Vampyre  published in 1819.
 Dracula was the first vampire to venture properly into popular culture as the central character in Bram Stoker’s quintessential epistolary novel published in 1897. The most well-known, big-budget film adaptation was Francis Ford Coppola’s  1992 version, Bram Stoker’s Dracula starring Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder. It wasn’t an immediate bestseller but gained popularity over time and, again,  helped to shape the present idea of vampires.

There is a mysterious appeal to vampires.  Maybe it’s because they represent death, a concept which is one of the few things we are yet to understand. Though technically ‘undead’, it would appear to reinforce the theory of life after death, like a reincarnation, but in a different, powerful form. There is also a real romanticism and sexiness to vampires as  they represent something forbidden. We see this in Twilight,  where essentially vampires are portrayed as humans with an affliction, as opposed to being evil monsters in a cape with long fangs. They have become more human, not only in terms of appearance, but also in that they are capable of emotion. This is what seems to have made Edward so irresistibly endearing to hoards of teenagers round the globe.

Vampires are nothing more than “bad boys” or lovable rogues and the image of vampires has become increasingly sexualised. If anything, their lust for blood makes them more appealing, and has been translated as carnal desire. After the success of Twilight, one thing is clear; vampires sell. Garlic notwithstanding.