V is for Vampire the A to Z guide to everything undead (Skal, David J)

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<p>From low-cut negligees to low-flying bats, from silver bullets to</p><p>wooden stakes, from the gender-bending disciples of Dracula to the</p><p>fans of Anne Rice, this entertaining, encyclopedic compendium of</p><p>vampirology answers such burning undead questions as:</p><p>—How did the folklore surrounding garlic, mirrors, wooden stakes,</p><p>and other eerie artifacts evolve?</p><p>—Why does Dracula's cape always have a big, stand-up collar?</p><p>—What accounts for the persistent cultural connection between</p><p>gays and lesbians and vampires?</p><p>—Why are bats the premier emblems of vampirism?</p><p>—What are the best vampire movies ever made? The worst?</p><p>And everything else you want to know about the fascinating, seduc-</p><p>tive, dark-cloaked creatures of the night.</p><p>V 18 FOR VflHIPIRE</p><p>David J. Skal is a respected scholar in all things macabre and the author of</p><p>Hollywood Gothic and The Monster Show. A frequent talk-show guest and lec-</p><p>turer, his many media appearances have included "The CBS Evening News,"</p><p>"Joan Rivers," "Charlie Rose," and NPR's "All Things Considered."</p><p>David J. Skal</p><p>18 FO</p><p>VflHlPIRE</p><p>The A-Z Guide</p><p>to Everything Undead</p><p>©</p><p>A PLUME BOOK</p><p>PLUME</p><p>Published by the Penguin Group</p><p>Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,</p><p>New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.</p><p>Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,</p><p>London W8 5TZ, England</p><p>Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,</p><p>Victoria, Australia</p><p>Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,</p><p>Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2</p><p>Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,</p><p>Auckland 10, New Zealand</p><p>Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:</p><p>Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England</p><p>First published by Plume, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.</p><p>First Printing, September, 1996</p><p>10 987654321</p><p>Copyright © David J. Skal, 1996</p><p>All rights reserved</p><p>© I'l I.ISI IHlli I H \])l MAKh MAUI A Hi U'-.l R.V > \</p><p>LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBUCATION DATA</p><p>Skal, David J.</p><p>V is for Vampire : the A-Z guide to everything undead / David J. Skal.</p><p>p. cm.</p><p>ISBN 0-452-27173-8</p><p>1. Vampires. I. Title.</p><p>GR830.V3S57 1995</p><p>398.45—dc20 95 15522</p><p>CIP</p><p>Printed in the United States of America</p><p>Set in Galliard</p><p>Designed by Leonard Telesca</p><p>Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be</p><p>reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by</p><p>any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior</p><p>written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.</p><p>BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES.</p><p>FOR INFORMATION TLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN BOOKS USA INC.,</p><p>375 HUDSON STREE'l , NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.</p><p>For Ron Borst, Jeanne Youngson,</p><p>and Lokke Heiss</p><p>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</p><p>Thanks are in order to numerous individuals and institutions for their assis-</p><p>tance and advice in the research and writing of V Isfor Vampire. First, I</p><p>want to gratefully acknowledge my dedicatees: Ron Borst, who, as usual, pro-</p><p>vided access to his unparalleled collection of visual materials; Jeanne Young-</p><p>son, founder and president of the Count Dracula Fan Club in New York; and</p><p>Lokke Heiss, physician and fellow traveler in the vampire realm, who has</p><p>demonstrated to me his nuanced mastery of both Nosferatu and Nuprin.</p><p>A special thank-you is due to my agent, Malaga Baldi, who liked the concept</p><p>and energetically marketed the proposal, and my editor at Plume, Peter K.</p><p>Borland, who acquired it.</p><p>Ron and Howard Mandelbaum of Photofest assisted my picture research</p><p>with their characteristic professionalism. Tom Weaver and Mark Martucci gen-</p><p>erously provided dozens of hard-to-find videotapes. Robert Eighteen-Bisang,</p><p>founder of the Transylvanian Press and vampire bibliographer extraordinaire,</p><p>helped fill gaps with his truly amazing database.</p><p>Institutional collections consulted included the Elmer Holmes Bobst Li-</p><p>brary of New York University; the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York</p><p>Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center; the Margaret Her-</p><p>rick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the Free Library</p><p>of Philadelphia Theatre Collection; the Vernon Alden Library of Ohio Uni-</p><p>versity; and the Library of Congress.</p><p>Other individuals who offered courtesies, correspondence, conversation,</p><p>illustrations, advice, assistance, and simple enthusiasm include Sheppard Black,</p><p>the late Carroll Borland, Sam and Susan Crowl, James V. D'Arc, Bernard</p><p>Davies, Norine Dresser, Geraldine Duclow, Robert Haas, Donal Holway,</p><p>Carla Laemmle, Robert James Leake, Scott MacQueen, Raymond T. McNally,</p><p>viii Acknowledgments</p><p>William G. Obbagy, Gary Don Rhodes, Laura Ross, Elias Savada, Johanne</p><p>Tournier, Dale Tucholski, Gordon Van Gelder, Delbert Winans, and Scott</p><p>Wolfman.</p><p>A final, special acknowledgment must be given to the memory of the late,</p><p>distinguished scholar of gothic literature, Devendra P. Varma. I met Dr. Varma</p><p>at the 1994 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, where we</p><p>had a long and stimulating conversation on the vampire in literature. I was</p><p>looking forward to renewing our dialogue when I learned of his death in Octo-</p><p>ber 1994. The loss of his impeccable erudition and boundless enthusiasm</p><p>leaves a void in the study of the fantastic that will not be easily filled.</p><p>INTRODUCTION</p><p>Vampires, Descending</p><p>a Staircase</p><p>Did you ever notice how the best scenes in vampire movies tend to happen</p><p>on staircases? You know the picture: the draped, pallid figure with blazing</p><p>eyes and crimson lips posing majestically on an ancient, crumbling stairway that</p><p>somehow represents all human possibilities, our deepest hopes and fears. Capa-</p><p>ble of bestowing death or granting eternal life, the vampire can lead us up the</p><p>stairs to a transcendent superhuman real-</p><p>ity, or (as Poe might have put it) down,</p><p>down, inexorably down to our basest in-</p><p>stincts and animal desires. In the mirror</p><p>the vampire reflects nothing, yet in reality</p><p>it reflects everything. Sometimes the crea-</p><p>ture spreads its cape in a reflexive gesture,</p><p>assuming a stance that is a dark travesty of</p><p>crucifixion, for the vampire is both savior</p><p>and destroyer. It is on staircases that vam-</p><p>pires condescend to mingle with mortals,</p><p>on staircases that they greet and seduce</p><p>their victims, dispatch their enemies, de-</p><p>scend to commune with the lower realms,</p><p>the better to entice us with the promise</p><p>of a higher consciousness and destiny.</p><p>Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland make thei</p><p>entrance in Mark of the Vampire (1935).</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>x Introduction</p><p>My first impression of vampires came in 1959 with a television skit on The</p><p>Garry Moore Show in which an American housewife (Carol Burnett) dis-</p><p>covered Count Dracula (Durward Kirby) hiding in her living room closet.</p><p>"Good evening!" he said, striking a rigid pose in evening clothes. She</p><p>slammed the door. I was seven years old, but even then knew that this meant</p><p>something. Once open to vampires, the closet door could never be slammed,</p><p>not really. I don't remember anything else about the broadcast, except that</p><p>my mother explained the basics. Vampires, she said, came out of coffins.</p><p>They bit you on the neck. They wore "fancy" clothes, and they always said</p><p>"good evening."</p><p>Soon after, vampires began to pop up everywhere in the bedroom com-</p><p>munity of Garfield Heights, Ohio, where I grew up. While a third grader at</p><p>Garfield Park Elementary School, I can remember an older girl on the play-</p><p>ground—I'll call her Maxine—who significantly deepened my appreciation of</p><p>things undead. Maxine was the classic kid of whom parents disapproved; she</p><p>was a rambunctious tomboy who "had ideas." Maxine was already free-falling</p><p>through puberty while the rest of us stood merely tottering at the edge of</p><p>the abyss. As a denizen of this scary, uncharted realm, Maxine was a wealth</p><p>of information on fascinating subjects. She knew about unpleasant medical</p><p>conditions of certain of our teachers.</p><p>from Tolstoi in adding a far more downbeat conclusion, but</p><p>the grisly sense of closure serves the tale well. Bava directed Karloff, Mark</p><p>Damon, and Michelle Mercier in a screenplay by Marcello Fondato and</p><p>Alberto Bevilacqua. (American International)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 29</p><p>Arturo Dominici</p><p>Black Sunday.</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>Black Sunday</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1960. One of the all-time great vampire films, directed by</p><p>Mario Bava under the original title La maschera del demonio. This film</p><p>caused quite a stir on the playground, as I recall, and I can still remember</p><p>making notebook scribbles of Barbara Steele's staring eyes, gothic cheek-</p><p>bones, and flying hair instead of paying attention to Mrs. Kimball and the</p><p>multiplication tables (which I only learned imperfectly—blame it on the</p><p>undead). The screenplay, by Ennio De Concini and Bava, is supposedly</p><p>based on Gogol's short story "The Viy," and recounts the story of</p><p>Princess Asa, a seventeenth-century Moldavian witch (Barbara Steele),</p><p>who has a spiked mask hammered onto her face before being entombed in</p><p>the supernatural equivalent of a nuclear garbage dump—a windowed crypt</p><p>with a highly visible cross that she must stare at for eternity. Eternity lasts</p><p>only a couple of hundred years, however, and Asa returns, drinking blood</p><p>and attempting to possess the soul of her great-granddaughter. The only</p><p>relationship the film bears to the Gogol story is the image of a witch rising</p><p>from her coffin, and one senses that the attribution to Gogol is just pre-</p><p>30 David J. Skal</p><p>tentious overreaching. But Black Sunday doesn't need to beg for re-</p><p>spectability—it's an unassailable classic, full of unforgettable set pieces and</p><p>masterfully sustained atmosphere. Upon its American release, Variety</p><p>noted with interest that Barbara Steele bore a "strong resemblance" to the</p><p>country's new first lady, Jackie Kennedy. The film has had a number of</p><p>alternate tides, including Revenge ofthe Vampire and House ofFright. With</p><p>John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, and Arturo Dominici.</p><p>(American International/Galatea-Jolly)V</p><p>Black Vampire</p><p>Cinema, USA 1973. Originally tided Ganja and Hess (alternately, Posses-</p><p>sion, Black Evil, and Black Out), Bill Gunn's low-budget, slow-moving</p><p>thriller is a kind of art-house version of Blacula. Gunn postulates an an-</p><p>cient African society of blood-drinkers, whose curse remains dormant in a</p><p>sacrificial knife—until, of course, someone gets stabbed with it. The relent-</p><p>lessly laid-back dialogue can be quite unintentionally funny, as when a</p><p>woman is unfazed by her new lover's confession of vampirism. "Every-</p><p>body's some kind of freak," she says. "Everybody I know is into something,</p><p>you know? You're into horror movies. I can dig it. When it gets too heavy</p><p>and I can't cut it, believe me, you'll be the first to know." With Duane</p><p>Jones (star of Night of the Living Dead), Marlene Clark, Leonard Jackson,</p><p>and Bill Gunn (who also scripted). (Kelly-Jordan Enterprises)T</p><p>The Black Vampire</p><p>An obscure melodrama presented in Camden Town, London, in the late</p><p>1920s; of note only because Florence Stoker, Bram's widow, assumed it</p><p>was yet another plagiarism of Dracula. It wasn't.</p><p>Blackwood, Algernon</p><p>See "Transfer, The."</p><p>Blacula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1972. One wishes that this film was, somehow, much better</p><p>or much worse than it is, or that a wickedly satiric cross-cultural sensibility</p><p>was at work. Sadly, Blacula is just a formula vampire movie with a mostly</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 3</p><p>1</p><p>black cast, proving only that white fangs are indeed effective when dis-</p><p>played against dark skin, but little else. The most imaginative scenes are</p><p>near the beginning, when it is revealed that the original Count Dracula</p><p>(Charles MacCauley) once dabbled in the slave trade and put a vampire</p><p>curse on a certain African Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall), who is</p><p>locked in a coffin until a pair of gay interior decorators (grossly stereo-</p><p>typed) bring the box back to Los Angeles in a lot of Transylvanian an-</p><p>tiques. Marshall, a classically trained actor, is an imposing presence,</p><p>reading ridiculous dialogue with an authoritative, Othello-style rumble.</p><p>But nothing is surprising as Mamuwalde tries to woo the reincarnation of</p><p>his lost African love. The film reaches its climax in a sewage treatment</p><p>plant, just the sort of touch that compels critics to say rude things. With</p><p>Thalmus Rasulala, Denise Nicholas, Elisha Cook, Jr., Vonetta McGee, and</p><p>Gordon Pinsent. Directed by William Crain. Screenplay by Joan Torres</p><p>and Raymond Koenig. An uninspired sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream,</p><p>was released in 1973. (American International)</p><p>Blake, Edmund</p><p>Edmund Blake was the first actor to portray Dracula in the familiar</p><p>evening-clothes-and-opera-cape persona devised by playwright-producer</p><p>Hamilton Deane and unveiled in Derby, England, in 1924. Almost noth-</p><p>ing is known about Blake as a performer, except that he had a prominent</p><p>gold front tooth. He resurfaced briefly in 1927 to appear in a rival version</p><p>of Dracula commissioned by Bram Stoker's widow Florence when she</p><p>grew tired of paying royalties to Deane. The adaptation, written by Charles</p><p>Morell but owned by Stoker, was a complete flop, and Edmund Blake</p><p>thereafter seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.</p><p>Bloch, Robert</p><p>See cloaks and capes.</p><p>Blood</p><p>The ultimate human symbol, blood—like the vampire itself—has the</p><p>power to assume almost endless metaphorical forms. As the primarily vital</p><p>fluid, blood has been held in awe since prehistoric times, and is prominent</p><p>in the imagery of most religious and folk traditions. Blood is our physical</p><p>32 David J. Skal</p><p>connection to the ancient, atavistic past, as well as our immediate bond of</p><p>kinship and fealty. The ancient belief that there is no essential difference</p><p>between the physical reality of blood and the less tangible qualities of</p><p>spirit, courage, and purposeful consciousness—that "the blood is the life,"</p><p>quantifiable and transferable—is notably at the root of cannibalism,</p><p>blood sacrifice, and vampire legends in a wide variety of cultures. Blood, in</p><p>many traditions, is believed to absorb or transmit evil; the removal of</p><p>blood from the body, therefore, can often provide a cathartic cleansing.</p><p>An old Arabic saying, "The blood has flowed, the danger has passed," cap-</p><p>tures the historical dynamism of both animal and human sacrifice. Outside</p><p>of Voodoo, Santeria, and some Maori tribal rites, literal blood sacrifice is</p><p>now rare, but the torrential prevalence, in recent decades, of simulated</p><p>blood in popular culture is significant, less as a reflection (or cause) of real</p><p>-</p><p>life violence than as an exorcism of diffuse cultural anxieties in a postmod-</p><p>ern age of image and artifice. Next to the Catholic ritual of the mass and</p><p>the culture of AIDS (q.v.), vampire entertainment is our richest modern</p><p>repository of blood-related themes, ceremonies, and obsessions. See also</p><p>Catholicism; Christianity; folklore.</p><p>Blood Addiction</p><p>Theater, USA 1980. A company-developed play by the Iowa Theater Lab,</p><p>a touchy- feely homoerotic troupe headed by Ric Zank. Other Stages de-</p><p>scribed the piece thus: "Performed in a black void, Blood Addiction was of-</p><p>ten mysteriously, hauntingly illuminated by the guttering, fickle flames of</p><p>candles" providing "suggestive, allusive, intuitional impressions of the pri-</p><p>vate lives of the master vampires." See also homosexuality.</p><p>Blood and Roses</p><p>Cinema, France/Italy 1961. Roger Vadim's loose update of "CARMILLA"</p><p>was originally titled Et mourir de plaisir (And Die of Pleasure), but re-</p><p>leased in America only after its lesbian eroticism was significantly cut. The</p><p>film has a somewhat better reputation than it deserves, perhaps because of</p><p>Claude Renoir's accomplished cinematography. It received decidedly</p><p>mixed reviews upon its stateside release. Film Quarterly called it "the most</p><p>elegant and intelligent vampire film in decades, despite a few lines such as,</p><p>'What do you make of these marks on her throat, Doctor?' " Brendan Gill,</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 3 3</p><p>A masquerade costume covers the real</p><p>thing in Roger Vadim's erotic chiller</p><p>Blood and Roses. (Photofest)</p><p>writing in The New Yorker, begged</p><p>Vadim that Blood and Roses "be his</p><p>last crack at a supernatural thriller.</p><p>Vampires just aren't what they</p><p>used to be; they seem to lack</p><p>the old—well, I guess you'd have</p><p>to call it spirit. The setting for</p><p>this preposterous farrago is, of all</p><p>places, Hadrian's Villa. It is beau-</p><p>tiful and will survive." With Mel</p><p>Ferrer, Elsa Martinelli, and Annette</p><p>Vadim. (Paramount/Les Films EGE</p><p>Documento)T</p><p>The Blood Drinkers</p><p>Cinema, Philippines 1966. I saw this film largely out of desperation; the</p><p>original Dracula was not shown on Cleveland television for most of the</p><p>1960s—long before the advent of home video—and I felt cruelly de-</p><p>prived. I had to satisfy myself with any junk that came down the pike. The</p><p>Blood Drinkers had a nifty advertisement and I had high hopes when I</p><p>took the bus to downtown Cleveland for the fifty-cent matinee at the Hip-</p><p>podrome Theatre—the very place where the Lugosi film had premiered in</p><p>Cleveland thirty-five years before. Alas, none of the vampire mystique that</p><p>must have been contained in the Hippodrome walls rubbed off on The</p><p>Blood Drinkers. It was the cheesiest movie I had ever spent money on—the</p><p>film was full of Filipino performers with bad skin and worse wardrobes: I</p><p>can almost swear that one of the vampires wore a polka-dot cape. The film</p><p>was so cheap that only part of it was in color—the rest was filled out with</p><p>tinted black-and-white sequences. My current research reveals that the</p><p>film was directed by Gerardo de Leon, and starred Amelia Fuentes, Ronald</p><p>34 David J. Ska I</p><p>Poster for The Blood Drinkers.</p><p>Remy, and Eddie Fernandez. I don't remember</p><p>who did what. But you know . . . that ad still</p><p>looks pretty good. (Hemisphere Pictures)</p><p>Blood Fetishism</p><p>Sexual gratification through blood drinking has</p><p>been a well-documented clinical phenomenon</p><p>since Richard von Krafft-Ebbing's Psychopathia</p><p>Sexualis (1892), but it has only been in the last</p><p>decade that real-life blood drinkers have culti-</p><p>vated an identification with vampires of the</p><p>imaginary sort. A contributing factor to this</p><p>new phenomenon, no doubt, has been the mass</p><p>rehabilitation of the vampire image in Anne</p><p>Rice's The Vampire Chronicles and elsewhere;</p><p>the once villainous revenant is now more likely to be presented as a sensi-</p><p>tive outcast craving meaningful human contact. In the standard psycho-</p><p>analytic interpretation, the root of the "vampire's" alienation is his/her</p><p>arrested development at the oral/sadistic stage of sexual development.</p><p>Blood, as a potent symbol of human warmth and belonging, can also</p><p>become an erotic fixation for children in abusive families, where tangled</p><p>emotions of love, pain, power, and powerlessness (and, too often, the lit-</p><p>eral presence of blood) trap the child in a limbo-state of infantile rage and</p><p>insatiable hunger. For some blood fetishists, the gratifying act is wholly</p><p>masturbatory, involving self-bleeding or, in more extreme cases, self-</p><p>mutilation. For others, who share their practice, bloodletting/drinking is</p><p>a preferred way of establishing intimacy or trust. Since human teeth make</p><p>exceedingly crude instruments for opening veins, modern vampires tend</p><p>to use razor blades, knives, or syringes to make incisions; the blood may</p><p>then be sucked directly or, more ritualistically, sipped from a chalice, cor-</p><p>dial glass, or other vessel.</p><p>The explosive growth ofvampire literature, imagery, and entertainment</p><p>has given many blood fetishists, for the first time in their lives, a positive</p><p>sense of connectedness. Several books in the last few years have explored</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 35</p><p>this unsettling sexual netherworld, including Norine Dresser's American</p><p>Vampires (1989), Rosemary Ellen Guiley's Vampires Among Us (1991),</p><p>and Carol Page's Bloodlust (1991). (My own 1993 book, The Monster</p><p>Show: A Cultural History of Horror, contains a detailed and, I hope, re-</p><p>vealing interview with a practicing California "vampire.") Richard Noll's</p><p>Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons: Twentieth-Century Reports in the Psy-</p><p>chiatric Literature (1992) recounts several of the more psychopathic</p><p>cases, including the notorious English "acid-bath" murderer John Haigh,</p><p>who killed nine people between 1944 and 1949 in order to drink a cup of</p><p>their blood. Haigh, before his trial and execution, was judged to be sane,</p><p>despite his claim that "I was impelled to kill by wild blood demons." He</p><p>assured his mother before his execution that "my spirit will remain earth-</p><p>bound for a while. My mission is not yet fulfilled."</p><p>It should be noted that mere fact of blood arousal does not necessarily</p><p>indicate a propensity for violence. While it is true that many serial killers do</p><p>drink blood, a more typical scenario involves consensual erotic play involv-</p><p>ing relatively mild forms of biting, cutting, and sucking. Neither is blood</p><p>fetishism necessarily correlated with satanism—many practitioners consider</p><p>their activities to be essentially pre-Christian, rendering satanic considera-</p><p>tions meaningless—though satanists are frequently attracted to the dra-</p><p>matic trappings of vampirism. See also psychoanalysis; sadomasochism.</p><p>Blood of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1957. The first of producer Herman Cohen's teen-monster</p><p>movies (7 Was a Teenage Werewolf'and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein were</p><p>next) established a now-familiar formula: take a troubled teen with a lot of</p><p>pent-up rage, stir in an unscrupulous authority figure and a dash of mad</p><p>science, and presto, all hell can break loose. Sandra Harrison stars as a girl</p><p>whose widowed dad has taken up with an expensive floozie. They ditch</p><p>her in a private girl's academy where a power-crazed science teacher</p><p>(Louise Lewis) plans, somehow, to upset the male-dominated scientific es-</p><p>tablishment with a Mr. Wizard-style chemistry set and a Transylvanian</p><p>amulet she twiddles in a darkened room. She only succeeds in turning the</p><p>impressionable Harrison into a small-time serial killer with really big teeth.</p><p>This movie is simultaneously awful and entertaining, and that chemistry</p><p>set can't be beat for low-budget shamelessness. Directed by Herbert L.</p><p>Strock, from a screenplay by Ralph Thornton. (American International)^</p><p>36 David J. Skal</p><p>Blood of the Vampire</p><p>Cinema, UK 1958. Light-years ahead of Dr. Christiaan Barnard, this better-</p><p>than- average costume piece posited a truly original means to revive a</p><p>staked vampire: give him a heart transplant. Dr. Callistratus (played with</p><p>an enhanced Bela Lugosi visage by Sir Donald Wolfit, the over-the-top</p><p>Shakespearean actor who inspired the play The Dresser) is not a supernat-</p><p>ural vampire, but all this transplant/resurrection business has resulted in a</p><p>blood condition amounting to the same thing. Callistratus sets himself up</p><p>as the head of a nasty Victorian prison, where he can experiment with</p><p>blood however he pleases. Wolfit's icy portrayal evokes the death camp</p><p>doctors who were still in business the decade before this film was released.</p><p>Technically, the film has a rich look to it and makes some clever use of</p><p>trompe Poeil painted backdrops. With Vincent Ball, Barbara Shelley, and</p><p>Victor Maddern. Henry Cass directed from Jimmy Sangster's Hammer-</p><p>style script. (Eros Films/Universal- International)</p><p>The Blood-Spattered Bride</p><p>Cinema, Spain 1972. Another soft-porn</p><p>lesbian spinoff of "Carmilla," though the</p><p>menage- a- trois theme suggests D. H.</p><p>Lawrence's "The Fox" more strongly than</p><p>it does J. Sheridan Le Fanu's story. The</p><p>film contains one of the most bizarre images</p><p>of a sleeping vampire in cinema history,</p><p>when the young husband finds the creature</p><p>(who will seduce his wife) supine beneath</p><p>the beach, her breasts and scuba goggles</p><p>peeking through the sand. Directed by</p><p>Vincente Aranda. With Alexandra Bastedo,</p><p>Maribel Martin, and Simon Andreu. (Mor-</p><p>gana Films)Y</p><p>Blood of the Vampire: Sir Donald Wolfit bats</p><p>Bela Lugosi eyes. (Photofest)</p><p>DONALD WOLFIT-BARBARA SHELLEY</p><p>VINCENT BALL- VICTOR MADDERN</p><p>-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 37</p><p>Blood Ties</p><p>Television, USA 1991. "Wake up, blond and blue-eyed America!" wrote</p><p>television critic John J. O'Connor in the New York Times. "Those swarthy</p><p>types living down the street, the ones with the dark hair and smoldering</p><p>eyes, they're very likely to be vampires." This pilot, which, not surpris-</p><p>ingly, never took off, "sticks its neck out trying to be a parable of racism</p><p>and American assimilation of foreign blood," according to TV Guide. The</p><p>script actually included the following line of dialogue, self-righteously de-</p><p>livered without an ounce of intended humor: "We're Americans—and it's</p><p>time we came out of the coffin."</p><p>Borland, Carroll</p><p>American actress (1914—1994) and protegee of actor Bela Lugosi, best</p><p>known for her role as Luna the bat-girl in Mark of the Vampire (1935).</p><p>Borland's appearance in the film by director Tod BROWNING was an im-</p><p>portant contribution to horror iconography, standardizing the image of</p><p>the lank-haired, almond-eyed female vampire that probably influenced</p><p>cartoonist Charles Addams when he created his ghoulish "Morticia" char-</p><p>acter. Borland, who retired from acting in the late thirties, has given many</p><p>interviews about her relationship with Lugosi (she insists it was all pla-</p><p>tonic), especially her experiences working with him on stage in Dracula.</p><p>But beyond a letter from Lugosi asking her to try out for a condensed</p><p>vaudeville -circuit version of the play in late 1932, hard documentation of</p><p>her stage work is elusive. Borland had</p><p>brief appearances in the Universal se-</p><p>rial Flash Gordon (1935) and Sutter's</p><p>Gold (1936). She made a comeback,</p><p>of sorts, in the low-budget Scalps</p><p>(1982). Borland's manuscript Count-</p><p>ess Dracula (c. 1930), which had in-</p><p>terested Lugosi as a possible stage</p><p>Carroll Borland and Jean Hersholt in Marie</p><p>of the Vampire. (Courtesy of Carroll Borland)</p><p>38 DavidJ.Skal</p><p>vehicle, recently resurfaced and was published in 1994 by Magiclmage</p><p>Filmbooks.</p><p>Boucicault, Dion</p><p>Irish- born actor and playwright (1820?-1890) best known for The</p><p>Shautjhran, London Assurance, and Love in a Maze, Boucicault made his</p><p>London stage debut in 1852 in The Vampire: A Phantasm. Boucicault's</p><p>Vampire was the latest in a long string of theatrical adaptations of John</p><p>Polidori's "The Vampyre: A Tale" (1819), and was especially influenced by</p><p>Le Vampire (1820) by Charles Nodier. The Boucicault play substituted a</p><p>new vampire, Sir Alan Raby (a.k.a. "Gervase Rookwood"), for Polidori's</p><p>original Lord Ruthven, and rather audaciously set its action in three cen-</p><p>turies, past, present, and future. Boucicault later trimmed the third act and</p><p>presented the play in America as The Phantom. The vampire, resurrected by</p><p>"moonbames," forges his own will to reclaim his former castle, but is found</p><p>out by the too-recent watermark on the document. According to biogra-</p><p>pher Townsend Walsh, the acting chores fell to Boucicault himselfwhen his</p><p>employer, the great nineteenth-century actor Charles Kean, "deemed 'vam-</p><p>pires' beneath his tragic dignity." The London Examiner noted that Bouci-</p><p>cault "enacted the 'monster' with due paleness of visage, stealthiness of pace</p><p>and solemnity of tone." Following is an excerpt from Boucicault's abridged</p><p>version, in which Alan Raby barnstorms his prey:</p><p>Alan. Thou lovest me, thy soul is mine. Come to my heart, thou can'st</p><p>not escape the spell my spirit has cast upon thine. Why do you</p><p>repulse</p><p>—</p><p>Ada. Because that breast upon which you press me, seems to be the</p><p>bosom of a corpse, and from the heart within I feel no throb of</p><p>life!</p><p>Alan. Ah! dost thou know me, then?</p><p>Ada. Away—phantom! demon!—thy soul is dark, thy heart is cold.</p><p>Alan. Ada—thy life must pass into that heart.</p><p>Ada. Avaunt!—leave me!—my father—Edgar—oh! my voice is choked</p><p>with fear—avoid thee, fiend! abhorrent spectre!</p><p>[Retreats into room]</p><p>Alan. She is mine.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 39</p><p>The Vampire was not well received by the critics. As the Examiner com-</p><p>mented, "If there is truth in the old adage that 'When things are at the</p><p>worst they must mend,' the amelioration of spectral drama is not distant,</p><p>for it has reached the extreme point of inanity. ..." The Illustrated Lon-</p><p>don News complained that "much ingenuity has been thrown away on a</p><p>subject barren of interest, and, to some extent, disgusting." Boucicault's</p><p>acting, however, was roundly praised. The Era reported that he "looked</p><p>the Vampire to perfection. . . . His deathy hue and rigid cast of counte-</p><p>nance, his high and bald forehead and spare figure, his measured accents</p><p>and grave demeanour, were all in keeping, and his 'make up' was in each</p><p>act quite a study."</p><p>Boucicault found a special fan in Queen Victoria, who attended the</p><p>benefit premiere and returned the following week to view the drama a sec-</p><p>ond time. She commissioned a watercolor portrait of Boucicault in the</p><p>role of the vampire and wrote in her journal (quoted by Boucicault biog-</p><p>rapher Richard Fawkes), "Mr. Boucicault, who is very handsome and has a</p><p>fine voice, acted very impressively. I can never forget his livid face and</p><p>fixed look. ... It quite haunts me." But upon her return visit, Victoria</p><p>found the play itself an ordeal. "It does not bear seeing a second time,"</p><p>she wrote, "and is, in fact, very trashy."</p><p>In its transatlantic incarnation as The Phantom, the play seems to have</p><p>fared better with the public. According to its original publisher, Samuel</p><p>French, the 1856 New York engagement at Wallack's Theatre "was</p><p>crowded to excess, and the enterprise netted ten thousand dollars in a run</p><p>of eleven weeks, unprecedented in the history of the New York Stage."</p><p>One interesting aspect of Boucicault's conception of the vampire is the</p><p>possibility that he may have been the first actor to incorporate the appear-</p><p>ance of a BAT into his performance. Odell's Annals of the New York Stage</p><p>cites Mrs. M. E. W. Sherwood's 1875 recollections of the play: "Then . . .</p><p>comes a vision of Boucicault playing the 'Vampire,' a dreadful and weird</p><p>thing played with immortal genius. That great playwright would not have</p><p>died unknown had he never done anything but flap his bat- like wings in</p><p>that dream-disturbing piece." See also theater.</p><p>The Brainiac</p><p>Cinema, Mexico 1961. An evil baron is burned on earth as a wizard, but he</p><p>returns from outer space 300 years later in a meteor, with the ability to</p><p>40 David J. Skal</p><p>metamorphose into a papier-mache monster with a brain-sucking pro-</p><p>boscis. Thus, he fits (somewhat uneasily and over- literally) into the cate-</p><p>gory of "psychic" vampires. This one has a camp following; if you're so</p><p>inclined, by all means track it down. With Abel Salazar (who also pro-</p><p>duced) and German Robles, who also teamed up for the Mexican fright</p><p>fests The Vampire and The Vampire's Coffin. Directed by Chano Urveta.</p><p>Screenplay by Adolpho Portillo. (AIP-TV)V</p><p>Bram Stoker's Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1992. A major disappointment. Francis Ford Coppola's $50</p><p>million vampire movie was just the latest in a long string of films that have</p><p>appropriated Stoker's title and characters for highly idiosyncratic exer-</p><p>cises in filmmaking. Therefore, it was not surprising that Bram Stoker's</p><p>Dracula would emerge as an essential subversion of the 1897 Stoker text;</p><p>what was surprising was the uncritical way that journalists and critics alike</p><p>swallowed the studio's laughable assertion that Coppola's film was the</p><p>first truly faithful adaptation of the Stoker</p><p>novel—a classic love story, no less.</p><p>Now, whatever Dracula is, it is not a love</p><p>story; it is difficult, in fact, to imagine a more</p><p>antiromantic narrative. Stoker's Dracula is a</p><p>cunning Darwinian superman; he does not</p><p>seduce—he seizes. While he grows younger</p><p>as he drinks blood, he never becomes attrac-</p><p>tive. The sexuality in Dracula is both rancid</p><p>and repellent. The story's nightmarish power</p><p>derives in large part from the tension</p><p>wrought by a highly "civilized" Victorian</p><p>surface narrative</p><p>clashing with a raging sub-</p><p>text of unsublimated animalism.</p><p>Following a string of expensive flops, Cop-</p><p>Bram Stoker's Dracula: Cover of the paperback</p><p>movie tie-in edition of Stoker's novel.</p><p>(Courtesy of New American Library) >»"—»'</p><p>fr i«"*HZ)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 4</p><p>1</p><p>pola was ready to reestablish his credibility with the Hollywood main-</p><p>stream by producing an on-time, on-budget commercial film for a major</p><p>studio. James V. Hart's screenplay, originally tided Dracula: the Untold</p><p>Story, was stalled in TV-movie limbo when actress Winona Ryder brought</p><p>it to Coppola's attention. In one sense, Hart's script was indeed "un-</p><p>told"—by Bram Stoker, since Hart had replaced Stoker's ravenous monster</p><p>with a lovesick revenant seeking the reincarnation of his fourteenth-century</p><p>wife. On the other hand, the theme was extraordinarily derivative; it had</p><p>been used by screenwriter Richard Matheson in his 1973 television adap-</p><p>tation of Dracula, as an ongoing plot device in the sixties soap opera</p><p>Dark Shadows, and even in the blaxploitation flick Blacula (1972).</p><p>(Television's Saturday Night Live picked up on the Blacula connection</p><p>and ran an amusing skit lampooning Bram Stoker's Blacula the week be-</p><p>fore the Coppola film opened.) And the inspiration for all these reincarna-</p><p>tion tales was The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff pursuing a parallel</p><p>romance across the millennia.</p><p>Bram Stoker's Dracula was promoted like a steamroller by Columbia</p><p>Pictures (it had the most extensive merchandising tie-ins of any film before</p><p>Jurassic Park); as a result, there was almost no independent, intelligent re-</p><p>porting on the film's evolution—just an avalanche of sycophantic puff</p><p>pieces and coffee-table books. In the major media, only Newsweek called</p><p>the film's bluff, going as far as to run parallel texts from the novel and the</p><p>screenplay to reveal the 180-degree switch in sensibility.</p><p>The casting, to say the least, was odd. Gary Oldman as Dracula is more</p><p>pixie-ish than princely; neither Winona Ryder nor Keanu Reeves as the</p><p>young lovers is convincingly British; Tom Waits' Renfield (like Oldman) is</p><p>often vocally incomprehensible; and Anthony Hopkins as a near- crackpot</p><p>Van Helsing seems manically adrift, almost undirected. The operatically</p><p>inclined costumes by Eiko Ishioka are on the whole very impressive—but</p><p>where is the opera? (Not every sartorial concept works, however; Lucy</p><p>Westenra's huge-collared dress was supposedly inspired by the anatomy of</p><p>a frilled lizard, but creates a far more bizarre effect: the Victorian virgin</p><p>served up as a white cheese pizza.)</p><p>The film operates like a broken, very expensive kaleidoscope, jamming</p><p>image atop precious image until the whole thing ends up feeling dis-</p><p>jointed and insubstantial. Of course, all the film's incongruities and flaws</p><p>and superficiality were applauded by Coppola partisans as evidence of a</p><p>brilliant "postmodernist" sensibility. The postmodernist defense, of course,</p><p>42 David J. Skal</p><p>is the last refuge for anything these days that has no point of view, bor-</p><p>rows egregiously, and finally makes no sense.</p><p>Coppola's real attitude toward Stoker may be revealed in his voice-over</p><p>commentary on the Criterion Collection laser disc of the film, when he</p><p>tells us, "Very few people have gotten through the book, if truth be known</p><p>. . . it's very hard going. . .</p><p>." For Coppola and company—obviously. (Co-</p><p>lumbia Pictures)T</p><p>Breasts</p><p>See DECOLLETAGE.</p><p>"The Bride of Corinth''</p><p>Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1797 ballad "Die Braut von Korinth" sug-</p><p>gests a horror version ofRomeo and Juliet, in which a family's opposition to</p><p>a burgeoning love affair is circumvented by the maiden's death and resurrec-</p><p>tion as a vampire to consummate her passion in blood. The ballad is usually</p><p>cited as one of the first "respectable" literary treatments of vampirism.</p><p>Goethe was later much impressed by John Polidori's 1819 story "The</p><p>Vampybe," which he (like much of Europe) attributed to Lord Byron.</p><p>The Brides of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, UK 1960. Hammer Films' first follow-up to its wildly successful</p><p>Horror of Dracula (1958) doesn't feature Dracula at all but instead re-</p><p>volves on a Suddenly, Last Summer-like premise: a dragon-lady baroness</p><p>(the peerless Martita Hunt) entices young women to her castle to provide</p><p>nourishment to Baron Meinster, her captive vampire son (David Peel).</p><p>Mom feels guilty about her son's predicament—somehow, she fostered his</p><p>vampirism by indulging his taste for decadent friends and unspecified but</p><p>"wicked" games. The Oedipal tension reaches a climax when the baroness</p><p>is finally neck-penetrated by the son. The thinly veiled Freudian theme was</p><p>picked up by the reviewer for the London Evening Standard, who noted,</p><p>disapprovingly, that the golden-haired vampire "capitalises on current</p><p>fashion by resembling Oscar Wilde's Bosie with fangs." (Actor Peel may</p><p>have had more in common with another Wildean personage: at the age of</p><p>forty, Peel's ability to play a role half his age brings to mind The Picture</p><p>of Dorian Gray.) Reviled by many reviewers when it first appeared (the</p><p>London Observer called it "a ludicrous monstrosity"), The Brides of</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 43</p><p>"Bosie with fangs"? David Peel vamps</p><p>Yvonne Monlaur in The Brides of Dracula.</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>Dracula is now widely considered</p><p>something of a minor classic, pre-</p><p>figuring the complex sexual themes</p><p>that have been more recently ex-</p><p>panded upon by Anne RlCE and</p><p>others. With Peter Cushing (as</p><p>Van Helsing), Freda Jackson, and</p><p>Yvonne Monlaur. Directed by</p><p>Terence Fisher from a screenplay</p><p>by Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan,</p><p>and Edward Percy. ( Universal-</p><p>International)T See also homo-</p><p>sexuality; Wilde, Oscar.</p><p>Browning, Tod</p><p>An American film director (1882-1962), who created one of the darkest,</p><p>most obsessive bodies of work in cinema history, Browning produced</p><p>three highly influential vampire films: London After Midnight (1927),</p><p>Dracula ( 193 1 ), and Mark of the Vampire ( 1935). London After Mid-</p><p>night was one of Browning's many successful collaborations with Lon</p><p>Chaney, Sr., featuring the actor as a razor-mouthed bat-man in a beaver</p><p>hat. Dracula is Browning's most celebrated film, but the extent to which</p><p>he actually directed it is a matter of some dispute (cinematographer Karl</p><p>Freund may actually have handled much of the directorial chores). Mark</p><p>of the Vampire was in many ways a remake of both London After Midnight</p><p>and Dracula; it was one of Bela Lugosi's final Hollywood appearances as</p><p>a vampire in a noncomedic role. All three of Browning's vampire epics are</p><p>full of overlapping plot elements and visual references and are probably</p><p>best regarded as some kind of ongoing, "unfinished" film. Browning</p><p>loved unsavory topics—gangsters, con artists, sideshows—and his most</p><p>44 David J. Skal</p><p>Tod Browning, vampire-movie maven.</p><p>notorious effort was Freaks (1932), fea-</p><p>turing living sideshow oddities. Despite his</p><p>rigorous use of a well-defined set of themes,</p><p>Browning showed surprisingly little inter-</p><p>est in the technical aspects of filmmaking,</p><p>and many of his films have a slapdash feel</p><p>to them. Another of Browning's obsessive</p><p>motifs was castration, which has its own</p><p>curious and persistent relationship to vam-</p><p>pire stories. (Anne Rice, author of The</p><p>Vampire Chronicles, was interested enough</p><p>to write a major novel on the castrati of the</p><p>opera world, Cry to Heaven.) Following</p><p>the disaster of Freaks, Browning's career went steadily downhill; nonethe-</p><p>less, he retired in 1939 a wealthy man, living the rest of his days in a</p><p>strange, self-imposed seclusion.</p><p>Bruce, Lenny</p><p>Controversial "dirty mouth" comic of the fifties and sixties, Lenny Bruce</p><p>transformed American humor with his relentless assaults on the hypocrisy</p><p>and complacency of American culture in the Cold War era. Bruce forever</p><p>subverted the image of Dracula with a series of skits (most notably</p><p>"Beautiful Transylvania") which presented the vampire as a tired old Jew-</p><p>ish man with a nagging wife and a pill habit—a satirical</p><p>jab at the odd me-</p><p>dia spectacle generated by actor Bela Lugosi who, in 1955, underwent a</p><p>well-publicized treatment for narcotic addiction. Bruce himself was no</p><p>stranger to chemical substances and died of an overdose in 1966.</p><p>Buffy, the Vampire Slayer</p><p>Cinema, USA 1992. Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula</p><p>was merely the central event in the 1992 plethora of body-fluid entertain-</p><p>ment; glomming onto its spillover publicity were scads of lesser efforts like</p><p>Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Buffy (Kristy Swanson) is a Valley Girl cheer-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 45</p><p>leader destined by a forgotten bloodline to destroy a monster who feeds</p><p>on just exactly the kind of kids who hang out in shopping malls and see</p><p>the same movie more than once. The bloodsucker is the once-handsome</p><p>Rutger Hauer (favored, for a while, by Anne Rice as the ideal vampire Le-</p><p>stat), who has not aged well and here resembles nothing so much as Kurt</p><p>Vonnegut on a bad hair day. With Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, and</p><p>Luke Perry. Directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui from a script by Joss Whedon.</p><p>(Twentieth-Century-Fox)T</p><p>Bunnicula, a Rabbit-Tale of Mystery</p><p>Fiction, USA 1979. What excuse could there be for a children's story</p><p>about a vampire bunny rabbit who evaporates from his cage to suck the</p><p>juice from innocent carrots and tomatoes? Three million Bunnicula books</p><p>in print, that's what. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that kids pick up</p><p>on all the campy references to grown-up vampire stories in Deborah and</p><p>James Howe's singular oeuvre, and suspect that it is primarily parents who</p><p>are driving the sales of these slim, lucrative volumes. Perhaps it affords</p><p>them a sanitized, guilt-free way to pass on to their children their own mor-</p><p>bid interest in things vampiric. But it still seems to me a lot like giving a</p><p>kid a coffin with training wheels. If we really want to stretch things, I</p><p>guess it could be pointed out that rabbits, through their recent cultural</p><p>proximity to Easter, must embody some kind of death-and -resurrection</p><p>energy. Hare-raising stuff.</p><p>Bunston, Herbert</p><p>A British character actor (1870-1935) best known to readers of this book</p><p>for his portrayal of the ineffectual Dr. Seward in the 1931 film version of</p><p>Dracula, Bunston made his stage debut in London in 1897, the year of</p><p>DracuWs publication, and he acted at the Lyceum Theatre at the turn</p><p>of the century while it was still being managed by Bram STOKER. His fa-</p><p>vorite role was Cassius in Julius Caesar, though he was more usually cast</p><p>in bland administrative parts: magistrates, professors, ministers, and the</p><p>like. He originated the role of Dr. Seward in Horace Liveright's Broad-</p><p>way and roadshow productions of Dracula with Bela LuGOSi beginning in</p><p>1927, and repeated the part for the 1931 film. For fans who can't get</p><p>enough of the Bunston charisma, his Hollywood films from the early thir-</p><p>ties include The Last ofMrs. Cheney, Charlie Chan's Chance, The Monkey's</p><p>46 David J. Skal</p><p>Paw, Once a Lady, Almost Married, Clive ofIndia, and others. He died at</p><p>the age of sixty-four, of a heart attack, in Los Angeles.</p><p>Burial Customs</p><p>Since a vampire is usually conceived to be a reanimated corpse, it is not</p><p>surprising that burial customs in a wide range of cultures evolved with the</p><p>implicit or explicit purpose of immobilizing the body after death. The</p><p>grave marker, in its most primitive form, is a stone meant to create a heavy</p><p>physical barrier against reanimation. A STAKE driven through the heart can</p><p>also effectively pin a corpse to its coffin, while simultaneously destroying</p><p>the body's blood pump. In their 1935 study, The Cassubian Civilization,</p><p>Lorentz, Fischer and Lehr-Splawinski recount the vampire -related burial</p><p>customs of the Cassubian Poles, many of which, they say, have persisted</p><p>even into the twentieth century:</p><p>In order to be protected against the doings of the vampire, care has to</p><p>be taken in the first place that the dying person receives the Eucharist. If</p><p>a little earth from under the threshold is put in his coffin, he cannot re-</p><p>turn to the house. Further, the sign of the cross is made on his mouth,</p><p>and the crucifix from a rosary or a coin is placed under his tongue for</p><p>him to suck. A brick is put under his chin, so that he may break his teeth</p><p>on it. Or a net is put into the coffin, all the knots of which the vampire</p><p>must undo before he can leave his tomb, and this lasts many years, for,</p><p>according to some, he can undo only one knot a year. Or a little bag full</p><p>of sea-sand or poppy-seed is placed in his coffin, or the way to the grave</p><p>is strewn with sea-sand or poppy-seed; the vampire must then count all</p><p>the grains before he is able to get out and return to the house, and this</p><p>likewise lasts a very long time, for, according to some authorities, he</p><p>counts but one grain a year. He is also laid in the coffin face downwards,</p><p>so that he may not find the way to the upper world, but descend deeper</p><p>and deeper into the earth.</p><p>See also folklore.</p><p>Burne-Jones, Sir Philip</p><p>Son of the celebrated decorative painter Edward Coley Burne-Jones,</p><p>Philip Burne-Jones (1861-1926) was also a painter, though distinctly</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 47</p><p>overshadowed by his father's reputation. His most famous canvas was The</p><p>Vampire, which created a scandal upon its exhibition in 1897, since the</p><p>monstrous female figure it depicted was unmistakably the actress Mrs.</p><p>Patrick Campbell, then the toast of theatrical London. The younger</p><p>Burne-Jones had been her frequent escort and, it was rumored, she had</p><p>thrown him over in favor of the noted Shakespearean actor Johnston</p><p>Forbes-Robertson. Philip's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, contributed some</p><p>immortal lines to the exhibition catalog, which the public took as an alle-</p><p>gory of Philip's relationship with the actress:</p><p>A fool there was and he made his prayer</p><p>(Even as you and I!)</p><p>To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair</p><p>(We called her the woman who did not care)</p><p>But the fool he called her his lady fair</p><p>—</p><p>(Even as you and I!</p><p>)</p><p>It is almost a certainty that there was</p><p>never any romantic intimacy between Philip</p><p>and Mrs. Campbell, though Philip may have</p><p>had his illusions. The actress was likely far</p><p>more interested in cultivating a relationship</p><p>with his father and the rarefied world of the</p><p>Pre-Raphaelites he represented. Additionally,</p><p>while Philip may have been born into com-</p><p>fortable circumstances, he did not inherit his</p><p>father's ethereally handsome looks. He was</p><p>short, somewhat froggy looking, and appeared</p><p>dour and middle-aged while still a young</p><p>man. He suffered from mood swings and had</p><p>a viperish side when crossed. He also knew</p><p>how to hold a grudge.</p><p>Philip Burne-Jones' 1897 painting The Vampire was a</p><p>caustic comment on the painter's failed relationship</p><p>with the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell.</p><p>48 David J. Skal</p><p>Reviews of The Vampire were mixed, though it got plenty of attention.</p><p>The Westminster Gazette pronounced that "Mr. Philip Burne-Jones' dis-</p><p>agreeable picture of Mrs. Patrick Campbell as a 'Vampire' in a dirty night-</p><p>gown and a weird light, is uncommonly clever in many respects, but it is</p><p>hardly the kind of thing one would want to live with." The Daily Mail was</p><p>far more salutory:</p><p>In a moonlit room an eerie figure clad in the night costume that is</p><p>usually worn in the security of locked doors, sits on a couch and gloats</p><p>over the body of her victim, upon whose bare chest is an ominous</p><p>crimson stain. . . . One may cavil at Mr. Burne-Jones' predilection for</p><p>the gruesome; it is, however, evident that his style and draftsmanship</p><p>have improved steadily. . . . 