Are you Vamp enough?

The first vampire film I remember seeing was the 1979 Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu the Vampyre. I sat mesmerised, enraptured by the most beautiful and erotic film I had ever seen. It was the early 80’s and I was a country town teenager, totally disgruntled with where my bogun upbringing had landed me. That film set me on a road to a different life; it planted in me a taste for the ethereal and the elegant. Over the next year or so I shed my denim cocoon and emerged in black, with my hair shaved into a long Mohawk with my eyes rimmed in black. I discovered self adornment and a passion for beautiful clothes. There were many other influences of course, and I have written about them before, but that vampire film was the spark.
I have since devoured as many vampire books and films as I could find. And I’m the first to admit that most of them are rubbish. The recent surge in vampire literature and film has me again pondering the hold that this legend has over us. I’m not going to rant about the psychology of it all, it’s been done to death (pardon the pun), but I will give my opinion on the best of all that’s Vamp. There are a gazillion blogs, web pages, forums etc about vampire films and in comparison I am a mere amateur, but I have been a fan of the genre for almost 30 years and even though this list is by no means comprehensive it encompasses my experience and opinions.

So the 1979 Nosferatu of course led me straight to the 1922 F. W. Murnau film Nosferatu: A symphony of Horror. This film is a masterpiece.
I recently saw Avatar, James Cameron’s epic 3D fairytale. Sure, it looked fabulous – but that was all there was. The story was Fern Gully meets Land Before Time, the acting was laughable, the dialogue was terrible and the husband and I agreed it was truly an awful film. And it cost $500 million to make! Yet in 1921 Murnau made a black and white silent film that has more impact, more atmosphere and an intensity that has rarely been equalled. And it was probably made with the equivalent of a few hundred thousand dollars. So the Nosferatu films are my benchmark. I was worried when E. Elias Merhige made Shadow of the Vampire in 2000. As we all know, Hollywood’s ability to take something glorious and turn it into trashy shit knows no bounds and I was terrified they would do this with Nosferatu. But no, in this rare instance they got it 100% right. The combination of the surreal nature of the original, the clever incorporation of original shots into the new film and the humour and brilliant performances works sublimely. It is a beautiful compliment to the original.
Of course the 1931 version of Dracula with (my puppy’s namesake) Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula. It is a classic. Often overlooked though is the Spanish version which was filmed at the same time with different actors but using the same sets at night. It is a superior film in terms of direction and cinematography, but the actors don’t have the presence of Lugosi or Frye (Renfield) and the film ends up being a bit on the boring side. If only they could have used the English actors with the Spanish director!!
The 60’s and 70’s gave us many vampire films and I personally love the kitschy Hammer Horror versions, although I don’t like Christopher Lee. The Twins of Evil is a personal favourite. Daughters of Dracula and The Vampire Lovers are great, even if just for the clothes. There were a dozen other lesbianesque films made in the 60s, but they’re all pretty much the same. The uber kitsch blacksploitation film Blacula is actually a lot better than you’d think. I love it. The Fearless Vampire Killers, Polanski’s 1967 film, is very funny although in light of recent revelations about the rape charges against him I’m almost ashamed to own it. I feel like I should hide my Polanski collection under the bed. Polanski also made a cameo in Andy Warhol’s Blood For Dracula, which is trashy and outrageously funny. Pair it with Flesh for Frankenstein made at the same time and with the same actors and you have a very entertaining evening. The BEST vampire film of the 70’s however, was actually Australia’s first attempt at a vampire film, The Thirst (1979). Unfortunately it was overshadowed by Mad Max and it is now somewhat obscure. It is available on DVD though if you search hard enough.

I was a very serious teenager and as a new release The Lost Boys (1987) didn’t do it for me. I watched it again recently, having long since removed the stick from my arse, and thought it was very good, a nice spoof. The sequal Lost Boys 2: The Tribe (2008) is quite bad. Another 80’s effort was Vamp (1986), starring Grace Jones. Watch it just for her work. She does an amazing striptease and I bought the DVD simply for that - the rest of the film is trash. In 1988 Ken Russell made Lair of the White Worm, based VERY loosely on Bram Stoker’s novel. It is an absolute hoot, in spite of the Ken Russell trademarks all over it. 1989’s Vampire Kiss with Nicholas Cage is very clever and very funny. But the best of the 80’s would have to be the sublimely erotic The Hunger (1983) and Near Dark, released in 1987 starring Lance Hendriksen who I adore. They are two of the most realistic vampire films I have found and in my top 10 all time favourites.