'The Vampire' will be much talked about</p><p>during the coming season.</p><p>From 1902 to 1903, Phil took The Vampire to America, and, in a coin-</p><p>cidence suggesting a morbid farce by Noel Coward, he and Mrs. Pat</p><p>checked into the same Chicago hotel, where they each issued angry and</p><p>flustered pronouncements to the press about the painting and their rela-</p><p>tionship—or lack of one. The papers ate it up. Both the painting and the</p><p>Kipling</p><p>poem had considerable staying power in the public mind, and</p><p>their recognition value was a tremendous asset when Porter Emerson</p><p>Browne opened his hit Broadway temperance melodrama, A Fool There</p><p>Was, in 1909. Browne's play was the basis for William Fox's 1915 film of</p><p>the same title, which instantly transformed Theda Bara into an inter-</p><p>national star and made "the Vamp" a household concept. Philip Burne-</p><p>Jones never painted anything again that matched the notoriety of The</p><p>Vampire; he never married and died in 1926. For her part, Mrs. Patrick</p><p>Campbell failed to make a successful transition to the screen, though she</p><p>did have a few memorable Hollywood appearances in her dowager years</p><p>—</p><p>most notably as the old pawnbroker beaten to death with a poker by Peter</p><p>Lorre in Crime and Punishment (1935). In 1940 she died for real.</p><p>Byron, George Gordon, Lord</p><p>The leading figure of the Romantic movement, Lord Byron (1788-1824)</p><p>had a powerful influence on the development of the modern image of the</p><p>vampire as a brooding, sexy aristocrat, though he never wrote a major</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 49</p><p>piece of vampire literature himself. He touched on the theme in his 1813</p><p>poem "The Giaour" ("But first on earth, as Vampyre sent,/Thy corse</p><p>shall from its tomb be rent;/And ghastly haunt thy native place,/And suck</p><p>the blood of all thy race . . ."). As part of his 1816 literary contest with</p><p>Percy and Mary Shelley (a challenge that produced Frankenstein), Byron</p><p>wrote a fragment of a tale about a man who vows to return from the</p><p>grave. He lost interest in the composition, but Byron's physician, John</p><p>Polidori, elaborated the fragment into the classic story "The Vampyre"</p><p>(1819) which, published anonymously, was widely taken as Byron's work</p><p>and adapted as a play and opera. Byron's legendary reputation as a seducer</p><p>and rake fit nicely with the image of the fatal Lord RUTHVEN of Polidori's</p><p>tale and continues to exert a shaping influence over vampire characteriza-</p><p>tions to the present day.</p><p>e</p><p>Calmet, Dom Augustine</p><p>The first scholar to systematically examine vampire superstitions, the</p><p>Benedictine monk Augustine Calmet (1672-1757) was himself a contem-</p><p>porary of the vampire hysteria which swept central and eastern Europe in</p><p>the 1720s and 1730s. Near the end of his life, the celebrated French bibli-</p><p>cal scholar published a two-volume treatise on ghosts, vampires, and other</p><p>revenants; a century later, in 1850, it appeared in English as The Phantom</p><p>World: or, the Philosophy of Spirits and Apparitions. Calmet was essentially</p><p>skeptical about the existence of vampires (he snorted at claims that "the</p><p>dead have been heard to eat and chew like pigs in their graves"); nonethe-</p><p>less, Calmet dutifully recorded a wide range of vampire reports gleaned</p><p>from sources in Hungary, Moldavia, and Poland, which he then subjected</p><p>to analysis on both natural and theological grounds. He found particularly</p><p>troubling the physical implausibility of the vampire's nightly wanderings:</p><p>How a body covered with four or five feet of earth, having no room to</p><p>move about and disengage itself, wrapped in linen, covered with pitch,</p><p>can make its way out, and come back upon the earth, and there occa-</p><p>sion such effects as are related of it; and how after that it returns to its</p><p>former state, and re-enters underground, where it is found sound,</p><p>whole, and full of blood, and in the same condition as a living body?</p><p>this is the question. Will it be said that these bodies evaporate through</p><p>the ground without opening it, like the waters and vapours which en-</p><p>ter into the earth, or proceed from it, without sensibly deranging its</p><p>particles? It were to be wished that the accounts which have been given</p><p>us concerning the return of the vampires had been more minute in</p><p>their explanations of this subject.</p><p>52 David J. Skal</p><p>While Calmet wrestled with the paradox that the vampire was some-</p><p>how both an immaterial phantom and a physical entity, he ironically never</p><p>recognized the obvious analogy to the flesh/spirit dichotomies of his own</p><p>religious tradition. See also Catholicism; Christianity.</p><p>Candle</p><p>A favorite prop of vampires as they glide between subterranean vaults and</p><p>lofty tower rooms, the candle is a classic symbol of human life and its finite</p><p>span, and simultaneously an emblem of survival and transcendence. Like</p><p>the vampire, the candle flame fascinates, consumes, and transforms. The</p><p>flame also represents spiritual illumination, faith, or esoteric knowledge.</p><p>Of course, the person who follows the vampire's way of knowledge soon</p><p>finds his or her own life flickering—and likely soon extinguished.</p><p>Cannibalism</p><p>Vampirism finds its prehistoric roots in cannibal practice: the ancient</p><p>belief that strength, courage, or other qualities could be transferred</p><p>from one being to another by eating and drinking flesh and blood is</p><p>central to the vampire mythos, as well as to the common rites of the</p><p>Christian tradition. The ghoul of oriental FOLKLORE is in many ways a</p><p>transitional figure between the cannibal and the vampire, feasting alter-</p><p>nately on the flesh of corpses as well as on living blood. The modern</p><p>movie zombie, as celebrated in the films of George Romero, shares</p><p>many characteristics of the pre-Romantic cannibal/vampire/ghoul. See</p><p>also Catholicism; Christianity.</p><p>Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter</p><p>Cinema, UK 1974. Produced by Hammer Films as a television pilot, but</p><p>released theatrically when plans for a series fell through, Captain Kronos:</p><p>Vampire Hunter introduced several novel concepts, including vampires</p><p>that feed directly upon the youth and vitality of their victims rather than</p><p>on their blood, transforming buxom maidens into withered crones in the</p><p>twinkling of a bat. There is a distinct suggestion in the script that, had the</p><p>series come to fruition, all sorts of vampires—blood drinking, soul steal-</p><p>ing, and otherwise—would have been introduced to provide variety and</p><p>sustain viewer interest. The film is set in a pseudo-Regency period with</p><p>plenty of swashbuckling—they contrived a way to dispatch vampires with</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 5 3</p><p>swords instead of stakes, which are demonstrated to be highly unreliable.</p><p>A tolerable diversion. Written and directed by Brian Clemens. With Horst</p><p>Janson, John Carson, Shane Briant, and Caroline Munro. (Paramount)V</p><p>"Carmilla"</p><p>Novella, Ireland 1872. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's elegant tale of a female</p><p>vampire is one of the best and most influential vampire stories ever writ-</p><p>ten, rivaling only Dracula for the inspiration it has provided to genera-</p><p>tions of supernatural fiction writers, playwrights, and filmmakers. First</p><p>published in Le Fanu's collection In a Glass Darkly, "Carmilla" recounts</p><p>the tale of a beautiful vampire, apparently young but in reality 300 years</p><p>old, who insinuates herself into a household in remote Styria (a district of</p><p>Austria), there seducing and draining the story's narrator, a girl named</p><p>Laura. The lesbianism in the story is surprisingly pronounced, as the girls</p><p>spend languorous hours kissing, fondling, and gazing into each other's</p><p>eyes. At night Carmilla comes to Laura as "a sooty-black animal that re-</p><p>sembled a monstrous cat. ... I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two</p><p>broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if</p><p>two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast." The</p><p>dracu-puncture continues until Carmilla's true nature is discovered and</p><p>her living corpse is staked, beheaded, and burned.</p><p>"Carmilla" very nearly had its stage debut in 1928, when Hamilton</p><p>Deane, coauthor with John L. Balderston of the Broadway adaptation</p><p>of Dracula, dramatized the Le Fanu story in collaboration with his wife,</p><p>the actress Dora Mary Patrick, as a bargaining chip with Dracula^ pro-</p><p>ducer Horace Liveright, who was waffling on his commitment to an</p><p>American tour of the Deane/Balderston play. If Liveright refused to tour</p><p>Dracula, Deane would tour his own version of "Carmilla" and corner the</p><p>American market for stage</p><p>vampires. Liveright relented, and the "Carmilla"</p><p>adaptation was never performed.</p><p>In 1937, the earl of Longford presented a stage version of the tale in</p><p>Dublin and London. The notices were extremely mixed; the reviewer for</p><p>the London Daily Telegram called it "as boring a play as I ever sat through</p><p>in my life," while another daily appraisal conceded that "now and then it</p><p>undoubtably gives the sensitive spectator an eerie thrill." Apropos the</p><p>thick lesbian subtext, the Sunday Times admitted that it was "prepared to</p><p>spend an evening's playgoing in the company of such a fearful denizen of</p><p>54 David J. Skal</p><p>the charnel-house as a vampire without embarrassment. But this play . . .</p><p>causes discomfort by apparently giving bald statement to a theme which,</p><p>in the theatre at any rate, is usually treated with delicate insinuation." The</p><p>Observer called the play "picturesque," but noted that "since Horace Wal-</p><p>pole and Mrs. Radcliffe set the supernatural dancing, Freud has blown so</p><p>many gaffs that Carmilla is seen less in charnal trappings than in emotional</p><p>deshabille. As a heroine she seems to call for the attention of the psy-</p><p>chopathologist or a strict headmistress, rather than simple shudders."</p><p>"Carmilla" was given as a source of inspiration for Carl Dreyer's moody</p><p>1931 art film, Vamptr, though the debt to Le Fanu seems extraordinarily</p><p>tenuous. The next film version—an extremely loose, modernized adapta-</p><p>tion—was Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses in 1960, followed by the first</p><p>straightforward dramatization for British television in 1966. The Vampire</p><p>Lovers (1971) escalated the girlish groping of the original story into a</p><p>full-scale nude bedroom romp, and began Hammer Films' three-picture</p><p>foray into the Karnstein legend. The Hammer series continued with Lust</p><p>for a Vampire (1970) and culminated in Twins of Evil (1971). Mean-</p><p>while, across the Atlantic, New York's La Mama Experimental Theatre</p><p>Company produced a curiously stylized chamber musical based on "Car-</p><p>milla" in the fall of 1970, written by Wilford Leach. Owing to a knee opera-</p><p>tion undergone by the actress who played Carmilla, the staging was altered</p><p>to allow the vampire to remain seated throughout the performance on a</p><p>grandly carved Victorian sofa in which singers' faces protruded through</p><p>the curlicues like animated wooden masks. The piece toured internationally,</p><p>had its score recorded as an original cast album, and was given several re-</p><p>vivals, most recently in 1986.</p><p>The most recent adaptation of the story was produced in 1989 for ca-</p><p>ble television's Nightmare Classics series, with its setting imaginatively</p><p>transplanted to the antebellum South. Other films with female vampires</p><p>exploiting the Carmilla/Karnstein connection include Crypt of Horror</p><p>(1963) and Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974).</p><p>Carpathian Mountains</p><p>A mountain range in central Europe, extending from the Czech -Polish</p><p>border into central Romania. The Carpathians achieved vampiric immor-</p><p>tality through Bram Stoker's use of them as the locale of Castle Dracula</p><p>in his 1897 novel.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 55</p><p>Carradine, John</p><p>A distinguished, if eccentric, American character actor who made a memo-</p><p>rable Dracula on numerous occasions, John Carradine was born Rich-</p><p>mond Reed Carradine in 1906, adopting his stage name after several years</p><p>in Hollywood—where he had bit parts in several horror/fantasy classics,</p><p>including The Invisible Man (1933), The Black Cat (1934), and Bride of</p><p>Frankenstein (1935). Carradine was a classically trained actor who claimed</p><p>to have taken the part of Dracula in UniversaPs House of Frankenstein</p><p>(1944) in order to subsidize his own Shakespearean theater troupe.</p><p>Though he was only in his late thirties, his cadaverous, white-haired, mus-</p><p>tached Dracula was a convincing approximation of the character as de-</p><p>scribed in the original novel. (Carradine also had a gaze so penetrating</p><p>that it almost obviated the need for FANGS—one suspected he could stare</p><p>holes in a neck.) He repeated the vampire role in House of Dracula</p><p>(1945) and, in the fifties, in stage and television adaptations. In the sixties,</p><p>Carradine once more donned the</p><p>Dracula cape for the beginning of a</p><p>long run of bad films, including Billy</p><p>the Kid vs. Dracula (1966), Blood</p><p>of Dracula }</p><p>s Castle (1967), Vampire</p><p>Girls (1967), Vampire Hookers (1979),</p><p>etc. Carradine appeared in nearly 200</p><p>feature films (including several Holly-</p><p>wood classics, like The Grapes of Wrath</p><p>of 1939), and countless television pro-</p><p>grams and, while cruelly crippled by</p><p>arthritis in his later years, never stopped</p><p>acting. (I saw him act, with great gusto,</p><p>in a summer-stock production of Ar-</p><p>senic and Old Lace with Sylvia Sidney</p><p>in the 1970s. Though his hands were</p><p>reduced by disease to useless knobs,</p><p>he somehow carried off all required</p><p>John Carradine in House of Frankenstein.</p><p>56 David J. Skal</p><p>stage business effortlessly and seemed to be enjoying himself hugely.) He</p><p>died in June 1990.</p><p>Castration</p><p>According to Sigmund Freud, our sense of the uncanny has much of its</p><p>roots in the castration complex, or primal fear of genital mutilation. On the</p><p>surface, castration would seem to have little to do with vampires, but the</p><p>links, once explained, are more reasonable than you might think. The argu-</p><p>ment goes like this: in the absence of functional genitalia, the vampire's</p><p>sexual energy is displaced in fantasy to an earlier, oral stage of erotic feel-</p><p>ing—the vision of the vampire's piercing, erectile fangs thus represent</p><p>a dreamlike eruption of a deflected sexuality. The ambiguous vampire</p><p>mouth—soft yet hard, simultaneously engulfing yet penetrating—is a sur-</p><p>passing evocation of the oldest castration symbol of all, the vagina dentata.</p><p>It should come as no surprise, therefore, that two of this century's greatest</p><p>purveyors ofvampire entertainment, film director Tod Browning and nov-</p><p>elist Anne Rice, have also been attracted to castration themes—Rice explic-</p><p>itly in her novel Cry to Heaven (1982), and Browning more obliquely in</p><p>psychosexual mutilation dramas like The Unknown (1927). Castration, of</p><p>course, resonates symbolically with other kinds of social powerlessness, ex-</p><p>ploitation, and victimization that are hallmarks of vampire culture. The</p><p>modern threat of AIDS (q.v.)—itself a powerful modern symbol of the</p><p>vampire—might be considered "castrating" in that it inhibits ordinary geni-</p><p>tal sex and forces it into compromised or sublimated forms. See also AIDS;</p><p>CODEPENDENCY; FANGS; FELLATIO; FREUD, SlGMUND; PSYCHOANALYSIS.</p><p>Catalepsy</p><p>This is a state of suspended animation and muscular rigidity, sometimes</p><p>mistaken for death. In the days before routine embalming, cataleptics were</p><p>good candidates for premature burial. It has been frequently argued that</p><p>catalepsy gave rise to many stories of vampirism. Following the shock of</p><p>waking in a coffin—the naturally desperate clawing at the lid and the tear-</p><p>ing away of finger flesh, the frantic eating of the grave clothes, etc.—those</p><p>people unfortunate enough to have been buried alive would finally present</p><p>a grotesque postmortem appearance easily taken as "evidence" that the</p><p>dead are restless in their graves and very, very hungry. See also Isle of</p><p>the Dead.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 57</p><p>Catholicism</p><p>During the reign of Pope Innocent III in 1215, the Roman Catholic</p><p>Church formalized the dogma of transubstantiation—the belief that the</p><p>body and blood of Christ were physically present in the communion wafer</p><p>and wine used in the celebration of the Mass. Thus, the essential act of</p><p>vampirism—the literal drinking of human blood—is a central ritual in one</p><p>of the world's major religions. In my own informal but extensive observa-</p><p>tion, the vampire myth resonates with a particular strength with lapsed</p><p>and ex-Catholics—scratch a vampire buff, and it's more than a little likely</p><p>you'll find a Catholic school uniform bunched beneath the cape. The rea-</p><p>sons are complex and as varied as the individuals. To the rebellious, a vam-</p><p>pire</p><p>fetish can seem to be a perverse badge of antiauthoritarian honor. To</p><p>the lapsed, the ritual aspects of vampire entertainment with their many</p><p>shadow-suggestions of the sacraments may, to some extent, fill a spiritual</p><p>void. And even practicing Catholics may find a reinforcement of their faith</p><p>in the traditional vampire story's emphasis on the dualistic reality of good</p><p>and evil, the mystical properties of blood, etc. The leading practitioner of</p><p>vampire fiction in our time, Anne Rice, is an ex- Catholic, as is her most fa-</p><p>mous creation, the vampire Lestat. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, in a recent</p><p>essay on the 1931 film Dracula, commented on the ritualistic, priestlike</p><p>demeanor of the master vampire, which she likened to her own childhood</p><p>memories of the dark-robed priests intoning the Latin mass. See also</p><p>blood; Christianity.</p><p>Chandler, Helen</p><p>Wistful stage and screen actress of the 1920s and 1930s, Helen Chandler</p><p>(1906-1965) was the toast of Broadway in roles ranging from light com-</p><p>edy to Ophelia in Hamlet, but she is remembered today for only one role:</p><p>Mina Seward in the 1931 film version ofDracula. Her Hollywood career</p><p>didn't last long, however; she destroyed her professional chances, as well</p><p>as several marriages, with pills and drugs, and sank into an obscurity bro-</p><p>ken only occasionally by a newspaper report of her commitment to a sani-</p><p>tarium or, in the early fifties, disfiguring burns suffered in a bedroom fire.</p><p>A rather bizarre story was reported by the New York papers in the mid-</p><p>thirties, when, while married to the actor Bramwell Fletcher, Chandler was</p><p>harassed by a man using the name "Bramwell Fletcher" and demanding</p><p>money by mail. Years later, the real Fletcher is said to have tried to visit</p><p>58 David J. Skal</p><p>Chandler in one of her sanitariums, only to be turned away by a woman</p><p>who no longer recognized him. Chandler died alone of complications fol-</p><p>lowing surgery; no obituaries appeared in the trade papers and no one has</p><p>ever claimed her ashes.</p><p>Children of the Night</p><p>"Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!"</p><p>Probably the most quoted and instandy recognizable line from the novel</p><p>Dracula, spoken by the count in reference to the wolves howling outside</p><p>his casde. The line appears in virtually all dramatizations of Bram Stoker's</p><p>novel, though more recent film adaptations added some irritating modi-</p><p>fiers</p><p>—"sweet music," or "beautiful music"—thus destroying the delicious</p><p>ambiguity of the original.</p><p>Children of the Night</p><p>Television, USA 1985. A made-for-TV movie about teenage prostitutes,</p><p>drawing its title from DRACULA, thus making a contemporary link be-</p><p>tween the prostitute and the female vampire—a common motif from the</p><p>Victorian era onward. See also prostitution.</p><p>Helen Chandler with</p><p>David Manners in Dracula.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 59</p><p>Children of the Night</p><p>Cinema, USA 1992. Cult-camp actress Karen Black stars as a waterlogged</p><p>vampire who expirates an enveloping sleep-membrane. Her victims sleep</p><p>in bathtubs instead of coffins, with their lungs coughed up like flotation</p><p>devices. Give the producers credit for icky ingenuity, if nothing else. Di-</p><p>rected by Tony Randel. With Peter DeLuise, Ami Dolenz, and Garrett</p><p>Morris. (Fangoria Films)Y</p><p>Children of the Night</p><p>Fiction, USA 1992. Just the idea of a novel that links vampires with the</p><p>real-life plight of AIDS babies in Romania sounds tasteless and exploita-</p><p>tive in the extreme, but novelist Dan Simmons, one of the most gifted and</p><p>intelligent practitioners of commercial horror fiction, spins one hell of a</p><p>yarn in this page-turning thriller, which isn't afraid to suggest that our</p><p>contemporary fixation on vampire entertainment has something to do</p><p>with another, more tangible blood horror. Horror novels don't get much</p><p>better than this, and I'll leave you to discover on your own the engaging</p><p>characters and imaginative medical premises with which Simmons weaves</p><p>his modern vampire tapestry.</p><p>Chocula, Count</p><p>A popular children's breakfast cereal that weirdly defangs the vampire's</p><p>unholy thirst, harnessing its hunger to stimulate ordinary appetites. The</p><p>name, of course, is a take-off on Dracula; a "ula" suffix is now used rou-</p><p>tinely and illiterately as a kind of marketing shorthand for "vampire" in</p><p>the same stupid way "gate" (as in Watergate) is now a universal suffix to</p><p>indicate "scandal." Thus, we have had Bearacula (a toy), Blacula, Bun-</p><p>NICULA, Gayracula, Japula, Rockula, Spermula, etc. The original Count</p><p>Chocula package, now a prized collector's item, featured a painting of</p><p>Bela LuGOSi as he appeared in the 1931 film version of Dracula; it was sup-</p><p>pressed after complaints that the vampire's six-pointed medallion looked</p><p>suspiciously like a star of David. A cartoon Chocula, sans offending amulet,</p><p>was substituted. See also anti-Semitism.</p><p>"Christabel"</p><p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished, but nonetheless influential gothic-</p><p>romantic ballad "Christabel" (1797) foreshadows many familiar motifs of</p><p>60 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>vampire literature, particularly the female predator of "CARMILLA." In Cole-</p><p>ridge's poem, the tide character is ambiguously molested by her father's</p><p>new bride, a blue-eyed beauty named Geraldine:</p><p>Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,</p><p>And slowly rolled her eyes around;</p><p>Then drawing in her breath aloud,</p><p>Like one that shuddered, she unbound</p><p>The cincture from beneath her breast:</p><p>Her silken robe, and inner vest,</p><p>Dropt to her feet, and full in view,</p><p>Behold! her bosom and half her side</p><p>—</p><p>A sight to dream of, not to tell!</p><p>Oh shield her! shield sweet Christabel!</p><p>The precise nature of Geraldine's horrifying torso is not revealed in the</p><p>poem, though Mary Shelley (her father was a close friend of Coleridge's)</p><p>maintained that the specific deformity intended by the poet was "two eyes</p><p>in the bosom." (Filmmaker Ken Russell, in his 1986 film, Gothic, inter-</p><p>preted this as meaning eyes in place of nipples, with unintentionally hilari-</p><p>ous results—a sort of busty Muppet that Frederick's of Hollywood might</p><p>use for a Halloween window.) But given the repeated descriptions else-</p><p>where in "Christabel" comparing Geraldine to a snake, it is probable that</p><p>Coleridge had in mind the vampirelike Lamia of classical antiquity, often</p><p>envisioned as halfwoman and half serpent.</p><p>Christianity</p><p>The vampire in western tradition presents a paradox by simultaneously</p><p>perverting and reinforcing the images and rituals of Christianity. Blood-</p><p>communion, death, and resurrection are central to both the Christian faith</p><p>and the conventions of vampire belief. Author Clive Leatherdale, in his</p><p>critical study Dracula: The Novel and the Legend, devotes a fascinating</p><p>chapter to the ways in which the Dracula story in particular serves as</p><p>both a Christian parody and a Christian allegory:</p><p>It can be proposed that one of the basic lessons of the novel was to</p><p>reaffirm the existence of God in an age when the weakening hold of</p><p>Christianity generated fresh debate about what lay beyond death. The</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 6 1</p><p>marshalled diary extracts and letters are themselves endowed with the</p><p>status of scripture. Instead of the Gospels according to St. Matthew</p><p>and St. Mark, we find Gospels according to Mr. Harker and Dr. Seward.</p><p>Taken with Van Helsing's concluding remarks, "We want no proofs" . . .</p><p>they constitute a "revelation" of Dracula's existence, as the Bible offers</p><p>a "revelation" of Christ's. See also blood; Catholicism; Christmas;</p><p>cross/crucifix.</p><p>Christmas</p><p>Not a holiday usually associated with vampires and other monsters</p><p>—</p><p>at least not before Tim Burton's film The Nightmare Before Christmas</p><p>(1993). It was, nonetheless, a belief in the Greek Orthodox tradition that</p><p>a child born on Christmas might have vampire tendencies, since its parents</p><p>must have been sporting carnally at the calendar time of the Immaculate</p><p>Conception. Such infants were called callicantzari, and often had their</p><p>feet and hands singed as a preventive measure. (Talk about coal in your</p><p>stocking. . . .)</p><p>Cinema</p><p>See Appendix A.</p><p>Class Warfare</p><p>The nineteenth-century metamorphosis of the vampire into a wealthy,</p><p>decadent aristocrat bleeding the local peasants made the monster an irre-</p><p>sistible symbol of class conflict and exploitation. It is perhaps not surpris-</p><p>ing that American culture—where class distinctions are officially denied,</p><p>and where everyone not living in a homeless shelter absurdly considers</p><p>him- or herself to be "middle class"—has most enthusiastically embraced</p><p>the vampire as a cultural icon. The vampire affords a forbidden acknowl-</p><p>edgment of the stubborn master-slave, parasite-host social dynamics that</p><p>thrive in even a supposedly egalitarian republic. The elegant, overdressed</p><p>bloodsucker leeching off his underlings' energies is a perfect working-class</p><p>cartoon of upper-class resentment. For vampires are, after all, classy (in</p><p>every revealing sense of the word), fancy-schmantzy, libidinous, and care-</p><p>free (just like those characters on Dynasty or Dallas) and, best of all, are</p><p>even above the human obligation to die—in short, everything we resent</p><p>and secretly desire. See also Andy Warhol's Dracula; Marx, Karl.</p><p>62 David J. Skal</p><p>Cloaks and Capes</p><p>Where would a vampire be without its black velvet cloak? This most evoca-</p><p>tive of garments represents concealment, darkness, the secrets and terrors</p><p>of the night itself. Spread wide, it suggests the wings of a bat, the promise</p><p>of an exhilarating flight from ordinary human constraints. Capes and</p><p>cloaks have been associated with theatrical vampires since the 1820s, when</p><p>the creatures first became stock figures of melodrama and opera. In this</p><p>century, the cape most closely associated with the character of Dracula is</p><p>an opera cloak lined in red satin, especially characterized by a big stand-up</p><p>collar. The collar was introduced in 1924 by playwright Hamilton Deane</p><p>to facilitate a stage illusion; in order for Dracula to "vanish" on stage, es-</p><p>caping from the cloak through a trapdoor or secret panel, it was necessary</p><p>to fit the cape with a collar large enough to conceal the actor's head when</p><p>he turned his back to the audience. Such a collar had no real usefulness in</p><p>the movies, where trick photography could provide the illusion, but the</p><p>image was so striking and memorable that it became a permanent fixture</p><p>of vampire costuming in all media. One of the best-known fictional treat-</p><p>ments of the vampire cape can be found in Robert Bloch's 1939 short</p><p>story "The Cloak," in which a man looking for a Halloween costume finds</p><p>more than he is bargaining for in a cursed cape which transforms anyone</p><p>who wears it. Bloch reworked the story in 1971 as part of the anthology</p><p>film The House That Dripped Bloody changing the main character to a hor-</p><p>ror movie actor seeking the ultimate in vampire realism.</p><p>Codependency</p><p>A state of emotional parasitism and nonliving, a term originally used to de-</p><p>scribe the psychological dilemma of women trapped in relationships with</p><p>alcoholics, With its compelling evocation of vitality-draining, no-win rela-</p><p>tionships, codependency resonated strongly with the traditional idea of the</p><p>vampire, and exploded during the vampire-obsessed 1980s to encompass</p><p>the entire spectrum of unsatisfactory human relationships. Pop psychology</p><p>also aggressively promulgated the related concept of the tormented "inner</p><p>child," a true or genuine self trapped in a psychological limbo by codepen-</p><p>dent, "dysfunctional" family life. One of the most memorable characters in</p><p>Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is the child-vampire Claudia; with an</p><p>angry adult mind trapped forever in a child's never-aging body, Claudia</p><p>provides a striking metaphor of the parasitic phantom child of the self-help</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 63</p><p>. 5</p><p>' :|§iB!^</p><p>flHal</p><p>jlil lSli*l\</p><p>A^C-xv if 'v</p><p>p</p><p>PSf'*'r ?</p><p>i-^ ';j^^.j</p><p>nUM^Bfi Pf /?'illl ^K^£C~~^ r</p><p>^</p><p>"j3| / (f^wE|</p><p>JlBl</p><p>sSli^F*</p><p>%Jmm</p><p>JlflFlbs IwPIp</p><p>K^fl ^KSesjjIJBra S§Pf^</p><p>SRgJPi|~%|=r^}?S togs?'?;—J^JSUjiiy .</p><p>"</p><p>J.-i'r—v- ~^-E-*1</p><p>-5-^?</p><p>The vampire's protective chrysalis, as</p><p>illustrated in Varney the Vampyre.</p><p>manuals. See also addiction; al-</p><p>coholism.</p><p>Coffin</p><p>The coffin is the vampire's tradi-</p><p>tional daytime home. Aside from</p><p>its obvious utilitarian aspect, the</p><p>coffin has a number of symbolic</p><p>meanings. Boxes of all kinds sug-</p><p>gest secrets and the concomitant</p><p>promise of revelations (this con-</p><p>cealing/revealing characteristic is</p><p>also true of cloaks and capes). As</p><p>an enclosure of the human form, the coffin is also a womblike symbol of</p><p>the mysterious transitions between life and death. See also burial customs.</p><p>Collins, Barnabas</p><p>An immensely popular daytime television vampire of the late 1960s,</p><p>whose cult following has continued to the present day. See also Dark</p><p>Shadows.</p><p>Condom</p><p>A modern protective talisman, similar in size and shape to the Host when</p><p>wrapped, employed with great show to ward off a stealthy blood plague.</p><p>See also AIDS; cross/crucifix; garlic.</p><p>Count, The</p><p>A puppet character on the children's television show Sesame Street, pat-</p><p>terned loosely on the Deane/Balderston conception of Dracula. Ap-</p><p>propriately, the Count gives young viewers instructions in counting,</p><p>intoning "Vun! Two! Three!" in a mock-Transylvanian accent.</p><p>64 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Count Dracula</p><p>Cinema, Spain/West Germany/Italy 1970, This film caused a buzz of an-</p><p>ticipation with its promise to be a truly faithful rendition of Bram</p><p>Stoker's novel, starring none other than the most celebrated screen vam-</p><p>pire of modern times, Christopher Lee. The buzz, which backfired, how-</p><p>ever, as Variety noted, prompted "those familiar with the novel looking</p><p>for discrepancies, of which there are plenty. Yelping German shepherd</p><p>dogs substitute for wolves, scenes are set in Budapest instead of England,</p><p>and not a string of garlic appears. . .</p><p>." Lee strongly resembles the monster</p><p>as Stoker described him, and Klaus Kinski makes a memorable Renfield,</p><p>the vampire's insect-eating slave. But the cheap production values and in-</p><p>differently lit location photography cancel out the performances. With</p><p>Herbert Lorn (as Van Helsing), Frederick Williams, Maria Rohm, and</p><p>Soledad Miranda. Directed by European horror maven Jess Franco, who</p><p>has done much better. Peter Welbeck (pseudonym for producer Harry</p><p>Alan Towers) scripted. The British title was Bram Stoker's Count Dracula.</p><p>(Fenix/Corona/Filmar/Towers of London)</p><p>Count Dracula</p><p>Television, UK 1977. When people ask me which screen adaptation of</p><p>Dracula is most faithful to the original novel, I usually point them in the</p><p>direction of this little gem, with only a few caveats. Philip Saville's script</p><p>scupulously adheres to the book, and while actor Louis Jourdan is hardly</p><p>what Bram Stoker had in mind, he is so wonderfully unctuous and creepy</p><p>that you happily accept the discrepancy. Frank Finlay (who was Iago to</p><p>Olivier's Othello) is one of the best vampire hunters ever, and there are</p><p>countless moments that evoke the book to perfection (my favorite is</p><p>Mina's glimpse of Dracula neck- ravishing her friend Lucy in a church-</p><p>yard). The combined use of videotape and film cheapens the overall im-</p><p>pact, however, and some of the electronic special effects seem like a</p><p>psychedelic hangover from the sixties. Upon its second showing on Amer-</p><p>ican public television, a scene in which Dracula's vampire brides feasted on</p><p>a naked baby was trimmed. Saville also directed; the cast includes Susan</p><p>Penhaligon, Judi Bowker, Mark Burns, and Jack Shepherd. (BBC-TV)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 65</p><p>Count Yorga, Vampire</p><p>Cinema, USA 1970. Good junk movies—like this one—are useful for spot-</p><p>ting anxious cultural subtexts; they slip in precisely because the filmmakers</p><p>have no other aim than to grab the attention of a wide, nondiscriminating</p><p>audience with tried and true formulas. In the case of horror movies, these</p><p>formulas tend to be deep repositories of troublesome feelings about sex</p><p>that require periodic exorcism. In the case of Count Yorga, Vampire, the</p><p>anxiety is fairly straightforward: sexually active</p><p>young people, reaping the</p><p>pleasurable benefits of the swinging sixties and seventies, are having trouble</p><p>dealing with a scarier kind of sex that keeps popping up—here represented</p><p>by Count Yorga, an elegant, older, unattached man who presides over a big</p><p>house full of antiques, wearing pancake makeup and sweeping dressing</p><p>gowns—the stereotypical "gay" cues are unmistakable. The straight kids'</p><p>dilemma: how to retain their bell-bottomed, back-of-the-van sexual pre-</p><p>rogatives intact while keeping the deeper polymorphous stuff from eating</p><p>them alive. Or something. The film had several working titles, including</p><p>The Loves of Count Yorga, The Abominable Count Yorga, and Vampire To-</p><p>day. Directed by Bob Kelljan. With Robert Quarry (majesterial as the vam-</p><p>pire), Roger Perry, Michael Murphy, Michael Macready, Donna Anders,</p><p>and Judith Lang. A sequel, The Return of Count Yorga (1971) is set in an</p><p>orphanage, where Yorga shows up at a Halloween party in full vampire</p><p>drag. "Where are your fangs?" asks one of the guests. "Where are your</p><p>manners?" the unflappable count replies. (Erica/American International)</p><p>T See also homosexuality.</p><p>Countess Dracula</p><p>Cinema, UK 1970. Not a very good film, but still the most elaborate</p><p>screen treatment to date of the Erzebet Bathory legend. Ingrid Pitt, the</p><p>breast-biting lesbian vamp of Hammer's The Vampire Lovers, returns as</p><p>the blood countess who discovers that a virgin a day keeps the wrinkles</p><p>away. Directed by Peter Sasdy. With Nigel Green, Sandor Eles, Maurice</p><p>Denham, and Lesley-Anne Down. (Hammer Films) T</p><p>Countess Dracula!</p><p>Theater, USA 1979. Like many a mature actress no longer in demand for</p><p>traditional film and stage roles, Betsy Palmer turned to horror in this</p><p>semi-spoof premiered at Buffalo's Studio Arena Stage and authored by</p><p>66 David J. Skal</p><p>Dr. Van Helsing</p><p>(Eduardo Arozamena)</p><p>subdues the</p><p>vampirically challenged</p><p>Eva (Lupita Tovar) in</p><p>the 1931 Spanish-</p><p>language version of</p><p>Dracula.</p><p>Neal DuBrock. According to Variety, "instead of the imposing cape, there's</p><p>a neckline cut all the way down to the corpuscles. Lady Alucard is the</p><p>name she goes by, which shouldn't be hard to figure out for anyone who</p><p>ever heard one of those old Serutan commercials." The trade paper was</p><p>particularly impressed by the special effects, "remarkable gasp-producers,"</p><p>including "a slumbering vampire which dissolves to a skeleton when im-</p><p>paled on the traditional stake." See also THEATER.</p><p>Cross/Crucifix</p><p>The symbol of Christ's crucifixion is one of the best known of all vampire</p><p>repellents, but the rules and regulations governing its use are sometimes</p><p>confusing and contradictory. As a symbol of the faith of the person using</p><p>it, the cross should, therefore, offer little protection to the unfaithful.</p><p>Nonetheless, in many films and stories the cross seems to contain its own</p><p>source of power, like a supernatural stun gun. A "real" cross isn't always</p><p>needed and can sometimes be effectively improvised. In the film Kiss of</p><p>the Vampire (1962), a man whose chest has been scratched by a vampire</p><p>quickly smears the blood into a cruciform and repels her. In Horror of</p><p>Dracula (1958) the vampire hunter Van Helsing jerry-rigs a cross from</p><p>two candlesticks to force the monster into a deadly ray of sunlight. In</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 67</p><p>Hammer's next vampire film, The Brides ofDracula (1960), Van Hels-</p><p>ing manipulates the vanes of a burning windmill to cast a crosslike shadow</p><p>on a fleeing vampire; it works just fine. In more recent vampire traditions,</p><p>such as the novels of Anne Rice, holy relics have no power whatsoever</p><p>over the vampire, who looks on such superstitions with amusement. In the</p><p>1979 film version of Dracula, for instance, actor Frank Langella causes</p><p>a cross to burst into flames with nothing more than a contemptuous</p><p>glance. See also Christianity; folklore; garlic.</p><p>Cushing, Peter</p><p>Hawk-faced British character actor (1913-1994) best known for his work</p><p>in the horror oeuvre ofHammer Films, where his recurring roles as Baron</p><p>Victor Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing earn</p><p>him a permanent place in our sepulchral pantheon. Cushing played Van</p><p>Helsing (or one of Van Helsing's descendants) in Horror of Dracula</p><p>(1958), The Brides ofDracula (1960), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972),</p><p>Satanic Bjtes of Dracula (1973), and The Legend of the Seven Golden</p><p>Vampires (1974). Cushing's other vampire film appearances include In-</p><p>cense for the Damned (1970), The Vampire Lovers (1970), and Twins</p><p>of Evil (1971).</p><p>1:</p><p>Dance of the Damned</p><p>Cinema, USA 1988. Katt Shea Ruben, a protegee of Roger Corman, di-</p><p>rected this offbeat tale of a suicidal stripper (Starr Andreef), who meets a</p><p>sexy male vampire (Cyril O'Reilly) who keeps her alive for a vicarious</p><p>glimpse of daylight reality. Of course, it's really a perverse redemption</p><p>story, in the time-honored tradition of A Christmas Carol, with a single</p><p>vampire taking on the functions of Halloween ghosts past, present, and</p><p>future. But what makes Katt Shea and Andy Ruben's entertaining screen-</p><p>play especially interesting is that Corman produced it again, from scratch,</p><p>as To Sleep with a Vampire in 1992 (with a scene-by-scene adaptation of</p><p>the original script credited to Patricia Harrington). Adam Friedman di-</p><p>rected, and (Ms.) Charlie Spradling and Scott Valentine reprised Andreef's</p><p>and O'Reilly's roles. The films, both successful on their own terms, are</p><p>sufficiently different in tone and technical execution that they speak vol-</p><p>umes about the interpretive possibilities of a single script—much like the</p><p>back-to-back English and Spanish-language versions of Dracula (1931).</p><p>(Concorde Pictures)</p><p>Dance of the Vampires</p><p>See The Fearless Vampire Killers.</p><p>Dark Shadows</p><p>Television, USA 1966-1971. As a last-ditch attempt to save his foundering</p><p>ABC-TV daytime gothic-opera Dark Shadows, producer Dan Curtis intro-</p><p>duced a 175 -year-old New England vampire named Barnabas COLLINS</p><p>—</p><p>and instantly brought the series back from ratings death. Housewives and</p><p>70 David J. Skal</p><p>Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall</p><p>in Dark Shadows.</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>other shut-ins warmed to</p><p>Barnabas' sangfroid, never</p><p>noticing how "supernatural"</p><p>plotlines (in which, for in-</p><p>stance, the vampire kept his</p><p>beloved victim locked in a</p><p>cellar) reflected ordinary do-</p><p>mestic problems. (As novel-</p><p>ist/critic Joanna Russ once</p><p>commented on gothic ro-</p><p>mance formulas, the unac-</p><p>knowledged story is often "someone's trying to kill me, and I think it's my</p><p>husband.") Over time the story expanded far beyond vampires to include</p><p>man-made monsters, ghosts, witches, reincarnation, werewolves, and even</p><p>time travel. The series ran for over 1200 episodes, and two decades later</p><p>still has a loyal following in syndication, on videocassette, and at fan con-</p><p>ventions, where surviving cast members regularly endure writer's cramp</p><p>signing autographs. As a reluctant, angst-ridden bloodsucker, Barnabas</p><p>Collins is an important transitional figure in the history of vampirism,</p><p>providing a popular link between the predatory evil of Dracula and</p><p>the introspective, conflicted vampires of novelist Anne Rice. The original</p><p>cast included Joan Bennett, Jonathan Frid (as Barnabas), Grayson Hall,</p><p>Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker, David Selby, John Karlen, Louis Ed-</p><p>monds, and Alexandra Moltke (later the real-life mistress of Claus Von</p><p>Bulow). Dark Shadows generated two feature film spinoffs; only the first,</p><p>House ofDark Shadows (1970), employed the vampire theme.</p><p>T</p><p>Dark Shadows</p><p>Television, USA 1990. NBC-TV's ambitious attempt to revive Dark Shad-</p><p>ows, a la Star Trek, flopped badly, possibly because the cast included no</p><p>original performers from the first series, and the once-weekly format</p><p>couldn't possibly re-create the sense of day-to-day familiarity and involve-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 7</p><p>1</p><p>merit that the first audience derived from daily viewing. The production</p><p>values were perhaps too slick—much of the fun of the old series was</p><p>watching the sets shake, actors flubbing</p><p>She could recount the details of fatal</p><p>amusement park accidents, knew what went on during an autopsy, and had a</p><p>pretty good idea what happened to rats after they ingested poison.</p><p>But most of all, Maxine knew about vampires. She had been reading up,</p><p>and she was the only one among us who had been to the Mapletown Theatre</p><p>where a film called The Brides ofDracula was a featured matinee. She elabo-</p><p>rated on the information first provided by my mother. Vampires, Maxine ex-</p><p>plained, were pale people who lived forever as long as they stayed out of</p><p>the sun and out of churches. The male vampires generally wore tuxedos, and</p><p>the female vampires long white gowns—being undead, apparently, was a lot</p><p>like getting married. You could kill them by driving a wooden stake through</p><p>their hearts—Maxine sharpened a Popsicle stick on the sidewalk to make the</p><p>point vivid.</p><p>Maxine would hold her vampire court every day in the most shadowy cor-</p><p>ner of the playground she could find, and soon she began bringing in the</p><p>most amazing magazines—illustrated publications with titles like Famous</p><p>Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein. They were just the sort of</p><p>things parents and teachers and librarians loved to confiscate and destroy.</p><p>They were worse than Mad magazine, almost as bad as Playboy. Which, of</p><p>Introduction xi</p><p>course, made them all the more interesting. And one day Maxine brought in</p><p>a magazine with a full-page, life-sized portrait of the male vampire from The</p><p>Brides of Dracula. The picture was printed with special instructions—you</p><p>were supposed to push thumbtacks through the back of the photo, just</p><p>where the monster's fangs were peeking out, then roll the magazine up and</p><p>whack yourself on the neck with it—thus simulating an "actual" vampire at-</p><p>tack. (I don't know anyone who actually tried this, but dares were made.)</p><p>You may be wondering why on earth third and fourth graders in the early</p><p>sixties were so captivated by images of the walking dead. While researching</p><p>this period for my previous book, The Monster Show, I was surprised to dis-</p><p>cover that I had largely forgotten my real source of anxiety at the time—Cold</p><p>War atomic jitters, and the daily threat of mass death that fairly shrieked from</p><p>newspaper headlines as the world's supply of available megatons piled up, and</p><p>up, and up. Immortal monsters like Dracula offered an alternative to death,</p><p>or at least an imaginative one. There wasn't much difference, after all, be-</p><p>tween a vampire's protective crypt and a fallout shelter—both amounted to</p><p>fantastic bargaining chips with the unacceptable prospect of personal annihi-</p><p>lation. My own active interest in Dracula—the point at which I really became</p><p>a player, buying the fan magazines (or begging my parents to buy them for</p><p>me), assembling plastic monster model kits, even producing my own eight-</p><p>millimeter horror extravaganzas—coincided precisely with the Cuban Missile</p><p>Crisis in October 1962. I was amazed to find, on microfilm reels of old Bill-</p><p>board charts, that the number one pop song in America during the missile</p><p>crisis was Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash"—a highly appropriate</p><p>"dance of death" presided over by a mad scientist, with a full complement of</p><p>man-made monsters, werewolves, ghouls—and, of course, vampires.</p><p>We survived the missile crisis, and my interest in monsters metamor-</p><p>phosed. To a working-class kid with untraditional ambitions—but no realistic</p><p>models or expectations of socioeconomic escape—vampires came to repre-</p><p>sent a vague fantasy of class transcendence and power (Dracula, with his</p><p>evening clothes, aristocratic charisma, and apparently bottomless bank coffers,</p><p>is the "classy" monster par excellence). In my later adolescence, the ambigu-</p><p>ous eroticism of Bela Lugosi's seduction of Dwight Frye in the 1931 film ver-</p><p>sion of Dracula became a powerful focus of sexual possibilities I then found</p><p>frightening in the extreme.</p><p>My interest in vampires took a backseat to college and career issues for a</p><p>couple of decades, but returned with a sudden urgency in the late 1980s</p><p>when I researched and wrote my book Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of</p><p>xii Introduction</p><p>"Dracula" from Novel to Stage to Screen. It was not until after I had com-</p><p>pleted the book that I realized, with a bit of a shock, that I had essentially re-</p><p>peated the death-anxiety ritual ofmy childhood, immersing myself in vampire</p><p>culture as a largely unconscious response not to a nuclear threat but instead</p><p>to the AIDS epidemic, which had claimed literally countless friends and ac-</p><p>quaintances. In this book, I explore the AIDS/vampire connection deliber-</p><p>ately, along with the vampire's persistence as an ambiguous, shifting symbol</p><p>of alternative sexualities.</p><p>Vampires, obviously, know how to sneak up on us and are capable of pop</p><p>cultural transformations as fantastic as anything imputed to them in folklore.</p><p>The undead mean many things to many people, and I hope that V Is for</p><p>Vampire will provide an accessible overview of a vast and apparently inex-</p><p>haustible topic. This is not a formal encyclopedia, and I apologize in advance</p><p>to readers who feel I have slighted their favorite book, film, or personality.</p><p>The selections and opinions make no pretense of anything but subjectivity,</p><p>and I have frequently favored the odd and obscure over subjects that have</p><p>been covered extensively elsewhere. (For completists I have included several</p><p>lengthy checklists and a bibliography.) In short, consider this book as a start-</p><p>ing point, not a final destination, as you begin to climb and explore your own</p><p>vampire staircase. V Is for Vampire may send you soaring to your belfry or</p><p>scurrying to your cellar—but, if I've done my job, you'll never look at vam-</p><p>pires in exactly the same way again.</p><p>18 FOR</p><p>VPPIRE</p><p>Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein</p><p>Cinema, USA 1948. Charles T. Barton's postwar comedy proved the death</p><p>rattle of the original Universal Pictures monster cycle, reducing the beloved</p><p>boogeymen to proplike buffoons opposite popular forties comedians Bud</p><p>Abbott and Lou Costello. Dracula (Bela Lugosi, in his last role for a ma-</p><p>jor studio) attempts to transplant the brain of Costello into the Franken-</p><p>stein monster (Glenn Strange), but is thwarted by the efforts of the Wolf</p><p>Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and the machinations of a predictable script by</p><p>Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, and John</p><p>Grant. Lugosi's makeup is appallingly</p><p>overapplied; he looks more like a kewpie</p><p>doll than a bloodsucking fiend (a shiny</p><p>satin cape does nothing to alleviate the</p><p>overall circus clown effect). The film does</p><p>have some funny moments, most memo-</p><p>rably Dracula's cat-and-mouse game with</p><p>Costello as he prepares to emerge from</p><p>his box, and later, the hilarious closeup</p><p>of the eyes of one of the vampire's vic-</p><p>tims (Lenore Aubert) revealing flapping</p><p>bats instead of pupils. Abbott and Costello</p><p>Advertising art for Abbott and Costello Meet</p><p>Frankenstein. (Photofest)</p><p>David J. Skal</p><p>Dwight Frye reacts to</p><p>Edward Van Sloan's</p><p>sudden offer of</p><p>wolfsbane in Dracula.</p><p>Meet Frankenstein is of some interest today for its superimposition onto</p><p>Dracula of both the vampire and mad scientist traditions; the time-</p><p>honored opposition of science and the supernatural settles down for a</p><p>cheerful codependency. While the film has developed an affectionate cult</p><p>following over the years, the original reviews were fairly caustic. Bosley</p><p>Crowther of the New York Times commented: "Most of the comic inven-</p><p>tion in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is embraced in the idea and</p><p>the title . . . get the most out of that one laugh while you can, because the</p><p>picture . . . does not contain many more." Or, as the Hollywood Citizen</p><p>News put it, "Ifyou've never known whether to laugh or scream at an Ab-</p><p>bott and Costello epic, their latest screen adventure will leave you more</p><p>confused than ever." (Universal-International)T*</p><p>Aconite</p><p>Aconitum napellus is the Latin name for the perennial herb, which, under</p><p>the aliases</p><p>their lines or glancing not-too-</p><p>discreetly at cue cards, etc. Ben Cross as the new Barnabas was handsome</p><p>but cold, and Barbara Steele—immortal alumna of the vampire classic</p><p>Black Sunday—was less than scintillating in her nonvampire role of the</p><p>doctor who attempts to cure the Collins curse. The show was canceled af-</p><p>ter nine episodes, and few mourners were noticed at the graveside.</p><p>Darwin, Charles</p><p>While we tend today to think of Dracula automatically in terms of</p><p>Freud's theories of sexuality and repression, it was another major figure</p><p>ofmodern science who likely influenced Bram Stoker in the composition</p><p>of his classic novel and the receptivity of the Victorian public to vampire</p><p>themes in general. Darwin's theory of evolution was a profoundly dis-</p><p>turbing notion to many people, and Dracula can be profitably read as an</p><p>anxious refutation or even a parody of Darwinian theory. The blurring of</p><p>distinctions between humans and lower species is at the heart of Drac-</p><p>ula\ creepy appeal; one of the book's most famous scenes, reproduced</p><p>on early cover designs, is a visual allegory of modern man's revulsion at</p><p>his relationship to the animal world. Dracula's visitor, high in an emblem-</p><p>atic tower, looks down in horror as his host reverses the evolutionary</p><p>process, descending the wall of his castle, crawling stealthily toward all of</p><p>our basest instincts and animal desires. Francis Ford Coppola, in his re-</p><p>cent film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) amplified the Darwinian as-</p><p>pect of the story by depicting one of the count's "werewolf" guises as</p><p>decidedly more apelike than lupine. Mass uneasiness with the implica-</p><p>tions of evolutionary science can also explain the frequent presence of</p><p>apes and man-animals in mass-market horror and science fiction formulas.</p><p>Daughters of Darkness</p><p>Cinema, Beljjiuni/France/West Germany 1971. Erzebet BATHORY is resur-</p><p>rected as a soignee lesbian vampire who disrupts the seaside honeymoon</p><p>of a young couple, whose union is already doomed by the shadow of</p><p>homosexuality. The bridegroom (John Karlen, of the original Dark</p><p>Shadows cast) neglects to tell his wife that the person he calls "Mother,"</p><p>and to whom he is reluctant to divulge the fact of his marriage, is in fact an</p><p>72 David J. Skal</p><p>androgynous amalgam of Oscar WlLDE and Bela Lugosi. Meanwhile, the</p><p>blood countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig), shimmering in a slinky art-</p><p>deco sheath and platinum bob, converts the bride (Danielle Ouimet) to</p><p>sanguinary Sapphism and brings the marriage crashing down in a scary ho-</p><p>moerotic vampire catastrophe. The politics are ambiguous, if suspiciously</p><p>homophobic, but the film contains a sufficient number of stylish set pieces</p><p>to have earned it the reputation of a minor classic. One of the visuals, fea-</p><p>turing a tuxedoed female vampire spreading her cape against a sunset, is an</p><p>absolute stunner. Directed by Harry Kumel. (Showking/Maya/Roxy/Cine</p><p>Vog)T See also homosexuality; lesbianism.</p><p>Davis, Bette</p><p>Vampires have often been linked to gender-bending, and in her perennial</p><p>role as a subject for transvestite impersonation, so was Bette Davis. But</p><p>how many of her fans recall the night during World War II, when, at the</p><p>Los Angeles branch of the Hollywood Canteen, Davis blurred the bound-</p><p>aries between transvestites and vampires when she allowed makeup artist</p><p>Perc Westmore to transform her face into that of Bela Lugosi as Drac-</p><p>ula? According to family historian Frank Westmore, it actually happened.</p><p>(Any veteran who can provide a photograph will have an eternal place of</p><p>honor in the next edition of V Isfor Vampire.)</p><p>Deafula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1975. Peter Wechsberg wrote and directed and starred in</p><p>the world's first and only horror movie for the hearing-impaired. Tran-</p><p>sylvanian accents, screams, etc. are, of course, totally beside the point in</p><p>Deafula, which is acted completely in sign language. A rarity, a print or</p><p>tape ofwhich I was unable to locate anywhere. (Signscope)</p><p>Deane, Hamilton</p><p>Irish-born actor-manager, who, enamored of Bram Stoker's novel Drac-</p><p>ULA from an early age, secured the dramatic rights to the book from the</p><p>author's widow in 1924. It is Hamilton Deane who is most responsible</p><p>for our contemporary image of Dracula as the unctuous, immaculately</p><p>dressed foreigner wrapped in an opera cape—a vision radically opposed to</p><p>the repellent, cadaverous old satyr imagined by Stoker. Deane, however,</p><p>was making a canny dramatic choice—in order to conform to the conven-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 73</p><p>Hamilton Deane, original stage adaptor of Dracula.</p><p>tions of the drawing-room mystery melo-</p><p>drama, Dracula needed to be reimagined as a</p><p>sort of chap who might plausibly be invited</p><p>into drawing rooms to begin with. The for-</p><p>mula clicked, and Deane toured the British</p><p>provinces successfully for three years before</p><p>taking the play to London, where it defied</p><p>critical calumny and was a major hit. The</p><p>American rights were purchased by the flam-</p><p>boyant producer-publisher Horace Liveright,</p><p>who enlisted John L. Balderston to com-</p><p>pletely rewrite Deane's script for Broadway.</p><p>Deane originally intended the part of Dracula</p><p>for himself, but opted for the character ofVan</p><p>Helsing, who had far more stage time and much longer speeches. Deane</p><p>finally did play Dracula in London in a 1939 revival; strangely, no pho-</p><p>tographs of him in character seem to have survived. He died in 1958. See</p><p>also Dracula, The Vampire Play.</p><p>Dearg-due</p><p>A dread species of Irish vampire, which quite possibly informed the imagi-</p><p>nations of Ireland's greatest vampire authors, J. Sheridan Le Fanu and</p><p>Bram Stoker. The name of the creature translates from the Gaelic as</p><p>"Red Blood Sucker." See also folklore.</p><p>Decolletage</p><p>The view of a woman's bosom is an essential component of modern vam-</p><p>pire iconography, especially prominent in the advertisement of films. From</p><p>a Freudian perspective, infantile oral appetites underly the psychology of</p><p>vampirism, and it is therefore not surprising that the neck bite in vampire</p><p>movies is often framed and photographed with a woman's plunging neck-</p><p>line and/or exposed breasts in the same field of vision. Sometimes a line of</p><p>74 David J. Skal</p><p>Christopher Lee and</p><p>Barbara Shelley in</p><p>Dracula, Prince of</p><p>Darkness. (Photofest)</p><p>blood is shown connecting the neckbite to the cleavage, diagrammatically</p><p>tracing the displacement. The bite wound itself—two reddish, circular</p><p>spots—may register in semiconsciousness as a kind of graphic shorthand for</p><p>nipples (or staring eyes—see "Christabel"). The advertising graphic for</p><p>the Frank Langella version ofDracula (1979) features the count ogling</p><p>a supine victim's neck, but our gaze is pulled instead to the undead uplift of</p><p>the woman's breasts—their levitation is the most supernatural thing about</p><p>the whole image, the breasts having been rendered in progressively larger</p><p>states of inflation for various posters, ads, book covers, etc. In more recent</p><p>films, such as Graveyard Shift (1987) and any number of vampire pic-</p><p>tures featuring lesbianism, the bloodsuckers tend to go for the breasts di-</p><p>rectly, avoiding the need for neck euphemisms. Incidentally, there is no</p><p>truth to the claim that a vampire bite on the breast is properly called a "Bra</p><p>Stoker." See also doppelsauger; Freud, Sigmund; psychoanalysis.</p><p>Deneuve, Catherine</p><p>See The Hunger.</p><p>Devil's Commandment, The</p><p>See / Vampiri.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 75</p><p>Dhampir</p><p>In gypsy tradition, a dhampir is the child of a vampire, blessed with special</p><p>powers to detect and destroy the undead. The term was adapted by Scott</p><p>Baker for the title of his freewheeling 1982 novel, Dhampire.</p><p>"Dinner with Drac"</p><p>TV horror-host Zacherley's 1958 novelty song "Dinner with Drac"</p><p>made the top-ten charts during a sick humor craze that coincided with the</p><p>release of classic Universal horror pictures to television, Lenny Bruce's</p><p>Transylvania skits, monster magazines, etc. "Dinner with Drac" consisted</p><p>largely of grisly limericks maniacally delivered by Zacherle to a downbeat</p><p>jazz accompaniment.</p><p>My favorite: "For dessert, there was bat-wing con-</p><p>fetti / And the veins of a mummy named Betty. / I first frowned upon it</p><p>/ But with ketchup on it / It tasted very much like spaghetti!"</p><p>Doppelsauger</p><p>In German superstition, a weaned child who returns to the breast—</p><p>a</p><p>"double-sucker"—is likely to become a vampire. Interestingly, the belief</p><p>parallels the psychoanalytic theory of vampirism, linking vampire fantasies</p><p>to an inability to move beyond the infantile, oral stage of sexual develop-</p><p>ment. See also decolletage; Freud, Sigmund; psychoanalysis.</p><p>Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan</p><p>The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1857-1930)</p><p>made several literary forays into vampirism, including the stories "The Par-</p><p>asite" (1891), "John Barrington Cowles" (1894), and "The Adventure of</p><p>the Sussex Vampire" (1924), in which Holmes investigates a bogus blood-</p><p>sucker. "The Parasite" contains a classic literary example of the psychic</p><p>vampire, a deceptively passive woman who nonetheless drains a professor's</p><p>mental energy, driving him to acts of violence and crime. Sherlock Holmes</p><p>was teamed with a master vampire by novelist Fred Saberhagen for his</p><p>1978 pastiche, The Holmes-Dracula File, and Doyle himself was fictionally</p><p>paired with Bram Stoker (a real-life friend) for Simon Hawke's 1988 novel</p><p>The Dracuta Caper.</p><p>76 David J. Skal</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Fiction, UK 1897. The T. Rex of the vampire world entered our mortal</p><p>realm via the imagination of part-time Victorian novelist Bram Stoker,</p><p>who by day managed the affairs of the charismatic actor-producer Henry</p><p>Irving and his prestigious Royal Lyceum Theatre. By night, Stoker wrote</p><p>reams of melodramatic potboilers, none of which has had the staying</p><p>power of Dracula; nearly a century later, the book has never been out of</p><p>print and has inspired more film and stage adaptations than any novel in</p><p>history. The following notice in the Spectator encapsulates the plot and is</p><p>typical of the novel's initially favorable, yet somewhat guarded, reception:</p><p>Mr. Bram Stoker gives us the impression—we may be doing him an in-</p><p>justice—of having deliberately laid himself out in Dracula to eclipse all</p><p>previous efforts in the domain of the horrible—to "go one better" than</p><p>Wilkie Collins (whose method of narration he has closely followed),</p><p>Sheridan Le Fanu, and all the other professors of the flesh-creeping</p><p>school. Count Dracula, who gives his name to the book, is a Transyl-</p><p>vanian noble who purchases an estate in England, and in connection</p><p>with the transfer of the property Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor,</p><p>visits him in his ancestral castle. Jonathan Harker has a terrible time of</p><p>it, for the Count—who is a vampire of immense age, cunning, and ex-</p><p>perience—keeps him as a prisoner for several weeks, and when the poor</p><p>young man escapes from the gruesome charnel-house of his host, he</p><p>nearly dies of brain-fever in a hospital at Buda-Pesth. The scene then</p><p>shifts to England, where the Count arrives by sea in the form of a dog-</p><p>fiend, after destroying the entire crew, and resumes operations in vari-</p><p>ous uncanny manifestations, selecting as his chief victim Miss Lucy</p><p>Westenra, the fiancee of the Honourable Arthur Holmwood, heir-</p><p>presumptive to Lord Godalming. The story then resolves itself into the</p><p>history of Lucy's protectors, including two rejected suitors—an Ameri-</p><p>can and a "mad" doctor—and a wonderfully clever specialist from Am-</p><p>sterdam, against her unearthly persecutor. The clue is furnished by</p><p>Jonathan Harker, whose betrothed, Mina Murray, is a bosom friend of</p><p>Lucy's, and the fight is long and protracted. Lucy succumbs, and, worse</p><p>still, is temporarily converted into a vampire. How she is released from</p><p>this unpleasant position and restored to a peaceful post-mortem exis-</p><p>tence, how Mina is next assailed by the Count, how he is driven from</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 77</p><p>England, and finally exterminated by the efforts of the league—for all</p><p>these, and a great many more thrilling details, we must refer our readers</p><p>to the pages ofMr. Stoker's clever but cadaverous romance. Its strength</p><p>lies in the invention of incident, for the sentimental element is decidedly</p><p>mawkish. Mr. Stoker has shown considerable ability in the use that he</p><p>has made of all the available traditions of vampirology, but we think his</p><p>story would have been all the more effective if he had chosen an earlier</p><p>period. The up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph diaries, type-</p><p>writers, and so on—hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which</p><p>ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula's foes.</p><p>While Dracula is without question the most famous piece of vampire</p><p>literature in history, Stoker's ugly, animalistic conception of the count has</p><p>been stubbornly resisted by filmmakers and dramatists. Stoker was cer-</p><p>tainly aware of the romantic, Byronic image of the vampire that domi-</p><p>nated the page and stage in the early part of the nineteenth century, and</p><p>he deliberately went in another direction. His Dracula is a Darwinian su-</p><p>perman who blurs distinctions between humans and predatory animals;</p><p>the popularity of the novel reflected middle-class Victorian uneasiness with</p><p>the reductionistic message of evolutionary science. But the image of the</p><p>brooding, fatal seducer so dear to the Romantic sensibility lent itself far</p><p>better to dramatic adaptations than did Stoker's bestial bogeyman, and the</p><p>popular image of Dracula today is a distinct hybrid. In recent years the</p><p>novel has been the subject of countless critical studies, and the lack of a</p><p>firsthand account by Stoker of his intentions in its composition has fueled</p><p>a cottage industry of provocative speculation on the book's psychosexual,</p><p>scientific, and political subtexts.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Theater, UK and USA 1924/27. See Dracula, The Vampire Play.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1931. Perhaps the most influential bad movie ever made,</p><p>Dracula broke the long-standing Hollywood taboo against out-and-out</p><p>supernatural themes, thus awakening the American cinema to its dream-</p><p>like, fantastic possibilities (leading, of course, to the horror cycles of the</p><p>thirties and forties, the science fiction cycle of the fifties, and straight on to</p><p>78 David J. Skal</p><p>Never out of print since its 1 897 publication, Bram Stoker's Dracula has provided endless</p><p>inspiration to dust-jacket designers and illustrators. (Courtesy of Ronald V. Borsr/Hollywood</p><p>Movie Posters, and Dr. Jeanne Youngson, The Count Dracula Fan Club)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 79</p><p>Bram Stoker:</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Ein Vampirroman</p><p>BRAM STOKER</p><p>DRACULA</p><p>1 ,.i!lC</p><p>U:it</p><p>^ 1</p><p>1</p><p>1</p><p>I</p><p>80 David J. Skal</p><p>Bela Lugosi in an atmospheric publicity</p><p>photo for Dracula.</p><p>the Spielbergian blockbusters of the</p><p>present day). None would have hap-</p><p>pened in exacdy the same way had</p><p>Dracula not been produced by Uni-</p><p>versal in 1931—Universal, in fact,</p><p>might have folded that year without</p><p>the significant revenue Dracula pro-</p><p>duced. The historical importance of</p><p>Dracula has, unfortunately, led to its</p><p>being grossly overrated from an artistic</p><p>standpoint. In reality, the film is stagey</p><p>(while paradoxically lacking most of</p><p>the theatricality of the stage play on</p><p>which it is based), badly paced and</p><p>edited, and watchable today primarily</p><p>for Bela LUGOSl's classic line readings and the manic scenery-chewing of</p><p>Dwight Frye as his lunatic helper. Tod Browning is the nominal director,</p><p>though according to cast member David Manners, the production was</p><p>held together by the efforts of cinematographer Karl Freund (which may</p><p>explain why Freund had so little time to show off the fluid, mobile camera-</p><p>work that had been his signature in Germany). This may sound like</p><p>heresy, but Dracula would be a far better film if tightened to an hour</p><p>from its present seventy-five minutes; all the cuts could come from the op-</p><p>pressive dead air that hovers in virtually every shot and scene after the first</p><p>two reels. Screenplay by Garrett Fort (with Tod Browning, uncredited).</p><p>Also starring Helen Chandler, Edward Van Sloan, Frances Dade, Her-</p><p>bert Bunston, Charles Gerrard, and Joan Standing. (Universal)T</p><p>Dracula (Spanish-Language Version)</p><p>Cinema, USA 1931. The artistic shortcomings of Universal 's 1931 English-</p><p>language Dracula are vividly underscored by this fascinating Spanish version</p><p>shot on the same sets at night by a completely different producer, director,</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 8</p><p>1</p><p>cast, and crew. During the early days of talking pictures, Hollywood rou-</p><p>tinely shot dozens of foreign-language versions of its domestic films in</p><p>order to maintain the lucrative foreign markets, which had no interest in a</p><p>"dubbed" product—the novelty and excitement of talking pictures was</p><p>hearing actors speak in their natural voices. Most of these films are now</p><p>lost or forgotten, but the Spanish version of Dracula was in many ways a</p><p>rival production to the Tod Browning version—its associate producer,</p><p>Paul Kohner, had been frustrated in his attempts to bring an English-</p><p>language Dracula to the screen in collaboration with director Paul Leni</p><p>and actor Conrad Veidt in the title role. Made for a fraction of the cost of</p><p>the Browning film, producer Kohner and director George Melford (best</p><p>known for Valentino's The Sheik), upstaged the English version scene by</p><p>scene and shot by shot. The real star of the picture is cinematographer</p><p>George Robinson, whose mobile camera, dramatic lighting, and visual</p><p>effects frequently look a decade ahead of their time. The Spanish actor</p><p>Carlos Villarias (contract name: Charles Villar) proves a campy lookalike for</p><p>Bela Lugosi, and Kohner cast his bride-to-be, the photogenic Mexican</p><p>ingenue Lupita Tovar, as the female lead. Nearly every published account</p><p>of the film mentions Tovar's filmy negligees and plunging necklines (see</p><p>decolletage) as one of the film's great revelations, and I will not argue</p><p>otherwise. The film was beautifully restored in 1992 and released to home</p><p>video, where it made the best-seller charts and, I am told by insiders, did</p><p>better for MCA than the videocassette of Spartacus. Also starring Barry</p><p>Carlos Villarias in</p><p>the 1931 Spanish-</p><p>language version of</p><p>Dracula. (Courtesy of the</p><p>Cinemateca de Cuba)</p><p>82 David J. Skal</p><p>Norton, Pablo Alvarez Rubio, Eduardo Arozamena, and Carmen Guer-</p><p>rero. An absolute must-see. (Universal)T</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Television, USA 1958. John Carradine starred in the first television adap-</p><p>tation of Bram Stoker's novel as part of NBC's Matinee Theatre series.</p><p>Sadly, no kinescope or videotape seems to have survived—nor, apparently,</p><p>even a script or production photos. Has anyone seen this curiosity? If any</p><p>information or pictures surface, I'd love to include them in a future edi-</p><p>tion of V Isfor Vampire.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Theater, UK 1964. Fifty years to the day after Hamilton Deane premiered</p><p>his version of Dracula in Derby, England, playwright Tudor Williams un-</p><p>veiled his own adaptation, with actor Paul Geaves in the title role. Accord-</p><p>ing to an unsourced clipping, "In a strange way it all seemed faintly</p><p>possible. The diagnoses and theorisings of Professor Van Helsing bore a</p><p>strong resemblance to those snap decisions at the foot of the bed that are</p><p>such an accepted convention of television hospital shows, and which we</p><p>have learned to treat with a kind of cowering respect."</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Television, UK 1969. Denholm Elliott was weirdly miscast as a chubby,</p><p>Friar-Tuckish vampire in a low-budget but often inventive spin on</p><p>Stoker. The characters of Renfield and Jonathan Harker, for instance,</p><p>were combined through a surprise plot twist—the nameless, fly-eating lu-</p><p>natic is revealed to be none other than Harker himself, who has returned</p><p>to England from Castle Dracula a psychotic mess. Elliott's neck penetra-</p><p>tion of heroine Susan George is one of the kinkiest scenes of its kind I've</p><p>ever seen, and all the more surprising for sixties television—the chubby</p><p>chomper gets down on his knees next to her bed (thus raising all kinds of</p><p>oral sex expectations). After some preliminary nuzzling, he draws back his</p><p>lips to reveal impressive Nosferatu-style rat-fangs with which he snags</p><p>her jugular. The sucking and kissing of the open wound goes on at</p><p>surprising erotic length, and Elliott's complete on-camera disintegra-</p><p>tion provides another unexpected thrill. Directed bv Patrick Dromgoole;</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 8 3</p><p>also starring Conn Redgrave, Suzanne Neve, Bernard Archard, and Joan</p><p>Hickson.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Television, Canada 1973. Part of the Purple Playhouse series, this video-</p><p>taped dramatization featured actor Norman Welsh as a white-haired vam-</p><p>pire closely following Bram Stoker's description. Nehemiah Persoff took</p><p>the role ofVan Helsing while Blair Brown, later TV's Molly Dodd, pro-</p><p>vided the count with diversion and refreshment. Directed by Jack Nixon</p><p>Browne.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Television, USA 1974. Dan Curtis, the producer of Dark Shadows, got</p><p>the scoop on Francis Coppola almost twenty years before Bram Stoker's</p><p>Dracula in his stylish production scripted by Richard Matheson (IAm</p><p>Legend) that was obviously a heavy source of inspiration for the Coppola</p><p>extravaganza. Matheson combined Stoker's original story with a motiva-</p><p>tional subplot in which Dracula (creepily portrayed by the spookily cheek-</p><p>boned Jack Palance) attempts to recapture his reincarnated love of five</p><p>hundred years past. There are many impressive sequences, including Drac-</p><p>ula's marvelously understated response to being discovered indulging his</p><p>habit in Mina's bedchamber. With Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona</p><p>Lewis, and Penelope Horner.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Theater, UK 1974. A tongue-in-cheek dramatization by Ken Hill, replac-</p><p>ing Dr. Seward's asylum setting with a Victorian girl's school.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA/UK 1979. John Badham's lush remake of the Deane/Balder-</p><p>ston stage vehicle was a box office disappointment when first released, but</p><p>holds up surprisingly well on video. In a sense, Frank Langella's Byronic</p><p>vampire—a role he originated on stage a few years earlier—ushered in the</p><p>age of Anne Rice's sexy, introspective bloodsuckers. Screenplay by W. D.</p><p>Richter. With Laurence Olivier, Kate Nelligan, Donald Pleasance, Trevor</p><p>Eve, Jan Francis, Tony Haygarth. (Universal) T</p><p>84 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Theater, New Zealand 1982. Auckland's Mercury Theatre presented this</p><p>soft-rock musical adaptation, composed by Stephen McCurdy with book</p><p>and lyrics by Ian Mune. According to Variety, the story was "given a</p><p>Brechtian slant, so that the inhabitants of a small township, told that the</p><p>wealthy Count Dracula is interested in buying property, are greedily anx-</p><p>ious to exploit him, thus deserving the zombie fate that is theirs at the fi-</p><p>nal curtain."</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Theater, UK 1984. Actor Daniel Day Lewis, who turned down the role of</p><p>the vampire Lestat in Neil Jordan's 1994 film of Interview with the</p><p>Vampire, may well have had his fill of vampires after portraying Count</p><p>Dracula in Chris Bond's 1984 adaptation for London's Half Moon The-</p><p>atre. Nonetheless, he seems to have been quite impressive in the part. The</p><p>Guardian noted that, "The first appearance of Daniel Day Lewis's superb,</p><p>stooping, spindle-shanked Dracula produces a genuine frisson, not least as</p><p>he runs his nose up Dr. Van Helsing's arm as if smelling her mortality."</p><p>(Yes, Van Helsing was a woman in this one.) The Financial Times re-</p><p>ported that Lewis "hobbles, crouches and snarls like a bleach- blond</p><p>bloodless Richard III," while Time Out described him as a "pincer-fanged,</p><p>black-cloaked Dracula howling like a werewolf, whirling across the heads</p><p>of the audience to carry off his prey." The fang-in-cheek script included</p><p>generous dollops of class warfare humor, as well as the use of cocaine to</p><p>momentarily revive a damsel running on empty.</p><p>Dracula</p><p>Theater, Scotland 1985. The Scottish poet and playwright Liz Lochhead</p><p>wrote one of the most critically acclaimed Dracula adaptations of modern</p><p>times, a script that has yet to receive an American production. Though</p><p>criticizing its length (three and a half hours), the Guardian called it "an</p><p>astonishingly brave and ambitious piece of work," and praised Lochhead</p><p>for delving "deep beneath the psycho-sexual surface of Stoker's story in an</p><p>attempt to marry his imagery with modern ideas about women's sexuality;</p><p>its language is a daring and often highly successful mixture of domestic</p><p>naturalism and high melodrama, pun, alliteration, and pure poetry."</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 85</p><p>Dracula A.D. 1972</p><p>Cinema, UK 1972. Christopher Lee returned in the sixth installment of</p><p>Hammer's Dracula series, as the count is revived by hippie-satanic rituals in a</p><p>modern London and reels from a Carnaby Street hangover. Most novel mo-</p><p>ment: a vampire's death by running water—in this case, a shower, thereby</p><p>merging supernatural and Hitchcockian horror traditions. Directed by Alan</p><p>Gibson from a script by Don Houghton. With Peter Cushing, Stephanie</p><p>Beacham, and Christopher Neame. (Hammer/Warner Brothers)T</p><p>Dracula: A Modern Fable</p><p>Theater, USA 1978. Norman Bein's satire was presented off-off-Broadway</p><p>in midnight performances that capitalized on the concurrent popularity of</p><p>the Frank Langella Broadway revival of Dracula. Bein's play was set in</p><p>Hollywood: the heroine has flown to L.A. to bury her younger brother</p><p>who has suddenly died. He turns up, seemingly alive, explaining that his</p><p>"death" was just a publicity stunt for a Dracula movie. But we know bet-</p><p>ter. Drac himself shows up with a familiar chestnut—looking for the rein-</p><p>carnation of his lost love.</p><p>Dracula: A Musical Nightmare</p><p>Theater, USA 1978. Another late-seventies riff on Dracula, one that prob-</p><p>ably deserves more revivals than it's been given so far. With book and</p><p>lyrics by Douglas Johnson, and music by John Aschenbrenner, Dracula: A</p><p>Musical Nightmare is a concept show combining the story of a third-rate</p><p>English touring company and its production of Dracula with music hall</p><p>song and dance routines. The New York Theatre Review called the style</p><p>"very much in the mode of Cabaret, complete with a leering M.C. who</p><p>takes on the tide role. The music hall portions are fun and the play-within-</p><p>a-play presentations of segments of Dracula manage to be both sinister</p><p>and sensual ... [an] extremely stylish and remarkably entertaining</p><p>evening." The original Los Angeles production featured Hill Street Blues</p><p>regular Joe Spano as the vampiric master of ceremonies.</p><p>Dracula: A Pain in the Neck</p><p>Theater, UK 1981. The tide seems to sum up this obscure production,</p><p>which was described by Time Out: before the curtain, "the audience is in-</p><p>vited to wipe their feet on garlic impregnated Batmat. Fizzy blood and</p><p>86 David J. Skal</p><p>gingerbread crucifixes are served in the interval. . . . Dracula speaks like a</p><p>cockney sergeant-major pretending to be an Italian waiter. Mina is a bossy</p><p>girl who wears undignified face packs in bed. . .</p><p>." Get the picture?</p><p>Dracula and Son</p><p>Cinema, France 1976. Edouard France, the director who went on to much</p><p>better things, like La Cage auxfolles (1978), got his start with this report-</p><p>edly funny vampire spoof starring none other than Christopher Lee, but</p><p>the film is hard to evaluate in its English-language version, which wasn't</p><p>just dubbed but completely rescripted—atrociously. (Quartet Films)T</p><p>Dracula Blows His Cool</p><p>Cinema, West Germany 1979. This is a truly bizarre film. The vampire's</p><p>castle becomes a garish tourist trap, with the count reduced to providing</p><p>oral room service for paying customers looking for the thrill of a chill. The</p><p>idea of Dracula as a capitalist whore is an interesting idea, but this movie</p><p>isn't interested in ideas. Directed by Carlo Ombra, with Gianni Garko as</p><p>Dracula. (Lisa-Barthonia Film)</p><p>Dracula: Dead and Loving It</p><p>Cinema, USA 1995. This must have sounded like a great idea on paper. A</p><p>companion piece to Mel Brooks' classic farce Young Frankenstein, this time</p><p>taking on the other great horror icon. But Dracula: Dead and Loving It is</p><p>mostly a mess. Leslie Nielsen's casting as Dracula is inexplicable, except for</p><p>the box office value of his name as comedy star (though it must be said he</p><p>has carefully studied Bela LuGOSl's vocal mannerisms, which is more than</p><p>most impersonators do). Unlike Young Frankenstein, there is no attempt</p><p>here to recreate the black-and-white world of the classic horror films, and by</p><p>aiming darts at every Dracula variation from Lugosi to Langella to Lee to</p><p>Coppola, Brooks ends up missing all targets. Peter MacNichol steals the</p><p>show with an inspired impersonation of Dwight Frye's classic Renfield,</p><p>and Anne Bancroft has a fun in a cameo as a pushy, crucifix-dispensing gypsy.</p><p>But the screenplay, by Brooks, Rudy De Luca, and Steve Haberman, is slug-</p><p>gish and uninventive. Still, one cannot suppress a smile at lines like "Yes, we</p><p>have Nosferatu." If only there had been more of them. With Steven Weber,</p><p>Amy Yasbeck, Lysette Anthony, Harvey Korman and Mel Brooks, as the</p><p>vampire's nemesis Van Helseng. (Columbia/Castle Rock)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 87</p><p>Dracula Has Risen from the Grave</p><p>Cinema, UK 1968. One of the original posters for Dracula Has Risen</p><p>from the Grave added the word "obviously" as a tag line to the tide, illus-</p><p>trated by a shapely neck sporting twin Band-Aids. The film itself, the third</p><p>Hammer entry featuring Christopher Lee, is free from such campy humor,</p><p>though the famous scene in which Lee pulls a stake out of his chest may</p><p>well provoke an ironic chuckle or two. Newsweek, in a Vietnam mindset,</p><p>had some trouble with the hero, "an atheist who refuses under any cir-</p><p>cumstances to flash the crucifix [to protect the heroine]. He loves her</p><p>though, and that's enough to save the day and night. Imagine a war being</p><p>won by a conscientious objector." Purists and sticklers beware: there is a</p><p>scene in which Dracula casts a reflection. Horrors! Directed by Freddie</p><p>Francis, from a script by John Elder. With Rupert Davies, Veronica Carl-</p><p>son, Barbara Ewing, and Barry Andrews. (Hammer/Warner Bros.)T</p><p>Dracula, or Out for the Count</p><p>Theater, UK 1985. Charles McKeown, coauthor of the surreal film com-</p><p>edy Brazil, seems to have reworked this material over a period of several</p><p>years. It was first performed in Manchester, England, in 1978, under the</p><p>tide Dracula Is Undead and Well and Living in Purlfleet (not to be con-</p><p>fused with Dracula Is Dead and Well and Living in London—the working</p><p>tide for the film Dracula A.D. 1972). Time Out described the end result:</p><p>"You'll find no Hammer Horror here, no creepy, creaky casries or ghoul-</p><p>ish undead. Charles McKeown's Dracula is a 30's screen idol, complete</p><p>with entourage of Busby Berkeley vampiresses, who, against Roger Glos-</p><p>sop's stylishly elegant Art Deco set, elegandy dances and sings before sink-</p><p>ing his fangs into his willing victims' necks. It's a great idea and even a</p><p>greater shame it fails." Actor Tim Flavin, who played Dracula, lip-synched</p><p>nostalgic recordings in much the same manner popularized by Dennis</p><p>Potter in Penniesfrom Heaven.</p><p>Dracula, Prince of Darkness</p><p>Cinema, UK 1966. Having been sun-baked to ashes in Horror of</p><p>Dracula, Christopher Lee missed Hammer's first follow-up, Brides of</p><p>Dracula, but returned as an oddly mute king of vampires for Dracula,</p><p>Prince of Darkness, directed by Terence Fisher from a script by John San-</p><p>som. The lack of dialogue in this film supposedly had something to do</p><p>with Lee's salary and distaste for the original script. Dracula's resurrection</p><p>88 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>is accomplished in a particularly grisly fashion—a honeymooning husband</p><p>is suspended and throat-slit over Dracula's powdery remains by his faithful</p><p>servant Klove, who stirs up the count like a satanic pot of Sanka. The Mo-</p><p>tion Picture Association ofAmerica objected to the Grand Guignol excess of</p><p>the resurrection scene as it was originally scripted: "The business ofKlove de-</p><p>capitating Alan and the subsequent scene showing the torrents of blood</p><p>pouring into the coffin, together with Klove's throwing ofAlan's head aside,</p><p>is simply too sickening to be approved," the association wrote. The British</p><p>censors also objected and the scene was toned down. But one scene from</p><p>Stoker's original novel, long avoided in dramatizations, is finally realized here</p><p>as Dracula suckles his victim with vampire blood from a wound he has</p><p>opened in his breast. Dracula, Prince ofDarkness also contains a gruesome,</p><p>quasi-gang-bang involving a group of monks, a female vampire (Barbara</p><p>Shelley), a table, and a stake. (Hammer/Warner Bros.)V See also rape.</p><p>Dracula Rising</p><p>Cinema, USA 1992. This low-budget Roger Corman number was in-</p><p>tended to capitalize on the big-screen Dracula craze of 1992, but seems</p><p>to have been released primarily on video. It's the old Dracula-seeks-his-</p><p>reincarnated-love gambit again. A young art restorer (Stacey Travis) takes</p><p>an assignment in Transylvania, with predictable results. In flashbacks, she's</p><p>burned as a witch for carrying on with Vlad, the son of Dracula (Christo-</p><p>pher Atkins), who is trying to live down his heritage by becoming a monk.</p><p>The real problem, however, is another monk (Doug Wert), who seems to</p><p>want Vlad for himself. They both end up as vampires, with a nice under</p><p>current of homoerotic tension that would make Anne Rice proud. Di-</p><p>rected by Fred Gallo. Screenplay by Rodman Flender and Daniella Purcell.</p><p>(Concorde/New Horizons)T</p><p>Dracula: Sabbat</p><p>Theater, USA 1970. It was inevitable, after the Manson-curdled climax of</p><p>the psychedelic sixties, that Dracula would form the basis for a piece of</p><p>ritual theater. Dracula: Sabbat, by Leon Katz and directed by Laurence</p><p>Kornfeld, received outstanding reviews when it was presented by the Judson</p><p>Poet's Theatre. George L. George, critic for Backstage, called it ".</p><p>. .a quasi</p><p>-</p><p>religious spectacle that holds the sometimes unnerved audience under its</p><p>spell for two tense unbroken hours ... a visually startling and mind-</p><p>expanding pageant, where the forces of evil fight for the possession of souls</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 89</p><p>as in the old Morality plays." Clive Barnes of the New York Times called the</p><p>piece "a mixture of the frankly repulsive and the eccentrically beautiful," and</p><p>Jack Kroll of Newsweek found it "... a work of absolute authenticity—with a</p><p>beauty, dignity, gravity and sensuality rare to the point of near-extinction in</p><p>any part of our contemporary theater." Kroll especially praised Crystal Field,</p><p>an actress "with the fructuous body of the Venus ofWillendorf and the face</p><p>of a Victorian maiden rapt by Heaven [who] gives a wonderful performance</p><p>as the girl metamorphosed into transcendental profanity by Dracula."</p><p>Dracula Sucks</p><p>Cinema, USA 1979. This is the inevitable title for the inevitable film. Porn</p><p>veterans Jamie Gillis, Annette Haven, and Serena starred in this reportedly</p><p>elaborate piece of erotica that got embroiled in producer/distributor law-</p><p>suits in the early eighties and now can't be found anywhere.</p><p>The Dracula Tape</p><p>Fiction, USA 1975. The much-maligned Dracula gets to tell his side of the</p><p>story in Fred Saberhagen's amusing novel. No one understands the count,</p><p>it seems. "Lucy I did not kill," he tells us. "It was not /who hammered</p><p>the great stake through her heart. My hands did not cut off her lovely</p><p>head, or stuff her breathless mouth-</p><p>—</p><p>that mouth—with garlic, as if she</p><p>were a dead pig, pork being made ready for some barbarians' feast." What</p><p>about that notorious incident at the castle, with the baby in the bag, and</p><p>the mother devoured by wolves? It never happened, the count insists—in</p><p>fact, the wolves used their extraordinary hunting instincts to find the lost</p><p>child in the woods for a happy family reunion. The thing in the bag was a</p><p>calf, a late supper for the count's trio of brides. And so on. Whether you</p><p>will swallow the count's impassioned spin-doctoring is probably a matter</p><p>of individual taste, but Saberhagen sustains his conceit effectively, provid-</p><p>ing nasty chuckles on almost every page.</p><p>Dracula (The Dirty Old Man)</p><p>Cinema, USA 1969. Supposedly, this started out as a bottom- of- the -barrel</p><p>attempt at a "serious" horror film, but someone who realized what an</p><p>unholy mess it was tried to salvage it by overdubbing a completely new,</p><p>cornball soundtrack that only compounded the disaster. In addition to</p><p>Dracula, there is a werewolf and many, many breasts. The producers, per-</p><p>haps, thought nudity would make this watchable. They were wrong. Star-</p><p>90 David J. Skal</p><p>ring Vince Kelly and Ann Hollis. Written and directed by William Edwards.</p><p>(Boyd Productions)T</p><p>Dracula: The Story You Thought You Knew</p><p>Theater, USA 1983. Richard Sharp's acclaimed adaptation of the vampire</p><p>classic was a two-season hit at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and won ad-</p><p>ditional praise when restaged in 1985 in a downtown San Francisco church.</p><p>The play's set drew most of the plaudits: designer Richard Hay created a</p><p>semicircle of gothic arches framing a monumental bas-relief of St. Michael</p><p>driving Lucifer into hell. Director Richard Geer employed a chorus of gray-</p><p>robed living-dead "statues" who provided a choreographic counterpoint to</p><p>the dramatic action, anchored in the San Francisco production by Dan Kern</p><p>as Dracula and John Astin (the ghoulish Gomez of TV's original Addams</p><p>Family) as Van Helsing. The San Francisco Chronicle critic Bernard Weiner</p><p>commented: "The draw for this production is not a 'star' but the stunningly</p><p>original concept that makes this 'Dracula' seem fresh all over again and well</p><p>worth a visit. . . . The special effects are ingenious—Bibles and crosses ex-</p><p>ploding, props moving on their own, a chair that seems to levitate, fluores-</p><p>cent veils, etc. The final effect, as a wooden stake is hammered into Dracula's</p><p>heart, is enough to blow you away. Rarely does a special effect earn an ova-</p><p>tion, but that's what occurred opening night—what an ending!" (Needless</p><p>to say, if any reader witnessed this event, we'd love to hear the details.)</p><p>Dracula Unbound</p><p>Fiction, UK 1991. Acclaimed science fiction writer Brian W. Aldiss, who</p><p>cleverly applied time travel to the Mary Shelley legend in Frankenstein</p><p>Unbound (1973), here takes a similar approach to Bram Stoker, with</p><p>somewhat less successful results. Nonetheless, Aldiss' speculation on the</p><p>vampire's evolutionary link to the reptile world is brilliantly original and</p><p>carried off with the usual Aldiss flair. The positing of real vampires in</p><p>Stoker's England anticipates the alternate-universe gambit of Kim New-</p><p>man's kaleidoscopic novel Anno Dracula (1992).</p><p>Dracula, The Vampire Play</p><p>Theater, UK and USA, 1924-1927. Hamilton Deane and John L.</p><p>Balderston's efficient theatrical adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel is re-</p><p>ally two plays: Deane's original, which was the only version performed in</p><p>England from 1924 to 1939, and Balderston's 1927 complete rewrite for</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 9</p><p>1</p><p>HORACE LIVER1GHT</p><p>PRESENTS</p><p>THE WORLD FAMOUS</p><p>VAMPIRE THRILLER</p><p>ha BBAM</p><p>Original handbill for Dracula: The Vampire Play.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>Broadway. The Broadway version formed the</p><p>basis for the famous 1931 film version starring</p><p>Bela Lugosi and directed by Tod Browning</p><p>(though to cover all the bases, Universal Pic-</p><p>tures also bought film rights to the Deane</p><p>version and the original novel, plus a curious</p><p>and turgidly verbose stage adaptation Stoker's</p><p>widow had commissioned from playwright</p><p>Charles Morrell). The play is significant for its</p><p>introduction of the popular image of Dracula</p><p>as an unctuous seducer in evening clothes and</p><p>opera cloak—an appearance far removed from</p><p>Stoker's rancid satyr. The Deane/Balderston</p><p>Dracula is, in fact, a variation on the familiar</p><p>image of a vaudeville magician, an appropriate</p><p>strategy given the play's frequent reliance on startling "magic" effects</p><p>—</p><p>flash bombs, fog, disappearing boxes, trapdoors, and the like. The play-</p><p>wrights dropped the broad geographical sweep of the novel, leaving out</p><p>the Transylvania sequences entirely and setting the entire action in and</p><p>around the Seward Sanitorium. The play was greeted with critical raised</p><p>eyebrows on both sides</p><p>of the Atlantic, but it nonetheless was a huge</p><p>moneymaker, earning over two million dollars on Broadway and on tour.</p><p>The play has gone on to be a staple repertory item and is constantly re-</p><p>vived by regional theaters, colleges, and community groups. Dracula was</p><p>given a major revival on Broadway in 1977 in a stylish, intentionally campy</p><p>production with sets and costumes designed with macabre whimsy by Ed-</p><p>ward Gorey and directed by Dennis Rosa, with Frank Langella as the</p><p>count. To accommodate the star, dialogue was padded and expanded,</p><p>some of it lifted directly from the 1931 film ("I never drink . . . wine,"</p><p>etc.). See also cloaks and capes; Liveright, Horace; theater.</p><p>92 David J. Skal</p><p>Dracula vs. Frankenstein</p><p>Cinema, Spain/West Germany/Italy 1969. This film is a dreadful mash of</p><p>monsters, including aliens, a mummy, and a werewolf, notable only for</p><p>being Michael Rennie's final film. Featuring Paul Naschy (who also wrote</p><p>the script) as the wolf-man. Directed by Hugo Fregonese and Tulio Demi-</p><p>chelli. Also known as Assignment Terror. (Prades/Eichberg/International</p><p>Jaguar)T</p><p>Dracula vs. Frankenstein</p><p>Cinema, USA 1971. A shameful cheapie, marking the ignominious career</p><p>ends of two veteran actors, J. Carroll Naish and Lon Chaney, Jr., as a mad</p><p>scientist and his zombie hench-thing. Zandor Vorkov makes a sleazy, goa-</p><p>teed Dracula with a ray-gun in his ring, as if his legendary demonic powers</p><p>require some kind of technological boost. The fact that some of the origi-</p><p>nal electrical equipment from Universal's Frankenstein films was hauled</p><p>out of storage for the sets doesn't add interest; it just makes the whole</p><p>thing seem even more depressing. Also featuring Anthony Eisley. Directed</p><p>by Al Adamson. (Independent-International)V</p><p>Dracula vs. Frankenstein</p><p>Cinema, Spain 1972. You can't keep a good title down, apparently. But</p><p>Spanish horror maven Jesus (a.k.a. Jess) Franco failed to impress Vari-</p><p>ety's film critic, who pointed up the absurd inconsistencies of the story:</p><p>"... Franco never seems quite to decide when and where the scene is set.</p><p>Though there's a blinking lab with plenty of electric current, the rooms</p><p>are inevitably lit with candles; sometimes we'll see a modern car following</p><p>a horse and buggy; the vampire's coffins are lit with a spotlight from the</p><p>ceiling; the wind whistles constantly, but nary a leaf ever moves upon a</p><p>tree. Make-up and thesping are best left uncommented upon." Also known</p><p>as The Screaming Dead.</p><p>Dracula Was a Woman</p><p>See Bathory, Erzebet.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 93</p><p>Dracula's Daughter</p><p>Cinema, USA 1936. Universal's long-awaited sequel to Dracula went</p><p>through its own extended period of developmental hell: though they orig-</p><p>inally intended it as a starring vehicle for Bela Lugosi and Jane Wyatt (as</p><p>his daughter), the director James Whale and screenwriter R. C. Sherriff</p><p>found it impossible to get their original concept past the censors. Sher-</p><p>riff 's story featured a long Transylvanian flashback in which the cruel</p><p>count amused himself with elaborate palace games involving young lovers</p><p>and severed arms; a local wizard, fed up with the debauchery, interrupts</p><p>the revelries and casts a spell that turns the count's degenerate guests into</p><p>swine and Dracula himself into a vampire. Whale, Sherriff, Lugosi, and</p><p>even the character of Dracula were dropped from the production, which</p><p>was finally scripted by Garrett Fort and directed by Lambert Hillyer. Ac-</p><p>tress Gloria Holden made an austere, soignee Countess Zaleska, a reluc-</p><p>tant vampire who unsuccessfully seeks a psychiatric cure. She also has</p><p>distinct tendencies toward lesbianism: her blood-seduction of a young</p><p>streetwalker (Nan Grey) is the film's most famous scene, and it still packs a</p><p>punch. Novelist Anne RlCE credits this film as a major early inspiration for</p><p>94 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>her vampire novels; in Queen of the Damned, she paid it homage by nam-</p><p>ing a quasi-gay bar in San Francisco's Castro district "Dracula's Daugh-</p><p>ter." The film also starred Otto Kruger as the psychiatrist (a part originally</p><p>intended for Cesar Romero); Edward Van Sloan, reprising his role as Van</p><p>Helsing; and Irving Pichel as a Lugosi-esque servant who undermines his</p><p>mistress' recovery program for his own undead ambitions. (Universal)T</p><p>Dracula's Dog</p><p>Cinema, USA 1978. No, this is not a satirical vampiric counterpart to Tim</p><p>Burton's Frankenweenie, but rather a merely laughable horror film with a</p><p>canine twist: Dracula relocates to modern Los Angeles, with his hound</p><p>Zoltan standing in for the old-country wolves. Directed by Albert Band.</p><p>Screenplay by Frank Ray Perelli. (Vic/Crown)T</p><p>Dracula's Dragster</p><p>Marketed by Aurora Plastics in the early 1960s, Dracula's Dragster con-</p><p>flated two then-current crazes in model kits: customized sports cars and</p><p>Hollywood movie monsters. The kit featured Dracula at the helm of a</p><p>souped-up coffin on wheels, wearing a jaunty driver's cap and toasting the</p><p>night sky with a martini glass sloshing with blood. I know this one from</p><p>the advertisements only; try as I could, I never found the actual kit in a</p><p>store—likewise for its contemporaneous counterpart, Frankenstein's Flivver.</p><p>Dracula's Widow</p><p>Cinema, USA 1988. Christopher Coppola, nephew of Francis, seems to</p><p>have directed this absurdist (or maybe just absurd) horror film as a kind of</p><p>film school in-joke. Sylvia Kristel, star of the soft-core classic Emmanuelle, is</p><p>surprisingly prudish here, dressed to the chin in the kind of severe, dress-for-</p><p>success outfits favored by scary female executives. She was evidently directed</p><p>to imitate the rigid wrist-flexing of Max Schreck in the 1922 Nosferatu,</p><p>generous clips of which are incorporated into the film. When Dracula's</p><p>widow attacks, she transforms into a gargoylish creature who rips her vic-</p><p>tims to shreds, leaving hands and eyeballs for the police to scrape off the</p><p>floor. A mess, it went straight to home video. With Josef Sommer, Lenny</p><p>Van Dohlen, Marc Coppola, Stefan Schnabel, and Rachel Jones. Script by</p><p>Christopher Coppola and Kathryn Ann Thomas. (DeLaurentiis)T</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 95</p><p>Dragula</p><p>A heavy-handed comic spoof that appeared in the National Lampoon in</p><p>the early 1970s, Dragula featured a gay vampire who could change into a</p><p>toothy French poodle, nipping his victims on the ankle, etc. A woman fi-</p><p>nally learns how to outwit him: "Sink your fangs into these, tooth fairy!"</p><p>she cries, flashing her breasts, which prove as effective as holy water. Done</p><p>today, Dragula would be considered beyond the pale, politically speaking,</p><p>but for its time it still has a certain sophomoric charm. Dragula was also</p><p>the title of a 1973 gay porn film starring Casey Donovan. See also homo-</p><p>sexuality; LESBIANISM.