1992 brought us Wynona’s pet project Bram Stoker’s Dracula (F.F. Copolla). If you can ignore Keanu and Wynona making a total hash of the English accent and the fact that Keanu couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, the rest of the film is gorgeous. Richard E. Grant is, as always, brilliant, aside from the blaring continuity error in one scene but the reason I love the film so much is Gary Oldman and the costumes. The scene where Dracula is walking the streets of London, wearing a grey suit and top hat and round sunglasses with his long hair flowing down his back is to me borderline pornography. When he looks over his glasses and says “see me now” I melt. Stunning, utterly stunning. When this film was released it was a hot summer, I had a broken heart, it was the summer break from University and I lived near an old cinema. I think I saw that film about seven times in two weeks. It was an escape from the heat, escape from my emotional pain and an escape from the hippy bullshit of the house I was living in. That film took me from cheesecloth-vegetarian-beige-share-house hell and transported me to a world of gentile elegance and glamour. The costumes and the sets are divine. So even though it is fundamentally flawed, it is one of my favourites.
Also from the 90’s we have Cronos (1993) a Mexican film with the fabulous Ron Perlman. Nadja (1994) is very arty and lovely to watch. Razor Blade Smile (1998) is a low budget gem with terrible acting and bad production but the story is unique and clever. Wisdom of the Crocodiles (1998) with Jude Law is an unusual take on the genre but ultimately dull.

The 00’s have thrown a mixed bag of vampire films at us. The best are the Russian films Night Watch (2005) and the sequel Day Watch (2006) they are brilliant. They crap all over the American vampire efforts for that decade, as does Eternal Blood (2007) another Mexican horror. The exception is The Hamiltons (2006) which was an independent release and a very good attempt at realism.

I am Legend, the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, is undoubtedly one of the best vampire stories around. So good it has been made into film three times. The first being Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price. Apparently Matheson worked on the script but was so unhappy with the end result took his name off it. I love it, but then it has Vincent so what’s not to love?? The next was in 1971, The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston. It’s very good and does the book justice as best as Hollywood can – which is to say, not very well. Then there was the 2007 blockbuster I Am Legend with Will Smith. As a standalone film it’s very good. But I can’t help compare it to the book and they just messed with the story too much, and for no real gain other than conforming to the stereotype – vampires bad, humans good and good always wins. Changing a fundamental aspect of the plot also changed the meaning of the title. I live in hope that one day, someone will make I Am Legend as it is written and it will kick arse.
Also released in 2007 was 30 Days of Night which almost impressed me: the scenario was brilliant, the vampires looked great but I just got annoyed with all that blood splattering. Sure all the red splashed on the snow looked dramatic, but really, if you go to all the effort of isolating a whole town in order to harvest a precious resource – why would you then spill it all over the ground?
Let The Right One In (2008) is a Swedish film that unusually uses a young girl as the vampire protagonist. It’s very good but very Swedish.

I am now waiting for the release of DayBreakers starring Ethan Hawke,Sam Neil and the marvelous Willem Defoe. From the trailers I have seen it is something of a spin on The Thirst, possibly due to it's Australian production?

So then we move onto the bad. Interview with the Vampire (1994) is awful, although not nearly as bad as the appalling sequel Queen of the Damned (2002). Even though I was an extra in Queen of the Damned I still can’t bring myself to buy a copy of it it’s just SO bad. The Blade films (1998, 2002, 2004) didn’t appeal to me, neither did Ultraviolet (2006) or the Underworld series (2003, 2006, 2009). That said, I love Bill Nighy and think he makes an excellent vampire and I suspect my husband secretly masturbates over Kate Beckinsale in that outfit.
Dusk Till Dawn (1996) has bored me to sleep twice, Dracula 2000 is dreadful but the notion of Dracula being Judas Iscariot is interesting. And then there is Twilight (2008), which was actually my inspiration for writing this. Twilight and New Moon the 2009 sequal, have made such an impact on tween culture, and have helped bring vampires very much into fashion, yet they are utter, utter rubbish. Well, I haven’t seen New Moon and I don’t intend to but I can extrapolate. Watching Twilight made me feel like I’d been robbed of 2 hours of my life. The best that can come of these films is that some of the more obscure films I have mentioned will get some attention now that vamps are the new big thing. It saddens me that the genre has been so cheapened, but then I said I loved Blacula, so what the fuck do I know?
As far as television series go there’s been Nick Knight with Rick Springfield, the pilot was released as a movie in 1989 and it’s terrible but he drives a gorgeous Cadillac. The TV series wasn’t made until 1992, with different actors, as Forever Knight. It’s awful. Also awful is Moonlight and The Vampire Diaries. True Blood is however, great stuff. It’s tacky, kitsch, very, very silly and I love it. I even love the opening credits. But by far the best TV series I’ve ever found is Ultraviolet (1998), a British police drama about a secret unit who exist only to hunt vampires. It is very well made, and has a British touch of class. The word “vampire” is never used.

So that’s it. Larissa’s guide to vampire film and TV Top 10:

1. Nosferatu The Vampyre
2. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
3. Near Dark
4. The Hunger
5. Razor Blade Smile
6. Bram Stoker's Dracula
7. Ultaviolet the TV series
8. The Thirst
9. Cronos
10. Night Watch/ Day Watch