</p><p>Drakula</p><p>Cinema, Hungary 1921. Little is known about this lost film, but it is spec-</p><p>ulated to be the first, unauthorized film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula.</p><p>The director was Karoly Lajthay (1885-1945), and the cinematographer</p><p>was Lajos Gasser. Drakula's actors included Margit Lux, Paul Askonas</p><p>(who later acted with Conrad Veidt in The Hands ofOrlac), Karl Jotz, Myl</p><p>Gene, Elemer Thury, Lajos Rethey, Oszkar Perczel, Paula Kende, Dezso</p><p>Kertesz, Karoly Hatvani, Lajos Szalkai, Aladar Ihasz, and Bela Timar. We</p><p>can only speculate at this point that it was Askonas who first took the role of</p><p>Dracula, and that Lajthay's production may have inspired F. W. Murnau's</p><p>Vilma Banky in a</p><p>vampirish scene from an</p><p>early Hungarian film.</p><p>96 David J. Skal</p><p>Atif Kaptan in Drakula Istanbulda.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/</p><p>Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>equally unauthorized adapta-</p><p>tion, Nosferatu, also filmed in</p><p>1921, but released the follow-</p><p>ing year. Drakula was filmed</p><p>in Berlin, like many Hungarian</p><p>films of the time, and used</p><p>German as well as Hungarian</p><p>performers (Askonas and Jotz</p><p>were German). Of some tan-</p><p>gential interest to Drakula is</p><p>the photograph, reproduced</p><p>here, of silent film actress</p><p>Vilma Banky in a decidedly</p><p>vampirish scene from an un-</p><p>identified Hungarian film</p><p>from</p><p>the same period.</p><p>Drakula Instanbulda</p><p>Cinema, Turkey 1953. The first non-Western film adaptation of Dracula</p><p>starred Atif Kaptan as an interesting amalgam of the earlier Max SCHRECK</p><p>(bald and fanged) and Bela Lugosi (evening wear and cape) interpre-</p><p>tations of the role. No print or video of this oddity has turned up in</p><p>America, but stills have been widely published, revealing the story to be</p><p>set in contemporary Istanbul. Directed by Mehmet Muhtar. Umit Deniz'</p><p>screenplay drew both from the Stoker novel and The Impaling Voivode</p><p>by Ali Riza Seyfi.</p><p>Dreyer, Carl</p><p>See Vamptr.</p><p>Elvira</p><p>Popular television horror movie hostess of the 1980s, portrayed by actress</p><p>Cassandra Peterson. The busty, Valley ghoul-accented Elvira, clad in slinky</p><p>black and topped by a bloodcurdling bouffant, is not exacdy a vampire,</p><p>but a creepy compromise on the theme by television producers who were</p><p>unable to negotiate character rights from the original TV horror hostess,</p><p>VAMPIRA. In addition to her television program, videocassettes, and prod-</p><p>uct endorsements, Elvira starred in her own feature film, Elvira, Mistress</p><p>ofthe Dark, a horror spoof released in 1988. See also decolletage.</p><p>Espionage</p><p>Would it surprise you to learn that the CIA resorted to dirty tricks involv-</p><p>ing vampires in the 1950s? According to Nathan Miller in Spying for</p><p>America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence, Air Force Colonel Ed-</p><p>ward G. Lansdale, a major covert operator of the postwar era, launched a</p><p>two-tiered strategy to defeat insurgent Communist Hukbalahap guerrillas</p><p>in the Philippines. In addition to promoting land reform and social initia-</p><p>tives, Lansdale "also launched a campaign of dirty tricks to keep the Huks</p><p>off balance," writes Miller. "One ingenious operation played on the Fil-</p><p>ipinos' superstitious dread of vampires. Lansdale arranged for the body of</p><p>a Huk killed in an ambush to be punctured on the neck in two places,</p><p>drained of blood and left at a crossroads. The Huks, as frightened of vam-</p><p>pires as anyone else, fled the area."</p><p>98 David J. Skal</p><p>Ewers, Hanns Heinz</p><p>This German writer (1871-1943), whose stories and novels frequently</p><p>dealt sensationally with the occult, published a moody symbolist book</p><p>called Vampir just about the same time F. W. Murnau was completing</p><p>his vampire film masterpiece, Nosferatu: Eine Stmphonie des Grauens.</p><p>Both works treated the vampire legend as a metaphor for the enervation</p><p>wrought on Germany by the First World War; in Nosferatu the symbolism</p><p>is fairly muted, but in Vampir, Ewer takes things right over the top. To il-</p><p>lustrate his point that the war came about because "humanity had become</p><p>stricken with a wild fever and had to drink blood to make themselves well</p><p>and young again," Ewers brings on German patriot Frank Braun (who</p><p>had, ten years earlier, figured in Ewers' novel Alraune, about a vampirish</p><p>laboratory-grown woman), who doesn't realize until the book's conclu-</p><p>sion that he himself is a vampire. In a perversely creepy anticipation of the</p><p>Hitler era, the story is resolved only when the half-Jewish mistress Lotte</p><p>Levi feeds the all-Aryan Braun "red milk" from her lacerated breasts, sacri-</p><p>ficing herself in much the same way as the heroine of Nosferatu. Upon the</p><p>book's English translation (as Vampire) in 1934, The New Republic noted</p><p>that Ewers finished this novel "several years before anyone took the Nazis</p><p>seriously. . . . Yet if 'Vampire' had been written under the Fiihrer's leader-</p><p>ship it could hardly have been more in tune with the theme songs of the</p><p>Nazis; its pages fairly drip with the mysticism, nationalism and symbolism</p><p>dear to their hearts." The Nazis themselves were confused by Ewers, who</p><p>was appointed to the new Dichter-Akademie in 1933, only to be de-</p><p>nounced as a purveyor of entarte kunst—decadent art—and drummed</p><p>summarily from his post. See also anti-Semitism.</p><p>F</p><p>Fangs</p><p>While the vampire's telltale bite is an indispensable part of undead lore,</p><p>the use of animallike teeth in its production is distinctly a matter of liter-</p><p>ary, theatrical, and cinematic fashion. In Victorian fiction, the protagonists</p><p>in both Varney the Vampyre and Dracula were described as having</p><p>protruding teeth—though their contemporaneous lady colleague in "Car-</p><p>milla" showed no oral anomalies. (She did, however, produce a needlelike</p><p>sting when she fell upon her victim's breast—suggesting a chipped tooth,</p><p>at the very least.) Max Schreck, the Dracula-inspired vampire of Nosfer-</p><p>atu (1922), had frontal fangs patterned after a rat's teeth, a highly effec-</p><p>tive touch that has, strangely, not been much imitated. For London</p><p>After Midnight (1927), Lon Chaney sported fearsome dentures resem-</p><p>bling the uniformly filed and sharpened choppers of</p><p>a witch doctor. But starting with Tod Browning's</p><p>m ^^gg^^ DRACULA, the dominant approach to vampire teeth</p><p>M JH ^^^ m Hollywood was understatement, and virtually all</p><p>Jmkmk movie vampires of the thirties and forties relied on</p><p>jfl B piercing stares as a kind of theatrical euphemism</p><p>j^f '</p><p>I for oral penetration. The fashion for prosthetic,</p><p>I pointed canines made with modern dental tech-</p><p>1</p><p>j</p><p>niques began with HORROR OF DRACULA (1958),</p><p>m 7 in which Christopher Lee was afforded an un-</p><p>Bk precedented range of facial expression; the actor</p><p>The generic Halloween variety.</p><p>1 00 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>made a memorable trademark of gradually curling back his upper lip to re-</p><p>veal the pearly frights. In Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), audiences</p><p>were treated to a quasi-clinical display of fang-buds sprouting in the upper</p><p>gums of the doomed Miss Lucy.</p><p>As elongated, penetrating objects, vampire fangs are textbook phallic</p><p>symbols, and in recent years increasingly liberated special effects technolo-</p><p>gies have made it almost de rigueur for vampire films to feature a semi-</p><p>pornographic "master shot" of vampire teeth as they thrust forward to</p><p>their full length and hardness. In the case of female vampires, a voluptuous</p><p>mouth filled with piercing fangs is usually interpreted as the most recent</p><p>cultural update of the classic vagina dentata and male castration anxi-</p><p>ety. A cursory glimpse at recent vampire films shows that the traditional,</p><p>minimalist representation of extended canines has lately given way to</p><p>more baroque concoctions, often based on exotic animal models—piranhas,</p><p>sharks, saurian carnivores, etc. See also bite marks; Freud, Sigmund.</p><p>Fangs, the Vampire Musical</p><p>Theater, USA 1993. An overly ambitious, critically panned piece of gay mu-</p><p>sical theater produced by New York's Wings Theatre Company, a kind of</p><p>hangover from the vampire media excesses of 1992. Written by Clint Jef-</p><p>feries and composed by Michael Calderwood, Fangs was set on the French-</p><p>German border during World War I—an interesting place and period, of</p><p>course, what with its essential relationship to German Expressionism, Nos-</p><p>feratu, etc. But the promise of the piece was scuttled by a confused plot.</p><p>As the New Tork Native's critic L. C. Cole noted, "Wartime espionage,</p><p>vampire lovers, women's rights, religious homophobia, the joys of being a</p><p>funloving spy—Jefferies tries to find time for them all. But his thematic for-</p><p>ays don't enhance each other; they merely leave us puzzled as to which plot</p><p>is number one."</p><p>The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me,</p><p>But Your Teeth Are in My Neck</p><p>Cinema, UK 1967. Roman Polanski's stylish, celebrated horror spoof, called</p><p>Dance of the Vampires in Britain, isn't half so funny today as it seemed on</p><p>its first release. The specter of Polanski's then-wife Sharon Tate and her</p><p>gruesome murder by the Manson "family" a year after the film's release</p><p>still haunts every frame in which the beautiful actress appears, lending</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 101</p><p>Sharon Tate and Ferdy</p><p>Mayne in The Fearless</p><p>Vampire Killers.</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>the proceedings a gloomy,</p><p>haunting fatalism that sits</p><p>uneasily with the film's over-</p><p>all aspiration to slapstick.</p><p>On its first American re-</p><p>lease, The Fearless Vampire</p><p>Killers was so drastically</p><p>cut</p><p>and reedited that Polanski</p><p>requested his name be re-</p><p>moved from the credits. It</p><p>has subsequently been re-</p><p>stored: the video disc cur-</p><p>rently available includes not</p><p>only the cut footage but two sets of credit sequences—Polanski's original,</p><p>and the animated cartoon added by MGM. The film has much to admire</p><p>(and perhaps a bit too much; Polanski's cut often feels interminable); I</p><p>especially liked how much Polanski himself resembles Gustav Von Wan-</p><p>genheim, the young hero of Nosferatu (1922) in both costume and ap-</p><p>pearance. Ferdy Mayne as the evil Count Krolock is a masterful vampire, a</p><p>plausible amalgam of both the Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee tradi-</p><p>tions. (A bizarre detail I noticed only on a second viewing: one of the</p><p>revelers at the big bloodsuckers' ball is carefully made up to be a dead</p><p>ringer for Laurence Olivier as Richard III. There has to be a story behind</p><p>this.) With Jack MacGowran, Alfie Bass, Ronald Lacey, and Jessie Robbins.</p><p>Polanski coscripted, with Gerard Brach. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)</p><p>Fellatio</p><p>It may seem strange that black magician Aleister Crowley and born-again</p><p>Christian Anita Bryant have anything in common, but when it comes to</p><p>the subject of blowjobs, both seem to hear bat wings flapping.</p><p>The classic act of oral sex was frankly called "vampirism" by Crowley,</p><p>who understood that the unconscious mind makes no distinction between</p><p>1 02 David J. Skal</p><p>vital body fluids—blood, milk, or semen. Both fellatio and vampirism have</p><p>strong associations with HOMOSEXUALITY; the antigay crusader Anita</p><p>Bryant once explained to Newsweek magazine that "sperm is the most con-</p><p>centrated form of blood . . . the homosexual is eating life." Homosexual</p><p>practices, male and female, have been encoded in the decidedly oral trap-</p><p>pings of literary vampirism ever since J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla"</p><p>(1872) and Count Stenbock's The Sad Story of a Vampire (1894).</p><p>Homosexual or heterosexual, fellatio has always carried a certain air of</p><p>perversity, a "forbidden" practice all the more alluring for its exoticism.</p><p>Several commentators have noted the overtones of fellatio that color the</p><p>famous sequence in Dracula wherein the count's three vampire brides</p><p>attempt to seduce Jonathan Harker: "The girl went on her knees . . .</p><p>Lower and lower went her head ... I could hear the churning sound of</p><p>her lips and tongue. ..."</p><p>The erect penis consists primarily of blood—cocksucking, therefore, is</p><p>almost literal bloodsucking; blood provides the feast, the hardness, the</p><p>whole point and purpose. In Anne Rice's immensely popular vampire</p><p>novels, there are frequent descriptions of undead encounters in which hot</p><p>blood spurts sensuously against the back of the vampire's throat. While</p><p>real life blood drinkers do exist as a sexual minority, for the vast majority</p><p>of Rice's readers such descriptions resonate only in terms of their associa-</p><p>tion with memories or fantasies of ejaculation into the mouth. In Ray</p><p>Carton's audacious novel Live Girls, a young man becomes addicted to a</p><p>Forty-second Street peepshow where a vampire hooker sucks blood as well</p><p>as semen; he worries that the marks on his penis are the lesions of a sexu-</p><p>ally transmitted disease. It is interesting to note here the belief of many</p><p>Victorian medical specialists that loss of semen was tantamount to the loss</p><p>of blood, and for whom female sexuality generally took on many of the</p><p>qualities of vampirism. There is a long literary and artistic tradition linking</p><p>orgasm and death—the "death" usually being that of the male.</p><p>Vampires who pig out on penises can be seen in films like Erotikill</p><p>(1973), Spermula (1976), and (with a crunchy, scrotum-shriveling sound</p><p>effect) in Ken Russell's Lair of the White Worm (1988). Oral penile</p><p>contact, of course, is only to be expected in porn films with titles like</p><p>Dracula Sucks (1979) and Gayracula (1983). When correctly viewed,</p><p>even the stodgy 1931 film version of Dracula contains a few, um, jaw-</p><p>dropping surprises. Dracula's rabid servant, Renfield, has been bitten by</p><p>the count, but shows no marks, at least not on his throat. During the sea</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 03</p><p>voyage to England, there is a rather remarkable composition as Renfield</p><p>opens the vampire's coffin box; surely somebody noticed that, as Dracula</p><p>sits up, his face makes a bullseye for Renfield's pants—as ifhoming in hun-</p><p>grily on a blood -filled breakfast burrito. See also Freud, Sigmund.</p><p>Fetus</p><p>A modern variation on the vampire. In late-twentieth-century popular cul-</p><p>ture, in films ranging from Rosemary's Baby to It's Alive! to Alien, the un-</p><p>born are regularly depicted as something nearly undead—monstrous,</p><p>invading parasites, often the puritanical price to be paid by women for</p><p>sexual activity and/or sexual pleasure. In Victorian times, anxiety over</p><p>women's sexuality gave rise to the image of the female, fin de siecle vam-</p><p>pire; in our own time, the demonic fetus serves a similar function.</p><p>Fevre Dream</p><p>Fiction, USA 1982. George R. R. Martin's highly atmospheric meditation</p><p>on vampires and riverboats on the mid-nineteenth-century Mississippi is a</p><p>prime example of what might be called "Americana gothic"—a novel so</p><p>compellingly wrought and lyrically imagistic that it's hard to believe no</p><p>one has yet filmed it. The story concerns the Ahablike obsession of one</p><p>Joshua York, himself tainted with vampire evil, to destroy the blood-</p><p>drinking pestilence spreading down the Mississippi like river silt. The book</p><p>is filled with macabrely evocative echoes of Twain and Melville that irre-</p><p>sistibly bring to mind Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American</p><p>Novel (1960) and its exploration of the gothic undercurrents of nine-</p><p>teenth-century American literature.</p><p>Folklore</p><p>The vampire belongs to the broad folklore category of revenant beings, in</p><p>particular those creatures who return from the dead to do harm to the liv-</p><p>ing for reasons of revenge, malice, or simple hunger. But a vampire is not</p><p>merely a malevolent spirit; to fully qualify as undead, a vampire must do</p><p>more than merely frighten or bedevil—it must in some way drain the</p><p>BLOOD or vital essence from its victim. Blood is highly metaphorical in the</p><p>vampire world (as it is in ours); its loss is usually considered more than a</p><p>simple medical deficit—something of the soul or personality or innocence</p><p>is taken, too. Blood also suggests other vital fluids—particularly milk and</p><p>1 04 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>semen, with all their tangled connotations of sexuality, familial bonds, and</p><p>oral dependency. These evocative, constantly shifting associations help</p><p>make the vampire a timeless mythological construct. The vampire draws</p><p>its power from not meaning precisely anything, but suggesting everything.</p><p>Virtually every civilization has had some variation on the theme of the</p><p>vampire, though it is the eastern European model that has had the largest</p><p>impact on literature and popular culture. Psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, best</p><p>known as the biographer of Sigmund Freud, interpreted vampire folklore</p><p>in terms of sexual repression and the incest complex; his 1931 study On</p><p>the Nightmare argues that the classic incubus, or night-terror, is the</p><p>vampire's antecedent, its oppressive paralysis representing buried mem-</p><p>ories of incestuous assault or guilt over incestuous desire. Because a direct</p><p>acknowledgment of incest was taboo, the anxiety became fantastically</p><p>elaborated and objectified in vampire legends. (See also NIGHTMARE; PSY-</p><p>CHOANALYSIS.)</p><p>In general, the European vampire was a reanimated corpse, or a ghost</p><p>who ethereally transports blood back to its corpse—a physical body is</p><p>somehow replenished by blood in either case. The vampire is active at</p><p>night, when it can go about its business unobserved and prey on sleeping</p><p>victims—sunlight is not necessarily an impediment; it just makes things</p><p>difficult. (The destruction-by-sunlight theme was an invention of the</p><p>cinema, introduced in 1922 by F. W. Murnau in his landmark film, Nos-</p><p>FERATU.) According to various traditions,</p><p>a vampire can be repelled or</p><p>kept immobilized in its coffin by a variety of means—by crucifixes or holy</p><p>relics, or evil-absorbing botanicals like garlic or aconite. In some strains</p><p>of the legend, a vampire cannot cross running water, abide the thorn of a</p><p>wild rose, or enter any dwelling where it has not been invited (afterward,</p><p>of course, it can come and go as it pleases). Sometimes the vampire can be</p><p>confused or thwarted by obsessive-compulsive rituals—the liberal strewing</p><p>of poppy seeds, for instance, which the vampire must individually count</p><p>each night before leaving its grave. Heavily knotted cords can prove</p><p>equally vexing.</p><p>Vampires in western folklore are created in any number of ways. Sui-</p><p>cides, blasphemers, and other transgressors are likely candidates; so are</p><p>children born with cauls, hair, or teeth. Red-haired or left-handed children</p><p>are suspect in some cultures, witches and necromancers in most. Destruc-</p><p>tion of a vampire is accomplished by a range of mutilation rituals per-</p><p>formed on the corpse: burning, decapitation/dismemberment, or most</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 05</p><p>Impalement by wooden stake is the classic,</p><p>cross-cultural method of destroying a vampire</p><p>pest. Illustration from Varney the Vampyre.</p><p>classically, impalement by a wooden</p><p>STAKE.</p><p>Vampires are prevalent in non-</p><p>Western folklore as well, where they of-</p><p>ten blur with spirit- beings of a more</p><p>generalized malevolence. Excellent, de-</p><p>tailed discussions of even the most ob-</p><p>scure vampire relatives can be found in</p><p>Matthew Bunson's The Vampire Ency-</p><p>clopedia (see bibliography).</p><p>See Appendix B for an alphabetical</p><p>listing of the names of vampires and</p><p>vampirelike creatures from folklore tra-</p><p>ditions around the world.</p><p>Fool There Was, A</p><p>See Bara, Theda.</p><p>Freud, Sigmund</p><p>The father of psychoanalysis had little to say directly about vampires, but</p><p>his insights into oral sadism, hysteria, phallic symbolism, and the death</p><p>wish have given vampire commentators their major critical compass over</p><p>the years. The Freudian prism yields its best results when applied to early</p><p>works like "Carmilla" and Dracula, which were created before Freud's</p><p>work had been popularized, and are therefore free of prior theoretical con-</p><p>tamination. Late -twentieth-century vampire entertainment tends to wink</p><p>endlessly at Freud and Freudian cliches and often has almost no uncon-</p><p>scious content to be excavated—it's all on the cynical surface. Freud him-</p><p>self appears as quasi-undead in Snoo Wilson's 1973 avant-garde play</p><p>Vampire, heart-staked in a casket as he endlessly drones on about his theo-</p><p>ries of sex and culture.</p><p>1 06 David J. Skal</p><p>Frid, Jonathan</p><p>See Dark Shadows.</p><p>Fright Night</p><p>Cinema, USA 1985. The first vampire</p><p>movie to spend one million dollars on</p><p>special effects, Tom Holland's Fright</p><p>Night is not entirely successful in find-</p><p>ing the proper balance between humor</p><p>and horror; nonetheless, the picture</p><p>is an entertaining eyeful, whether it is</p><p>scoring points with over-the-top visuals,</p><p>or more discreetly, with such touches</p><p>as having its vampire (Chris Sarandon)</p><p>nonchalantly whisding "Strangers in</p><p>the Night." Sarandon's teenage neigh-</p><p>bor (William Ragsdale) suspects the</p><p>worst and enlists the burnt-out host of</p><p>the local television horror movie show</p><p>(Roddy McDowall) to banish the evil</p><p>forever—or at least until the sequel,</p><p>Fright Night Part II (1988), which</p><p>featured a memorable sequence with a</p><p>vampire on roller skates. The makeup</p><p>in both films was elaborate and inven-</p><p>tive; the New York Post's "Phantom of</p><p>the Movies" dutifully noted that Fright</p><p>Nighfs heroine Amanda Bearse "sports</p><p>the champ vamp choppers of all time</p><p>—</p><p>stalactitic fangs gleaming from a crim-</p><p>son kisser that take up half her face."</p><p>Another Post critic, Rex Reed, was not</p><p>quite so taken. Of cinematic vampires,</p><p>Reed quipped, "Like bad filmmakers,</p><p>they're fearless, persistent pests, and</p><p>hard to get rid of." Nonetheless, the</p><p>final twenty minutes or so of the film</p><p>—</p><p>Fright Night: Chris Sarandon</p><p>undergoes a spectacular</p><p>transformation. (Photofest)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 07</p><p>everything after Sarandon intones "Welcome to Fright Night . .</p><p>."</p><p>—</p><p>constitute a wildly entertaining vampire Gotterdammerung that will keep</p><p>you gasping, and reaching for the rewind button. (Vistar/Columbia) T</p><p>From Dusk Till Dawn</p><p>Cinema, USA 1996. 1 loved the trailer's tag line: "No interviews. Just vam-</p><p>pires." No matter that it takes half the film before Mexican monsters turn a</p><p>nasty killers-on-the-lam story into an absurdly entertaining special effects</p><p>pig-out. Two brothers, one psychopathic (George Clooney) and one psy-</p><p>chotic (Quentin Tarantino) meet their match in a south-of-the-border</p><p>vampire/biker bar demurely called the Titty Twister. The dive is built atop</p><p>a buried Aztec ruin; presumably (it's never really explained) ancient blood</p><p>sacrifices had something to do with the present goings-on. But this isn't</p><p>the kind of film in which you try to explain anything, and director Robert</p><p>Rodriguez doesn't, probably to his credit. Tarantino wrote the script long</p><p>before Pulp Fiction, reportedly for spare change while working as a video</p><p>store clerk. The effects were created by the resourceful KNB EFX Group</p><p>(one partner, Robert Kurtzman, wrote the original story), but their most</p><p>inspired efforts seem to have been reduced to mere subliminal flashes in an</p><p>effort to secure an R rating; what we're left with are endless repetitive vari-</p><p>ations on the same gooey melt-downs and morphings. With luck, we'll see</p><p>an unrated director's cut on video. With Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, and,</p><p>in a memorable bit of comic casting, makeup effects maven Tom Savini as a</p><p>lovable psycho called Sex Machine. (Miramax)</p><p>Frye, Dwight</p><p>American character actor Dwight Frye (1899-1943) was best known for</p><p>his role as the insect- eating madman Renfield in the 1931 film version of</p><p>Dracula. Previously a versatile stage actor, Frye nevertheless became</p><p>typecast in Hollywood horror roles (he followed Dracula with the part of</p><p>the hunchbacked laboratory assistant in Frankenstein). Frye is often con-</p><p>fused with Bernard Jukes, the British actor who originated the Renfield</p><p>role in London and on Broadway in 1927; a memorable photo of Jukes</p><p>cackling maniacally is frequently misidentified as Frye (who never acted on</p><p>stage in Dracula until years after the film). Frye was a devout Christian</p><p>Scientist who kept a series of heart attacks a secret from his family until a</p><p>1 08 David J. Skal</p><p>final coronary killed him on a trip to the movies with his young son,</p><p>Dwight, Jr. His death was especially tragic as it came on the eve of his be-</p><p>ing cast in a good role in a major nonhorror film. Other Frye films perti-</p><p>nent to the theme of this book are The Vampire Bat (1933) and Dead-</p><p>Men Walk (1943). Shock-rocker Alice Cooper recorded a memorable</p><p>song, "The Ballad of Dwight Fry," misspelling his last name—curiously</p><p>reverting it to its original, pretheatrical spelling.</p><p>3</p><p>Garland, Judy</p><p>According to critic Camille Paglia, the legendary singer and drug addict</p><p>Judy Garland may also have been a vampire. In her New York Times Book</p><p>Review appraisal of David Shipman's Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an</p><p>American Legend (1993), Paglia states: "The great stars are sacred mon-</p><p>sters, amoral vampires who drain those around them to feed the world." I</p><p>remember a description of one of Garland's front-row fans during one of</p><p>her final tours, a young man who purportedly wrang his hands until they</p><p>bled—whether Garland shook them or licked them, I don't know. But I</p><p>also remember a Cleveland lawyer in the sixties who waged a media cam-</p><p>paign against movie monsters, especially vampires, which he felt were de-</p><p>faming to Romania and Romanians. He specifically cited an appearance by</p><p>Judy Garland on Jack Paar's television show in which she made a joke</p><p>about her psychiatrist being "from Transylvania." Following her drug-</p><p>overdose death in 1969, Garland's coffin remained in storage, uninterred</p><p>for an</p><p>unusual length of time. The circumstantial evidence mounts, inex-</p><p>orably. See also addiction; alcoholism.</p><p>Garlic</p><p>It's hardly surprising in our new age of body-fluid horrors and reawakened</p><p>vampire consciousness that the old reliable of bloodsucker repellents, com-</p><p>mon garlic, has reasserted itself as a popular folk remedy. In the age ofAIDS</p><p>(q.v.), garlic sales have soared everywhere as vague quasi-medical claims</p><p>("the goodness of garlic") appeal to our free-floating sense of blood</p><p>contamination, encroaching death, and cultural dread. Garlic has, in fact,</p><p>been prized for centuries for its well-known (if poorly understood) blood-</p><p>purifying and immune-boosting properties; modem science points to garlic's</p><p>1 1 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>high concentration of sulfurlike compounds which make it effective as both</p><p>an antibacterial and antifungal agent. It is easy to understand how prescien-</p><p>tific societies, which often superimposed evil spirits on disease, could extend</p><p>garlic's powers as a natural remedy into the supernatural realm as well. Ac-</p><p>cording to folklorist Wayland D. Hand, "... the communication of human</p><p>ills to trees is both ancient and widespread, as in the absorption of disease</p><p>and miasmas by such common plants as potatoes, onions, and garlic."</p><p>In vampire superstitions and stories, garlic affords protection against</p><p>the undead when worn wreathed around the neck, festooned on doors, or</p><p>rubbed around windows and entrances. In some traditions, when vampires</p><p>are killed by staking and decapitation, the mouth of the corpse is stuffed</p><p>with garlic as additional vampire prophylaxis. The superstition is often</p><p>played for laughs, as in the recent film Innocent Blood (1992), which in-</p><p>cludes a gag about the garlicky breath of a mafioso and its undead implica-</p><p>tions. Hamilton Deane's 1924 stage version of Dracula also contained</p><p>some tasteless ethnic/garlic humor; the least offensive bit was Dracula's</p><p>snarling explanation of his visceral response to the plant: "I lived too long</p><p>in Italy to care for the smell of garlic!" See also folklore.</p><p>Gautier, Theophile</p><p>Influential poet and novelist of the French Romantic movement, Theophile</p><p>Gautier (1811-1872) wrote an 1836 story, "La mort amoureuse," contain-</p><p>ing an especially erotic evocation of an undead courtesan, Clarimonda, who</p><p>bedevils a young priest. The following excerpt is from a 1903 translation by</p><p>F. C. de Sumichrast, titled "The Vampire":</p><p>One day I was seated by her bed breakfasting at a small table, in or-</p><p>der not to leave her a minute. As I pared a fruit I happened to cut my</p><p>finger rather deeply. The blood immediately flowed in a purple stream,</p><p>and a few drops fell upon Clarimonda. Her eyes lighted up, her face as-</p><p>sumed an expression of fierce and savage joy which I had never before</p><p>beheld. She sprang from her bed with the agility of an animal, of a</p><p>monkey or of a cat, and sprang at my wound, which she began to suck</p><p>with an air of inexpressible delight. She sipped the blood slowly and</p><p>carefully like a gourmand who enjoys a glass of sherry or Syracuse</p><p>wine; she winked her eyes, the green pupils of which had become ob-</p><p>long instead of round. From time to time she broke off to kiss my</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 111</p><p>A turn-of-the-century illustration for Theophile</p><p>Gautier's story "The Vampire."</p><p>hand, then she again pressed the wound</p><p>with her lips so as to draw out a few more</p><p>red drops. When she saw that the blood</p><p>had ceased to flow, she rose up, rosier than</p><p>a May morn, her face full, her eyes moist</p><p>and shining, her hand soft and warm; in</p><p>a word, more beautiful than ever and in a</p><p>perfect state of health.</p><p>"I shall not die! I shall not die!" she</p><p>said, half mad with joy, as she hung</p><p>around my neck. "I shall be able to love</p><p>you a long time yet. My life is in yours, and</p><p>all that I am comes from you. A few drops</p><p>of your rich, noble blood, more precious</p><p>and efficacious than all the elixirs in the world, have restored my life."</p><p>The scene preoccupied me a long time and filled me with strange</p><p>doubts concerning Clarimonda . . .</p><p>Golden, The</p><p>Fiction, USA 1993. By the end of 1992, vampire novels were appearing at</p><p>the rate of nearly one a week, and needless to say, the general quality be-</p><p>gan to drop along the precipitous trajectory of a wooden STAKE. There-</p><p>fore, the appearance of Lucius Shepard's The Golden provided ample and</p><p>welcome evidence that the Great American Vampire Novel was alive and</p><p>well. And what, exactly, is a "Golden"? Shepard introduces the concept in</p><p>his brilliant first paragraph: "The gathering at Casde Banat on the evening</p><p>of Friday, October 16, 186— , had been more than three centuries in the</p><p>planning, though only a marginal effort had been directed toward the cer-</p><p>emonial essentials of the affair, its pomp and splendor. No, most of that</p><p>time and energy had been devoted to the nurturing and blending of cer-</p><p>1 1 2 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>tain mortal bloodlines so as to produce that rarest of essences, a vintage of</p><p>unsurpassing flavor and bouquet: The Golden." Shepard, previously best</p><p>known as a leading stylist of cyberpunk science fiction, brings both a self-</p><p>assured narrative voice and a virtuoso speculative imagination to this land-</p><p>mark opus, the delicious plot details of which I will allow you to discover</p><p>for yourself. A must-read if there ever was.</p><p>Graveyard Shift</p><p>Cinema, Canada 1987. What better cover occupation for a vampire than</p><p>driving a cab all night? Actor Silvio Oliviero makes a sexy, breast- biting</p><p>urban predator in Gerard Ciccoritti's more than passable monster movie.</p><p>A female video director suffering from cancer (Helen Papas) finds undeath</p><p>a viable alternative to chemotherapy—and thereby demonstrates the vam-</p><p>pire's larger contemporary function as a fantastic bargaining chip with death</p><p>anxiety. Director Ciccoritti scripted. Oliviero returned in Ciccoritti's sequel,</p><p>The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II (1988) . (Cinema Ventures/Lightshow</p><p>Communications )T</p><p>Guzla, La</p><p>The French playwright and poet Prosper Merimee (1803-1870) used</p><p>vampires as the subject of five dramatic ballads in La Guzla (1827):</p><p>"La Belle Sophie," "Jeannot," "Le Vampire," "Cara-Ali le Vampire,"</p><p>and "Constantin Yacoubovich." Merimee drew upon the work of Dom</p><p>Augustine Calmet for his vampire basics and capitalized on the craze for</p><p>vampire stories, plays, and operas that swept Europe in the aftermath of</p><p>John Polidori's 1819 Lord BYRON-inspired story, "The Vampyre." See</p><p>also THEATER.</p><p>I</p><p>Hammer Films</p><p>An independent British film company, founded in the 1930s, Hammer fi-</p><p>nally found its goldmine in the 1950s when it inaugurated a series of low-</p><p>budget but lush-looking horror films beginning with Curse ofFrankenstein</p><p>(1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), both of which helped make a</p><p>horror superstar out of actor Christopher Lee. Vampires were central to</p><p>the Hammer formula, its films including The Brides of Dracula (1960),</p><p>Kiss of the Vampire (1963), Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966),</p><p>Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of</p><p>Dracula (1969), The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire</p><p>(1970), Scars of Dracula (1970), Twins of Evil (1971), Vampire Cir-</p><p>cus ( 1971 ), Dracula A.D. 1972 ( 1972), The Satanic Rites ofDracula</p><p>(1973), Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), and Legend of the</p><p>Seven Golden Vampires (1974). Bright red blood and bountiful female nu-</p><p>dity were staples of the Hammer product—the nudity, often in the context</p><p>of vampire lesbianism, didn't debut until the 1970s, but after that, there</p><p>was no turning back. Hammer has been long dormant, but its complete</p><p>holdings of scripts and literary properties were recently purchased by</p><p>Warner Bros., which announced plans to film unproduced Hammer scripts</p><p>and remake certain Hammer classics.</p><p>Harker, Jonathan</p><p>The hero of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, Jonathan Harker was</p><p>named after Joseph Harker, a scenic artist at London's Lyceum Theatre,</p><p>which Stoker managed for the great Victorian actor-impresario Henry</p><p>Irving. According</p><p>of wolfsbane and monkshood, is also a perennial fixture in the</p><p>lore of werewolves and vampires. Its supposed antivampire properties may</p><p>derive from ancient medicinal uses as a heart and circulatory stimulant.</p><p>Aconite is also one of the most toxic herbal substances known and must be</p><p>"Film entries followed by the symbol T are available on home video.</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 3</p><p>used in minute medicinal quantities; its potential to poison as well as to</p><p>heal probably helped to engender a certain aura of awe and magic over the</p><p>ages. The plant, which displays striking blue, bell-shaped flowers (hence</p><p>the name "monkshood"), is native to central and southern Europe, but is</p><p>cultivated as an ornamental elsewhere. In medicine, the plant's roots yield</p><p>the chemically active substance; in vampire folklore, the leaves are usually</p><p>enough to do the trick. See garlic.</p><p>Addiction</p><p>Vampire stories tend to assume the form of each generation's special fears</p><p>and afflictions. The rise of chemical dependency as a major social problem</p><p>in the late twentieth century has colored contemporary vampire stories</p><p>with the metaphors of addiction. Some of the correspondences are obvi-</p><p>ous: the vampire provides an easy metaphor for both pusher and addict,</p><p>enslaving or enslaved through vein puncturing and blood contamination.</p><p>The recent confluence between intravenous drug use and AIDS (q.v.) has</p><p>intensified the addict/vampire connection, since AIDS anxiety has had</p><p>much to do with the rise of vampire imagery and entertainment in the last</p><p>decade. There is probably also a more subtle link between the self-destructive</p><p>behavior of the addict and the ancient belief that suicide is one of the</p><p>surest routes to undeath.</p><p>In the film Dracula's Daughter (1936), Countess Zaleska's morbid</p><p>blood craving is presented as a psychological addiction potentially treatable</p><p>by science and psychiatry. In House of Dracula (1945), the count seeks</p><p>out a medical doctor for a cure for his compulsion; however, like many an</p><p>addict in need of a fix, he sabotages his treatment program. The implicit</p><p>themes of addiction in vampire movies became almost grotesquely literal in</p><p>1955 when actor Bela Lugosi, famed for his Dracula characterization,</p><p>publicly committed himself to a drug rehabilitation program. Soon after,</p><p>the controversial, cutting-edge comedian Lenny Bruce, no stranger to</p><p>drugs himself, introduced stand-up routines lampooning Lugosi-Dracula</p><p>as a pill-popping, reefer-puffing has-been. Barnabas Collins, the remorseful</p><p>New England vampire of the 1960s television soap opera Dark Shadows,</p><p>also sought treatment, which was only intermittently successful. Many films</p><p>and stories have placed vampires in blood banks or hospitals, a comedic</p><p>parallel to the real-life problem of drug pilfering by addicted medical per-</p><p>sonnel. The quasireligious overtones of many currently popular twelve-step</p><p>4 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>rehabilitation programs reinforce the idea of addiction as a kind ofdemonic</p><p>possession. See also AIDS; ALCOHOLISM.</p><p>The Addiction</p><p>Cinema, USA 1995. A curiously reactionary film by Abel Ferrara, which</p><p>seems to equate intellectual modernism with living death. A New York Uni-</p><p>versity graduate student, Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor) spends so much time</p><p>reading existential philosophy and looking at concentration-camp photos</p><p>that she lacks the moral center to repel a female vampire (Annabella Sciorra)</p><p>when she is attacked on a Greenwich Village street. (In Nicholas St. John's</p><p>screenplay, the vampires always offer their victims the chance to just say no,</p><p>but of course they never do.) Gorgeously photographed in black-and-white,</p><p>The Addiction occasionally groans under unnecessarily pedantic philosophical</p><p>dialogue. With Edie Falco, Michael Fella, Paul Calderon, and, smarmy as</p><p>ever as a vampire who's seen it all, Christopher Walken. (October Films)</p><p>Advertising</p><p>As the ultimate symbol of consumerism, the vampire has frequently found</p><p>employment in consumer advertising. Legend has it that Bela LUGOSI was</p><p>once asked to endorse a product called "Dra-Cola," an abortive brainchild of</p><p>Royal Crown bottlers in the 1940s. I can vividly remember a 1960s televi-</p><p>sion commercial for Isodettes throat lozenges featuring actor Dennis</p><p>O'Keefe as "Count Sore Throat Pain," extolling the benefits of Isodettes' ac-</p><p>tive ingredient, the local anesthetic benzocaine. "When you contract a cold,</p><p>it relieves the minor pain in the throat," O'Keefe warbled in a mock Lugosi</p><p>accent. "It spoils all my fun." The Isodettes commercial came in the wake of</p><p>an early sixties monster boom, spurred by Universal Pictures' aggressive li-</p><p>censing of its monster characters for a staggering variety ofproducts. The im-</p><p>age of Dracula was used to enhance the commercial prospects of such items</p><p>as T-shirts, toys, pencil sharpeners, bubble gum, and swizzle sticks. Dracula</p><p>has even been used as a public relations emissary for the Lutheran Church</p><p>("Are your kids learning about the power of the cross on the late, late show?</p><p>With all due regard to Hollywood, there's more to Christianity than stop-</p><p>ping vampires."). Folklorist Norine Dresser, in her 1989 study, American</p><p>Vampires, enumerates a wide range of vampire-driven advertising, including</p><p>but not limited to home security systems ("Protects you against uninvited</p><p>guests"), cat food, insecticide, pizza, and computer software. See also</p><p>ALCOHOLISM; LUGOSI, BELA.</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 5</p><p>AIDS</p><p>The earliest vampire superstitions were fueled in no small part by pre-</p><p>scientific peoples' frightened responses to poorly understood medical phe-</p><p>nomena. Plagues, wasting diseases, and invisible contagions were often</p><p>attributed to the wrath of the recently dead, giving rise to an increasingly</p><p>embellished mythology of fear and its attendant rituals of scapegoating</p><p>and purification.</p><p>The epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the</p><p>modern world a primitive shot of fear in the 1980s and 1990s, and the</p><p>characteristics of AIDS itself weirdly echoed the classic motifs of vampire</p><p>legends. A blood-borne, wasting malady appears, each victim capable of</p><p>creating others through vein-puncturing or unconventional forms of sex.</p><p>Science is baffled. Self-appointed moral guardians come forth, waving reli-</p><p>gious talismans, insisting that the affliction is the work of the devil. None-</p><p>theless, the vampire seems unstoppable; in the streets, there is a steady</p><p>procession of coffins.</p><p>AIDS is the undeniable subtext of the explosive growth of vampire en-</p><p>tertainment in all media during the last decade; to the conscious mind, the</p><p>reality of AIDS can be almost too much to bear, but on the plane</p><p>of fantasy, the threat of AIDS death can be bargained with—defanged, as</p><p>it were.</p><p>Vampire entertainment also permits one of the few socially sanctioned</p><p>outlets for images of rape. The woman who entertains fantasies ofvampire</p><p>-</p><p>rape is not doing so because she wants to be raped; she is more likely fright-</p><p>ened by the prospect of rape and controls the fear through a desensitizing</p><p>process of ritual fantasy, over which she has complete control. Similarly, the</p><p>vampire represents a complete control over mortality, a supernatural immu-</p><p>nity to death in an age ofimmune dysfunction. The mass appetite for Anne</p><p>Rice's vampire novels (they have all been major bestsellers) demonstrates</p><p>the need for transcendent images in a time of modern plague. Rice's vam-</p><p>pires are also powerfully androgynous beings, whose supernatural sexuality</p><p>can withstand any amount of blood contact. Not surprisingly, Rice has a</p><p>huge cult following among gay readers.</p><p>Stephen Jones' The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide (1993) lists nearly</p><p>150 vampire-related features released throughout the world from 1980-</p><p>1989, but over seventy from 1990-1992 alone, suggesting a major annual</p><p>increase in vampire media, at least during the first years of the current</p><p>6 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>decade. Needless to say, the activity coincided with a cultural crescendo of</p><p>AIDS anxiety. Frank Rich</p><p>to Bernard Davies, cofounder of the London-based</p><p>Dracula Society, the novel Dracula is filled with obscure personal refer-</p><p>1 1 4 David J. Skal</p><p>ences and private jokes of this type. Harker, in the book, is a real estate</p><p>lawyer who travels to Transylvania to sell an English estate to Count Drac-</p><p>ula, only to be trapped in an evil web of vampirism. Dramatists and film</p><p>adaptors have sometimes found it useful to merge the character with that</p><p>of Renfield, Dracula's insectivore assistant, in an attempt to streamline</p><p>the sprawling narrative.</p><p>Highgate Cemetery</p><p>A mecca for aficionados of the undead, Highgate Cemetery in what was</p><p>then suburban London is generally believed to be the site chosen by Bram</p><p>Stoker when he created the restive resting place of the vampire Lucy</p><p>Westenra in his novel Dracula. Miss Lucy was buried in what the author</p><p>described as "a lordly death-house in a lonely churchyard, away from</p><p>teeming London; where the air is fresh; and the sun rises over Hampstead</p><p>Hill, and where wildflowers grow of their own accord."</p><p>Highgate was founded in 1839 as an alternative to the appalling con-</p><p>ditions of London's central graveyards, which included unsanitary over-</p><p>crowding, grave-robbing, and even body-snatching by medical schools in</p><p>search of cadavers. Highgate was conceived</p><p>as a sylvan retreat where death could be sen-</p><p>timentalized in the Victorian fashion—here</p><p>the dead weren't really dead, only sleeping.</p><p>In Dracula, Stoker literalized this Vic-</p><p>torian conceit almost to the point of par-</p><p>ody. Lucy Westenra barely has time to doze</p><p>before she's up and about, terrorizing stray</p><p>children with her terrible thirst. The scene</p><p>in which Professor Van Helsing and his</p><p>cohorts break into Lucy's tomb and destroy</p><p>her is Dracula's most horrific scene and a</p><p>benchmark sequence in vampire fiction.</p><p>Stoker's conception of this episode may</p><p>have been influenced in part by an actual</p><p>The crypts that inspired Bram Stoker.</p><p>(Photo by the author)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 1 5</p><p>incident at Highgate. The violation of Lucy's grave has a distinct reso-</p><p>nance with the notorious 1869 exhumation by the poet-painter Dante</p><p>Gabriel Rossetti (at one point a Stoker neighbor) of his wife, Elizabeth</p><p>Siddal. Lizzie had been buried seven years when Rossetti had second</p><p>thoughts about the notebook of his unpublished poetry he had buried</p><p>with her. According to popular legend, Lizzie was in a remarkable state of</p><p>preservation—an odd prefiguration of Stoker's undead Lucy.</p><p>Lucy's haunting ground today is a wildly romantic setting. Two of its</p><p>structures alone would give it claim to world-class moodiness. The Egyp-</p><p>tian Avenue, gated with massive obelisks, is a shaded lane of iron-doored</p><p>tombs, each bearing the ancient death symbol of the inverted, extin-</p><p>guished torch. The Lebanon Circle comprises an inner and outer ring of</p><p>catacombs in both the Egyptian and classical styles, sunk into the ground</p><p>around the base of a huge, centuries-old cedar tree. The older, western</p><p>part of the cemetery was closed in the mid 1970s and became badly over-</p><p>grown. However, through the persistent efforts of a volunteer group, the</p><p>Friends of Highgate Cemetery, it was declared a historic site in 1983. Fi-</p><p>nancial considerations make complete restoration impractical; instead,</p><p>Highgate is conserved as a managed wood-</p><p>land, not a landscaped park. The result is</p><p>stunningly atmospheric, and guided tours are</p><p>available most days.</p><p>The Highgate guardians aren't crazy about</p><p>the cemetery's vampire associations, but con-</p><p>cede that it is an important part of the place's</p><p>mystique and generates needed revenue. For</p><p>a fee, film and television crews have been</p><p>allowed to capture gothic effects that could</p><p>be approximated but never duplicated on a</p><p>soundstage. See also burial customs.</p><p>Homosexuality</p><p>Since vampire stories create tension and inter-</p><p>est through the presence of a sexual "out-</p><p>The Rossetti gravesite.</p><p>(Photo by the author)</p><p>1 1 6 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>sider," it is not surprising that homosexuality, implicit or explicit, has been</p><p>employed in film and fiction to evoke aspects of vampirism. Curiously, the</p><p>image has vacillated wildly between negative stereotypes of the gay sexual</p><p>predator to glamorous evocations of a liberating pansexuality.</p><p>The persistent, pop-cultural interplay between images of homosexuality,</p><p>bisexuality, and vampirism date to J. Sheridan Le Fanu's quasi-lesbian 1872</p><p>novella "Carmilla." In Bram Stoker's Dracula the theme is soft-pedaled</p><p>but still palpable; the men in the story think they are saving Lucy Westenra's</p><p>life by repeatedly transfusing her, while in reality they are opening their own</p><p>veins and bodies to the invasive thirst of a male monster.</p><p>In the landmark 1931 film version of Dracula, director Tod Brown-</p><p>ing—who knew better than anyone how to pluck Freudian nerves in pop-</p><p>ular culture—staged the visit of Renfield to Castle Dracula as a distinctly</p><p>homoerotic seduction. Browning shot his interpretation of the scene over</p><p>the producer's objections: "Dracula should go only for women and not</p><p>men!" Carl Laemmle, Jr., scrawled on his copy of the shooting script. In</p><p>Browning's film, Renfield's unrequited love for Dracula becomes the only</p><p>compelling story line; the heterosexual hero and heroine are bloodless</p><p>ghosts by comparison.</p><p>The first follow-up to the Browning film, Dracula's Daughter</p><p>(1936) featured an austere, contralto-voiced heir to the Dracula curse.</p><p>Played by actress Gloria Holden, Dracula's Daughter displays decidedly</p><p>Sapphic tastes; in the film's most famous scene, Holden picks up a street-</p><p>walker on the pretext of using her as a model. The original script, which</p><p>called for nudity, was toned down considerably for filming, where the</p><p>mere sight of the girl's bare shoulder triggers a deadly vampire attack.</p><p>The 1960 film The Brides of Dracula has a premise reminiscent</p><p>of Suddenly, Last Summer: a beautiful young man, overindulged by his</p><p>dragon-lady mother, somehow becomes a vampire. Mom (the great Mar-</p><p>tha Hunt) lures young girls to the castle to feed him; the thick Oedipal</p><p>tensions are resolved only when the mother is herself penetrated (i.e.,</p><p>bitten) by the son. "Would you believe we once had gay times here?" the</p><p>tormented baroness asks, in campy deadpan.</p><p>Vampirelike slurs against gays have been standard ammunition for the</p><p>religious right for quite some time. Consider Anita Bryant's charming as-</p><p>sertion that "the male homosexual eats another man's sperm. The homo-</p><p>sexual is eating life." Tangled blood themes also run beneath the surface</p><p>of gay clashes with the Roman Catholic Church over AIDS (q.v.) issues. It</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 1 7</p><p>was somehow appropriate that a 1989 demonstration at St. Patrick's</p><p>Cathedral specifically disrupted the communion service—the purest ritual</p><p>sublimation of the blood-drinking, "life-eating" impulse in Western civi-</p><p>lization. In some parts of the world, the metaphors become deadly literal</p><p>—</p><p>in the West Indies, a favorite sport is the beating and even killing of gay</p><p>men, who are called (interestingly enough) "batty boys," and who are be-</p><p>lieved to be ghosts ofSodom and Gomorrah who actually drink the blood</p><p>of slum dwellers.</p><p>In an astute essay, "Children of the Night: Vampirism as Homosexuality,</p><p>Homosexuality as Vampirism," Richard Dyer examines the ways in which</p><p>"the languid, worn, sad, refined paleness of vampire imagery" intersects</p><p>with popular stereotypes of gay "decadence." Language filled with murki-</p><p>ness and mystery has traditionally informed the presentation of gay images.</p><p>In the 1950s and 1960s, Dyer points out, if a book "was called Women in</p><p>the Shadows, Twilight Men [or] Desire in the Shadows then it had to be about</p><p>queers. This imagery derives in part from the idea of decadence, people who</p><p>do not go out into public life, whose complexions are not weathered, who</p><p>are always indoors or in the shade. It may also relate to the idea that lesbians</p><p>and gay men are not 'real' women and 'real' men, [that] we have not</p><p>got</p><p>the blood (with its very different gender associations) of normal human be-</p><p>ings." See also AIDS; Count Torga, Vampire; Daughters of Darkness;</p><p>Fearless Vampire Killers, The; fellatio; Garland, Judy; Interview</p><p>with the Vampire; lesbianism; Murnau, F. W.; Rice, Anne; Vampire</p><p>Lesbians of Sodom; Vampire Lovers, The; Wilde, Oscar.</p><p>"Horla, The"</p><p>Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) published his terrifying story of a pos-</p><p>sessing, demonic "Horla" in 1887, four years before losing his own mind</p><p>to the ravages of syphilis. The story is routinely cited as an important</p><p>"psychic vampire" tale, but in truth it has more in common with Poe's el-</p><p>egantly crafted evocations of clinical paranoia. It is still worth reading, but</p><p>its relationship to vampire literature is perhaps more tenuous than gener-</p><p>ally supposed.</p><p>Horror of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, UK 1958. Released in New York City the same day as Alfred</p><p>Hitchcock's Vertigo, Horror of Dracula (called simply Dracula in the</p><p>1 1 8 David J. Skal</p><p>Christopher Lee and Melissa</p><p>Stribling. (Photofest)</p><p>U.K.) proved to be as influ-</p><p>ential to the vampire genre</p><p>as the Hitchcock film was</p><p>to the psychothriller. Made by</p><p>Hammer Films as a follow-</p><p>up to its The Curse of Fran-</p><p>kenstein (released the previous</p><p>year), Horror of Dracula for-</p><p>ever broke the monochro-</p><p>matic cobweb conventions of</p><p>earlier vampire movies with a</p><p>bright red swath of Techni-</p><p>color blood from which horror</p><p>films have never recovered.</p><p>The film was an astonishing success by any standard; it has been reported</p><p>that Horror ofDracula had the largest cost-to-profit ratio of any film ever</p><p>released in Great Britain. While hardly a definitive treatment, it is nonethe-</p><p>less a tight and satisfying adaptation of the Stoker novel and was pro-</p><p>duced on a budget of about $200,000—or, one two-hundredth the cost</p><p>of Francis Ford Coppola's far more problematic Bram Stoker's Dracula</p><p>(1992).</p><p>In keeping with the stage and film tradition linking adaptations ofDrac-</p><p>ula and Frankenstein, actor Christopher Lee, who played the monster in</p><p>The Curse ofFrankenstein, was cast as Count Dracula, with a distinct Jekyll/</p><p>Hyde coloration. At one moment urbane and Oxford-accented, Lee could</p><p>shift effortlessly into animal-fanged fury (Lee was the first Dracula to sport</p><p>fangs since Nosferatu in 1922).</p><p>As usual, the script took many liberties with Stoker's story line, many of</p><p>them interesting. Jonathan Harker is introduced not as an innocent real</p><p>estate agent, but rather as a vampire hunter who obtains a position in</p><p>Dracula's employ in order to destroy him, but Harker is destroyed instead.</p><p>The story takes place not in England or Transylvania, but in a peculiar</p><p>European never-never land that embodies aspects of both. The part of</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 1 9</p><p>Renfield has been completely eliminated—a disappointment for purists</p><p>—</p><p>but the drama does move more swiftly without an encumbering subplot.</p><p>(Hammer Films) T See also Cushing, Peter; Dracula; Hammer Films;</p><p>Stoker, Bram.</p><p>House of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1945. John Carradine makes his second appearance as</p><p>Dracula in this entertaining finale to the Universal Pictures horror cycles</p><p>of the 1930s and 1940s. Here, there is an attempt to scientifically rational-</p><p>ize the monsters: Dracula, for instance, has a blood disease, the WolfMan</p><p>(Lon Chaney, Jr.) suffers from pressure on the brain, etc. Both seek medical</p><p>treatment from Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens), who is also tinkering with</p><p>the comatose Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange). Carradine made the</p><p>most ambivalent vampire yet depicted on screen, constandy sabotaging his</p><p>treatment to nip on the side. There are some nice bat transformations and</p><p>an especially atmospheric scene in which the count hypnotically compels a</p><p>female pianist to play music she does not know. Directed by Erie C. Kenton</p><p>from Edward T. Lowe's script. ( Universal)</p><p>T</p><p>House of Frankenstein</p><p>Cinema, USA 1944. The first go-for-broke "house party" of the major</p><p>Universal Pictures monsters (minus, for some reason, the Mummy), the</p><p>episodic House of Frankenstein resurrects Count Dracula (John Carra-</p><p>dine) for its memorable first sequence. Boris Karloff is a mad scientist es-</p><p>caped from prison with Frankensteinian ambitions; he finds refuge in a</p><p>traveling carnival whose chamber of horrors contains the staked skeleton of</p><p>Dracula. Spike removed, the revived vampire agrees to do Karloff's bid-</p><p>ding, until he is once more reduced to dust by an ill-timed sunrise. Also</p><p>starring Lon Chaney, Jr., J. Carroll Naish, Elena Verdugo, Glenn Strange,</p><p>and George Zucco. Directed by Erie C. Kenton from a script by Edward T.</p><p>Lowe. ( Universal)</p><p>House of the Vampire</p><p>Fiction, USA 1907. George Sylvester Viereck's first novel foreshadowed</p><p>his later difficulties with the U.S. government, which imprisoned him for</p><p>his vociferous Nazi sympathies in the 1940s. House ofthe Vampire is stylis-</p><p>tically naive, but there is no doubt about the author's ideological leanings</p><p>20 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>as he tells the story of Reginald Clarke, a modern-day vampire in Manhat-</p><p>tan, a man of letters who absorbs creativity instead of blood from a succes-</p><p>sion of male proteges. The result falls with distinct unease somewhere</p><p>between the worlds of Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche (an instantly</p><p>identifiable portrait of Wilde, in fact, adorned the cover of the German</p><p>edition). Near the end of the book, the monster explains himself to the fe-</p><p>male friend of his latest victim:</p><p>"In every age," he replied, with great solemnity, "there are giants who</p><p>attain to a greatness which by natural growth no men could ever have</p><p>reached . . . But to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron</p><p>and the wit of a hundred men. And from the iron they take the</p><p>strength, and from a hundred men's brains they absorb their wisdom</p><p>. . . with Titan strides they scale the stars and succeed where millions</p><p>fail. In art they live, the makers of new periods, the dreamers of new</p><p>styles."</p><p>Viereck's book received dismissive reviews (The Nation: "Of course the</p><p>theme of the consuming power of greatness . . . has been eternally inter-</p><p>esting . . . The difficulty with Mr. Viereck's treatment lies in his purely</p><p>melodramatic conception of character, an utter lack of subtlety in dealing</p><p>with the whole situation, and a distressing congestion of large words") but</p><p>he kept plugging away at the theme, rewriting the story for the theater (as</p><p>The Vampire) a few years later. Viereck also explored the vampire theme in</p><p>poetry ("The Singing Vampire" [1911]). One of his most notorious liter-</p><p>ary exploits was a 1905 hoax in which he suggested that Oscar Wilde had</p><p>faked his own death to avoid further humiliating public scrutiny after his</p><p>release from prison.</p><p>Hunger, The</p><p>Cinema, UK/USA 1983. Tony Scott's stylish adaptation of Whitley</p><p>Strieber's 1981 novel jettisons most of Strieber's quasi-scientific rational-</p><p>izations in favor of slick, sensuous visuals, and the gambit works. Catherine</p><p>Deneuve is a chic bisexual vampire named Miriam Blaylock, astonishingly</p><p>long-lived due to her pure and ancient vampire bloodline. Her longtime</p><p>companion (David Bowie) has less of a pedigree and begins aging rapidly.</p><p>Miriam seeks out a medical specialist in the aging process (Susan Sarandon)</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 121</p><p>Catherine Deneuve</p><p>and David Bowie in</p><p>The Hunger.</p><p>and ends up switching her affections, storing the crumbling Bowie in a</p><p>chained box in the attic. Sarandon's cold-turkey convulsions as she tries</p><p>unsuccessfully to shake off the titular Hunger are one of the best evoca-</p><p>tions I've seen of vampirism as addiction. This film is a lot of fun to</p><p>watch, especially the sex scenes—a close viewing of the lesbian action re-</p><p>veals that Deneuve employs a body double, while Sarandon alone bares</p><p>all. The best set piece has Bowie aging several decades while sitting in a</p><p>hospital waiting room. My favorite line is Sarandon's, as she tries feebly to</p><p>explain to her boyfriend the nature of Miriam Blaylock's lavish attentions:</p><p>"She's that kind ofwoman. She's . . . European." Screenplay by Ivan Davis</p><p>and Michael Thomas. (MGM/UA) T</p><p>Huntley, Raymond</p><p>British character actor (1903-1990) best known for his stage and screen</p><p>portrayals of officious, haughty villains and bureaucrats, Raymond Hunt-</p><p>ley holds the all-time record for stage appearances as Dracula, a role he</p><p>played almost nonstop in England and America from 1926 to 1930. He</p><p>initially turned down the chance to play the role stateside in 1927, thus in-</p><p>advertently making a star out of producer Horace Liveright's second</p><p>1 22 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>choice, the expatriate Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. Huntley</p><p>came to America in 1928 to play the role on tour; his total</p><p>number of performances as Dracula was in the thousands, far</p><p>more than that of Lugosi (whom Huntley never met or even</p><p>saw in the stage production). I interviewed Hundey shortly</p><p>before his death, and he shared numerous amusing anec-</p><p>dotes about Dracula, notably that Hamilton Deane's orig-</p><p>inal production was so threadbare that he was required to</p><p>provide his own evening clothes for the role. Hundey was</p><p>always faintiy embarrassed by the role, which he felt in-</p><p>hibited his career; nonetheless, he worked steadily in</p><p>British film, television</p><p>(</p><p>Upstairs, Downstairs), and on</p><p>stage until the year he died.</p><p>Raymond Huntley as Dracula.</p><p>/ Am Legend</p><p>Fiction, USA 1954. Like Jack Finney's frequently filmed The Body Snatch-</p><p>ers, Richard Matheson's masterful science fiction/horror thriller / Am</p><p>Legend also provides a subtextual commentary on the anxious underside of</p><p>American society in the fifties. Instead of the good life, Matheson gives us</p><p>unlife: a plague has virtually wiped out the human race, leaving the sub-</p><p>urbs and shopping centers inhabited by roaming, thirsting vampires. The</p><p>focal character, Robert Neville, stages an existential one-man stand against</p><p>the encroaching darkness—a theme echoed in his second SF novel, The</p><p>Shrinking Man (1956). IAm Legend has been filmed twice, first with Vin-</p><p>cent Price in The LastMan on Earth ( 1964) and later with Charlton Hes-</p><p>ton as The Omega Man (1971). George Romero's landmark zombie film,</p><p>Night of the Living Dead (1968), owes much to both the Matheson novel</p><p>and the 1964 film adaptation.</p><p>J, Vampire</p><p>Fiction, USA 1984. Science fiction writer Jody Scott uses the vampire as the</p><p>springboard for a tour de force of social satire in J, Vampire, which also</p><p>employs time-travel, aliens, and feminist LESBIANISM—the female narrator,</p><p>a 700-year-old Transylvanian vampire named Sterling O'Blivion (the name,</p><p>perhaps, a nod to another character of the same improbable surname in</p><p>David Cronenberg's film Scanners), is in love with a shape-changing alien</p><p>who assumes the form of Virginia Woolf. The plot is too twisty for a brief</p><p>synopsis, but J, Vampire brims with imagination and invention and will</p><p>either delight or confound aficionados of both the gothic and SF tra-</p><p>ditions. The title /, Vampire was also used in 1990 by author Michael</p><p>Romkey for his more traditional novel of a contemporary vampire in Paris.</p><p>1 24 David J. Skal</p><p>Image of the Beast</p><p>Fiction, USA 1968. Philip Jose Farmer's notorious pornographic novel</p><p>opens with a scene that is hard to beat for complete repulsiveness, and for</p><p>its rather overliteral illustration of vampirism's psychological links to the</p><p>CASTRATION complex. A group of policemen watch a film of one of their</p><p>colleagues, Colben, meeting his very kinky end at the hands and mouths</p><p>of a pair of ersatz vampires: "Dracula cackled again, showing two obvi-</p><p>ously false canines, long and sharp. Then he bent down and began to</p><p>chew savagely on the penis but within a short time raised his head. The</p><p>blood and spermatic fluid was running out of his mouth and making</p><p>the front of his white shirt crimson. He opened his mouth and spit out the</p><p>head of the penis onto Colben's belly and laughed, spraying blood . .</p><p>." If</p><p>you need to read more, try finding a copy of the 1979 reissue by Playboy</p><p>Paperbacks. See also FELLATIO.</p><p>Incubus</p><p>This is a lewd male demon closely related to the oppressive nightmare,</p><p>believed to have sexual relations with immobilized sleeping victims. The</p><p>female counterpart of the incubus is the succubus. The concept of the in-</p><p>cubus crystallized in the Middle Ages, when outbreaks of incubation and</p><p>succubation were rife in cloisters and monasteries. Today, of course, we</p><p>recognize the phenomenon as a hysterical reaction to conditions of en-</p><p>forced celibacy rather than demonic predation. The modern image of the</p><p>sexually seductive vampire is a hybrid of the incubus/succubus and the</p><p>ZOMBIE-Iike bloodsuckers of European folk traditions. See also folklore.</p><p>Innocent Blood</p><p>Cinema, USA 1 992. John Landis, director of An American Werewolf in</p><p>London and Michael Jackson's Thriller video, was responsible for this al-</p><p>ternately very funny and very gruesome romp about a female vampire in</p><p>Pittsburgh (Anne Parillaud, the sexy assassin of La Femme Nikita) who has</p><p>sufficient scruples to feast only on criminals and mafiosi. She miscalculates</p><p>an attack on mob boss Robert Loggia, who, instead of dying, returns as a</p><p>formidable vampire opponent. The film's most outrageous special effects</p><p>set piece involves the sunlight- disintegration of the blood-converted Don</p><p>Rickles in a hospital room. Anthony LaPaglia plays the cop who finds him-</p><p>self falling for the lady vamp. Script by Michael Wolk. (Warner Bros.) T</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 1 25</p><p>Interview with the Vampire</p><p>Cinema, USA 1 994. The sturm und drang accompanying the transference</p><p>of Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire (1977) to the screen has</p><p>all the makings of a grand opera bouffe—or at least a gossipy behind-the-</p><p>scenes book. The film rights were purchased ages ago, and at various times</p><p>performers like John Travolta, Jon Voight, and even Cher had their names</p><p>attached to the project in its various development incarnations as a theatri-</p><p>cal feature, a television mini-series, and even a Broadway musical. When</p><p>producer David Geffen announced that the film would finally be made,</p><p>with director Neil Jordan</p><p>(</p><p>The Crying Game, The Company of Wolves) at</p><p>the helm, Rice and her fans rejoiced . . . until Geffen announced the de-</p><p>cidedly against-type casting ofTom Cruise as the vampire Lestat.</p><p>Outraged, Rice took her case to the media, denouncing both the pro-</p><p>ducer and the actor, in advance, for ruining her book. Cynics might well</p><p>point out that surrounding the film with an air of controversy and antici-</p><p>pation for the better part of a year was a tremendous publicity bonanza for</p><p>both Rice and the film. After a while, the news value of Rice's umbrage</p><p>played itself out, but the novelist recaptured media attention when she</p><p>viewed an advance videocassette of the completed Interview, and promptly</p><p>fell in love with Cruise and everyone else involved with the film. Interview</p><p>with the Vampire opened in November 1994 and was an immediate com-</p><p>mercial hit; whether it is a completely successful adaptation of the book is</p><p>another matter.</p><p>On the positive side, Interview with the Vampire is a lavishly mounted</p><p>fever-dream, embellished with lurid cinematic set pieces—certainly one</p><p>of the most visually successful vampire movies ever produced, and a neces-</p><p>sary corrective to the garish frou-frou of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram</p><p>Stoker's Dracula. Sadly, the artful shadow play of cinematographer</p><p>Philippe Rousselot was reduced to mere murkiness in most American the-</p><p>aters, where the money-grubbing practice of projecting at three-quarter</p><p>normal brightness (to save electricity) is now almost universal. Production</p><p>designer Dante Ferretti provided some stunning tableaux, notably at the</p><p>Parisian Theatre des Vampires with its honeycombed catacomb.</p><p>But the lead actors, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, while handsomely filling</p><p>their roles from a physical standpoint, lack the kind of classical vocal train-</p><p>ing needed to carry off a stylized costume picture—Pitt's drone is particu-</p><p>larly damaging</p><p>in that he delivers voiceover narration as well as dialogue.</p><p>1 26 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>(It occurred to me about halfway through the screening that Interview</p><p>would be immeasurably improved once it was dubbed into French. Please,</p><p>someone: send me a video when it happens.) Twelve -year- old Kirsten</p><p>Dunst, as the doll-like vampire child Claudia, strikes exacdy the right tone</p><p>of cloying creepiness in a part many feared would be played by an older ac-</p><p>tress to avoid a kiddy-porn mood.</p><p>Many Rice fans were anguished by rumors that the book's implied</p><p>homoerotic allegory was going to be sacrificed to avoid offending a main-</p><p>stream audience, or because Tom Cruise just said no. But in the end Cruise</p><p>cruises just fine, eyeing hunky Pitt hungrily through gauzy bed curtains,</p><p>and consummating their blood link with a sky-high vampire orgasm, of</p><p>sorts. It would be a dense audience indeed that didn't have some idea what</p><p>all the male-male sucking and suckling is really about. (See FELLATIO.) Syn-</p><p>dicated columnist Liz Smith asked a pointed question about the meaning</p><p>of such an elaborate celluloid closet: Why couldn't film characters just be</p><p>gay, instead of disguised as vampires? Rice answered Smith toward the end</p><p>of a rambling trade ad in which she reviewed the film. "Ms. Smith," she</p><p>wrote, "the gays are us. . . . There is no disguise. Gay allegory doesn't exist</p><p>apart from moral allegory for every-</p><p>one." See also HOMOSEXUALITY.</p><p>Isle of the Dead</p><p>Cinema, USA 1945. One of the</p><p>few nonderivative treatments of the</p><p>vampire theme to come out of Holly-</p><p>wood, produced by Val Lewton (Cat</p><p>People, The Body Snatcher), Isle ofthe</p><p>Dead stars Boris Karloff as an au-</p><p>thoritarian Greek general who be-</p><p>gins to lose his sanity when faced</p><p>with an unstoppable plague. He be-</p><p>comes obsessed with an innocent</p><p>Isle of the Dead:</p><p>Boris Karloff and Katherine Emery. (Photofest)</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 1 27</p><p>girl, convinced that she harbors a vrykolaka, or vampirelike spirit of pesti-</p><p>lence—thus crazily reasserting his sense of control. The psychology is un-</p><p>usually astute, and the atmospherics up to Lewton's celebrated standards.</p><p>With Ellen Drew, Mark Cramer, and Katherine Emery. Mark Robson di-</p><p>rected from Ardel Wray's screenplay. (RKO) T See also catalepsy.</p><p>IfJ The Terror From Beyond Space</p><p>Cinema, USA 1 958. The still effective prototype for the Alien films was set</p><p>on a spaceship returning from Mars with a scaly, shadowy, blood-drinking</p><p>monster lurking in the bulkhead. The noirish black-and-white photogra-</p><p>phy and well- sustained sense of menace has kept the film watchable and</p><p>scary. During production, the word "Vampire" was used in the tide in</p><p>place of "Terror." With Marshall Thompson (who starred the same year</p><p>in another film combining spaceships and blood drinking, First Man</p><p>Into Space), Shawn Smith, and Kim Spalding. Directed by Edward I. Cahn.</p><p>(United Artists) T</p><p>J</p><p>Jewelry</p><p>"Do you like jewelry, Lily? This ring is very old, and very beautiful." So</p><p>progressed Gloria Holden's lesbian seduction of Nan Grey in the 1936</p><p>film Dracula's Daughter. Precious stones and their decorative settings</p><p>crop up repeatedly in vampire stories and films, possibly because jewels</p><p>connote a certain transcendent permanence that parallels the vampire's</p><p>immortality. Ostentatious jewelry also signifies class distinctions and the</p><p>vampirelike transference of energy that passes from the working classes</p><p>to their monied masters (see also class warfare). Notable examples of</p><p>vampire jewelry include the medallion and signet ring worn by Count</p><p>Dracula in the 1931 film version and its many imitations, and on the</p><p>protective side, the profusion</p><p>of silver crosses adorning the</p><p>necks of a multitude of active</p><p>and would-be victims.</p><p>Jonathan</p><p>Cinema, West Germany 1970.</p><p>This hard-to-find film has an</p><p>inflated reputation due to its</p><p>fascinating premise and simul-</p><p>Jonathan: Vampirism as political</p><p>metaphor. (Courtesy of Ronald V.</p><p>Borst/Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>1 30 David J. Skal</p><p>taneous inaccessibility</p><p>—</p><p>Jonathan, a retelling of Dracula as a parable of</p><p>fascism, never received an American release and is presendy only viewable</p><p>on boodeg videos from German television. Sadly, writer/director Hans</p><p>W. Geissendorfer's ambitions never congeal into a satisfying artistic state-</p><p>ment, and the film tries to trade on its intentions rather than its achieve-</p><p>ments. Some films should exist only in legend; Jonathan, sadly, is one of</p><p>them. With Jurgen Jung, Hans Dieter Jendreyko, and Paul Albert Krumm.</p><p>(Iduna Films)</p><p>K</p><p>Karloff, Boris</p><p>The actor best-known as the Frankenstein monster nearly played the role</p><p>of Dracula in a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel scripted for</p><p>him in the late 1950s, but never produced. According to producer</p><p>Richard Gordon, Karloff was enthusiastic about the project, which fell</p><p>through because of scheduling conflicts. His only concern: "Just so long</p><p>as I don't have to imitate Bela." See also Black Sabbath; House of</p><p>Frankenstein; Isle of the Dead.</p><p>Kerouac, Jack</p><p>The guiding light of beat writers was also a devotee of darkness in the guise</p><p>of the living dead; Kerouac's</p><p>autobiographical fantasy Dr. Sax</p><p>( 1959) featured a vampire named</p><p>Count Condu, an undead dream-</p><p>inhabitant of Kerouac's home-</p><p>town of Lowell, Massachusetts.</p><p>Kerouac also wrote program</p><p>notes on Nosferatu for the</p><p>New Yorker Film Society in</p><p>Kiss of the Vampire: Isobel Black</p><p>prepares to "initiate" Edward</p><p>DeSouza with something more</p><p>substantial than a smooch. (Photofest)</p><p>132 DavidJ.Skal</p><p>1960; because of his heavy nighttime drinking, a daylight Sunday screen-</p><p>ing was finally arranged in order for Kerouac to view the film sober. See</p><p>also ALCOHOLISM.</p><p>Kiss of the Vampire</p><p>Cinema, UK 1 963. A gem of a vampire picture from Hammer Films, Don</p><p>Sharp's atmospheric film concerns a pair of honeymooners in Bavaria (Ed-</p><p>ward DeSouza and Jennifer Daniel) who come under the malign in-</p><p>fluence of the undead Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman) and his white-robed</p><p>cult of blood-drinking acolytes. Kiss of the Vampire was thoroughly</p><p>butchered when the film was edited for television in the late sixties; every</p><p>shot of a vampire's FANGS, for instance, was censored, and the film was</p><p>padded with a newly shot subplot to fill out a two-hour time slot. The film</p><p>was aired under the title Kiss of Evil. Fans had almost given up hope of</p><p>ever seeing this film again when, in 1995, MCA Home Video uncovered</p><p>the original negative and released a pristine videocassette. Among the</p><p>film's revelations is a complex vampire psychology revolving around guilt,</p><p>disease, and self-delusion. Vampire hunter Professor Zimmer (Clifford</p><p>Evans) tells the endangered bride's husband how he lost his own daughter</p><p>to the corruptions of Dr. Ravna, joining his "smart set" in an unnamed</p><p>decadent city. "She came home eventually . . . what was left of her came</p><p>home. She was riddled with disease. And she was a vampire." According to</p><p>Zimmer, the vampire deludes itself into regarding a "filthy perversion" as</p><p>"some kind of new and wonderful experience, to be shared by the favored</p><p>few." Kiss of the Vampire is one of the few films to associate vampires</p><p>explicitly with cultism. Script by John Elder (pseudonym for producer</p><p>Anthony Hinds). (Hammer/Universal)</p><p>La-Bas</p><p>Fiction, France 1891. J.-K. Huysmans, one of the most influential nine-</p><p>teenth-century French decadents (his novel A Rebours [Against the Grain,</p><p>a.k.a. Against Nature] is thought to have been one of Oscar Wilde's in-</p><p>spirations for The Picture of Dorian Gray), created a sensation when he</p><p>published La-Bas (Down There), for the book contained graphic descrip-</p><p>tions of satanic rituals, blood sacrifice, and vampirism. The real-life, Sade-</p><p>like atrocities of Gilles de Raille are recounted: "Vampirism satisfies him</p><p>for months. He pollutes dead children, appeasing the fever of his desires in</p><p>the blood smeared chill of the tomb. . . . He even goes so far—one day</p><p>when his supply of children is exhausted—as to disembowel</p><p>a pregnant</p><p>woman and sport with the foetus. After these excesses he falls into horrible</p><p>states of coma. . .</p><p>." Huysmans paints an unforgettable portrait of a female</p><p>vampire of the succubus school—Mme. Chantelouve, powerfully alluring</p><p>yet distincdy repulsive: "He undressed, casting a rapid glance at Hy-</p><p>acinthe's face. It was hidden in the darkness, but was sometimes revealed</p><p>by a flare of the red-hot fire. . . . Swiftly he slipped between the covers. He</p><p>clasped a corpse; a body so cold that it froze him, but the woman's lips</p><p>were burning as she silently gnawed his features."</p><p>Lair of the White Worm, The</p><p>Fiction, UK 1911; Cinema, UK 1988. Bram Stoker's final, lunatic novel is</p><p>not precisely about a vampire, but it echoes much of Dracula in its fever-</p><p>ish concern with fantastically blurred boundaries between women and ani-</p><p>mals. The book's sickeningly hallucinatory sex imagery may have been the</p><p>direct result of the syphilis thought to have been affecting Stoker's mind</p><p>in his final years. Lady Arabella March is a kind of lamia, or supernatural</p><p>1 34 David J. Skal</p><p>snake-woman, who prefers victims made of literary cardboard rather than</p><p>flesh and blood. Despite its crudities, the book is nonetheless a Freudian</p><p>field day. Filmmaker Ken Russell produced an extremely loose and campy</p><p>adaptation in 1988, incorporating some concepts from his unproduced</p><p>screenplay for Dracula. Amanda Donohoe played Lady Arabella, with</p><p>Catherine Oxenberg the object of her lesbian-lamia affections. T</p><p>Lake of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, Japan 1971. Highly Westernized Japanese women who wear</p><p>their hair in Mary Tyler Moore-style flips are besieged in this film by a</p><p>HAMMER-style male vampire who accents his shadowy cape with a nifty</p><p>white scarf. Despite his fashion sense, the monster is maladroit in his neck-</p><p>side manner and makes an excessive number of abortive attacks on his in-</p><p>tended victim, from which she is usually able to run away. With Mori</p><p>Kishida, Midori Fujita, and Osahide Takahari. Directed by Michio Ya-</p><p>mamoto. Screenplay by Ei Ogawa and Katsu Takeura. (Toho Films) T</p><p>Lamia</p><p>A female demon of classical antiquity, the lamia is a sexual predator</p><p>thought to be half woman and half serpent. The lamia is a clear prefigu-</p><p>ration of the modern female vampire and</p><p>has often been evoked in supernatural lit-</p><p>erature, from Bram Stoker's The Lair of</p><p>the White Worm to Whitley Strieber's The</p><p>Hunger. See also "Christabel."</p><p>Landau, Martin</p><p>An American actor (born 1931), perhaps</p><p>best known for his starring role in the 1960s</p><p>Mission Impossible television series, Landau</p><p>took the role of Dracula in a 1984 national</p><p>tour of the Edward Gorey-designed stage</p><p>Martin Landau as Dracula in a 1984 revival of the</p><p>Deane/Balderston stage play.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 35</p><p>revival of the Hamilton DEANE/John L. Balderston play. In 1994 he</p><p>scored a tour de force—and won an Oscar—in the role of the aged, drug-</p><p>addicted Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's outlandish biopic, Ed Wood.</p><p>Langella, Frank</p><p>An American actor (b. 1940), with dark eyes and sensuous face, under-</p><p>stated line readings and knowing glances tossed to the audience, Frank</p><p>Langella made a charismatic stage Dracula in the Edward Gorey-designed</p><p>Broadway revival in 1977, and repeated the role on screen for Universale</p><p>big-budget 1979 film. While Langella studiously avoided the traditional</p><p>Bela Lugosi mannerisms, the Deane/Balderston stage play was rewrit-</p><p>ten to give the star additional dialogue and stage time, incorporating fa-</p><p>mous lines from the Lugosi film ("I never drink . . . wine") that were not</p><p>part of the original play. Despite some guarded reviews, the revival had the</p><p>kind of success usually reserved for Broadway musicals, and Langella was</p><p>deluged with fan attention. As he later told the Washington Post, "The</p><p>crowds outside the stage door were uncontrollable and certainly the closest</p><p>I have ever come to knowing what it would be like to be a rock star."</p><p>Richard Eder of the New York Times called Langella "a stunning figure as</p><p>Dracula: tall, pale, Byronic, with an occasional prosaic reflex as if he were</p><p>mentally counting coffins." He was succeeded in the role by a string of ac-</p><p>tors including Jean LeClerc, Raul Julia, David Dukes, Jeremy Brett, and on</p><p>a 1984-1985 revival tour, Martin Landau. Langella's appearance was</p><p>about the only thing that linked the play and the film remake, which jetti-</p><p>soned the campy stylization of the stage production for elaborate location</p><p>settings and a lush eroticism. In the long run, the Dracula role did not</p><p>seem to help Langella's movie career (as Bela Lugosi found before him,</p><p>Dracula is a very hard act to follow), though he has continued his distin-</p><p>guished work in the theater—most recently to high critical acclaim in</p><p>Austin Pendleton's 1994 biographical drama, Booth. See also theater.</p><p>Last Man on Earth, The</p><p>See IAm Legend.</p><p>Le Fanu, J(oseph) Sheridan</p><p>An Irish writer (1814-1873) of elegant ghost stories and gothic novels,</p><p>Le Fanu's most notably influential vampire tale was "Carmilla," pub-</p><p>1 36 David J. Skal</p><p>lished in 1872. "Carmilla" powerfully influenced Le Fanu's fellow Irish-</p><p>man Bram Stoker in the composition of his 1897 novel Dracula; Stoker,</p><p>in fact, originally planned to set his story in Le Fanu's semi-imaginary</p><p>country of "Styria" instead of the now-familiar Transylvania. LeFanu had an</p><p>instinctive, pre -Freudian grasp of the underlying psychodynamics of vam-</p><p>pirism, and "Carmilla" is usually acknowledged as the first literary conflation</p><p>of same-sex love with vampirism. See also homosexuality; lesbianism.</p><p>Lee, Christopher</p><p>An elegant, commanding British actor (born 1922), best known as the</p><p>leading screen interpreter of Dracula in the post-LuGOSi era, Lee first</p><p>riveted audiences in Hammer Films' stylish Technicolor remake Horror</p><p>of Dracula (1958), and returned to the role in Dracula, Prince of</p><p>Darkness (1965), Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968), Taste</p><p>the Blood of Dracula (1969), Scars of Dracula (1970), Count</p><p>Dracula (1970), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of</p><p>Dracula (1973), and Dracula and Son (1976). He also played lesser</p><p>vampires in films like Uncle Was a Vampire (1959) and made a caped</p><p>cameo appearance in The Magic Christian (1969). Lee was the first Drac-</p><p>Christopher Lee in |</p><p>Dracula Has Risen I</p><p>from the Grave</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 37</p><p>ula with real sexual magnetism, though his steely erotic purposefulness</p><p>makes him a virtual personification of rape—especially the male fantasy</p><p>that women who seem to resist really want to be ravished; throughout</p><p>Lee's Dracula series, there are repeated instances of frightened women</p><p>who nonetheless moan ecstatically at the moment of neck penetration.</p><p>The problematic attractiveness of surrender to cruel authoritarianism is</p><p>also a component of the Lee/Dracula mystique and much vampire culture</p><p>in general—if we're lucky, audiences respond to these films in order to</p><p>confront, entertain, and dispel persistent tendencies toward fascism.</p><p>Lesbianism</p><p>Long an undercurrent of classic vampire stories like "Carmilla," super-</p><p>naturalized sexual relations between women have become a common hor-</p><p>ror motif in recent decades, paralleling the cultural demonization of male</p><p>homosexuality, but without the particular overlay of disease imagery that</p><p>has colored male-male vampirism in the age ofAIDS (q.v.). According to</p><p>Andrea Weiss, author of Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film:</p><p>Merging two kinds of sexual outlaws, the lesbian vampire is more than</p><p>simply a negative stereotype. She is a complex and ambiguous figure,</p><p>at once an image of death and an object of desire, drawing on pro-</p><p>found subconscious fears that the living have toward the dead and that</p><p>men have toward women, while serving as a focus for repressed fan-</p><p>tasies. The generic vampire image both expresses and represses sexual-</p><p>ity, but the lesbian vampire especially operates in the sexual rather than</p><p>the supernatural realm.</p><p>Lesbians made coy appearances from time to time</p><p>in early vampire</p><p>films—take a look at Gloria Holden's seduction of the streetwalker in</p><p>Dracula's Daughter (1936). But the modern lesbian movie vampire</p><p>owes much of her popularity to HAMMER FILMS, which, beginning with</p><p>The Vampire Lovers (1970), found a goldmine in "Carmilla"-derived</p><p>horror films that fully exploited the seventies' new tolerance for onscreen</p><p>nudity and violence. The beasts-and- breasts formula continued happily at</p><p>Hammer with Lust for a Vampire (1970) and Twins of Evil (1971).</p><p>Daughters of Darkness (1971) was a particularly elegant Belgian effort,</p><p>imaginatively amplifying the lesbian aspects of the Erzebet BATHORY leg-</p><p>138 DavidJ.Skal</p><p>"Do you like</p><p>jewelry?" Countess</p><p>Zaleska (Gloria</p><p>Holden) vamps a</p><p>streetwalker in</p><p>Dracula's Daughter</p><p>(1936).</p><p>Andrea Rau and</p><p>Delphine Seyrig in</p><p>Daughters of</p><p>Darkness. (Photofest)</p><p>end. Perhaps the most celebrated of all lesbian vampire films is The</p><p>Hunger (1983), wherein the ageless Catherine Deneuve pursues the sex-</p><p>ually ambivalent Susan Sarandon without apology or pity. In literature,</p><p>author Jewelle Gomez created a full-scale historical epic of lesbian vam-</p><p>pirism in The Gilda Stories (1991). Like homosexual men, lesbian readers</p><p>and audiences have tended to embrace gay vampires as ironic role models,</p><p>responding to the vampire's romantic aspects of rebellion, alienation, and</p><p>social transcendence.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 39</p><p>The straight world reads the signals differently. Real-life lesbians threaten</p><p>the heterosexual male's sense of himself as the center of the sexual uni-</p><p>verse—not needing or wanting men's bodies, their disinterest is nonethe-</p><p>less seen as judgmental, an "unnatural" challenge to maleness. The lesbian's</p><p>sexual independence from men overlaps with the more generalized inde-</p><p>pendence extolled by feminism; it is therefore not surprising that the de-</p><p>monized image of the lesbian vampire became a stock image in popular</p><p>culture and soft porn during the feminist revival of the 1970s. Pam Kesey,</p><p>editor of the anthology Daughters ofDarkness, cites twenty-six films deal-</p><p>ing with lesbian vampires; most appeared during this period of widescale</p><p>reappraisal of sex roles and sexual politics. See also "Christabel"; homo-</p><p>sexuality; i" Vampiri; Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.</p><p>Lifeforce</p><p>Cinema, UK/USA 1985. Colin Wilson's talky, cerebral science fiction novel</p><p>The Space Vampires (1976) was the basis for this $25 million special -effects</p><p>disaster directed by Tobe Hooper, who previously had been at the notori-</p><p>ous helm of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead of blood, the vampires</p><p>thrive on bioelectrical energy, leaving their victims withered husks. Some of</p><p>the effects are entertaining, such as a full-sized puppet of a mummylike vam-</p><p>pire which rises from an examination table to drain a hapless doctor. The</p><p>lead vamp, Mathilda May, walks nude around London, windows exploding</p><p>in her wake. With Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, and Frank Finlay. Screenplay</p><p>by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. (Cannon/Tri-Star) T</p><p>Lilith</p><p>In the Hebrew tradition, Lilith is the first wife of Adam, who abandoned</p><p>her mate and the Garden of Eden to become the Queen of the Night. The</p><p>figure of Lilith has its roots in Babylonian legends and is echoed in various</p><p>guises throughout world mythology, often as a kind of sperm-vampire or</p><p>SUCCUBUS.</p><p>Little Shop of Horrors, The</p><p>Cinema, USA 1960. Audrey, Jr., a talkative blood -drinking plant, is the</p><p>centerpiece of Roger Corman's legendary low- budget horror spoof and</p><p>one of Hollywood's crazier variations on the theme of the vampire. Au-</p><p>drey's carnivorous petals probably represent some kind of vagina dentata,</p><p>1 40 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>but the film is so funny on the surface that you overlook the deeper impli-</p><p>cations. Little Shop was adapted as an enormously successful off-Broadway</p><p>musical in the early 1980s and filmed anew in 1986 with a masterful,</p><p>Muppet-inspired Audrey II. The original film cost $27,000 and was filmed</p><p>in two days; the remake cost $30 million and took over a year to com-</p><p>plete. Script by Charles B. Griffith. With Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph,</p><p>Mel Welles, and Jack Nicholson. (Filmgroup/American International) T</p><p>London After Midnight</p><p>Cinema, USA 1927. Director Tod Browning's first excursion into the</p><p>world ofvampires has a special mystique because the film's negative and all</p><p>known prints have vanished from sight; the American Film Institute has</p><p>officially ranked London After Midnight as one of the most important</p><p>"lost" films of the silent era. Lon Chaney acted the dual role of a Scotland</p><p>Yard detective as well as a pop-eyed, razor-toothed monster in a costume</p><p>derived from Dr. Caligari—not a real vampire, it turns out, but part of an</p><p>elaborately theatrical ruse to catch a flesh-and-blood killer. Many film col-</p><p>lectors believe the film isn't really lost but in deliberate hiding, its owner</p><p>waiting for the MGM/Turner copyright</p><p>to expire sometime after the turn of the</p><p>century. Nonetheless, unsubstantiated</p><p>reports of London After Midnight's re-</p><p>discovery keep cropping up, like sight-</p><p>ings of the Loch Ness Monster. On these</p><p>occasions, the phone lines of film preser-</p><p>vationists and historians will burn fren-</p><p>ziedly from coast to coast, until the latest</p><p>close encounter is debunked as yet an-</p><p>other cruel hoax. Perhaps the most florid</p><p>of the recent rumors had a complete ni-</p><p>trate print of the film dangerously close</p><p>London After Midnight:</p><p>Edna Tichenor and Lon Chaney.</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 141</p><p>to disintegration in a Jersey City refrigerator while its owner's mind un-</p><p>derwent a corresponding deterioration due to AIDS dementia. Screenplay</p><p>by Waldemar Young, from a story by Browning. With Henry B. Walthall,</p><p>Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Polly Moran, and Edna Tichenor (as the</p><p>kohl-eyed Bat Girl). (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)</p><p>Lost Boys, The</p><p>Cinema, USA 1987. A cult favorite on college campuses, The Lost Boys re-</p><p>portedly went through a "development hell" from its original concept as</p><p>a wistful juxtaposition of Peter Pan and Dracula to its final form as a</p><p>demographically savvy alienated-teenagers-as-heavy-metal-vampires media</p><p>event. The film's advertising tag line said it all: "Sleep all day. Party all</p><p>night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." While The Lost</p><p>Boys is too slick by half, it does have its share of nice touches—including the</p><p>clawlike feet by which lead vampire Kiefer Sutherland clings to the rafters,</p><p>or the brilliant choice of The Doors' "People Are Strange" for the title</p><p>theme. Following several scripts and potential directors, Joel Schumacher</p><p>directed from an embattled screenplay by Janice Fisher, James Jeremias,</p><p>and Jeffrey Boam. With Jason Patric, Corey Haim,</p><p>Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Barnard Hughes,</p><p>Jami Gertz, and Corey Feldman. (Warner Bros.) T</p><p>Love at First Bite</p><p>Cinema, USA 1979. A completely corny but</p><p>nonetheless delightful Dracula spoof. George</p><p>Hamilton's pale, pale makeup is an instant parodic</p><p>comment on the actor's otherwise carcinogenically</p><p>suntanned playboy persona; Hamilton makes a</p><p>very funny vampire, coping with the cultural shock</p><p>attendant on his relocating from Transylvania to</p><p>Love at First Bite: George Hamilton makes do</p><p>without a suntan—for eternity,</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>1 42 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>the Manhattan disco scene. Actress Carroll Borland, protegee of Bela</p><p>Lugosi, once told me that Hamilton's performance was an uncanny ap-</p><p>proximation of Lugosi's original stage interpretation of Dracula (a perfor-</p><p>mance much muted in the 1931 film version). A sequel, Love at Second</p><p>Bite, has been announced repeatedly over the years, but as of this writing</p><p>has not yet materialized. Stan Dragoti directed, Robert Kaufman wrote.</p><p>With Susan Saint James, Richard Benjamin, Dick Shawn, Arte Johnson,</p><p>and Sherman Hemsley. (Melvin Simon Productions/American Interna-</p><p>tional Pictures) T</p><p>Lugosi, Bela</p><p>Perhaps no other human being has had such an influence on our modern</p><p>concept of the vampire than Bela Ferenc Deszo</p><p>Blasko (1880-1956), better</p><p>known as the actor Bela Lugosi. The Hungarian political expatriate arrived</p><p>in New York City in the early</p><p>1920s, establishing himself as a</p><p>dependable interpreter of "heavy"</p><p>parts (even though his extensive</p><p>stage experience in Hungary had</p><p>emphasized romantic roles and</p><p>comedy). When the British actor</p><p>Raymond Huntley turned down</p><p>the chance to play Dracula in</p><p>the original 1927 Broadway pro-</p><p>duction, Lugosi donned the flow-</p><p>ing velvet opera cape that would</p><p>follow him, quite literally, to the</p><p>grave. Hungry to repeat the role</p><p>in Universal's 1931 film version,</p><p>he accepted a ridiculously small</p><p>salary ($500 a week, a quarter of</p><p>the money paid to third-billed</p><p>David Manners) and thereafter</p><p>Autographed publicity illustration of</p><p>Bela Lugosi in Dracula.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 43</p><p>One giveth, one taketh away:</p><p>cultural icons collide as Bela</p><p>Lugosi's Dracula cuts cards with</p><p>Santa Claus for a seasonal photo</p><p>opportunity.</p><p>was never able to negotiate a lucrative Hollywood contract. Dracula was</p><p>the height of his Hollywood career, and also the beginning of its end.</p><p>Lugosi turned down the role of the monster in Frankenstein (1931), lead-</p><p>ing to Boris Karloff 's eclipsing him as movieland's most bankable horror</p><p>star. Part of Lugosi's difficulties came from his failure to completely master</p><p>English; on stage, and to a lesser extent in Hollywood, he learned his roles</p><p>phonetically, resulting in the peculiar vocal rhythms and intensity now</p><p>universally recognized as "Dracula." Dracula was Lugosi's most famous</p><p>role, though he only played him twice on film; as a display of his acting</p><p>ability, however, it must take a distinct backseat to his inspired interpreta-</p><p>tion ofYgor, the demented monster-keeper of Son ofFrankenstein (1939).</p><p>Lugosi's film career continued to slide throughout the 1940s and was</p><p>virtually finished after his reprise of Dracula in Universal's Abbott and</p><p>Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). He never worked again for a</p><p>major studio, and in 1955 made headlines as the first Hollywood star to</p><p>go public with a substance abuse problem. Lugosi successfully ended a</p><p>decades-long addiction to prescription painkillers, but never made the</p><p>comeback he dreamed of. His final films were produced under the dubi-</p><p>ous direction of Edward D. Wood, Jr., notorious as "the worst filmmaker</p><p>of all time," for films like Bride of the Monster (1956) and Plan Ninefrom</p><p>Outer Space (1958). In the latter, Lugosi appeared posthumously in a few</p><p>scenes, a stand-in with a cape over his face playing the bulk of the role in-</p><p>tended for him. Bela Lugosi died in Hollywood on August 16, 1956, and</p><p>1 44 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>was buried in makeup and costume as Dracula, at his family's request. See</p><p>also Borland, Carroll; Browning, Tod; Landau, Martin; Mark of</p><p>the Vampire; Return of the Vampire.</p><p>Lugosi, Bela, Jr.</p><p>Los Angeles attorney (born 1938), and son of the late horror movie actor,</p><p>Bela Lugosi, Jr., brought significant legal attention to publicity and like-</p><p>ness rights retained by actors who create unique screen personas while</p><p>under contract to film studios and entertainment conglomerates. In a</p><p>lengthy court wrangle beginning in the 1960s, Lugosi claimed that Uni-</p><p>versal Pictures had exceeded the terms of his father's 1930 contract for the</p><p>film Dracula by licensing the actor's image for reproduction on a variety</p><p>of merchandise (toys, model kits, Halloween masks, etc.) that had nothing</p><p>to do with the direct exploitation of the film. The Los Angeles County Su-</p><p>perior Court initially ruled in favor of the Lugosi estate, but the opinion</p><p>was overruled on appeal to the California Supreme Court. More recently,</p><p>however, a California right-of-publicity ruling restored certain rights of</p><p>image exploitation to public figures and their heirs.</p><p>Lurking Vampire, The</p><p>Cinema, Argentina 1959. I have spent years obsessively searching for a</p><p>print or any photographs or information on this film, which, under its</p><p>original title, El vampiro acerca, received a flurry of attention in the early</p><p>sixties but absolutely no distribution in the English-speaking world. Mike</p><p>Parry, writing in the fan magazine Castle ofFrankenstein in 1964, told of</p><p>viewing the film in Madrid, calling it "superbly done . . . ranking with the</p><p>best of the Hammer efforts, and even superior to them," and including</p><p>"many nice expressionistic touches, reminiscent of the German horror</p><p>classics of the silent era." The film opens with a sadly revolving carousel</p><p>populated with carvings of monsters, witches, and ogres. A narrator in-</p><p>tones that "the struggle between good and evil, child and monster, con-</p><p>tinues eternally." The frightening merry-go-round becomes a recurrent</p><p>visual in a story that blurs the idea of the vampire with that of a child mo-</p><p>lester who entices a young girl with lollipops. The menacing stranger is</p><p>played by German Robles, the Mexican actor best known for his striking</p><p>Dracula-style roles in The Vampire (1957) and The Vampire's Coffin</p><p>(1958). All indications are that The Lurking Vampire is a distinguished</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 45</p><p>picture deserving of revival and quite likely one of the major "lost" films of</p><p>the genre. Has anyone out there seen it? Even a picture from it? If so,</p><p>please scream.</p><p>Lust for a Vampire</p><p>Cinema, UK 1970. Jimmy Sangster directed Hammer's second "Car-</p><p>MiLLA"-derived flesh-fest cum blood-feast, set in a nineteenth-century girl's</p><p>finishing school. The erotic LESBIANISM went further than anything Ham-</p><p>mer had previously attempted, and the film was heavily censored for its</p><p>American release. Screenplay by Tudor Gates. With Ralph Bates, Suzanna</p><p>Leigh, Michael Johnson, Yutte Stensgaard (as Carmilla/Mircalla), and</p><p>Mike Raven (as the vampire Count Karnstein). (Hammer/MGM/EMI) T</p><p>m</p><p>Mad Monster Party</p><p>Cinema, USA/UK 1967. A live-animation horror comedy with music (no,</p><p>The Nightmare Before Christmas wasn't the first), Mad Monster Party fea-</p><p>tured a stop-motion Dracula in pursuit of a Barbielike victim. Boris</p><p>Karloff and Phyllis Diller contributed their voices. Written by Mad maga-</p><p>zine's Harvey Kurtzman and Len Korobkin, and directed by Jules Bass.</p><p>(Embassy/Videocraft International)Y</p><p>Mark of the Vampire</p><p>Cinema, USA 1935. Director Tod Browning was kept on a short leash by</p><p>Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after the unmitigated disaster of his 1932 film</p><p>Freaks. Mark of the Vampire was, evi-</p><p><^</p><p>dently, considered a "safe" project,</p><p>r -4&bJ^k being a remake of Browning's 1927</p><p>y^ r</p><p>* C H silent hit London After Midnight.</p><p>V^ Once more, the story involved a po-</p><p>lice sting using phony vampires to</p><p>catch a killer. Bela Lugosi provided</p><p>terrific atmosphere in the mute role</p><p>of "Count Mora," gliding around a</p><p>Mad Monster Party: A stop-motion Dracula</p><p>suspends his animation to consider a</p><p>snack. (Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/</p><p>Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>1 48 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Mark of the Vampire: Bela Lugosi and</p><p>Carroll Borland menace Elizabeth Allan</p><p>and Henry Wadsworth.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/</p><p>Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>cobwebby castle in Dracula drag</p><p>with his lank-haired daughter</p><p>Luna (Carroll Borland) in tow.</p><p>The real star of the show, how-</p><p>ever, is cinematographer James</p><p>Wong Howe, who visually ele-</p><p>vates the material well beyond</p><p>Browning's pedestrian direction.</p><p>The haunted house atmospher-</p><p>ics are occasionally so heavily laid</p><p>on as to approach parody, but</p><p>the brief film (cut by the studio</p><p>from its original ninety minutes to an hour) is still fun to watch—if only</p><p>to count the instances of visual cribbing from Universal's Dracula, which</p><p>Browning also directed. (Also cut was the original intimation that Count</p><p>Mora and his daughter achieved their undead state through incest. ) Lionel</p><p>Barrymore receives top billing as a Van HELSING-Iike professor; also with</p><p>Elizabeth Allan, Lionel Atwill, and Jean Hersholt. Screenplay by Guy En-</p><p>dore and Bernard Schubert. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)T</p><p>Martin</p><p>Cinema, USA 1976. George Romero, director of Night ofthe Living Dead</p><p>(1968), combined</p><p>the traditional image of the supernatural vampire with</p><p>the trappings of real-life BLOOD FETISHISM in Martin, a film shot for under</p><p>$100,000 on sixteen- millimeter color film and enlarged to thirty-five milli-</p><p>meter for theatrical release. Romero originally also wanted the prints struck</p><p>in black-and-white, but the producer overruled him. Martin, the film's</p><p>eponymous blood drinker, sedates his victims with a hypodermic syringe</p><p>and opens their veins with a razor blade. The film would have been better</p><p>had Romero resisted the temptation to present the character as a super-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 49</p><p>natural monster rather than a psycho-sexual one. Screenplay by Romero.</p><p>Starring John Amplas, Lincoln Maazel, and Christine Forrest. (Braddock</p><p>Associates/Libra Films/Laurel Group)T</p><p>Marx, Karl</p><p>"Capital is dead labour that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living</p><p>labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks," wrote Karl Marx in</p><p>Das Kapital. Interestingly enough, Marx is buried in HlGHGATE CEMETERY,</p><p>which probably has more vampire associations than any burial ground on</p><p>earth. See also class warfare.</p><p>Midnight</p><p>Cinema, USA 1988. Not a real vampire film, but of interest because of its</p><p>thinly disguised depiction of the 1950s television horror hostess Vampira.</p><p>As Midnight, Lynn Redgrave recites near-verbatim transcripts of Vam-</p><p>pira's original routines, but outside the television studio scenes, this film is</p><p>an unholy mess. The ultimate reasons that the producers were able to en-</p><p>tice performers like Redgrave and Tony Curtis to get involved in such a</p><p>ghastly production may have something to do with the vagaries of tax-</p><p>shelter laws. Though a slew of sound technicians are credited, dialogue on</p><p>the video release is frequently garbled, swallowed, or otherwise just in-</p><p>audible. Directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane. With Steve Parrish, Rita</p><p>Gam, and Frank Gorshin. (SVS Films/Midnight Inc.)V</p><p>Midnight Kiss</p><p>Cinema, USA 1993. Joel Bender directed this formulaic vampire thriller,</p><p>distinguished primarily by the unnerving performance of Gregory A.</p><p>Greer as a monster seemingly strung out on the supernatural equivalent of</p><p>crack cocaine. Screenplay by John Weidner and Ken Lamplugh. With</p><p>Michelle Owens, Michael McMillen, and Robert Miano. (Midnight Hour</p><p>Productions)</p><p>Mirrors</p><p>The vampire's traditional failure to reflect in mirrors is, on the face of it,</p><p>simple evidence of a wraithlike inhumanity; on a deeper level, however,</p><p>the idea is more a matter of psychological denial—the reason we block out</p><p>the vampire's reflection is to avoid seeing our own face in the glass.</p><p>1 50 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Mora</p><p>Also known as the mara in Slavic and Scandinavian countries, this version</p><p>of the vampire is entymologically linked to the word nightmare, and is of-</p><p>ten envisioned as an oppressive, crushing night demon. European Slavs</p><p>and Canadian Kashubes regard the mora as a blood drinker. Director Tod</p><p>Browning used the word for the name of the primary boogeyman, Count</p><p>Mora, in his 1935 film Mark of the Vampire. See also folklore.</p><p>"Mrs. Amworth"</p><p>Short story, UK 1923. E. F. Benson's oft-anthologized tale of a sweet old</p><p>lady, who just happens to float around at night in search of youthful</p><p>blood, introduced the theme of "the vampire next door," now a widely</p><p>utilized motif, but quite innovative for its time. "Mrs. Amworth" was</p><p>adapted for Canadian television in 1975 with Glynis Johns in the tide</p><p>role. See also "Room in the Tower, The."</p><p>Munster, Grandpa</p><p>A popular television character from the 1960s, an over-the-hill Jewish</p><p>Dracula portrayed by comedian Al Lewis on the CBS-TV series The</p><p>Munsters. The Munster family was composed of monsters who other-</p><p>wise behaved like a normal American sitcom clan. Grandpa Munster was</p><p>a sanitized popularization of the Lenny BRUCE conception of Dracula as a</p><p>drug-ridden old Jewish man with a nagging wife; The Munsters, however,</p><p>dropped the wife and all references to pill-popping. The idea of Dracula as</p><p>a cute ethnic cuddle toy is weird in the extreme, especially given the ugly</p><p>stereotype palpable in Bram Stoker's original concept of the vampire. See</p><p>also anti-Semitism.</p><p>Murnau, F. W.</p><p>A pupil and artistic associate of the great German stage director Max Rein-</p><p>hardt, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931) began directing films in</p><p>1919. Following two previous excursions into the macabre</p><p>—</p><p>Der Januskopf</p><p>(1920), an early version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Conrad Veidt</p><p>and Bela Lugosi, and The Haunted Castle (1921 )—Murnau directed one of</p><p>the most famous vampire films of all time, Nosferatu: Eine Stmphonie des</p><p>Grauens ("Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror"), an unauthorized version</p><p>of Dracula. Released in 1922, Nosferatu combined the theatrical shadows</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 5</p><p>1</p><p>and compositions of German Expressionism with natural light and location</p><p>settings, a startling innovation for the time. The result was a disquieting</p><p>juxtaposition of the fantastic and the familiar. Given larger budgets and</p><p>artistic autonomy, Murnau produced several masterpieces</p><p>—</p><p>The Last Laugh</p><p>(1924), Faust (1926), and in Hollywood, Sunrise (1927), generally con-</p><p>sidered his finest achievement. His enormously promising future was cut</p><p>short by a California traffic accident in 1931.</p><p>Murnau's well-known homosexuality has generated additional con-</p><p>temporary interest in his work, some of it intelligent and informative, and</p><p>some of it bizarre. Filmmaker Stan Brakhage tried to make a case in a</p><p>highly speculative 1977 essay that Nosferatu was essentially a homosexual</p><p>exercise in "camp," an argument that perhaps revealed more of Brakhage's</p><p>homophobia than further insight into the film. Brakhage ended his essay</p><p>with the undocumented assertion that Murnau's automobile accident de-</p><p>mise was the result of a distractingly deadly act of oral sex performed by a</p><p>Filipino houseboy. See also fellatio.</p><p>r</p><p>Nadja</p><p>Cinema, USA 1994. "He was like Elvis in the end . . . already dead, sur-</p><p>rounded by zombies." The person, or un-person, thus described is Dracula,</p><p>whose highly photogenic daughter Nadja (Elina Lowensohn) sets up camp</p><p>in lower Manhattan, where she fits right in with the club set. The real star of</p><p>Michael Almereyda's film is the stunning black-and-white cinematography</p><p>(which cleverly employs the toy-camera process Pixelvision to provide a</p><p>vampire's-eye view of things). Peter Fonda nearly wrecks the film with a</p><p>campy, scenery-chewing turn as Van Helsing. The film was generally over-</p><p>praised by the critics, none ofwhom noted how much of the plot was lifted</p><p>from 1936's Dracula's Daughter. Screenplay by Almereyda. With Jared</p><p>Harris, Martin Donovan, Galaxy Cruze, Susie Amis, Karl Geary and execu-</p><p>tive producer David Lynch, as a morgue attendant. (October Films) T</p><p>Near Dark</p><p>Cinema, USA 1987. Unassailably near the top of the heap of recent</p><p>vampix, Near Dark presents a terrifying vampire family of nihilistic white-</p><p>trash drifters. Director Kathryn Bigelow, who coscripted with Eric Red,</p><p>keeps the picture moving deftly and grandly blends two classic B -movie</p><p>genres: the vampire film and the road melodrama, conflating archetypal</p><p>American rootlessness with undeath. The best sequence involves a motel</p><p>shootout, each wall-penetrating bullet creating a stabbing ray of sunlight</p><p>imperiling the night-creatures within. If you've overlooked this one,</p><p>you're missing a major chapter of your vampire education. With Jenny</p><p>Wright, Adrian Pasdar, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton. (DeLauren-</p><p>tiis/Feldman-Meeker)Y</p><p>1 54 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Night Trap</p><p>An interactive video game parodying vampire movies, Night Trap became</p><p>the focus of tremendous media attention in late 1993 when a trio of U.S.</p><p>senators decided to score easy political points by vilifying the game as a</p><p>form of "child abuse" that taught small fry to "enjoy inflicting torture."</p><p>Unwilling to be confused by facts, Senator Joseph Lieberman provided</p><p>the press with a completely fanciful description of the game's object: "to</p><p>hang women on meat hooks." The video's producer, Tom Zito, re-</p><p>sponded to the kangaroo court tactic on the op-ed page of the Washing-</p><p>ton Post, calmly pointing out that the whole point of Night Trap was to</p><p>protect women from vampire assailants, not to torture them. But isn't it</p><p>nice that vampires have found their way onto the interactive info-highway</p><p>this early in the game?</p><p>Nosferatu</p><p>A meaningless word widely believed to be a Romanian term for "vampire,"</p><p>but which in fact does not exist in Romanian or any other language. The</p><p>first mention of the word came in folklorist Emily de Laszowska Gerard's</p><p>1885 essay "Transylvanian Superstitions," which novelist Bram Stoker</p><p>consulted in his research for Dracula. After exhaustive research, I have</p><p>come to the conclusion that Gerard must have recorded a corrupted or</p><p>misunderstood version of the Romanian adjective nesuferit, from the Latin</p><p>"not to suffer." Vampires, obviously, are "insufferable," "intolerable," or</p><p>even "plaguesome," all of which are given as definitions of nesuferit in vari-</p><p>ous Romanian dictionaries. The word, however, has no supernatural con-</p><p>notations of any kind, and it is likely that Gerard simply mistook its</p><p>context, or encountered a localized coinage which somehow never came to</p><p>the attention of other folklorists or to Romanian lexicographers.</p><p>Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens</p><p>Cinema, Germany 1922. The earliest known film adaptation of Dracula</p><p>is also one of the best, and a far cry from later films inspired primarily by</p><p>the 1920s stage play rather than the original Bram STOKER novel. Directed</p><p>by F. W. Murnau, the film was unauthorized by the Stoker estate and</p><p>drew the wrath of the author's widow, who pursued a legal case against</p><p>the film for nearly a decade, trying to have the negative and every known</p><p>print destroyed (the full story of Florence Stoker's obsessive campaign</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 55</p><p>Nosferatu: Max Schreck</p><p>wakes up and smells the</p><p>coffin. (Courtesy of Forrest J</p><p>Ackerman)</p><p>against the film is thoroughly recounted in my earlier book, Hollywood</p><p>Gothic). The widow did not succeed, of course, which is why we still can</p><p>enjoy one of the classics of German Expressionist cinema.</p><p>Nosferatu enthusiastically embraced Stoker's concept of Dracula as a</p><p>physically repellent creature, exaggerating Stoker's descriptions into one</p><p>of the most hideous screen monsters of all time. As portrayed by actor</p><p>Max Schreck, Count Orlock is a nightmare amalgam of a withered</p><p>corpse and a diseased rat, with hooklike fingernails that become progres-</p><p>sively elongated as the film unreels. The main characters of Stoker's</p><p>novel are recognizable, though freely adapted to a tightened, almost</p><p>fairy-talelike narrative. Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) is a young real</p><p>estate lawyer sent to Transylvania by his peculiar employer, Knock</p><p>(Alexander Granach, in the Renfield role) to close a deal for the myste-</p><p>rious Orlock. The basics of Stoker's plot are adhered to, though the Van</p><p>Helsing role is reduced almost to inconsequence. Nosferatu has a com-</p><p>pletely different conclusion from Dracula, finishing on a tragic note as</p><p>Hutter's wife Nina sacrifices her own life by keeping the vampire at her</p><p>bedside until daylight, when he is destroyed by the sun's first rays. (This</p><p>motif was an invention of the film; in previous stories, vampires could be</p><p>inhibited, though never killed, by light.) As photographed by Fritz Arno</p><p>Wagner, the image of the monster's shadow gliding up the stairs and</p><p>1 56 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>reaching for its victim's door remains one of the most famous composi-</p><p>tions of the silent film era.</p><p>Nosferatu was conceived as a self-conscious "art" film, using the vampire</p><p>as a metaphor of the plaguelike destruction of Germany in World War I. The</p><p>film was, upon its first release, elaborately color-tinted and accompanied by a</p><p>modernist orchestral score commissioned from composer Hans Erdmann.</p><p>Following an injunction won by Stoker's widow in the mid 1920s, the nega-</p><p>tive was ordered destroyed, and the film survived in a hodgepodge of various</p><p>prints until being definitively restored by German conservator Enno Patalas</p><p>in 1984. The Patalas restoration is not yet available on video outside Europe,</p><p>but an excellent parallel version was assembled by the American archivist</p><p>David Shepard for a 1992 videodisc release with a supplemental soundtrack</p><p>of astute critical commentary by Nosferatu scholar Lokke Heiss.</p><p>The full extent of Murnau's artistic control of Nosferatu is far from</p><p>clear; there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest, for instance, that</p><p>the film's overall concept owed more to production designer Albin Grau</p><p>and screenwriter Henrik Galeen than to Murnau. Modern notions about</p><p>directorial control and intention may not be applicable in the case of Nos-</p><p>feratu, which was produced by a kind of experimental artistic collective</p><p>called Prana-Film. Original publicity stories about Nosferatu scarcely men-</p><p>tion Murnau at all—Grau, instead, is the dominant voice. Murnau never</p><p>mentioned the film in a published interview, even after his later success in</p><p>Hollywood, possibly because of the legal brouhaha over the Dracula</p><p>copyright. Murnau died in 1931, long before film scholarship became re-</p><p>spectable, and well before Nosferatu^ critical reputation was established,</p><p>so it is not surprising no one ever approached him for comment. But I</p><p>consider it almost a crime that no European film historian ever thought to</p><p>conduct an interview with actor Gustave von Wangenheim, who became a</p><p>prominent force in German theater and was still alive in the early 1980s.</p><p>Therefore, we are left to informed speculation about the details of Nosfer-</p><p>atu's genesis; in 1993, novelist Jim Shepard published an imaginatively</p><p>entertaining fictional account of the filming of Nosferatu in the literary</p><p>magazine TriQuarterly. Interest in Nosferatu as a central artifact of world</p><p>cinema has steadily increased over recent decades; the film is regularly re-</p><p>vived for appreciative audiences around the world, often with contempo-</p><p>rary live musical accompaniment.</p><p>With its indelibly haunting images of death—always a popular motif</p><p>during fin de siecle decades such as the present one</p><p>—</p><p>Nosferatu reminds us</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 57</p><p>that the film medium itself is a kind of technological bargaining chip</p><p>against oblivion, allowing us a comforting illusion of perpetual life and</p><p>reanimation. Paradoxically, film's central mechanism—the shadow—also</p><p>suggests the world of death. In a recent essay, Gilberto Perez comments</p><p>on the centrality of shadows to the dream-message of Nosferatu: "The im-</p><p>age in Murnau becomes charged with the emotional coloring of a shadow,</p><p>with a poignant and disquieting sense that what we watch moving on the</p><p>screen is the world's ghost." The death/rebirth fantasy of vampire myths</p><p>comes full circle in the cinema: light destroys the vampire's shadow, but in</p><p>motion -picture terms, simultaneously creates the shadows which bring</p><p>vampires to life in the first place.</p><p>T</p><p>Nosferatu the Vampyre</p><p>Cinema, West Germany/France 1979. The real horror ofWerner Herzog's</p><p>homage to F. W. MURNAU, filmed in two simultaneous versions, one in</p><p>English and one in German, has nothing to do with the subject matter but</p><p>with its peculiar, almost Warholian execution. The film feels slack and shape-</p><p>158 DavidJ.Skal</p><p>less, utterly without a sense of pace or proportion—just one precious "im-</p><p>pression" of the Murnau film after another. Nonetheless, there are some</p><p>effective moments—as the vampire, Klaus Kinski's predatory hovering over</p><p>his guest inspires genuine visceral revulsion, and the actor's muted line</p><p>readings manage to convey a bottomless loneliness that other interpreta-</p><p>tions of Dracula have only hinted at. Otherwise, the actors look to be</p><p>stoned. Herzog doesn't seem to have a particular purpose in mind, and the</p><p>whole thing seems like a poindess stunt. Perhaps the best thing about it are</p><p>the wonderful publicity stills, endlessly</p><p>reprinted, of Isabelle Adjani's flaw-</p><p>less beauty juxtaposed with Kinski's pestilential beastliness. Twentieth</p><p>Century-Fox probably thought they were going to cash in big time on the</p><p>late-seventies cycle of Draculamania, but they found the English-language</p><p>version unreleasable and instead distributed the dubbed German version to</p><p>art houses. With Bruno Ganz. (Twentieth Century-Fox)Y</p><p>Not of This Earth</p><p>Cinema, USA 1957. A nifty science -fictional vampire film, produced and</p><p>directed by Roger Corman from a script by Charles Griffith and Mark</p><p>Hanna, Not of This Earth stars actor Paul Birch as a kind of sinister sales</p><p>man from outer space who pumps his valise full of earth people's red elixir</p><p>in an attempt to save his dying extraterrestrial race. He wears sunglasses to</p><p>hide his pupilless, Orphan Annie eyes, a direct glimpse of which will strike</p><p>you dead. An interesting little exercise in noirish fifties paranoia, remade,</p><p>quite unnecessarily, in 1988. With Beverly Garland, Morgan Jones, William</p><p>Roerick, and Jonathan Haze. (Allied Artists)T</p><p>Novels</p><p>See Appendix C.</p><p>Omega Man, The</p><p>See IAm Legend.</p><p>Once Bitten</p><p>Cinema, USA 1985. This film is only worth mentioning because of the un-</p><p>usual context in which I first saw it. While I was visiting Havana, Cuba, to</p><p>research missing footage from the Spanish version of Dracula in 1989,</p><p>Once Bitten was playing day and night on my hotel's cable service, and I</p><p>got to view parts of the picture more than once, in English with Spanish</p><p>subtitles. This is a very stupid movie. Centuries-old supermodel Lauren</p><p>Hutton needs to suck on a male virgin, and she picks teenager Jim Carrey</p><p>for the honors. What I found most interesting was the bowdlerization of</p><p>the American dialogue in the Spanish subtitles—as I recall, a gay charac-</p><p>ter's comment about "rough trade" was translated for Cuban consump-</p><p>tion as "jQue cosa!" Rent this one at your own peril. With Karen Kopins</p><p>and Cleavon Little. Directed by Howard Storm. (The Samuel Goldwyn</p><p>Company) T</p><p>Opera</p><p>Despite its estimable blood and thunder, Dracula has yet to be the sub-</p><p>ject of a professionally produced opera, but other vampires have warbled</p><p>their dark arias quite effectively over the past century and a half. The most</p><p>successful of all vampire operas is Heinrich Marschner's Der Vatnpyr, first</p><p>presented in Leipzig in 1828, with a libretto by W. A. Wohlbruck based</p><p>on John Polidori's story "The Vampyre" (1819), which had already had</p><p>inspired several stage plays in England and on the continent (see also the-</p><p>1 60 DavidJ. Ska/</p><p>Title page of Marschner's opera Der Vampyr.</p><p>lAlWilbriifk</p><p>in Wusik goetzl</p><p>MDimBUKBBBL</p><p>ater). The pleasantly melodic Marschner opera,</p><p>which recounted the exploits of the BYRON-based</p><p>vampire Lord Ruthven, was a standard fixture of</p><p>the German repertoire for years and is credited by</p><p>musicologists as owing a distinct musical debt to</p><p>Weber, while anticipating Wagner. Wagner, in fact,</p><p>saw its premiere production during his student</p><p>days, conducted the work himself a few years later,</p><p>and may well have taken from Der Vampyr some</p><p>measure of inspiration for his own opera on the</p><p>theme of eternal life as damnation, The Flying</p><p>Dutchman.</p><p>A second 1828 opera, also called Der Vampyr</p><p>and based on the Polidori tale and its derivative</p><p>stage melodramas, was composed by Peter Josefvon Lindpainter with a li-</p><p>bretto by Casar Max Heigel, and premiered in Stuttgart six months after</p><p>the Marschner work's debut. The Lindpainter/Heigel work had a confused</p><p>story line, less musical interest and, while it had a good run for its time, has</p><p>not been considered worthy of a full-scale revival since. The Marschner</p><p>opera, however, was revived frequently through the turn of the century</p><p>and is still produced occasionally in Germany. The work received its Amer-</p><p>ican premiere in a 1980 New York production with an English libretto</p><p>by Michael Feingold. In 1992, the Marschner music was the basis for a</p><p>cleverly modernized BBC television production depicting the vampire as</p><p>Ripley, a playboy investment banker. Called The Vampyr: A Soap Opera,</p><p>the new libretto was written by Charles Hart, from a story by Janet Street-</p><p>Porter and Nigel Finch (who also directed).</p><p>p</p><p>Paglia, Camille</p><p>The incendiary, politically incorrect intellectual of the 1990s, Camille</p><p>Paglia regards the female vampire as a powerful role model rather than a</p><p>misogynistic slur. In the introduction to her most recent book, Vamps</p><p>and Tramps (1994), Paglia contends that "Vamps are queens of the night,</p><p>the primeval realm excluded and repressed by today's sedate middle-class</p><p>professionals in their orderly, blazing bright offices. The prostitute, seduc-</p><p>tress, and high-glamour movie star wield woman's ancient vampiric power</p><p>over men." Paglia's Sexual Personae (1990) makes frequent references</p><p>to the vampire in the context of classical art and literature. See also GAR-</p><p>LAND, Judy.</p><p>Passion of Dracula, The</p><p>Theater, USA 1977. While Frank Langella's Broadway revival of Dracula</p><p>was doing standing-room business uptown, Bob Hall and David Rich-</p><p>mond's The Passion ofDracula did its own respectable business in the more</p><p>modest venue of Greenwich Village's Cherry Lane Theatre. Christopher</p><p>Birnau cut an impressive figure as Dracula in this otherwise not particu-</p><p>larly ambitious imitation of the Deane/Balderston stage play, one of</p><p>several produced in the vampire -redolent late seventies. See also theater.</p><p>Planet of the Vampires</p><p>Cinema, Italy/Spain 1965. Director Mario Bava, who proved himself a</p><p>master of traditional gothicism in Black Sunday (I960), was also responsi-</p><p>ble for this highly influential science fiction spin on the vampire theme, the</p><p>1 62 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>influence of which can be immediately perceived in the SF megahit Alien</p><p>(1979). Barry Sullivan stars as the captain of a spaceship stranded on a</p><p>planet whose disembodied inhabitants take over the bodies of dead crew</p><p>members. The film is a nonstop procession of stunning visual compositions,</p><p>thanks to cinematographer Antonio Rinaldi, many accomplished through a</p><p>clever deep-focus mixture of miniatures and live action. The costumes,</p><p>which approximate a leather-fetishist's idea of scuba gear with Dracula-</p><p>style high collars appended, are particularly stylish. Not to be missed. Script</p><p>by Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua, Rafael J. Salvia, Antonio Roman, and Catillo</p><p>Cosulich. English-language adaptation by lb Melchior and Louis Heyward.</p><p>With Norma Bengeli, Angel Aranda, and Eve Marandi. (Italian Interna-</p><p>tional/Castilla Coopertiva/American International)</p><p>Poe, Edgar Allan</p><p>Poe's trademark erotic obsession with dead and dying women ("The</p><p>death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical subject in the world") has</p><p>a clear resonance with classical vampirism, and Poe's influence is palpably</p><p>felt in vampire stories whenever a bereaved hero begins pining for a dead</p><p>lover. See also "Berenice"; Tale ofa Vampire.</p><p>Polish Vampire in Burbank, A</p><p>Cinema, USA 1983. It's probably significant that only a vampire movie</p><p>could be shot on Super- Eight film with a dubbed soundtrack and still earn</p><p>$500,000 on video and be offered on national cable. The sheer chutzpah</p><p>of this film makes it weirdly enjoyable to share the adventures of Dupah</p><p>(the Polish word for "ass"), a shy, reluctant bloodsucker trying to lose his</p><p>"virginity." Written, directed by, and starring Mark Pirro, with Lori Sut-</p><p>ton, Bibbi Dorsch, and Brad Waisbren. (Pirromount/Peacock Films)Y</p><p>Price, Vincent</p><p>With his imposing physical presence and mock-elegant manner, the late,</p><p>great horror actor (1911-1993) would have made a most charming Count</p><p>Dracula had anyone ever offered him the part in a straight adaptation of</p><p>the Stoker novel. Price did, however, get to play a Dracula- like vampire</p><p>for laughs on an episode of television's F Troop in the 1960s, starred in</p><p>an unusual hybrid of the Frankenstein and vampire formulas in Scream</p><p>and Scream Again (1970), and donned funny fangs for the 1980 British</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE</p><p>of the New York Times discussed the AIDS-</p><p>vampire nexus in a splashy Sunday feature on the occasion of the release of</p><p>Francis Ford Coppola's film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992):</p><p>The new blood culture is the bizarre pop byproduct of a national obses-</p><p>sion with all body fluids. It's a high-pitched, often hysterical acting out</p><p>of the subliminal fantasies, both deadly and erotic, of a country that has</p><p>awakened to the fact that the most insidious post-Cold War enemy is a</p><p>virus. AIDS, after all, actually does to the bloodstream what Commu-</p><p>nists and other radicals were once only rumored to do to the nation's</p><p>water supply. Its undiminished threat has made the connection between</p><p>sex and death, an eternal nexus of high culture, into a pop fixation, fi-</p><p>nally filtering down to the vocabulary of commercial images.</p><p>AIDS is not the first epidemic of modern times to find a reflection in</p><p>vampire literature and drama; the scourge of incurable SYPHILIS that cut a</p><p>wide swath through London in the 1890s left its shadow on the literary</p><p>conventions of Victorian vampirism: the obsession with blood contamina-</p><p>tion, the search for telltale lesions, the faith in antiscientific (read: quack)</p><p>cures, and the demonization of prostitutes. See also homosexuality.</p><p>Alabama's Ghost</p><p>Cinema, USA 1972. This blaxploitation flick, written and directed by</p><p>Frederic Hobbs, features a vampire rock band that hunts its prey on mo-</p><p>torcycles. With Lani Freeman, Pierre LePage, and the Turk Murphy Jazz</p><p>Band. (Ellman/Bremson International)</p><p>Alcoholism</p><p>Like creepy clockwork every Halloween, advertising agencies for major</p><p>beer, wine, and liquor companies invariably trundle out campaigns featur-</p><p>ing boozing vampires. "Welcome to our lite-mare" beckons a 1992 pro-</p><p>motion featuring a dissipated-looking Dracula and Draculette clutching</p><p>their cans of Miller and Miller Light in the window of a dank castle.</p><p>HURRY, sundown was the headline of a memorable Smirnoff's ad pushing</p><p>something called "The Vampire Gimlet." No doubt, the Bacardi Rum bat</p><p>logo has a certain subliminal significance for the seriously stewed. Just as</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 7</p><p>Halloween allows a ceremonial acknowledgment of antisocial impulses, so</p><p>too does holiday liquor advertising allow us a forbidden glimpse at the</p><p>dark side of drinking. Bloody Marys have long been a staple of vampire</p><p>humor, and characters like the eponymous antihero of Blacula (1972)</p><p>sometimes order the drink, if only to appear sociable.</p><p>The connection between vampirism and intemperate drinking predates</p><p>the modern media age by more than a century. Vampire historian Mon-</p><p>tague Summers cites the "frantic teetotal tract" Vampyre</p><p>(</p><p>"By the Wife of</p><p>a Medical Man"), published in 1858, and quotes the delirium ravings</p><p>of its central victim: "They fly—they bite—they suck my blood—I die.</p><p>That hideous 'Vampyre!' Its eyes pierce me thro'—they are red—they are</p><p>bloodshot. Tear it from my pillow. I dare not lie down. It bites—I die!</p><p>Give me brandy—brandy—more brandy."</p><p>A striking number of people creatively involved in major vampire films</p><p>and stories have histories of alcoholism, including director Tod Brown-</p><p>ing, actress Helen Chandler, producer Horace Liveright, actor Bela Lu-</p><p>gosi, and novelist Anne Rice. See also addiction; advertising.</p><p>Alucard</p><p>Dracula spelled backward. Originally the assumed name of the vampire</p><p>played by Lon Chaney, Jr., in Son of Dracula (1943), it was later</p><p>adopted by the character "Johnny Alucard" in Dracula A.D. 1972(1972).</p><p>"Lady Alucard" was the name of the female vampire portrayed by Betsy</p><p>Palmer in the stage play Countess Dracula! (1979). As the head of a</p><p>multinational corporation in the short-lived television program Dracula:</p><p>The Series, the vampire employed the name "Alexander Lucard." The use</p><p>of such an obvious pseudonym is usually evidence of the vampire's con-</p><p>tempt for the intelligence of the mortals with whom he or she must deal.</p><p>The contempt may be justified; audiences inevitably get the joke long be-</p><p>fore the slow-witted characters.</p><p>Alucarda</p><p>Cinema, Mexico 1975. Imagine the climax of Carrie if it had been set in a</p><p>convent instead of a public high school and you will have some idea of the</p><p>impressive fireworks that are to behold in this hard-to-find gem (the</p><p>American video title, if you can locate it, is Sisters of Satan). Alucarda is</p><p>the borderline-psycho ward of a Mexican nunnery, circa 1865, meaning,</p><p>8 David J. Skal</p><p>of course, that a load of hysterically repressed sexuality, much of it involv-</p><p>ing LESBIANISM, is about to go off like a powderkeg. Alucarda latches on to</p><p>Justine, a convent newcomer; they soon start poking around crypts, play-</p><p>ing with gypsy charms, and making blood vows. Soon they're spouting</p><p>blasphemy in the chapel and attending Satan in the nude. Following an</p><p>attempted exorcism, Justine dies and becomes a vampire who sleeps in a</p><p>coffin filled to overflowing with human blood. The production values and</p><p>photography are commendable; I particularly liked the stylized nun's</p><p>habits, resembling nothing so much as mummy wrappings. Screaming</p><p>continues at a fevered pitch through one grotesquely satisfying set piece</p><p>after another at ear-splitting frequencies; I had to turn down the volume</p><p>on my VCR in order not to freak the neighbors. Directed by Juan Lopez</p><p>Moctezuma; with Tina Romero, Susana Kamini, Claudio Brook, and</p><p>Adriana Roel. (Proa/Films 75/Yuma Films)</p><p>Y</p><p>American Vampires</p><p>Nonfiction, USA 1989. Norine Dresser's entertaining overview of modern</p><p>vampire mania from a contemporary folklorist's perspective illuminates the</p><p>diverse means by which the vampire reinforces popular values—the quest</p><p>for eternal youth and sexual magnetism, the escape from ordinary respon-</p><p>sibility and social constraints, etc. "Vampires have magically bypassed the</p><p>struggles that Americans face on a daily basis," Dresser writes. American</p><p>Vampires was the first mainstream book to examine the growth of blood</p><p>fetishism as a distinct subculture in the 1980s, when, for the first time,</p><p>people who are sexually aroused by the sight or taste of human blood be-</p><p>gan to romanticize their practices with the trappings of vampire films and</p><p>stories. The book includes a lengthy discussion of the vampire image in</p><p>advertising, and many revealing anecdotes, perhaps most memorably</p><p>the story of a Florida middle school which was overtaken by vampire panic</p><p>in 1988 when twenty-five percent of the student body was kept home</p><p>by concerned parents on the day a suicidal girl was expected to return</p><p>from the grave as "Samantha the Vampire." Despite police presence, 225</p><p>sets of parents in Panama City, Florida, decided they weren't taking any</p><p>chances.</p><p>V IS FORVAMPIRE</p><p>Andy Warhol's Dracula</p><p>Cinema, Italy/France 1973. "My body can't take it anymore! The blood</p><p>of these whores is killing me!" Dracula has a problem. Changing sexual</p><p>mores in his homeland have depleted the supply of virgins, without whose</p><p>blood he cannot survive. In the mistaken belief that a Catholic country</p><p>like Italy will enforce chastity among its young women, the febrile count</p><p>(Udo Kier) migrates to a Mediterranean village where a family of down-</p><p>and-out aristocrats are all too eager to marry a daughter to an apparently</p><p>rich and dying degenerate. But when he nips their necks, their impurities</p><p>are revealed—Dracula suffers agonizing bouts of blood-vomiting. Warhol</p><p>superstar Joe Dallesandro is the handyman stud who services the daugh-</p><p>ters while lecturing the wheelchair-bound vampire with Marxist rants</p><p>delivered in deadpan Brooklynese. Kier plays Dracula like a young Peter</p><p>Lorre. Perhaps the most memorable sequence is the one which appears</p><p>under the opening titles, as the aged Dracula rejuvenates himself with</p><p>black hair dye, primping before a mirror like a drag queen, fangs discreetly</p><p>protruding through the lip gloss. The Andy Warhol title was concocted</p><p>for obvious marketing purposes in the United States; the title which actu-</p><p>ally appears on English-language prints of the</p><p>163</p><p>Vincent Price plays a vampire for laughs</p><p>on the 1 960s comedy series F Troop.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/Hollywood</p><p>Movie Posters)</p><p>comedy The Monster Club. Price also</p><p>lent his talents to the hour-long British</p><p>documentary Vincent Price's Dracula</p><p>(1982), known in America as Drac-</p><p>ula—The Great Undead. In the late</p><p>1980s, Price was one of the few living</p><p>people I was able to find who had ever</p><p>socialized with Bram Stoker's formidable widow, Florence. While studying</p><p>art in London as a young man (before his theatrical career), Price was in-</p><p>vited for tea by Mrs. Stoker, and recounted his impressions for my book</p><p>Hollywood Gothic. See also television.</p><p>Prostitution</p><p>The image of the vampire frequently blurs with that of the prostitute</p><p>—</p><p>both, of course, are "creatures of the evening," stereotypically predatory,</p><p>and especially in Victorian times, dreaded vectors of syphilis, a then incur-</p><p>able disease, which, like AIDS (q.v.) today, powerfully fed the notion of</p><p>vampirism as a form of sexual contagion. Like the vampire, the prostitute</p><p>is often presented in art and literature as part of a misogynistic virgin/</p><p>whore dualism. By the early twentieth century, the female vampire had</p><p>lost her supernatural trappings and was most often depicted as a semipros-</p><p>titute or golddigger, a persona most successfully exploited by the silent</p><p>film actress Theda Bara. A recent television movie about teenage prosti-</p><p>tutes was titled Children of the Night, inspired by a famous line from</p><p>the novel Dracula. See also Burne-Jones, Sir Philip.</p><p>Psychoanalysis</p><p>Today, it is almost a cliche to think of vampire stories in terms of their</p><p>heavy resonance with Freud's theories of sexual repression, displacement,</p><p>and hysteria, but aside from the instinctive, perhaps semiconscious connec-</p><p>tions made by certain filmmakers (in the work of director Tod Browning,</p><p>64 David J. Skal</p><p>for example, or in Garrett Fort's screenplay for Dracula's Daughter),</p><p>the issue was addressed only twice prior to 1960 by serious psychoanalytic</p><p>commentators: first by Ernest Jones in his 1931 study On the Nightmare,</p><p>and perhaps more influentially in terms of its impact on popular culture</p><p>criticism, by Maurice Richardson in his 1958 essay "The Psychoanalysis of</p><p>Ghost Stories," which focused particularly on Bram Stoker's Dracula.</p><p>This essay is the essential prototype of the virtual avalanche of Dracula crit-</p><p>icism that has followed, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. "The starting</p><p>point," writes Richardson, is</p><p>Freud's dictum that morbid dread always signifies repressed sexual</p><p>wishes. In vampirism they become plainly visible. Here we enter a twi-</p><p>light borderland, a sort of homicidal lunatic's brothel in a crypt, where</p><p>religious and psychopathological motives intermingle. Ambivalence is</p><p>the keynote. Death wishes all round exist side by side with the desire</p><p>for immortality. Frightful cruelty, aggression and greed is accompanied</p><p>by a madly possessive kind of love. Guilt is everywhere and deep. Be-</p><p>haviour smacks of the unconscious world of infantile sexuality with</p><p>what Freud called its polymorphous perverse tendencies. There is an</p><p>obvious fixation at the oral level, with all that sucking and biting, also a</p><p>generous allowance of anality. We are left in no doubt about the origin</p><p>of the frightful smell, compost of charnel house and cloaca, that at-</p><p>taches to the vampire.</p><p>Richardson memorably describes Dracula as "a kind of incestuous,</p><p>necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in wrestling match. And this is what</p><p>gives the story its force."</p><p>Of course, Freud's theory of therapeutic transference is in itself a</p><p>pointed metaphor of vampirism—the absorption of essential psychic en-</p><p>ergy by a controlling (and sometimes literally mesmeric) authority figure.</p><p>I cannot count the number of times, following a media appearance or</p><p>speaking engagement, that someone has approached me to suggest that I,</p><p>or somebody, ought to write a story about a vampire psychiatrist. They</p><p>never hang around long enough for me to probe the specific source of</p><p>their suggestion, but I have little doubt that it resides in their own un-</p><p>pleasant encounters with the ample shadow-side of the modern thera-</p><p>peutic mythos.</p><p>;</p><p>Quarry, Robert</p><p>See Count Yorga, Vampire.</p><p>Queen of Blood</p><p>Cinema, USA 1966. Curtis Harrington's visually stylish exercise in low-</p><p>budget sci-fi horror has some fun moments, especially Florence Marly's</p><p>green-skinned, eyebrowless, beehive-hairdoed bloodsucker from space</p><p>(who has a pesky habit of laying eggs here, there, and everywhere). Basil</p><p>Rathbone, who hated being associated with horror movies, does not ap-</p><p>pear to be enjoying himself at all in the role of an earthbound scientist.</p><p>Queen of Blood:</p><p>Florence Marly at her</p><p>hideous, futuristic</p><p>repast. (Photofest)</p><p>1 66 David J. Skal</p><p>(He died the following year after appearing in the nadir-busting Hillbillys</p><p>in a Haunted House.) The film was written by Harrington around special-</p><p>effects footage producer Roger Corman acquired from a Soviet space film,</p><p>and completed for a reported $65,000. With John Saxon, Judi Meredith,</p><p>and Dennis Hopper. (American International)Y</p><p>Queen of the Damned</p><p>See Rice, Anne.</p><p>ii</p><p>Rabid</p><p>Cinema, Canada 1976. Director David Cronenberg originally wanted Cissy</p><p>Spacek to star in this high-tech horror film about a runaway plastic surgery</p><p>experiment that mutates a young woman into a vampire who drinks blood</p><p>through a fanged suction-penis in her armpit. Cronenberg's producers,</p><p>however, insisted on porn queen Marilyn Chambers for the role. Rabid is</p><p>a bleak, disturbing picture that foreshadows Cronenberg's larger- budget</p><p>exercises in literalized metaphor</p><p>—</p><p>The Brood ( 1979), Scanners (1980), and</p><p>Videodrome (1982). The film's overall atmosphere of tightly controlled</p><p>chaos is uniquely Cronenbergian and still effective despite the limited bud-</p><p>get. Screenplay by Cronenberg. With Frank Moore, Joe Silver, and Howard</p><p>Ryshpan. (Cinema Entertainment Enterprises/DAL Productions)T</p><p>Rape</p><p>I recently gave a lecture on vampires and other monsters at Bryn Mawr</p><p>College, the academically acclaimed and politically sensitized women's</p><p>school which had coincidentally displayed, in the student lounge just</p><p>outside the room where I was delivering my talk, an extraordinary wall</p><p>of student clippings and commentary called "Rape Culture," including</p><p>everything from fashion photography to advertising slogans to hard-core</p><p>porn. But conspicuously absent from the display was even a single image</p><p>of a male vampire bending over his swooning female victim, despite the</p><p>fact that vampire imagery now amounts to one of our largest—and most</p><p>ambiguous—cultural repositories of violent sex fantasy. The Bryn Mawr</p><p>students responded well to my lecture, posing many intelligent ques-</p><p>tions, but curiously made no connection whatsoever between vampire</p><p>1 68 David J. Skal</p><p>Rape: Vampire</p><p>destruction as ritual</p><p>gang-bang. From</p><p>Dracula, Prince of</p><p>Darkness. (Photofest)</p><p>culture and rape culture, despite the almost ridiculously transparent sym-</p><p>bolism of the neck-penetrating bedroom-crasher as the modern dream</p><p>essence of sexual assault. It is no coincidence that vampire imagery and</p><p>rape awareness emerged as twin popular obsessions during the sexually</p><p>traumatic 1980s and 1990s, as the AIDS epidemic and a puritan back-</p><p>lash engendered a deep distrust and general fear of sexuality.</p><p>Rape is a real evil in the world, deserving of every statutory punish-</p><p>ment, but the current cultural fixation on rape goes far beyond criminal</p><p>definitions into a twilight zone of invasion/pollution/end-of-innocence</p><p>fantasies, with a heavy patina of gothic horror. A striking feature of rape-</p><p>crisis feminism is the resurrection of Victorian cliches about female sexu-</p><p>ality and male predation integral to the nineteenth-century vampire</p><p>mystique. The model of womanhood presented by rape-crisis media</p><p>stars like Catherine MacKinnon recalls the listless virgins of Victorian</p><p>horror fiction, relentlessly</p><p>stalked by thirsty male vampires and requir-</p><p>ing around-the-clock protection by reassuring authority figures who</p><p>provide wolfsbane in the form of censorship and repressive legislation.</p><p>This stunning retreat into sexless, doll-like passivity and the elevation</p><p>of victimization to an almost sacramental state is a striking reversal of</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 69</p><p>the women's movement's traditional emphasis on empowerment and</p><p>autonomy.</p><p>Since much of the current demonization of maleness is also tacitly les-</p><p>bian, many heterosexual women these days may feel culturally stranded</p><p>between the mutually unwelcome attentions of the chauvinist Dracula</p><p>and his Sapphic daughter ("I believe in equal rights for women—but I'm</p><p>not a feminist!"). The classic swoon of the vampire's victim represents a</p><p>loss of consciousness analogous to the missing reflection in the mirror: a</p><p>refusal to acknowledge or accept personal responsibility for one's sexuality</p><p>or its consequences. A recent New Yorker cartoon by Gahan Wilson picked</p><p>up the undercurrents of date rape and responsibility transference in the</p><p>vampiric encounter: in evident compliance with Antioch College's strin-</p><p>gently authoritarian sexual consent regulations, Dracula hesitates over his</p><p>intended victim</p><p>—"May I bite your neck?" he asks warily, and perhaps a</p><p>little wearily. See also AIDS; lesbianism.</p><p>Reflecting Skin, The</p><p>Cinema, Canada 1990. An extraordinary film by Philip Ridley about an</p><p>eight-year-old boy (Jeremy Cooper) who is convinced that a reclusive</p><p>widow neighbor (Lindsay Duncan) is a vampire. The film is set in the early</p><p>1950s, when Cooper's older brother (Viggo Mortensen) returns from</p><p>military duty, not knowing he has been poisoned by exposure to radiation</p><p>from nuclear tests. He falls in love with the widow, and the boy takes his</p><p>brother's wasting symptoms and hair loss as proof positive ofvampirism. A</p><p>stylishly produced, intelligent, and altogether original meditation on the</p><p>vampire theme. (Fugitive Films/Virgin/Live Entertainment)T</p><p>Renfield</p><p>"Rats! Rats! Rats!" The character of R. M. Renfield, the vampire's zoo-</p><p>phagous henchperson in the novel DRACULA, is best known to the public</p><p>through the persona of actor Dwight Frye, who made the role his own in</p><p>the 1931 film version of Bram Stoker's book. In the novel, Renfield was a</p><p>mental patient of about sixty, given to violent outbursts; in the 1922 film</p><p>Nosferatu, the character's name was changed to "Knock" and depicted</p><p>as a crazy old real estate agent whose appearance suggested a maniacal Dr.</p><p>Caligari. In the 1924 and 1927 stage versions by Hamilton Deane and</p><p>1 70 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Bernard Jukes (center) as Renfield in the original</p><p>Broadway production of Dracula (Courtesy of Ronald V</p><p>Borst/Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>John L. Balderston, the character was recon- ^></p><p>ceived as a scenery-chewing "repulsive youth."</p><p>For the 1931 Universal film, the character was</p><p>conflated with that of the novel's hero, Jonathan</p><p>Harker, enabling Renfield to travel to Transyl-</p><p>vania, returning to England under Dracula's ma-</p><p>lignant influence as the vampire's servant and</p><p>protector.</p><p>Renfield is arguably the showiest part in Drac-</p><p>ula adaptations, one always coveted by actors. It</p><p>is in Renfield that we see one of the book's major</p><p>themes personified—namely the Victorian era's</p><p>anxieties about Darwin's theory of evolution and a general cultural obses-</p><p>sion with the idea of degeneration. Renfield's mad desire to eat his way up</p><p>the evolutionary ladder—starting with flies and spiders, then rats, etc.</p><p>—</p><p>was enacted on stage by the British actor Bernard Jukes (d. 1939), who</p><p>played the role thousands of times in England and America (photos of</p><p>Jukes in the role are frequently misidentified as Dwight Frye). In Roger</p><p>Vadim's unproduced adaptation of Dracula, the Renfield part was imag-</p><p>inatively reinterpreted as a woman. Film director Joe Dante {Gremlins,</p><p>The Howling) calls his production company, based at Universal, "Renfield</p><p>Productions."</p><p>Return of Dracula, The</p><p>Cinema, USA 1 958. "I hope he likes cheese sauce and asparagus," says the</p><p>Carleton, California, housewife, who has no inkling that the man upstairs</p><p>posing as a political expatriate cousin is really Count Dracula. Nonethe-</p><p>less, she enjoys the idea of feeding him: "Why don't you go up and ask</p><p>Cousin Bellac if he wants some pie?" she asks a bit later, after he starts his</p><p>rampage. Actor Francis Lederer makes a smarmy vampire king who dis-</p><p>penses with the usual politeness vampires affect in these kind of films. The</p><p>dumb host family just chalks it up to cultural differences. This must be the</p><p>first film in which Dracula gets to ride in a convertible. For the original re-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 7</p><p>1</p><p>lease, the black-and-white film contained a color insert of a stake being</p><p>driven through the heart of one of Dracula's female victims. Directed by</p><p>Paul Landres. Screenplay by Pat Fielder. With Norma Eberhardt, Ray</p><p>Stricklyn, and Jimmie Baird. (United Artists)</p><p>Y</p><p>Return of the Vampire, The</p><p>Cinema, USA 1943. Actor Bela Lugosi could not convince Universal Pic-</p><p>tures to cast him as Dracula when the studio revived the character for</p><p>three films in the mid- 1940s, choosing Lon Chaney, Jr., and John Carra-</p><p>dine instead. But Columbia Pictures did not hesitate in contracting for</p><p>Lugosi's services for The Return of the Vampire. Universal refused permis-</p><p>sion for Columbia to use the word "Dracula" in the script, but could do</p><p>nothing about the fact that Lugosi in evening dress and an opera cloak</p><p>looked just like you-know-who. As the vampire Armand Tesla, Lugosi en-</p><p>tertained wartime audiences with a story set during the London blitz</p><p>—</p><p>Nazi bombs both open his grave and send him back to it again. Actress</p><p>Nina Foch, who made her film debut in The Return of the Vampire, re-</p><p>called in 1994 that her strongest impression of Lugosi during the produc-</p><p>tion was his breath reeking of sulfur water, a popular but odiferous health</p><p>tonic. One can see why Universal may have passed the actor over—he</p><p>looks puffy and aged, though his line readings are as priceless as ever.</p><p>-w As Tesla's werewolf assis-</p><p>' tant, Andreas, Matt Willis</p><p>(looking more like a Scot-</p><p>tish terrier than a wolf)</p><p>gives some of the stiffest</p><p>line readings you'll ever</p><p>encounter in a major stu-</p><p>dio film of the period. But</p><p>The Return of Dracula: Francis</p><p>Lederer travels to America in</p><p>his ingenious mobile home.</p><p>(Photofest)</p><p>a</p><p>1 72 David J. Skal</p><p>Nina Foch seems to smell the sulfur as Bela Lugosi</p><p>approaches in The Return of the Vampire.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>it's still a load of campy fun. Directed by Lew</p><p>Landers from a screenplay by Griffin Jay. With</p><p>Frieda Inescort, Miles Mander, and Ottola</p><p>Nesmith. (Columbia Pictures)^</p><p>Rice, Anne</p><p>The publishing world's reigning Queen of the</p><p>Night has reached the problematic stage in</p><p>her career where she can accommodate auto-</p><p>graph requests by limiting them to "signa-</p><p>tures only," as a sign at a recent bookstore appearance warned would-be</p><p>supplicants. Anne Rice is the most successful vampire novelist in history,</p><p>her total earnings undoubtedly eclipsing even a century's worth of Drac-</p><p>ULA's profits. I will, therefore, assume that any reader of V isfor Vampire</p><p>who has gotten this far is already fully, numbingly aware of Rice's undead</p><p>oeuvre—her "Vampire Chronicles" series of novels, Interview with the</p><p>Vampire (1976), Tlie Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned</p><p>(1988), The Tale of the Body Thief'(1992) and Memnoch the Devil (1995)—</p><p>and I therefore will be excused from encapsulating their plots in detail.</p><p>Suffice it to say that, following the first book, in which he appears as a sup-</p><p>porting character, "The Vampire Chronicles" is primarily concerned with</p><p>the unlife and times of Lestat de Lioncourt, otherwise known as the Vam-</p><p>pire Lestat, following his progress from eighteenth-century France to</p><p>nineteenth-century New Orleans to twentieth-century America. One of</p><p>the first book's most</p><p>compelling and memorable characters is a child vam-</p><p>pire named Claudia, unconsciously patterned (by the author's own later</p><p>acknowledgment) after Rice's first daughter, Michele, who died of leuke-</p><p>mia at the age of six. As a woman supernaturally imprisoned in a child's</p><p>body, Claudia uncannily anticipated the rise of "the inner child" concept</p><p>as an axiom of pop psychology in the 1980s and 1990s—a seething adult</p><p>sensibility stunted and immobilized by childhood abuse. All of Rice's</p><p>vampire books, in fact, tap deftly into various Zeitgeist motifs, which no</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 173</p><p>doubt accounts for their wide popularity. The growing visibility of HOMO-</p><p>SEXUALITY in culture during the 1980s and 1990s against the grim back-</p><p>drop of the AIDS (q.v.) epidemic is consciously transformed in Rice's</p><p>novels into a kind of supernaturalized male eroticism that survives death; it</p><p>should come as no surprise that Rice has a vast and devoted gay male read-</p><p>ership—not an insignificant market in literary publishing. (Lesbians, how-</p><p>ever, seem fairly indifferent to Rice; the introduction to a recent collection</p><p>of lesbian vampire stories, Daughters of Darkness, fails to mention her</p><p>even in passing in its introductory overview.)</p><p>The third book of the series, The Queen ofthe Damned, takes on radical</p><p>feminism, arguing to spare male sexuality from a final solution as a con-</p><p>clave of politically self-assured vampires gathers in a mountain retreat to</p><p>decide the fate of the world a la Atlas Shrugged. Like Ayn Rand, Rice is,</p><p>for a woman writer, rather extraordinarily preoccupied with male sexuality</p><p>and male prerogatives and privilege. A hypothetical leftist critique of Rice</p><p>might well accuse her of collaborationist tendencies, but no such screed</p><p>has yet appeared. It may be that Rice's simple power and visibility as an</p><p>icon of the successful "woman writer" somehow protects her against fem-</p><p>inist attack. For instance, when Rice publicly defended Brett Easton Ellis'</p><p>allegedly misogynist novel American Psycho from assaults by feminist cen-</p><p>sors, not a peep was raised against her. Nor has</p><p>Rice's sideline identity as the sadomasochistic</p><p>pornographer A. N. Roquelaure (The Claiming</p><p>of Sleeping Beauty, etc.) prompted any visible</p><p>feminist debate about the political implications of</p><p>eroticized sexual domination (see also rape).</p><p>jM^k Vampires, of course, have the uncanny ability</p><p>to deflect and displace and defang all kinds of</p><p>mfm^m scary sexual issues. Take, for instance, the striking</p><p>lm preponderance of obese women drawn to horror</p><p>^^^m^^m I literature, gothic music, and Anne Rice in partic-</p><p>f / ular. Don't take my word for it: check out the</p><p>The dust jacket of Katherine Ramsland'</p><p>biography, Prism of the Night.</p><p>(Courtesy of Dutton/Penguin USA)</p><p>1991</p><p>1 74 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>marathon- length lines for Rice's next autograph signing (or any other</p><p>"gothic" event) and come to your own conclusions about displaced oral</p><p>aggression, the relationship between vampirism and eating disorders, and</p><p>the curious gratification presumably straight women (commonly, if un-</p><p>charitably, known as "fag hags") derive from fantastically neutered depic-</p><p>tions of male-male sex. The plunging necklines and corpse-white makeup</p><p>these women typically affect for their moment of communion with Anne</p><p>Rice says it all: "I want to be sexual, but my sexuality is dead."</p><p>All this said, Interview with the Vampire is still one hell of a good read;</p><p>while more ambitious in scope, the three (so far) follow-ups each seemed</p><p>to take about a hundred pages to get rolling, as if the author was doing</p><p>finger exercises and her publisher was too intimidated by all the money</p><p>pouring in to even bring up the subject of editing. Rice rankles a lot of</p><p>critics with the trademark against-the-grain ripeness of her prose, but by</p><p>eschewing the fashionably anorectic style of much literary fiction today,</p><p>Rice (like Stephen King) manages to attract a silent majority readership</p><p>that may well avoid fiction approved by the critical establishment because</p><p>it seems, well, vampirized of texture, emotion, and color. The results, of-</p><p>fered to readers long starved for nourishment, can prove addictive. Hu-</p><p>morist Garrison Keillor produced an extremely funny 1994 Prairie Home</p><p>Companion skit about a man on a date with a woman who can't stop talk-</p><p>ing about her passion for Anne Rice (with inspired droning patter along</p><p>the lines of: "I know people say Anne Rice, vampires, ick, but I know if</p><p>they just read her books I know they wouldn't feel that way, I've read all</p><p>her books ten times, she's the only writer I even bother to read anymore,"</p><p>etc., etc., etc.).</p><p>Rice is the subject of an informative, though perhaps overly worshipful,</p><p>1991 biography by Katherine Ramsland, Prism of the Night. Ramsland's</p><p>book may well demonstrate some of the built-in dangers of authorized bi-</p><p>ographies, but its Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous emphasis on the details</p><p>of Rice's contracts, advances, and real estate acquisitions shows that Anne</p><p>Rice may have become herself embalmed in the vampire mystique. Her</p><p>enviable success and unimaginable earnings blur in the minds of her fans</p><p>with the vampire's traditional appeal as a symbol of power, privilege, and</p><p>transcendence—if not from literal mortality, then at least from the stag-</p><p>nant economic death-in-life that awaits more Americans than not at the</p><p>millennium.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 75</p><p>Robles, German</p><p>A foxy-faced Mexican actor, Robles became Mexico's answer to Bela Lu-</p><p>GOSI with his inspired impersonation of a caped, medallioned bloodsucker</p><p>in The Vampire (1958) and The Vampire's Coffin (1959), and related</p><p>roles in The Lurking Vampire (1960) and the vampirish camp classic</p><p>The Brainiac (1959). Evidently, he's still working. Has anyone seen him</p><p>recently?</p><p>"Room in the Tower, The"</p><p>Fiction, UK 1912. E. F. Benson's classic short story has been widely an-</p><p>thologized, and with good reason: its chilling evocation of the vampire's</p><p>primal roots in nightmares is almost without parallel in the horror genre.</p><p>A young man's recurrent, shape -shifting dream of being a house guest led</p><p>to a terrifying room in a tower leads to an unforgettable real-life encounter</p><p>with a female vampire. The story still has the power to induce gooseflesh</p><p>in broad daylight—trust me. Read it at night in an empty house at your</p><p>own peril. See also "Mrs. Amworth."</p><p>Ruthven, Lord</p><p>The seminal vampire in English literature, inspired by Lord Byron but re-</p><p>alized by Byron's physician John Polidori in his 1819 short story "The</p><p>Vampyre," Lord Ruthven (pronounced RUH-ven) is the very prototype</p><p>of Romantic male vampirism, his image of brooding seduction casting a</p><p>long shadow over nineteenth-century literature, opera, and THEATER.</p><p>When Bram Stoker penned his novel Dracula in 1897, he sought to</p><p>create a new kind ofvampire icon, more a literal than figurative lady-killer,</p><p>a repulsive creature who wasted no time with social niceties. Although</p><p>Stoker's novel has been one of the century's longest-running literary sen-</p><p>sations, Ruthven has nonetheless won out—almost all stage and film adap-</p><p>tations of Dracula have discarded Stoker's Darwinian animal and reached</p><p>back to Ruthven for their characterizations of the count. Ruthven has</p><p>more recently lent his name to the Lord Ruthven Assembly, a special in-</p><p>terest group of the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts,</p><p>comprised of writers and academics with a special interest in revenant fig-</p><p>ures in literature and the arts.</p><p>D</p><p>"Sad Story of a Vampire, The"</p><p>Short Story, UK 1894. An evocative tale by Stanislaus Eric, Count Sten-</p><p>bock, "The Sad Story of a Vampire" might be considered a gay-pederast</p><p>counterpart to the protagonist of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire</p><p>story "Carmilla." Both are set in the literary vampireland of Styria</p><p>(where Bram Stoker, in fact, first intended to set his novel Dracula,</p><p>before settling on Transylvania). Stenbock introduces the mysterious</p><p>Count Vardalek, whose</p><p>attentions and kisses drain and destroy a beauti-</p><p>ful boy named Gabriel. The family is singularly obtuse and at no point</p><p>even questions why the count kisses the child on the mouth, feels his</p><p>pulse, somehow looks so much younger himself after spending time with</p><p>his youthful friend, etc. The story is an interesting demonstration ofhow</p><p>the denial or repression of homosexuality can rebound negatively as</p><p>vampire fantasy. See also lesbianism.</p><p>Sadomasochism</p><p>The sizable overlap between vampire fans and S & M aficionados is due in</p><p>no small part, I suspect, to Anne Rice's dual influence as best-selling vam-</p><p>pire author and best-selling sadomasochistic pornographer. S & M, often</p><p>romanticized by its practitioners as a renegade activity, is in reality a de-</p><p>pressingly status-quo fantasyland where real-world power imbalances are</p><p>erotically celebrated and thereby reinforced and perpetuated. But it's</p><p>probably not surprising, in this age of increasing economic disparities and</p><p>a creeping master-slave corporate ethos, that vampires and other ritual fig-</p><p>ures of domination/exploitation should be so culturally potent. See also</p><p>BLOOD FETISHISM; CLASS WARFARE.</p><p>1 78 David J. Skal</p><p>'Salem's Lot</p><p>Fiction, USA 1975. Owen Wister, the best-selling turn-of-the-century</p><p>novelist whose most famous book was The Virginian, announced about</p><p>1902 that he was writing an American vampire epic to rival Dracula.</p><p>Wister, of course, never wrote his book, and it was left to Stephen King to</p><p>finally exploit the Dracula formula in a completely American context. Like</p><p>Bram STOKER in 1897, King in 1975 introduced his undead evil into</p><p>a completely recognizable contemporary setting: in this case 'Salem's</p><p>(Jerusalem's) Lot, the postcard-perfect evocation of a classic small town in</p><p>New England. The book was adapted as a four-hour television movie in</p><p>1979, directed by Tobe Hooper and starring David Soul, James Mason,</p><p>Lance Kerwin, and Bonnie Bedelia. Paul Monash's script was fairly faithful</p><p>to the book, but opted to transform the main vampire, Barlow, from a</p><p>human-seeming antique dealer to an over-the-top NosFERATU-'mspircA</p><p>bogeyman.T</p><p>The book's cinematic ripples continued, less successfully, with Larry</p><p>Cohen's A Return to 'Salem's Lot (1987).</p><p>Satanic Rites of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, UK 1973. The Hammer series of Dracula films starring</p><p>Christopher Lee dead-ended in this strained studio attempt to prolong</p><p>the vampire's life. Peter CUSHING, as a descendant of the original vampire</p><p>hunter Abraham Van Helsing, exposes Dracula's updated identity as a</p><p>corporate tycoon dabbling in germ warfare. At the climax, tangled in a</p><p>vampire -repelling hawthorn bush, Lee sports a Christlike crown of thorns</p><p>and stigmatalike wounds—the kind of isolated, inspired detail that would</p><p>have been better used in a better picture. Directed by Alan Gibson from a</p><p>script by Dan Houghton. (Hammer/Warner Bros.)V</p><p>Scars of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, UK 1970. A one-shot attempt by Hammer Films to produce a</p><p>Dracula film with no story connection to the other Christopher Lee ve-</p><p>hicles. It seems a litrie beneath Dracula's dignity to see him flogging a ser-</p><p>vant or stabbing a victim with a knife, but Lee does what the script calls</p><p>for. Perhaps the most interesting historical point of Scars ofDracula is its</p><p>first time ever depiction of one of the most memorable scenes in Bram</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 79</p><p>Max Schreck, the original movie Dracula in Nosferatu,</p><p>seen here without his horrifying makeup.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>Stoker's novel—the sight of Dracula crawling</p><p>headfirst down the wall of his castle like a lizard</p><p>or a bat. Directed by Roy Ward Baker. Script</p><p>by John Elder. With Dennis Waterman, Jenny</p><p>Hanley, and Christopher Matthews. (Hammer/</p><p>MGM/EMI)T</p><p>Schreck, Max</p><p>German stage and screen actor, born in Berlin in</p><p>1879, Max Schreck is best known for his imper-</p><p>sonation of the unforgettably verminous Count</p><p>Orlock in F. W. Murnau's 1922 film classic</p><p>Nosferatu. Schreck—the name means "terror" in German—gave up con-</p><p>ventional business aspirations to train for the stage and was a member of</p><p>Max Reinhardt's celebrated repertory ensemble before entering films. He</p><p>continued working on stage and screen until the year of his death; his final</p><p>film was Die letzten Vier von Santa Cruz in 1936. He left a widow, the ac-</p><p>tress Fanny Normann. His name (which, despite its horror connotations,</p><p>was his real one) is occasionally appropriated, winkingly, for outlandish</p><p>characters in fantasy and horror films; most recently, Max Schreck was the</p><p>name of the slimy tycoon played by Christopher Walken in Tim Burton's</p><p>Batman Returns (1992)</p><p>.</p><p>Son of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1943. Lon Chaney, Sr., who died on the eve of being cast in</p><p>Universal's original Dracula, might well have made an unusual and in-</p><p>teresting vampire count, but his son Creighton, better known as Lon</p><p>Chaney, Jr., is excruciatingly miscast in this otherwise well-produced entry</p><p>in the wartime Universal horror cycle. As Count Alucard (yeah, groan;</p><p>but, hey, it was the first time) Chaney has a painted expression on his face</p><p>throughout most of the film, atmospherically photographed by George</p><p>Robinson, gifted cameraman of Universal's 1931 Spanish-language version</p><p>1 80 David J. Skal</p><p>Lon Chaney, Jr., and Louise Albritton in</p><p>Son of Dracula. (Photofest)</p><p>of Dracula, Dracula's Daughter</p><p>(1936), Son of Frankenstein (1939),</p><p>and many others. One of the eeriest se-</p><p>quences has Alucard standing in his</p><p>open coffin, which floats across a foggy</p><p>bayou toward his undead bride-to-be.</p><p>Directed by Robert Siodmak, from a</p><p>screenplay by Eric Taylor based on a</p><p>story by Curt Siodmak. With Louise</p><p>Albritton, George Irving, and Robert</p><p>Paige. ( Universal)</p><p>Stake, wooden</p><p>The classic instrument for destroying vampires is a stake, usually driven</p><p>through the heart. (A curious variation on the time-honored stake shows</p><p>up in the 1960 film Black Sunday, where a sharpened twig is used to</p><p>penetrate the vampire's eye.) On a literal level, the stake is a physical</p><p>means of pinning the vampire to its grave; on a more metaphorical</p><p>plane, the stake is an unmistakable phallic symbol which makes clear the</p><p>displaced, transformed sexuality of vampire beliefs in general. The vam-</p><p>pire, in other words, is a kind of symbolic sex itch that can be de-</p><p>stroyed/dispelled by a symbolic act of sexual penetration. If you're</p><p>having trouble with this kind of analysis, the next time you read Drac-</p><p>ula, try thinking of the band of vampire-killers as a Mad Hatter's party</p><p>of dangerously hysterical Victorian men, stalking their virginal prey with</p><p>croquet mallets and sharpened dildos, and see if that doesn't make</p><p>things a tad more transparent.</p><p>Stoker, Bram</p><p>The world-famous author of Dracula remains a tantalizing enigma for</p><p>modern literary commentators—while Bram Stoker wrote voluminous</p><p>quantities of popular fiction (not to mention business correspondence), he</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 181</p><p>revealed almost nothing about his own personality or the thematic inten-</p><p>tions of his novels. His friend Hall Caine, himself a best-selling novelist, re-</p><p>called in 1912 the "big, breathless, impetuous hurricane of a man who was</p><p>Bram Stoker had no love of the limelight. . . . He took no vain view of his</p><p>efforts as an author." As his biographer Harry Ludlam put it, Stoker "shrank</p><p>from personal publicity as his vampire creation hid from the sun . .</p><p>."</p><p>Therefore, the writer has ended up a kind of blank canvas on to which crit-</p><p>ics (including this one) are tempted to project all manner of their own</p><p>obsessions.</p><p>As for the facts of Stoker's life, he was born in Dublin, Ireland, in</p><p>1847, the third of seven children, and suffered from a long, peculiar, and</p><p>possibly even hysterical paralysis which, by Stoker's account, left him com-</p><p>pletely bedridden until the age of seven (but somehow did nothing to</p><p>prevent him from developing later into an accomplished athlete). Stoker</p><p>was educated at Trinity College, was active in the Trinity</p><p>Philosophical</p><p>Society (where he sponsored the membership of his friend Oscar Wilde),</p><p>and became a devoted, public partisan of Walt Whitman, to whom he</p><p>wrote long, passionate missives: "How sweet a thing it is for a strong</p><p>healthy man with a woman's eyes and a child's wishes to feel he can speak</p><p>to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul."</p><p>Stoker's susceptibility to male charisma reached a climax in his profes-</p><p>sional association with the actor Henry Irving, who rescued him from</p><p>the life of a Dublin petty-clerk and part-time</p><p>theater critic, ensconcing him as second-in-</p><p>command of his company at the Royal Lyceum</p><p>Theatre in London. The critical moment be-</p><p>tween the men seems to have occurred in</p><p>1876 when Stoker, then twenty-eight years</p><p>old, had a hysterical fit following one of</p><p>living's intensely emotional dramatic recita-</p><p>tions. The actor likely sensed that Stoker's</p><p>rapt response to his art, coupled with his love</p><p>of the theater and general business acumen,</p><p>would be useful in helping establish his the-</p><p>Bram Stoker</p><p>1 82 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>atrical dominion over London. Stoker devoted his life to Irving for three</p><p>decades, writing melodramatic fiction as a sideline; Hall Caine later wrote</p><p>that "I say without hesitation that never have I seen, never do I expect to</p><p>see, such absorption of one man's life in the life of another . . . with living's</p><p>life, poor Bram's had really ended." The vampirelike dynamics of Stoker's</p><p>relationship with Irving have been widely commented upon as having in-</p><p>fluenced the composition of Dracula; indeed, Stoker himself revealed to a</p><p>Chicago theater critic at the turn of the century that he intended Dracula</p><p>as a composite of Irving characterizations and tried vainly to convince the</p><p>actor to play the role on stage. (One wonders whether Stoker would have</p><p>liked to appear on stage with him, and whether he would be most drawn</p><p>to the role of Renfield, Jonathan Harker, or the vampire-destroyer</p><p>Abraham—the full form of "Bram"</p><p>—</p><p>Van Helsing.) Though snubbed by</p><p>Irving as a theater vehicle, Dracula found a wide popular audience and is</p><p>the only one of Stoker's books to have remained steadily in print. But his</p><p>royalties could not really sustain him after Irving's death in 1906 and the</p><p>dissolution of the Lyceum company. Stoker died, semi-impoverished, six</p><p>years after Irving; his death certificate lists the main cause of death as "lo-</p><p>comotor ataxia," a polite medical description of tertiary syphilis. Stoker's</p><p>second biographer (and great-nephew) Daniel Farson caused some con-</p><p>sternation among Stoker's descendants with this revelation, and his specu-</p><p>lation that the infection was contracted from a prostitute.</p><p>Farson didn't, however, speculate on the putative prostitute's sex. For</p><p>a long time, even after some groundbreaking psychoanalytic criticism be-</p><p>ginning in the 1950s, critics approached Stoker's imagination with the</p><p>strictest heterosexual presumptions—odd, indeed, for a subject so thor-</p><p>oughly consumed by the theater, so enamored of Walt Whitman, and</p><p>whose life was tangled with personal and professional connections, paral-</p><p>lels, and rivalries to Oscar Wilde (see my book Hollywood Gothic for their</p><p>complete enumeration). Stoker had, by some accounts, a cold and ulti-</p><p>mately sexless marriage to Wilde's former female heartthrob, and one</p><p>must wonder about the degree to which his fascination with her over-</p><p>lapped with a fascination for Wilde himself (see Stoker, Florence).</p><p>Dracula, at the very least, evinces an explosive hatred of anything but a</p><p>theatrically decorative female sexuality; the real business in the story is by,</p><p>for, and among the men, who use women's bodies as a kind of glory-hole</p><p>graveyard wall for their essentially male-male transactions and transfusions.</p><p>(It is perhaps significant that the single, outstanding line of dialogue Stoker</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 8 3</p><p>set down in his initial working notes for Dracula was "This man is mine!")</p><p>A turning point in Dracula criticism occurred in 1984 with the publica-</p><p>tion of Christopher Craft's essay "Kiss Me with Those Red Lips: Gender</p><p>and Inversion in Dracula" wherein the author brilliantly argued that the</p><p>surface heterosexuality of the novel was indeed but a veneer. After Drac-</p><p>ula\ publication, Wilde's friend and once-lover Robert Ross named his</p><p>London showcase for homosexual artists the Carfax Gallery—the only</p><p>artistic appropriation of the name "Carfax" in late Victorian London other</p><p>than one of Dracula's English haunts in Stoker's novel. Raymond Hunt-</p><p>ley, the English actor who most successfully played Dracula in England</p><p>and America, eclipsing even Bela Lugosi's total number of performances</p><p>during the 1920s, told me in 1989, with one eyebrow raised, that it was</p><p>"news to me that Bram Stoker had ever married," when I brought up the</p><p>subject of his wife Florence. Huntley died shortly afterward, before the</p><p>possible implications of his comment had dawned on me. But Huntley's</p><p>association with Dracula began only a dozen years after Stoker's death,</p><p>when the author's memory would have been still quite alive in theatrical</p><p>London. (In contemporary terms, the burly, bearded Bram is the perfect</p><p>physical embodiment of the modern homosexual type known as a "bear";</p><p>I don't, however, know whether London's "Uranian" circles of the 1890s</p><p>compartmentalized men quite so strictly.)</p><p>While finishing Hollywood Gothic, I spent several frustrating months</p><p>trying to verify a story that had originated in a prominent gay Hollywood</p><p>circle; namely, that Stoker, during one of his last American tours with the</p><p>Lyceum company (during which he kept discreetly separate lodgings),</p><p>had become infatuated with the youngest son of a prominent American</p><p>theatrical family, much to the family's horror. Did the young actor re-</p><p>ciprocate the older man's attentions? If he did, were the later infant</p><p>deaths of not one but two of the actor's children and his own later pa-</p><p>ralysis related in any way to the syphilis that likely killed Stoker? Had his</p><p>legendary actress sister, in a fatally misguided effort to promote the</p><p>young man's theatrical career, unwittingly pimped her baby brother to</p><p>Dracula? The story got nuttier and nuttier as I pursued it, and I was never</p><p>able to conclusively place the men together (or, for that matter, apart).</p><p>But whether or not the story is true is almost beside the real point:</p><p>Stoker's literary imagination, epitomized in Dracula but palpable in</p><p>other works as well, is a bleeding bottomless pit of bisexual ambivalence.</p><p>The "truth" of this material is likely beyond the purview and discipline of</p><p>1 84 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>documentablc biography . . . but just think what a film director like Ken</p><p>Russell could do with it.</p><p>Stoker, Florence</p><p>The beautiful, real-life bride of Dracula was Florence Anne Lemon Bal-</p><p>combe of Clontarf, Dublin, who discouraged the romantic attentions of a</p><p>near-penniless Oscar Wilde and waited instead for a proposal from Os-</p><p>car's Trinity College friend Bram STOKER, who was simultaneously plan-</p><p>ning a professional elopement with the actor Henry Irving. Florence</p><p>seems to have been a most decorative society hostess and a distinct asset to</p><p>Stoker's social climbing (as was he to hers), but most biographical ac-</p><p>counts of her are cold and unflattering. Daniel Farson, in The Man Who</p><p>Wrote Dracula, describes her as frigid, so repulsed by sex after giving birth</p><p>to her only child that she may have driven Bram into the arms of the extra-</p><p>marital SYPHILIS that killed him. In Harry Ludlam's early book, A Biogra-</p><p>phy ofDracula: The Life Story ofBram Stoker, written in cooperation with</p><p>the Stokers' son Noel, she never emerges as more than a walk-on, her</p><p>striking absence from the narrative perhaps reflecting the quality of her re-</p><p>lationship with her only child. My own delving into Florence Stoker's life</p><p>began with her obsessive, eight-year-long legal battle to suppress and de-</p><p>stroy all prints and negatives of the 1922 German</p><p>film Nosferatu—a pla-</p><p>giarized adaptation of her husband's book, the unpredictable royalties of</p><p>which had become very nearly her only source of income. The single-</p><p>minded, take-no-prisoners ferocity of her attack on the celluloid vampire</p><p>may, in retrospect, speak volumes about the fanged she-demons Bram</p><p>Stoker perceived lurking behind demure Victorian femininity. The late Vin-</p><p>cent Price, who met Mrs. Stoker in 1935, told me she was "still quite beau-</p><p>tiful" in her old age. Good bone structure may have had something to do</p><p>with it, but given the centrality of vampires in Florence Stoker's later life,</p><p>one must wonder about more supernatural forms of preservation as well!</p><p>Subspecies</p><p>Cinema, USA/Romania 1990. The first feature film shot in Romania after</p><p>the downfall of Nikolai "Dracula" Ceaucescu was, appropriately, a vampire</p><p>picture. Subspecies is distinguished by some evocative location photography</p><p>which gives the impression of a much bigger budget, and some wonderful</p><p>NosferaTV- style slithering-shadow visuals. But the good vampire/bad</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 185</p><p>vampire dialectic has been cropping up too frequently elsewhere in recent</p><p>years to seem at all fresh. The "subspecies" themselves—unintentionally</p><p>whimsical stop-motion imps who guard a powerful "bloodstone"—seem</p><p>grafted on from some other movie. Directed by Ted Nicolaou. Script by</p><p>Jackson Barr and David Pabian. With Michael Watson, Laura Tate, and</p><p>Anders Hove. (Full Moon Entertainment/Paramount Home Video)T</p><p>Succubus</p><p>The female equivalent of the INCUBUS, a sexually draining night-demon</p><p>that is a prototype of the modern vampire. The word never fails to get a</p><p>titter out of audiences, no doubt because it starts out with a homophone</p><p>for "suck."</p><p>Summers, Montague</p><p>An English scholar (1880-1947), Montague Summers was best known for</p><p>his groundbreaking book-length histories of vampires, werewolves, and</p><p>witchcraft. Although their overall reliability is a bit questionable (they</p><p>sometimes strive to impress with big chunks of untranslated Latin, etc.),</p><p>The Vampire, His Kith and Kin (1928) and The</p><p>Vampire in Europe (1929) are often reprinted</p><p>and are still frequently cited for their detailed</p><p>accounts of eighteenth-century vampire hysteria</p><p>(which he treats as fact, not superstition). Sum-</p><p>mers affected clerical robes and attitudes, but</p><p>does not seem to have ever gotten further than a</p><p>deaconship, possibly because of his membership</p><p>in the quasi-Masonic circle ofVictorian homosex-</p><p>uals known as the Order of Chaeronea. Summers,</p><p>therefore, provides yet another link in the histori-</p><p>cal, thematic correspondence between vampires</p><p>and HOMOSEXUALITY.</p><p>Montague Summers.</p><p>1 86 David J. Skal</p><p>Syphilis</p><p>The venereal scourge of Victorian times, syphilis was the AIDS epidemic</p><p>of its time and, like AIDS, fueled much of the era's fascination with vam-</p><p>pires and dangerous, fatal sexuality. A story like DRACULA can be read as</p><p>an almost transparent syphilis parable; its images of wanton women, con-</p><p>taminated blood, telltale skin lesions, and pseudoscientific "cures" res-</p><p>onating powerfully with widespread panic about sexual contagion, the</p><p>demonization of prostitutes, and the attendant rise of blood -purifying</p><p>quack doctors. One of Draculpfs more memorable scenes, in which the</p><p>men take turns transfusing the vampire -tainted Lucy Westenra, is a ritual</p><p>enactment of the anxiety described by Elaine Showalter in her pertinent</p><p>book Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Steele: "The pros-</p><p>titute's body was the vessel in which men discharged and mingled pollut-</p><p>ing fluids . . . hostility toward the prostitute could be generalized to apply</p><p>to all women." Lucy's transfusions are significantly followed by savage</p><p>hostility meted out by the same group of men: a sexually charged mutila-</p><p>tion by hammer, stake, and knife as overwrought as any of Jack the Rip-</p><p>per's prostitute predations. (One theory of the Ripper's crimes suggested</p><p>that the killer himself had contracted syphilis from a prostitute.) It is es-</p><p>pecially fascinating that a straightforward dramatic treatment of syphilis,</p><p>such as Ibsen's Ghosts (1891), met with public outrage over its suppos-</p><p>edly indecent subject matter, but the same theme, veiled only slightly by</p><p>penny-dreadful fantasy trappings, was considered harmless popular enter-</p><p>tainment. See also prostitution.</p><p>Tale of a Vampire</p><p>Cinema, UK/Japan 1992. All those undead overtones in Edgar Allan</p><p>Poe's stories and poems about necrophilish lady-loves are stylishly recy-</p><p>cled into a thoroughly modern melodrama with Poe himself as a vampire</p><p>in search of his reincarnated love. (Since the character finally revealed to</p><p>be Poe doesn't resemble him in the slightest, I'm not really giving away</p><p>much here.) Julian Sands turns in his usual, dependably geeky perfor-</p><p>mance; the neck-guzzling is so convincingly simulated that the film teeters</p><p>at the edge of being porn for the hardcore blood fetishism crowd. Instead</p><p>of a coffin, the vampire favors an ornate, gauze-draped bed. Shimako Sato</p><p>directed his feature debut, coscripting with Jane Corbett. With Suzanne</p><p>Hamilton and Kenneth Cranham. (Tsiuburaya Eizo/State Screen)T</p><p>Tale of the Body Thief, The</p><p>See Rice, Anne.</p><p>Taste the Blood of Dracula</p><p>Cinema, UK 1969. "You</p><p>—</p><p>you drink the filth!" Lines like that make Taste</p><p>the Blood ofDracula especially wonderful. A group of hypocritical Victorian</p><p>men—the kind who hold their wives and daughters to all manner of strait-</p><p>laced regulations while spending all their own spare time sniffing around</p><p>brothels—seek out increasingly kinky kicks and end up devil-worshiping,</p><p>playing games with Dracula's cape and a packet of his powdered blood, with</p><p>the results you'd expect. The most egregiously overprotected daughter gets</p><p>to ram a stake through her father's heart before it's all over, and you'll</p><p>cheer, too. Directed by Peter Sasdy; screenplay by Anthony Hickox and</p><p>188 DavidJ.Skal</p><p>John Burgess. With Geoffrey Keen, Gwen Watford, Linda Hayden, and</p><p>Peter Sallis. (Hammer/Warner Bros.)T</p><p>Television</p><p>The great technological vampire of modern times, television rests in a box</p><p>and is especially active at night, when it mesmerizes us with a baleful gaze.</p><p>Like a vampiric encounter, television is about living vicariously in a dead-</p><p>ened trance state. In his against- the -grain book, Four Arguments for the</p><p>Elimination of Television (1978), Jerry Mander lists typical phrases used by</p><p>Americans to describe their relationships with the tube: "I feel hypno-</p><p>tized," "Television sucks my energy," "My kids look like zombies when</p><p>they're watching it." Recalling his own experiences, the former advertising</p><p>executive wrote,</p><p>Even if the program I'd been watching had been of some particular</p><p>interest, the experience felt "antilife," as though I'd been drained in</p><p>some way, or I'd been used. I came away feeling a kind of internal</p><p>deadening, as ifmy whole physical being had gone dormant, the victim</p><p>of a vague soft assault. The longer I watched, the worse I'd feel. After-</p><p>ward, there was nearly always the desire to go outdoors or go to sleep,</p><p>to recover my strength and my feelings.</p><p>In the early 1950s, as television invaded America the way Dracula</p><p>wished he could have invaded England, vampires of the bloodsucking vari-</p><p>ety began to turn up regularly on ^^ggp</p><p>the airwaves, like sprites or famil-</p><p>iars. The original television horror</p><p>movie hostess was Vampira, whose</p><p>cartoony persona kept her fans</p><p>glued to their sets. Bela Lugosi</p><p>himself appeared on You Asked for</p><p>It at the request of a California</p><p>Denholm Elliott displays his wares in the</p><p>1969 BBC adaptation of Dracula.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 89</p><p>Bob Denver on Gilligan's Island. Tiny Tim on Love, American Style</p><p>housewife—for whom newfangled television, perhaps, awakened a nostal-</p><p>gia for low-tech leeching of the Lugosi kind. Dracula itselfwas produced</p><p>as an NBC Matinee Theater episode starring John Carradine as the count.</p><p>I have already recounted my own memories of Durward</p><p>Kirby and Carol</p><p>Burnett bringing vampires into the homes of millions via The Garry Moore</p><p>Show in the introduction to this book. In the 1960s, The Munsters comedy</p><p>series featured a half-vampire family of prime-time monsters, and home-</p><p>makers with nothing better to do weekday afternoons began to eagerly con-</p><p>sume images of living death on ABC-TV's Dark Shadows. Popular sixties</p><p>series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, and F Troop found ways</p><p>to feature vampires—even Gilligan's Island's Bob Denver found an excuse</p><p>to don a cape and widow's peak.</p><p>By the 1970s, vampires were appearing everywhere: the excellent tele-</p><p>vision appendix to Stephen Jones' The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide</p><p>lists over forty entries for the seventies alone. The most influential pro-</p><p>duction of this period was probably ABC's vampire-in-Vegas-themed</p><p>The Night Stalker ( 1971 ), which broke all ratings records for a made-for-</p><p>television movie when it first aired. The Night Stalker spun off a series,</p><p>1 90 David J. Skal</p><p>Ben Cross the Dark Shadows</p><p>revival. (Photofest)</p><p>and in 1974, a second TV vampire fea-</p><p>ture. Notable tele-vampires of the eighties</p><p>and nineties include the TV movie Nick</p><p>Knight (1989) and its spin-off series For-</p><p>ever Knight (1992), the Nightmare Clas-</p><p>sics adaptation of "Carmilla" (1989), the</p><p>made-for-cable horror comedy Nightlife</p><p>(1989)—in which Ben Cross' vampire role</p><p>seems to have had something with his be-</p><p>ing cast as Barnabas Collins in NBC's ill-</p><p>fated 1990 revival of Dark Shadows—and</p><p>the BBC's clever updating of Marschner's</p><p>1827 OPERA Der Vamfyr as The Vampyr:</p><p>A Soap Opera (1992).</p><p>Theater</p><p>Since the Romantic ferment of the early 1800s, the vampire has been dear</p><p>to the heart of theatrical melodrama; John Polidori's 1819 story "The</p><p>Vampyre" inspired at least seven stage adaptations and two operas during</p><p>the 1800s. The first and most influential was Le Vampire (1820), by the</p><p>French Romantic writer Charles Nodier, which was reworked in English</p><p>by James Robinson Planche as The Vampire, or the Bride of the Isles</p><p>(1820). Two Parisian burlesques of Nodier, one by Martinet and the</p><p>other by Scribe and Melesville, also appeared in 1820, creating a virtual</p><p>vampire mania on the Parisian stage. (Readers ofAnne RlCE will recognize</p><p>here the seeds of one of her most memorable settings, Le Theatre des</p><p>Vampires, wherein vampires like Lestat present themselves semi-openly to</p><p>postrevolutionary Parisian audiences as metaphors for aristocratic oppres-</p><p>sion.) Other vampire dramas and farces of this period include Les Trois</p><p>Vampires ou le clair de lune (1820) by Brazier, Gabriel and Armand;</p><p>Cadet Buiteux, vampire (1820) by Desaugiers; and George Blink's The</p><p>Vampire Bride, or the Tenant ofthe Tomb (c. 1820).</p><p>VIS FOR VAMPIRE 191</p><p>The basic Polidori/Nodier plot was adapted and revived in France and</p><p>England in 1851 by Alexandre Dumas and Dion BouciCAULT, respec-</p><p>tively; Boucicault later shortened his play and toured it to America as The</p><p>Phantom (1856). But aside from occasional revivals, new vampires were</p><p>largely absent from the stage until Hamilton Deane's 1924 stage adapta-</p><p>tion of Dracula, later rewritten for American audiences by John L.</p><p>Balderston. Dracula: The Vampire Play was an enormous transatlantic</p><p>success; adapted to the Cinema in 1931, it inaugurated the modern hor-</p><p>ror film—a vast, influential genre. The bulk ofvampire theater since has, in</p><p>fact, been Dracula-derived., in addition to the Deane/Balderston script,</p><p>there are dozens of alternate adaptations now available. One, Count Drac-</p><p>ula by Ted Tiller, enjoyed a great popularity in American regional theaters</p><p>in the 1970s. The 1977 Broadway revival of the Deane/Balderston play,</p><p>with whimsical sets by Edward Gorey and a commanding title perfor-</p><p>mance by Frank Langella, was the most successful and lucrative vampire</p><p>event ever mounted in the theater. More recent efforts, such as Charles</p><p>Busch's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1985), tend to be campy comedies.</p><p>Beginning in 1993, a Grand-Guignolesque series of kinky, in-your-face</p><p>vampire playlets were presented to overflowing midnight audiences by a</p><p>New York company called the Commedia del Sangue. See also cloaks</p><p>and capes; Countess Dracula; Dracula: A Musical Nightmare;</p><p>Dracula: A Pain in the Neck; Huntley, Raymond; Lugosi, Bela;</p><p>Opera.</p><p>To Sleep with a Vampire</p><p>See Dance of the Damned.</p><p>"Transfer, The"</p><p>Short story, UK 1912. Algernon Blackwood's imaginatively original story</p><p>features not one but two "vampires"—the first, a psychic sponge named</p><p>Mr. Frene:</p><p>... a man who drooped alone, but grew vital in a crowd . . . He vam-</p><p>pired, unknowingly, no doubt, everyone with whom he came in con-</p><p>tact; left them exhausted, tired, listless ... he took your ideas, your</p><p>strength, your very words, and later used them for his own benefit and</p><p>aggrandizement. Not evilly, of course; the man was good enough; but</p><p>Dorothy Peterson and Terrence Neill</p><p>the original Broadway production of</p><p>Daniel Day Lewis in Chris Bond's stag*</p><p>adaptation of Dracula.</p><p>*P5^s^^"</p><p>Christopher Birnau in The</p><p>La Commedia del Sangue:</p><p>Shaunte Dawn Steele and Troy Ac</p><p>>: Tina Colui</p><p>David Wurst and Bonnie Mcleod in Ohio</p><p>Iniversity's 1971 production of Dr</p><p>(Courtesy of Ohio University Archi</p><p>1 94 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>you felt he was dangerous owing to the facile way he absorbed into</p><p>himself all loose vitality that was to be had. His eyes and voice and</p><p>presence devitalized you. Life, it seemed, not highly organized enough</p><p>to resist, must shrink from his too near approach and hide away for fear</p><p>of being appropriated, for fear, that is, of—death.</p><p>Mr. Frene's rival vampire and comeuppance is a barren patch of earth</p><p>in an old rose garden, itself hungry for vitality. When Mr. Frene strays too</p><p>close, the starved earth devours him and is transformed into a lush and</p><p>verdant plot, "very strong, full-fed, and bursting thick with life." Black-</p><p>wood's story resonates by its identification of the vampire with identifiably</p><p>predatory aspects ofhuman psychology and the larger, devouring image of</p><p>nature and its cruel and inescapable interdependencies.</p><p>Transylvania</p><p>Its name meaning "across the forest," Transylvania is now one of the ma-</p><p>jor regions of Romania, formerly of Hungary. Bram Stoker, in research-</p><p>ing his novel Dracula, apparently drew upon folklorist Emily Gerard's</p><p>1888 book The Land Beyond the Forest in selecting Transylvania as the</p><p>home of his vampire warlord (see also Nosferatu). (During Stoker's</p><p>time, Transylvania was a Hungarian province; Dracula, in fact, refers to</p><p>himself at one point as a Szekeley, even though the name "Dracula" is Ro-</p><p>manian in origin—see Vlad THE IMPALER.) At some point in Dracula' s</p><p>composition, Stoker switched the name of Dracula's homeland from his</p><p>earlier choice, Styria—an old region of Austria that had previously been</p><p>the setting of Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" and Stenbock's "Sad</p><p>Story of a Vampire." The word "Transylvania" is certainly the better</p><p>choice: the region's name connotes the sense of a journey, transition, or</p><p>initiation involving a descent into, or encounter with, wildness. In the past</p><p>century, of course, Transylvania has become a pop culture dumping</p><p>ground for just about every monster under the sun—not just vampires,</p><p>but just as frequently Frankensteins, mummies, werewolves, etc. The lo-</p><p>cale is, nowadays, typically evoked for comedy, as in the movie spoof titles</p><p>Transylvania Twist (1989) and Transylvania 6-5000 (1985).</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 95</p><p>Twins of Evil</p><p>Cinema, UK 1971. Hammer's final installment of its three-part exploration</p><p>of the "Carmilla" story, previously including The Vampire Lovers (1970)</p><p>and Lust for A Vampire (1970) . This film continues Hammer's exploita-</p><p>tion of LESBIANISM as a profitable horror formula and mixes vampire con-</p><p>ventions with the trappings of Puritan witch hysteria. Peter Cusheng is</p><p>memorable as the hypocritical witch-finder, Gustav Weil, whose pious fa-</p><p>naticism thinly covers his own, nonsupernatural</p><p>form of bloodlust. John</p><p>Hough directed Anthony Tudor's screenplay. With Madeleine and Mary</p><p>Collinson (as the twins), Kathleen Byron, and Dennis Price. (Hammer/</p><p>Universal)T</p><p>u</p><p>Uncle Was a Vampire</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1959. I am mentioning this film for two reasons: first, it</p><p>features actor Christopher Lee in a DRACULA-parodying role; and second,</p><p>because there is nothing else to fill out this alphabetical listing. The ori-</p><p>ginal title of this film was Hard Times for Vampires, which pretty much</p><p>sums up the letter U—and the film itself. Directed by "Steno" (Stefano</p><p>Venzina) from a script by Edoardo Anton, Dino Verde, and Alessandro</p><p>Continenza. With Renato Rascel as the nephew. (Maxima Film/Cei Incom/</p><p>Montflour Film)</p><p>1</p><p>Valley of the Zombies</p><p>Cinema, USA 1946. The most interesting thing about this cheapie is the</p><p>presence of actor Ian Keith as a vampire named Ormand Murks, who takes</p><p>the blood of his victims—and then thoughtfully replaces it with embalm-</p><p>ing fluid. Keith lost out at the eleventh hour to Bela Lugosi for the role of</p><p>Dracula not once but twice—in both Tod Browning's 1931 film as well</p><p>as the 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Keith,</p><p>well known for his Shakespearean stage roles, here demonstrates some</p><p>eye-popping histrionics (aided by shameless under- the -chin lighting). If</p><p>you squint, you might get a murky approximation of the Dracula-that-</p><p>almost-was. Anticlimactically, it takes but a normal bullet to dispatch him.</p><p>Directed by Philip Ford. Screenplay by D. McGowan and Stuart Mac-</p><p>Gowan. With Robert Livingston, Adrian Booth, and Thomas Jackson.</p><p>(Republic Pictures)</p><p>Vamp</p><p>Cinema, USA 1986. Amazonian disco diva Grace Jones embodies vora-</p><p>cious, phallic femininity that nerdy college guys find both scary and hot</p><p>—</p><p>all the hotter because of the scariness. A trio of frat brothers go to the big</p><p>city looking for a stripper to bring back for a campus party. They find</p><p>Jones instead, a zillion-year-old Egyptian vampire who has party ideas all</p><p>her own. For a formula teen comedy, this is pretty passable. Directed by</p><p>Richard Wenk, from his own screenplay based on a story by Donald P.</p><p>Borchers. With Chris Makepeace, Sandy Baron, Robert Rusler, and Gedde</p><p>Watanabe. (Balcor Films/New World Pictures)T</p><p>200 David J. Skal</p><p>Maila Nurmi reprised her "Vampira"</p><p>characterization in Plan Nine from</p><p>Outer Space (1959), the celebrated</p><p>"worst movie of all time."</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/</p><p>Hollywood Movie Posters).</p><p>Vampira</p><p>The original television horror host-</p><p>ess, Vampira slinked her way into</p><p>cult-camp legend with her Charles</p><p>Addams-inspired persona and pat-</p><p>ter that struck a morbid chord for</p><p>Southern California audiences in</p><p>1954. Vampira was played by actress/model Maila Nurmi (niece of the</p><p>famed Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi), a wasp-waisted beauty who provided</p><p>corny commentary during commercial breaks in grade-Z (as opposed to</p><p>B) horror movies, a formula later widely imitated by television stations</p><p>across the country. Vampira's fame got a grim boost following the death</p><p>of her friend James Dean—scandal magazines absurdly painted her as</p><p>Dean's "Black Madonna," who dabbled in witchcraft and hexes and some-</p><p>how contributed to Dean's untimely demise. But Vampira's greatest pub-</p><p>lic exposure was to come from a most unlikely place: her mute appearance</p><p>in a film by Edward D. Wood, Jr., Plan Ninefrom Outer Space (1959), a</p><p>movie so dreadful that it has achieved a paradoxical pop culture immortal-</p><p>ity. Famed for her reclusiveness, Vampira came out of retirement in the</p><p>1980s for a legal battle with TV horror hostess Elvira over alleged in-</p><p>fringement, pointing out similarities between the characters. Rather than</p><p>accept a settlement that would have relinquished all rights to the Vampira</p><p>character, Nurmi dropped her suit. In the 1988 film Midnight, Lynn</p><p>Redgrave played a television personality based loosely on Vampira; the</p><p>character (played by Lisa Marie) was directiy resurrected by filmmaker Tim</p><p>Burton for his 1994 extravaganza Ed Wood. See also television.</p><p>Vampire</p><p>The word vampire (or vampyre) entered the English language in 1732, ac-</p><p>cording to The Oxford English Dictionary, perhaps derived from the Turkish</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 20</p><p>1</p><p>word for witch, uber, and transformed in Slavic languages as upior, upir,</p><p>upyr, and, penultimately, vampyr and vampir. Matthew Bunson, author of</p><p>The Vampire Encyclopedia, suggests that another source may have been</p><p>the Lithuanian wempti—"to drink."</p><p>Vampire, The</p><p>Cinema, Mexico 1957. A lovingly wonderful fifties update on the Universal-</p><p>style vampires of the thirties and forties, right down to the widow's peak,</p><p>cape, and hypnotic medallion sported by Mexican actor German Robles as</p><p>Count Lavud, whose corny bat transformations, accomplished with the</p><p>simplest reverse -angle editing, are indescribably delightful in their low-tech</p><p>inventiveness (and bring to mind all the opportunities for childish wonder</p><p>and belief-suspension that make movies so attractive in the first place). Fer-</p><p>nando Mendez directed. Screenplay by H. Rodriquez and Ramon Obon.</p><p>With Ariadna Welter, Abel Salazar, and July Danery. Rosario Solano's cob-</p><p>web-sensitive cinematography deserves special commendation. The film</p><p>was followed within a year by an equally entertaining sequel, The Vampire's</p><p>Coffin. (Salazar/Cinematografica ABSA/American International)</p><p>Vampire and the Ballerina, The</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1960. You won't believe the "rehearsals" that transpire</p><p>when a troupe of showgirls are billeted in a vampire's castle, surely the</p><p>nuttiest fantasy on dance training outside of Dario Argento's Suspiria</p><p>(1977). We never see the actual performance, just the jazzercise warmups</p><p>—</p><p>but the dead remain cool to the come-ons. There's a nifty sex-reversal of</p><p>Bela LUGOSl's classic staircase bit when the visitors encounter an undead</p><p>countess, and the climactic sunrise vampire meltdown is heavily influenced</p><p>by Horror of Dracula (1958). The film contains some truly insane mo-</p><p>ments (such as a vampire who apparently infects a female victim just so he</p><p>can have someone to stake), and the papier-mache mask of the main villain</p><p>is one of the most unconvincing vampire visages ever devised for human</p><p>consumption. All in all, a film that expects you to be in, well, the proper</p><p>mood. It also amounts to a kind of deja-vu bookend for The Playgirls</p><p>and the Vampire, which also featured two of its lead performers. Directed</p><p>by Renato Polselli. Script by Polselli and Ernesto Gastaldi. With Walter</p><p>Brandi, Maria Luisa Rolando, and Helene Remy. (ACIF Consorzio/</p><p>United Artists)</p><p>202 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Vampire at Midnight</p><p>Cinema, USA 1987. It had to happen—psychobabble goes gothic! Imag-</p><p>ine a vampire shrink insisting he is "empowering" his victims to "break</p><p>through limits" and insisting on their "capacity to change." The ambience</p><p>is, ahem, drop-dead chic—instead of coffins, we get high-tech sculptural</p><p>black pallets surrounded by incense burners and bubble lights. This stuff is</p><p>smart and funny, and speaks volumes about the malignant undercurrents</p><p>of pop psychology and therapeutic predation. Directed by Gregory Mc-</p><p>Clatchy. Screenplay by Dulany Ross Clements. With Jason Williams, Gus-</p><p>tav Vintas, and Lesley Milne. (Key Video/Skouras International)</p><p>Vampire Bat, The</p><p>Cinema, USA 1933. The low- budget outfit Majestic Pictures filmed this</p><p>little charmer on the Universal backlot, and ifyou listen carefully, you will</p><p>hear at least three soundtrack bites from UniversaPs Dracula and</p><p>Frankenstein—a wolf, dogs, carriage sounds, etc. Dwight Frye, Dracula's</p><p>memorable Mr. Renfield, here pushes the Renfield bit over the top as</p><p>Herman Gleib, a village halfwit scapegoated by the locals for the actual</p><p>blood -crimes of Dr. Otto van Niemann (Lionel Atwill). Fay Wray is the</p><p>female lead, though she doesn't display anywhere the lung-power she</p><p>brought to bear on King Kong and Mystery</p><p>of the Wax Museum. And while you listen</p><p>to the burgomeister (Lionel Belmore) wax</p><p>rhapsodic</p><p>on vampire lore, ponder the fact</p><p>that Belmore himself once had a wonder-</p><p>fully direct connection to the most famous</p><p>vampire promulgator of all time—while a</p><p>member of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre</p><p>company, Belmore had his paychecks signed</p><p>by none other than Irving's devoted man-</p><p>ager, Dracula's creator, Bram STOKER. With</p><p>Melvyn Douglas and Maude Eburne. Di-</p><p>rected by Frank Strayer. (Majestic Pictures)T</p><p>The Vampire Bat: Advertising art for the 1933 filn</p><p>LIONEL /</p><p>ATWILL /</p><p>fAYWRAYV</p><p>MtlVIN DOUGLM</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 203</p><p>Vampire Circus</p><p>Cinema, UK 1971. The Circus of Nights comes to town, but the townsfolk</p><p>are incredibly stupid—they keep coming back night after night to watch</p><p>circus performers turning literally into (acro)bats and were-panthers, but</p><p>somehow never connect this to the blood plague that is destroying their</p><p>village. Vampire Circus nonetheless conjures evocative metaphors of vam-</p><p>pirism as a dark carnival, alternately a kingdom of terror and a realm of</p><p>gaudy fascination. Directed by Robert Young. Screenplay by Judson Kin-</p><p>berg from a story by George Baxt and Wilbur Stark. With Adrienne Corri,</p><p>Laurence Payne, and Thorley Walters. (Hammer Films)T</p><p>Vampire Hunter D</p><p>Cinema, Japan 1985. Futuristic horror with all manner of graphic grue-</p><p>someness, and a mysterious vampire bounty hunter in the impassive, Clint</p><p>Eastwood mold. Definitely worth a look, especially ifyou haven't been ex-</p><p>posed to the stylized charms of Japanese animation. This ain't Count</p><p>Duckula. Directed by Tayoo Ashida. (Epic/Sony/Streamline Pictures)</p><p>Vampire in Brooklyn</p><p>Cinema, USA 1995. The less said about this the better. Released within a</p><p>few weeks of another lame spoof, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Vam-</p><p>pire in Brooklyn demonstrates that some ideas ought to stay buried. Di-</p><p>rected by Wes Craven from a screenplay by Charles Murphy, Michael</p><p>Lucker, and Chris Parker. With Angela Bassett, Allen Payne, Kadeem</p><p>Hardison, and Zakes Mokae. (Paramount) T</p><p>Vampire Lesbians of Sodom</p><p>Theater, USA 1 985. Vampires are known for longevity, as playwright/per-</p><p>former Charles Busch proved with this cult comedy classic, which ran for</p><p>years off-Broadway. Two rival succubi of antiquity (one originally played</p><p>by Busch) set up shop in Hollywood, chewing necks and scenery in the</p><p>best drac-queen tradition. La Condesa, the elder succubus, shows off</p><p>Busch's peerless flair for bitchery in a characteristic speech:</p><p>Now you've really gone too far. You imagine yourself quite the cunning</p><p>vixen. You have delusions that you can conquer me. Hollywood is my</p><p>204 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>town. For centuries, you have been an albatross around my neck. . . .</p><p>did I chose revenge? No. And why? because I am a great lady. I conduct</p><p>myself with dignity and grandeur whilst you roll in the gutter. You've</p><p>got as much glamour as a common street whore, and now, madame,</p><p>you have gone too far. I am the queen of the vampires and I shall never,</p><p>never, relinquish my hold on Hollywood!</p><p>" 'Impersonator' is too feeble a word for Mr. Busch," the New York</p><p>Times opined, "the female roles he creates are hilarious vamps, but also</p><p>high comic characters . . . the audience laughs at the first line and goes</p><p>right on laughing at every line to the end, and even at some of the</p><p>silences." See also homosexuality; lesbianism; theater.</p><p>Vampire Lovers, The</p><p>Cinema, UK 1970. The first of three adaptations of "Carmilla," The</p><p>Vampire Lovers marked a landmark move by Hammer Films from sexual</p><p>insinuation into overt eroticism. Polish-born beauty Ingrid Pitt is particu-</p><p>larly striking as a topless, deathless lesbian-vamp. The New York Times</p><p>took note of the film's unblinking Sapphism: "Sure, she entices and de-</p><p>stroys a couple of guys, but only because they're in her way en route to</p><p>those gorgeous girls. Miss Pitt, specifically, is a luscious brunette, who is</p><p>exposed in a nude scene and prowls about the rest of the time in a di-</p><p>aphanous shift that leaves little to the imagination. And her willing victims</p><p>... are just as nobly endowed. Vampirism, which has become a silly busi-</p><p>ness on the screen, is, at least, easy on the eyes in this case." Directed</p><p>by Roy Ward Baker. Screenplay by Tudor Gates. With Madeleine Smith,</p><p>Peter Cushing, Pippa Steele, George Cole, and Dawn Addams. (Hammer</p><p>Films) See also Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan; lesbianism.</p><p>Vampirella</p><p>A buxom, scantily clad comic-book character, created in 1969 by Forrest J</p><p>Ackerman, best known as founding editor of Famous Monsters ofFilmland</p><p>magazine. Inspired by the French comic character Barbarella, Vampirella</p><p>is a denizen of the dying planet Drakulon, where blood, rather than water,</p><p>is the basic element. Vampy's exploits on the blood-planet earth formed</p><p>the basis for the longest-running vampire comic book in history, with 112</p><p>issues in its original series (which ended in 1983). In the 1990s, Vam-</p><p>pirella continues to thrive in reprints and new graphic adventures. The</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 205</p><p>runner-up for vampire comic longevity is Marvel's Tomb ofDracula series,</p><p>which had a 70-issue run from 1972 to 1979.</p><p>Vampire's Kiss</p><p>Cinema, USA 1989. A landmark film for two reasons: first, the lead actor</p><p>(Nicolas Cage) eats a live water bug on camera, carrying the quest for Ren-</p><p>FlELDesque realism to dizzying new heights; and, second, for being the first</p><p>film to deal with vampirism as a kind of metaphor for sexual harassment at</p><p>the office. Cage plays Peter Loew, a creepy literary agent who gets creepier</p><p>when he begins to believe that he's been bitten by a you-know-what. This</p><p>gives him the permission he needs to behave abominably toward his secre-</p><p>tary (Maria Conchita Alonso), the first move in a self-destructive binge that</p><p>ends with his sleeping under an overturned sofa and having his heart</p><p>spiked. Cage's performance here can make you itch, which may or may not</p><p>be a compliment. Directed by Robert Bierman. Screenplay by Joseph Min-</p><p>ion. With Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley (as the vampire's shrink), Kasi</p><p>Lemmons, and Bob Lujan. (Hemdale Pictures)T</p><p>Vampiri, I</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1 956. Director Mario Bava, best known for Black Sunday,</p><p>got his teeth wet on vampires while serving as cameraman for this moody</p><p>spin on the Erzebet Bathory legend; the nominal director, Riccardo</p><p>Freda, walked off the set in midproduction and Bava ended up directing as</p><p>well as lensing. Bava's black-and-white CinemaScope compositions are of-</p><p>ten quite beautiful and evocative of earlier classics; one setting in particu-</p><p>lar, a hallway full of billowing curtains, immediately brings to mind Paul</p><p>Leni's The Cat and the Canary (1927). Screenplay by Piero Regnoli and</p><p>Rik Sjostrom. With Gianna Maria Canale, Antoine Balpetre, Paul Miller,</p><p>and Carlo D'Angelo. (Titanus/Athena Cinematografica)</p><p>Vampyr</p><p>Cinema, France/Germany 1931-1932. I'm not sure that Carl Theodor</p><p>Dreyer's Vampyr is quite the cinematic masterpiece many people believe it to</p><p>be—although it is, without question, one of the most evocatively dreamlike</p><p>films ever made. Vampyr was financed by a rich German baron, Nicolas de</p><p>Gunzberg, who also acted in the film as David Gray, a young man pulled into</p><p>the ambiguous vampire realm. The film's most famous sequence features</p><p>Gunzberg watching his own funeral (the camera assuming his place in the</p><p>206 David J. Ska I</p><p>Vampyr: Two frame enlargements from</p><p>Carl Theodor Dreyer's moody meditation</p><p>on the vampire theme.</p><p>(Courtesy of Scott MacQueen)</p><p>coffin) and the sudden, unsettling ap-</p><p>pearance of an ancient female vampire</p><p>who peers down at him, and us. The</p><p>film was shot silent, with a sparse dia-</p><p>logue track added later in French,</p><p>German, and English. J. Sheridan Le</p><p>Fanu's "Carmilla" is often cited as</p><p>Vampyr1</p><p>s source of inspiration, but</p><p>other than the fact that both works</p><p>deal with vampires, the connection is,</p><p>to say the least, obscure. Dreyer had</p><p>previously received high critical praise</p><p>for The Passion ofJoan ofArc (1928),</p><p>but Vampyr (like NOSFERATU at the</p><p>time of its first American release) was</p><p>roundly</p><p>snubbed. New York Times critic</p><p>C. Hooper Trask was typical in his dis-</p><p>missal of the film, which he called "pe-</p><p>culiarly irritating" and "one of the worst</p><p>pictures I have ever attended," though</p><p>admitting that "there were some scenes that gripped with a brutal directness."</p><p>Trask attributed this not to Dreyer but to the actors, whom, he speculated,</p><p>grew into their roles over the uncommonly lengthy production period—over</p><p>one year. Although the release date of Vampyr is usually given as 1932, I</p><p>found an illustrated review of the picture in a Portuguese film magazine dated</p><p>January 1931, suggesting a much earlier production than is generally sup-</p><p>posed. Screenplay by Dreyer and Christen Jul. With Julian West (Gunzberg),</p><p>Maurice Schutz, Sybille Schmitz, and Rena Mandel. (Tobis-Klangfilm)Y</p><p>'Vampyre, The"</p><p>Short story, UK 1819. John Polidori's elaboration of Lord Byron's 1816</p><p>fragment of a horror story (part of the informal literary competition be-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 207</p><p>tween Byron, Polidori, and the Shelleys which ultimately produced</p><p>Frankenstein) is, with "Carmilla" and Dracula, one of the most influ-</p><p>ential pieces of vampire literature in English. In many ways it overshad-</p><p>ows Dracula, as evidenced by the modern tendency to dramatize Bram</p><p>Stoker's novel by recasting Dracula's repellent monster in a seductive,</p><p>Byronic mode. It's interesting that both "The Vampyre" and Dracula</p><p>were written by authors who had tangled professional relationships with</p><p>flamboyant, demanding (and, by extension, draining) men: in Stoker's</p><p>case, it was the actor Henry Irving; in Polidori's case, it was George</p><p>Gordon, Lord Byron, whom Polidori served as physician, traveling com-</p><p>panion, and amanuensis. Recent films and books about the Byron/</p><p>Shelley/Polidori menage have imaginatively explored the homoerotic</p><p>currents of domination and submission in Polidori's and Byron's rela-</p><p>tionship; in the film Haunted Summer (1988) Polidori is depicted</p><p>frankly as Byron's compliant boy-toy. (See also my entries on Bram</p><p>Stoker and homosexuality for some further speculation on why major</p><p>works of vampire literature—from Polidori to Anne Rice—so often have</p><p>male-male ambivalence, tension, and rivalry at their cores.) Polidori, in</p><p>any event, did write "The Vampyre" after a nasty falling-out with Byron,</p><p>and it is tempting to read the tale as his conscious attempt to further</p><p>skewer the Byron mystique—Byron's former lover Lady Caroline Lamb</p><p>had already done the deed in her 1816 novel Glenarvon.</p><p>Polidori's vampire was the rakish Lord Ruthven, a name taken direcdy</p><p>from the Lamb novel (her character's full name was Ruthven Glenarvon).</p><p>Polidori's original character name, however, was "Lord Strongmore." In</p><p>the memorable opening lines of the story, in which Polidori introduces</p><p>the first Byronic vampire to a hungry world, he also seems to intuit the</p><p>vampire's perennial function as a sociocultural vacuum pump, a bottom-</p><p>less metaphor capable of drinking all the attention we care to feed it:</p><p>It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon a Lon-</p><p>don winter, there appeared at the various parties of leaders of the ton a</p><p>nobleman, more remarkable for his singularities, than his rank. He</p><p>gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein.</p><p>Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention,</p><p>that he might by a look quell it, and throw fear into those breasts where</p><p>thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could</p><p>not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye,</p><p>208 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at</p><p>one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart, but</p><p>fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it</p><p>could not pass. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every</p><p>house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to</p><p>violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at</p><p>having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention.</p><p>Polidori introduces a young gentleman named Aubrey, who accepts</p><p>an invitation from Ruthven to tour with him abroad, but is appalled</p><p>at Ruthven's licentious ways, in particular his predilection for ruining</p><p>women. Continuing his travels alone in Greece, Aubrey meets and falls in</p><p>love with a peasant girl named Ianthe, who introduces him to vampire folk-</p><p>tales and is summarily killed by a vampire herself. Aubrey falls into a fevered</p><p>delirium, waking to find Ruthven once more at his side. They reconcile and</p><p>continue their tour, but are attacked by highwaymen and Ruthven is mor-</p><p>tally wounded. His dying wish is that Aubrey not tell anyone of his death for</p><p>a year. Aubrey swears, and Ruthven dies, but his body disappears after being</p><p>laid "in the first cold ray of the moon" at Ruthven's request. When Aubrey</p><p>returns to England, he is horrified to discover that his beloved sister is en-</p><p>gaged—to Lord Ruthven, who has somehow returned from the dead. Para-</p><p>lyzed into inaction by his solemn oath, Aubrey begins to lose his mind and</p><p>cannot prevent the vampiric conquering of his sibling. On his deathbed he</p><p>breaks his oath and tells his story, but it is too late</p><p>—"Lord Ruthven had dis-</p><p>appeared, and Aubrey's sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!"</p><p>Polidori's story was first published in The New Monthly Magazine under</p><p>Byron's name and, even after the ensuing controversy and revelation of the</p><p>true writer, was widely believed to be Byron's work (even Goethe was taken</p><p>in by the hoax). Highly successful theatrical and operatic adaptations were</p><p>mounted throughout Europe (see also opera; theater). Polidori didn't</p><p>live to see much of the theatrical activity generated by his story; he died in</p><p>1821 at the age of twenty-five, possibly a suicide. But "The Vampyre" has</p><p>lived on, the cornerstone of a vast and deathless literary and theatrical genre.</p><p>Vampyr, Der</p><p>See opera.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 209</p><p>Van Helsing, Abraham</p><p>The fictional nemesis of Dracula, created by Bram Stoker in his 1897</p><p>novel, Abraham Van Helsing is a Dutch medical specialist in obscure dis-</p><p>eases who leads a successful battle against the vampire count after setting</p><p>conventional, rationalist medicine on its head with his packets ofwolfbane,</p><p>crucifixes, garlic wreaths, wooden stakes, etc. On one level, Van Helsing</p><p>represents a kind of reactionary patriarchal authority, just the kind of moral</p><p>force many Victorians felt would help stop the rising tide of homosexual-</p><p>ity (as represented by Stoker's college friend Oscar Wilde), prostitution,</p><p>SYPHILIS, women's independence, and other scary, disruptive cultural devel-</p><p>opments. On another level Van Helsing represents the modern tussle be-</p><p>tween science and superstition, rationality and religion, etc.</p><p>It has been suggested that Stoker patterned Van Helsing after the</p><p>Hungarian scholar Arminius Vambery, an authority on orientalia and ex-</p><p>otic lore who had been the guest of Stoker and Henry Irving at the</p><p>Lyceum Theatre's Beefsteak Club (and is at one point directly referred to</p><p>by Van Helsing as "my friend Arminius"). Frankly, I think this is a bit of a</p><p>stretch; the similarity of "Vambery" and "Van Helsing" is, after all, quite</p><p>slight, compared to the obvious and exact correspondence between</p><p>Stoker's full first name—Abraham—and that of Van Helsing, who cer-</p><p>tainly acts as Stoker's authorial mouthpiece in the novel. Since Stoker in-</p><p>tended Dracula as a possible staged role for Irving, one of the most</p><p>important players in Stoker's life, it would be more than interesting to</p><p>know the extent to which Stoker may have projected himself into the Van</p><p>Helsing persona. The first actor to play Van Helsing was the Lyceum per-</p><p>former Tom Reynolds, in Stoker's 1897 staged reading of the book;</p><p>Hamilton Deane followed in his own 1924 adaptation of the novel; the</p><p>American version of the stage play gave steady employment to Edward</p><p>Van Sloan in 1927;</p><p>film is Blood for Dracula,</p><p>and the original Italian title was Dracula ccrca sangue di vergine e . . .</p><p>mori di sete. Directed by Paul Morrissey, from his screenplay. With Arno</p><p>Juer-ging, Maxime McKendry, Milena Vucotic, Vittorio De Sica, and, in</p><p>an unbilled cameo, Roman Polanski. (CC Champion/Yanne-Rassam/</p><p>Bryanston) See also class warfare.</p><p>* Anemia</p><p>Literally, "without blood." Anemia</p><p>comprises a wide range of blood dis-</p><p>orders, including an overall loss of</p><p>blood, a deficiency of red blood cells,</p><p>and a lack of hemoglobin. It is a</p><p>Udo Kier in Andy Warhol's Dracula.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/</p><p>Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>1 David J. Ska I</p><p>cliche of vampire fiction that anemia is the first diagnosis of traditional</p><p>medical authority, which usually contributes to the death of the patient,</p><p>who then is resurrected as a vampire. Chastened by metaphysical negli-</p><p>gence, the doctors involved characteristically undergo a conversion to a</p><p>more fluid worldview. The distrust of modern medicine and the shaking</p><p>up of scientific certitude is a persistent subtext of vampire stories. See also</p><p>BLOOD.</p><p>Anemia</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1986. Alberto Abruzzese's comedy/allegory about a leader</p><p>of Italy's Communist party who becomes a vampire was dismissed by Va-</p><p>riety as "a cerebral in-joke without a punchline. . . . Though filled with</p><p>potentially amusing ideas, [the] film is of doubtful comprehension outside</p><p>Italy, and there only appreciable by a narrow circle of souls on the same</p><p>wavelength." Abruzzese scripted as well as directed. With Hanns Zischler,</p><p>Gioia Maria Scola, and Gerard Landry. (RAI-TV Channel 3).</p><p>Anno Dracula</p><p>Fiction, UK 1992. Kim Newman's delirious pastiche of the Dracula legend</p><p>presents an alternate Victorian universe in which Vlad Tepes has con-</p><p>quered England, married Queen Victoria, and affixed the head of Abra-</p><p>ham Van Helsing to a pike outside Buckingham Palace. Dr. Jack Seward,</p><p>Van Helsing's former cohort, is now Jack the Ripper; the whores of</p><p>Whitechapel are more than metaphorical vampires here. Vampirism is a</p><p>kind of reverse imperialism, with the "warm" population reduced to sec-</p><p>ond-class citizenship. Oscar Wilde has converted, Gilbert and Sullivan are</p><p>penning vampire operettas, and Bram Stoker's social-climbing wife hosts</p><p>vampire salons in Chelsea. The London Times called Anno Dracula "a</p><p>tour de force which succeeds brilliantly on several different levels—as a</p><p>minutely detailed social history which cleverly pastiches the conventions of</p><p>the 19th-century novel, as a Victorian Who's Who, and as a full-blooded</p><p>flesh-ripping yarn in its own right." Anno Dracula is an enormously satis-</p><p>fying read for vampire addicts. This devotee would ordinarily have gulped</p><p>it down in a single sitting, but I chose instead to spread the task over sev-</p><p>eral nights to prolong the pleasure. See also ARMADILLO.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 1</p><p>Anti-Semitism</p><p>This is a persistent subtext of vampire stories, no doubt an offshoot of the</p><p>ugly Christian blood-libel of Jews as a race requiring the blood of gentile</p><p>babies in its rituals. Although it is rarely commented upon, a long literary</p><p>tradition of villainous Semitic stereotypes informed Bram Stoker's 1897</p><p>conception of Dracula, originally presented as a horrific, hook-nosed</p><p>Shylock from Transylvania (and a close cousin of another mesmeric Jew-</p><p>ish predator of the literary 1890s—George Du Maurier's "filthy black He-</p><p>brew," Svengali).</p><p>The Shylock- Dracula nexus was explored only once on the screen, in</p><p>Max Schreck's beak-faced impersonation of Dracula in Nosferatu</p><p>(1922). In a more ironic vein, comedian Lenny Bruce conflated Dracula</p><p>and Jewishness in a series of movie-monster comedy routines in the late</p><p>1950s. More recently, Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan stirred out-</p><p>rage and controversy when he refused to disavow the "essential truth" of</p><p>an associate's public description of Jews as "bloodsuckers." See also Ewers,</p><p>Hans Heinz.</p><p>Armadillo</p><p>This burrowing, bony-plated, nocturnal mammal indigenous to South</p><p>and Central America and the southwestern United States became part of</p><p>Hollywood vampire lore through the efforts of film director Tod Brown-</p><p>ing, who employed Dasypi novemcincti as bit players in not one but two</p><p>famous vampire pictures: London After Midnight (1927) and Drac-</p><p>ula (1931). For totally obscure reasons, Browning seems to have felt that</p><p>the peculiar, armored animals would lend an eerie ambience to deserted</p><p>houses and castles (they echo, in a sense, the medieval suits of armor that</p><p>decorate the gothic tradition); but their appearance in Dracula heralding</p><p>Bela Lugosi's descent down the crumbling staircase is usually regarded as</p><p>nothing more than camp in its highest Hollywood form. Oddly, Brown-</p><p>ing was not the first filmmaker to relate the armadillo to the vampire; a</p><p>record exists of a lost silent film called Vampire Bat and Armadillo</p><p>(1914), though this was most likely some kind of documentary curiosity.</p><p>In his immensely clever 1992 pastiche, Anno Dracula, novelist Kim</p><p>Newman describes the latest inhabitants of Buckingham Palace, following</p><p>Dracula's subjugation of England: "... an armadillo wriggled by her feet,</p><p>its rear parts clogged with its own dirt. Vlad Tepes had raided Regent's</p><p>1 2 David J. Skal</p><p>Park Zoo and had exotic species roaming loose in the Palace. This poor</p><p>dentate was merely one of his more harmless pets." Costume designer</p><p>Eiko Ishioka's armor for Vlad the Impaler in Bram Stoker's Dracula</p><p>(1992) was intended to be wolflike, but succeeded mostly in making actor</p><p>Gary Oldman himself look remarkably like an armadillo.</p><p>The next step in the ongoing dance of the armadillo and the vampire is</p><p>obvious, and is given here gratis to any filmmaker or novelist who might</p><p>like to make use of it: a little genetic engineering could result in a vampire</p><p>with no need for a coffin of any kind, just a shady place to roll up into a</p><p>light-proof ball.</p><p>The Arrival</p><p>Cinema, USA 1990. An undistinguished addition to the vampire-from-</p><p>outer-space subgenre, better examples of which include Lifeforce</p><p>(1985), Not of This Earth (1957, remade 1988). It is nowhere near as</p><p>bad, however, as Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). Directed by</p><p>David Schmoeller. Screenplay by Daniel Ljoka. With John Saxon, Joseph</p><p>Culp, and Michael J. Pollard. (Del Mar Entertainment)</p><p>Astral Body</p><p>An ethereal counterpart to the physical human form described in many oc-</p><p>cult traditions, the astral body is believed to contain the spirit-self and</p><p>physically separates itself from the heavy body in the course of such phe-</p><p>nomena as astral projection (the out-of-body experience), bilocation, re-</p><p>mote viewing, etc. In certain explanations of vampirism, the corpse itself</p><p>does not reanimate, but instead sends forth an astral double which carries</p><p>blood back to the grave to replenish the vampire's physical body. In this</p><p>way, the incorporeal vampire can pass through doors, keyholes, and in</p><p>general pull off the shape-shifting tricks that are the vampire's stock in</p><p>trade. However, the theory does not explain how blood itself is demateri-</p><p>alized at the site of the attack and later reconstituted in the grave. A con-</p><p>fusing sequence in John Badham's film version of Dracula (1979) seems</p><p>to toy with the idea of an astral double. The vampire Mina Van Helsing</p><p>exists in two forms: one hideous and zombielike, and one plump and pink</p><p>and pretty. But since they are both killed independendy by physical means</p><p>(one by a stake and one by surgical removal of her heart), it is difficult to</p><p>know what, exactly, Badham was getting at.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 13</p><p>Atom Age Vampire</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1961. Mario Bava, the director of the vampire classic</p><p>Black Sunday (1960), is often erroneously credited as producer ofAnton</p><p>Guilio Majano's spin on the theme of an obsessed doctor attempting to</p><p>restore a disfigured woman's face. The cure, of course, involves the Erze-</p><p>bet BATHORY-style sacrifice of other young women. In this case, the cov-</p><p>eted substance is not</p><p>he reprised the role in the 1931 film version as well as</p><p>in Dracula's Daughter in 1936. Other memorable screen Van Helsings</p><p>have included Peter Cushing (the record holder), Frank Finlay (in the</p><p>BBC miniseries COUNT DRACULA, opposite Louis Tourdan), Laurence</p><p>Olivier (opposite Frank Langella in the 1979 film), and most recently,</p><p>Anthony Hopkins in the 1992 Coppola film Bram Stoker^s Dracula. In</p><p>recent years, the role ofVan Helsing in stage productions has increasingly</p><p>been the focus of nontraditional casting choices and has been successfully</p><p>interpreted by women and minority performers.</p><p>2 1 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Edward Van Sloan as the master vampire hunter</p><p>Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula's Daughter.</p><p>Van Sloan, Edward</p><p>A San Francisco-born character actor</p><p>(1882-1964), Edward Van Sloan is</p><p>best known for his interpretation of the</p><p>Van Helsing role in Dracula, begin-</p><p>ning with the 1927 Broadway play and</p><p>reprised in the 1931 film version—both</p><p>opposite vampire arch-actor Bela Lu-</p><p>gosi. Van Sloan was selected for the</p><p>part by the publisher-producer Horace</p><p>Liveright, who had seen him play a</p><p>psychiatrist in a New York production</p><p>of Hans WerfePs drama Schweiger. Van</p><p>Sloan had little hope for a long run in Dracula. "I had been in five plays,</p><p>none of which had lasted more than three weeks." He went into Dracula,</p><p>"figuring it would at least buy cakes and ale" for a fortnight. Instead he</p><p>played Van Helsing on stage for nearly two years, before repeating the</p><p>role in Tod Browning's classic film. Van Sloan appeared in several other</p><p>macabre films in the 1930s and 1940s—usually in professorial or medical</p><p>parts—including Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932), and re-</p><p>turned to the Van Helsing role in 1936 for Dracula's Daughter.</p><p>Varney the Vampyre, or The Feast of Blood</p><p>Fiction, UK 1847. An absurdly long (850 pages; the author was paid by</p><p>the typeset line), crudely written "penny dreadful" novel by James Mal-</p><p>colm Rymer which nonetheless found a wide Victorian readership and</p><p>stabilized the conventions of literary vampirism for future horror writers</p><p>—</p><p>most notably Bram Stoker. Lord Francis Varney is a bloodsucker in the</p><p>Lord Ruthven mold, who is regularly roused from death by the power</p><p>of moonlight to further his feasting at the throats of virtuous virgins. The</p><p>following celebrated passage is typical of the campy prose style that per-</p><p>meates the book:</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 2 1 1</p><p>The figure turns half-round, and the light falls upon the face. It is per-</p><p>fectly white—perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the</p><p>lips are drawn back, and the principal feature next to those dreadful</p><p>eyes is the teeth—the fearful-looking teeth—projecting like those of</p><p>some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It ap-</p><p>proaches the bed with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together</p><p>the long nails that literally appear to hang from the finger ends. No</p><p>sound comes from its lips. Is she going mad—that young and beautiful</p><p>girl exposed to so much terror?</p><p>Apparently in order to increase the verbiage, Rymer's vampire pauses at</p><p>regular intervals on his way to his inevitable bed-supper, hypnotically fasci-</p><p>nating his victim with dead, yet glittering, eyes. "The figure has paused</p><p>again, and half on the bed and half out of it that young girl lies trembling.</p><p>Her long hair streams across the entire width of the bed. As she has slowly</p><p>moved along she has left it streaming across the pillows. The pause lasted</p><p>about a minute—oh, what an age of agony." And finally:</p><p>With a sudden rush that could not be</p><p>foreseen—with a strange howling cry</p><p>that was enough to waken terror in</p><p>every breast, the figure seized the long</p><p>tresses of her hair, and twining them</p><p>round his bony hands he held her to</p><p>the bed. Then she screamed—Heaven</p><p>granted her then power to scream.</p><p>Shriek followed shriek in rapid succes-</p><p>sion. The bed-clothes fell in a heap by</p><p>the side of the bed—she was dragged</p><p>by her long silken hair completely on</p><p>to it again. Her beautifully rounded</p><p>limbs quivered with the agony of her</p><p>Varney the Vampyre: Illustration from</p><p>James Malcolm Rymer's penny-dreadful</p><p>extravaganza.</p><p>2 1 2 David J. Skal</p><p>soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form</p><p>with a hideous satisfaction—horrible profanation. He drags her head</p><p>to the bed's edge. He forces it back by the long hair still entwined in</p><p>his grasp. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth—</p><p>a</p><p>gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has</p><p>swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous repast!</p><p>After 209 weekly installments (later published in book form), Lord</p><p>Varney decided he was "tired and disgusted with a life of horror," and</p><p>flung himself into the mouth of Mount Vesuvius, where no moonbeam</p><p>could resuscitate him. But one question remains. Why, given the story's</p><p>over-the-top theatricality, hasn't anyone tried to reanimate Varney as a</p><p>scenery-chewing, blood-and-thunder melodrama a la Sweeney Todd?.</p><p>Vlad the Impaler</p><p>The sobriquet given to the Wallachian warlord Vlad Tepes (1431-1476),</p><p>also known as Dracula, means "Son</p><p>of the Devil" or "Son of the Dragon"</p><p>in Romanian. (Tepes' father had been</p><p>called Dracul.) Vlad's nickname de-</p><p>rives from his favorite method of dis-</p><p>patching his enemies—by impalement</p><p>on wooden stakes. On one atrocious</p><p>occasion, 20,000 Turkish captives</p><p>were exterminated in this manner and</p><p>displayed in a mile-long semicircle</p><p>outside Dracula's capital city, Tirgov-</p><p>iste, to ward off oncoming enemy</p><p>troops. (It worked.) By all accounts,</p><p>Vlad reveled in the death agony of</p><p>his victims and often dined in the</p><p>shadow of their writhing, rotting</p><p>Vlad the Impaler, from a</p><p>sixteenth-century woodcut.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 2 1 3</p><p>bodies. Other victims were boiled, or hacked apart "like cabbages," ac-</p><p>cording to one account.</p><p>While ruthless, sadistic, and undoubtedly psychopathic, Vlad Tepes is</p><p>nonetheless a hero of Romanian history, who successfully protected the</p><p>country against foreign incursions. Sometime in the early 1890s, Bram</p><p>Stoker came cross a reference to the Voivode (Prince) Dracula in William</p><p>Wilkinson's 1820 book Account ofthe Principalities ofWallachia and Mol-</p><p>davia and decided to use the name for the vampire villain of a novel he</p><p>had begun to outline (his original choice had been "Count Wampyr").</p><p>Thus, Vlad the Impaler did not inspire Stoker to write Dracula (as is often</p><p>assumed), but provided historical verisimilitude to a story Stoker had al-</p><p>ready conceived. Other than an account of Vlad dipping bread in the</p><p>blood of a victim, and the coincidence of the wooden stake motif, there is</p><p>no historical correspondence between the bloody voivode and traditional</p><p>vampire FOLKLORE. The life and times of Vlad the Impaler have been ex-</p><p>tensively documented by historians Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T.</p><p>McNally in two books, In Search ofDracula (1972) and Dracula: Prince</p><p>ofMany Faces (1989).</p><p>i</p><p>Werewolf</p><p>In European folklore, the images of the vampire and werewolf often</p><p>blur, but in the twentieth century they have evolved into discrete entities.</p><p>Some of this had to do with the migration of Dracula from page to</p><p>stage; in Bram Stoker's novel, Count Dracula transforms himself into</p><p>a bat or a wolf with equal ease, but when the effect was attempted in</p><p>British and American stage versions of Dracula during the 1920s, the</p><p>clumsy results provoked wolf-howls of audience laughter; thereafter, bats</p><p>became the animal transformation of choice. Werewolves have tended to</p><p>attach themselves more to the Jekyll/Hyde formula than to the vampire</p><p>tradition.</p><p>Whitby</p><p>If you're planning a vampire holiday, I have no better destination for you</p><p>than the English seaside town of Whitby, North Yorkshire. It was in</p><p>Whitby, while on vacation in 1890, that Bram STOKER began taking notes</p><p>for the novel that was to become DRACULA. Not only did he do research in</p><p>the Whitby library (where he discovered, in a book, Vlad Dracula the Im-</p><p>paler—the source</p><p>blood but the secretion of a hitherto unknown gland</p><p>located somewhere in the victim's upper torso, easily accessible to the glan-</p><p>dularly challenged scientist and his scalpel (before making his midnight</p><p>rounds, the doc turns into a reptilelike monstrosity, the result of exposure</p><p>to various gland extracts). The disfigured woman is a blond stripper (her</p><p>opening exotic dance sequence is sometimes cut for television) who par-</p><p>tially hides her scars with a Veronica Lake hairdo. There is, in the English-</p><p>language version, a bizarrely inappropriate upbeat jazz accompaniment</p><p>to the scene in which the dancer first sees her injuries. Atom Age Vampire</p><p>is still campily entertaining; it would make a most interesting double bill</p><p>with Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1959), from which it borrows</p><p>heavily. The film's original Italian title was Seddok, Verede di Satana.</p><p>Screenplay by Majano, Piero Monviso, Gino de Sanctis, Alberto Befilac-</p><p>qua, and John Hart. With Alberto Lupo, Susanne Loret, Sergio Fantoni,</p><p>Roberto Berta, and Franca Paridi Strahl. (Topaz Films) See also Bathory,</p><p>Erzebet.</p><p>Attack of the Giant Leeches</p><p>Cinema, USA 1959. Roger Corman and his</p><p>brother Gene produced this low-budget</p><p>item that posited a link between the use of</p><p>nuclear energy at Cape Canaveral and the</p><p>appearance of mutated blood-drinkers in a</p><p>Susanne Loret and Alberto Lupo</p><p>in Atom Age Vampire.</p><p>(Courtesy of Ronald V. Borst/</p><p>Hollywood Movie Posters)</p><p>1 4 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>Florida swamp. Illicit white-trash sex dooms leads inexorably to abduction</p><p>by the leeches, who store their victims in a damp cave to drain at leisure.</p><p>The film contains only a few watchable minutes, primarily the grotesque</p><p>shots of plastic-suited "leeches" finishing off their victims to the accompa-</p><p>niment of rippling, rubbery sound effects. The credits strive, most unsuc-</p><p>cessfully, to imitate Saul Bass' impressive title graphics for films like Psycho,</p><p>Vertigo, etc. Otherwise, forget it. Directed by Bernard Kowalski. With Ken</p><p>Clark, Yvette Vickers, and Gene Roth. Also known as The Giant Leeches and,</p><p>in the UK, as Demons ofthe Swamp. (American- International Pictures)T</p><p>"Aurelia"</p><p>Short story, Germany 1819-20. A tale by E. T. A. Hoffman, written in re-</p><p>sponse to the immense popularity of John Polidori's "The Vampyre" (a</p><p>story originally attributed to Lord Byron). Hoffman employs a discussion</p><p>of "The Vampyre" as a way of introducing his own story to top it—the</p><p>tale of a young woman, Aurelia, who, having been driven mad by her</p><p>mother, shuns ordinary food and begins to feast on corpses. See also</p><p>GHOUL.</p><p>Autoexec.bat</p><p>The punchline to a riddle for computer wonks: What do you get when</p><p>you cross Lee Iaccoca with a vampire?</p><p>Autovampirism</p><p>The drinking of one's own blood, for sexual pleasure or as an adjunct to</p><p>self-mutilation. See also blood fetishism.</p><p>K</p><p>Baby Blood</p><p>Cinema, France 1990. A woman's uterus is invaded by a shape-changing</p><p>parasite, which requires male blood to be born. Guess how it gets it? Vam-</p><p>pire and science fiction themes are stirred together in a dark comedy</p><p>directed by Alain Robak. With Emmannuelle Escourrou, Jean-Francois</p><p>Gallotte, and Christian Sininger. (Partners Productions/EX07 Productions)</p><p>See also fetus.</p><p>Back to the USSR</p><p>Cinema, Finland 1992. A political satire in which a suicidal worker meets</p><p>Lenin in the form of a vampire. Directed by Jari Halonen. See also CLASS</p><p>WARFARE.</p><p>Balderston, John L</p><p>American journalist, playwright, and screenwriter, John Lloyd Balderston</p><p>was engaged as a play doctor by the flamboyant Jazz Age publisher-</p><p>producer Horace LrvERiGFTT, who wanted Hamilton Deane's naive British</p><p>barnstormer Dracula (1924) revamped, as it were, for more sophisticated</p><p>Broadway audiences. Balderston reshaped the play almost line for line, and</p><p>with the Hungarian expatriate actor Bela Lugosi in the title role, the lurid</p><p>melodrama was a huge success in New York during the 1927-1928 season</p><p>and later on tour. (Both the Deane and Balderston versions of the play</p><p>have finally been published together in Dracula: The Ultimate, Illustrated</p><p>Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play [St. Martin's Press, 1993],</p><p>where Balderston's contributions can be studied in detail.)</p><p>Following the success of Dracula, Balderston found himself in demand</p><p>1 6 David J. Skal</p><p>for similar horror projects; he rewrote Peggy Webling's British stage ver-</p><p>sion of Frankenstein for Liveright, who was unable to raise the money to</p><p>produce it on Broadway. Balderston and Webling then sold the script di-</p><p>rectly to Universal Pictures, who used almost none of it in their famous</p><p>1931 film version of the story, directed by James Whale with Boris Karloff</p><p>as the monster. Balderston reshaped the Dracula formula for Universal's</p><p>The Mummy (1932), adding his own firsthand knowledge of Egyptol-</p><p>ogy—he had been one of the journalists who covered the discovery of</p><p>King Tut's tomb in the 1920s. In 1934, Balderston sold a speculative</p><p>treatment of Dracula's Daughter to David O. Selznick (the producer</p><p>had acquired the rights to the short story "Dracula's Guest" from Bram</p><p>Stoker's widow), but the storyline bore no resemblance to the film actu-</p><p>ally produced by Universal in 1936. Balderston also penned a full-length,</p><p>unproduced sequel to Frankenstein for Universal in 1934; while the studio</p><p>junked his script, he was somehow able to negotiate a screenplay credit for</p><p>Bride ofFrankenstein (1935)—a film actually scripted by William Hurlbut,</p><p>with heavy input from director James Whale. Beyond his contributions to</p><p>the horror genre, he coauthored the romantic fantasy play Berkeley Square</p><p>(1926) with J. C. Squire and wrote screenplays for The Mystery ofEdwin</p><p>Drood (1935) and The Prisoner ofZenda (1937), and coauthored Gaslight</p><p>(1944), which garnered an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. He died</p><p>in Beverly Hills, California, in 1954.</p><p>Ballet</p><p>The earliest example of a vampire-based ballet is likely Morgano by Paul</p><p>Taglioni and J. Hertzel, which premiered in Berlin in 1857. Rotta's II</p><p>Vampiro followed in 1861. In 1925, Aaron Copland and Harold Clurman</p><p>wrote an unproduced ballet, Grogh, based on the film NOSFERATU; some</p><p>of the music was later incorporated into Copland's Dance Symphony. In</p><p>the 1940s, playwright and screenwriter John L. BALDERSTON suggested</p><p>half-seriously that his stage version of Dracula might be successfully</p><p>adapted as a ballet by choreographer Agnes DeMille. In 1956, the West-</p><p>ern Ballet Theatre presented Vampaera, a ballet choreographed by Peter</p><p>Darrell, at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, England. The piece was originally</p><p>set to Debussy's "Rhapsody for Saxophone and Orchestra"; however,</p><p>when permission for the Debussy music was withheld during rehearsals,</p><p>composer Michael Hobson substituted a "musique concrete" score con-</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 7</p><p>The American Repertory Ballet</p><p>Company's production of Stuart</p><p>Sebastian's Dracula with Mark</p><p>Roxey in the title role. (Photo by</p><p>W. Warner, courtesy of the American</p><p>Repertory Ballet Company)</p><p>sisting of rhythmic, abstract</p><p>sounds. During the 1980s,</p><p>Les Royal Ballets Canadiens</p><p>toured a daring and highly</p><p>effective ballet by James Ku-</p><p>delka called Love, Dracula,</p><p>including nudity (a topless</p><p>Lucy) and animal skins. In</p><p>1992 the Dayton Ballet and</p><p>American Repertory Ballet</p><p>premiered a straightforward</p><p>adaptation of Dracula chore-</p><p>ographed by Stuart Sebastian</p><p>to an eclectic classical score.</p><p>The production drew freely on previous dramatic versions of the story and</p><p>had a particularly showy part for the dancer who played Renfield.</p><p>Bara, Theda</p><p>American actress (1890-1955). Born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati,</p><p>Ohio, Bara took a stage name concocted by publicists as an anagram of</p><p>"Arab Death" when she was selected to play the predatory sex villainess</p><p>in William Fox's 1915 film version ofA Fool There Was, inspired by Rud-</p><p>yard Kipling's 1897 poem "The Vampire," the Philip Burne-Jones paint-</p><p>ing of the same name for which it was written, and, more directly, by the</p><p>unauthorized and wildly successful Porter Emerson Browne stage play</p><p>that put all of America in a tizzy over the idea of devouring "vampire</p><p>women" out to destroy bourgeois family life. (The popular fantasy was</p><p>in many ways a backlash against the burgeoning women's suffrage move-</p><p>ment.) For five years, Theda Bara was filmdom's reigning "vamp," her real</p><p>identity hidden beneath a mountain of publicity stunts and shameless mis-</p><p>1 8 David J. Skal</p><p>information. But both the press and the public were more than willing to</p><p>go along with the gag. Bara held press conferences in darkened rooms</p><p>amid billowing clouds of suffocating incense; she posed for publicity pho-</p><p>tographs rearing over the stripped-clean skeletons of her male victims. In a</p><p>1950 reminiscence, Adela Rogers St. John recalled that "audiences were</p><p>torn between a fear of the Vampire and a wild desire to have some of her</p><p>strange power rub off on them. The head of a New York department store</p><p>pleaded with her, 'Please don't come in, Miss Bara. We'll send gowns to</p><p>your hotel, but we can't stand any more of these riots.' Mobs of women</p><p>had broken plate glass windows to grab a hat Theda Bara had touched, in</p><p>the hope that they, too, might be able to make men grovel."</p><p>Bara's film career ended almost as abruptly as it had begun, when the</p><p>vampire formula lost its appeal following World War I. In the 1920s she</p><p>tried the theater, with devastating results. Hollywood veteran Budd Schul-</p><p>berg recalled the Broadway opening of her melodrama Tin Blue Flame:</p><p>"Her opening on Broadway drew a sold-out audience laced with all the</p><p>reigning celebrities. The first time she opened her mouth, they laughed.</p><p>This was the irresistible vampire against whom the Church and an orga-</p><p>nized group of outraged wives had fulmi-</p><p>nated as a threat to the established order?</p><p>This was the Serpent Woman? Cleopatra</p><p>and Salome incarnate? At the first sound</p><p>of her childlike piping, cruel laughter</p><p>ended Theodora [sic] Goodman's career."</p><p>In 1932, Bara's husband, Charles Bra-</p><p>bin, directed Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy</p><p>in The Mask ofFu Manchu, in which Loy's</p><p>spiderish role as Fu Manchu's daughter</p><p>owed much to the screen tradition inau-</p><p>gurated by Theodosia Goodman in 1915.</p><p>Following her retirement from the stage</p><p>and screen, Bara became a Los Angeles</p><p>society fixture. She sold her life story to</p><p>Theda Bara</p><p>(The Free Library of Philadelphia Theatre Collection)</p><p>&</p><p>-S&B j9</p><p>% -1s^</p><p>i</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 1 9</p><p>Columbia pictures for a film to have been titled The Great Vampire, but</p><p>it was never produced. She died of abdominal cancer in Hollywood on</p><p>April 7, 1955. See also Burne-Jones, Sir Philip.</p><p>Baron Blood</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1972. Jay Cocks, reviewing Baron Blood for Time, noted</p><p>that "Director Mario Bava has made a great many other films of this sort</p><p>. . . each displaying a formidable interest in interior decoration matched by</p><p>a lofty disregard for intelligence." Joseph Cotten plays a monster pat-</p><p>terned after Dracula prototype Vlad the Impaler; he returns from the</p><p>grave when his castle is renovated as a tourist hotel, and spends much time</p><p>in pursuit of Elke Sommer. After much carnage, the baron is sent back to</p><p>hell in a confusing climax. Bava, best known for BLACK SUNDAY, directed</p><p>from a script by Vincent Forte and William A. Bairn. With Massimo</p><p>Girotti, Antonio Cantafora, and Alan Collins. (American International)T</p><p>Baron Brakola, El</p><p>Cinema, Mexico 1965. Santo, the masked Mexican wrestler who made a</p><p>whole screen career battling vampires and other creepy beings, takes on an</p><p>undead baron and his vampire harem. The Santo films are hokey, to say</p><p>the least, but they effectively kept the undead alive in the imagination of</p><p>the Mexican public. Directed by Jose Diaz Morales. With Rodolfo Guz-</p><p>man Huerta (as Santo), Mercedes Carreno, and Antonio de Hud. (Filmica</p><p>Vergara/Columbia</p><p>)</p><p>Bat</p><p>The premier emblem and avatar of vampirism, the bat has a rich place in</p><p>world folklore. It is, of course, the image of the blood-drinking vampire</p><p>bat that forges the strongest link between the winged mammal and imagi-</p><p>nary vampires, but the bat has many other associations with darkness,</p><p>death, and the supernatural that reinforce its mythic reputation.</p><p>From a rational perspective, the reputation is undeserved, because bats</p><p>are an important part of the ecosystem and essential for the control of in-</p><p>sects in many regions. Bats are also much less exotic than many people</p><p>would believe; it has been estimated that twenty percent of all living mam-</p><p>mals are bats. The vampire bat comprises a small category of the bat</p><p>world: the family Desmodontidae, indigenous to South and Central Amer-</p><p>20 David J. Skal</p><p>Bats of the world, from a</p><p>turn-of-the-century engraving.</p><p>ica. Like its fantastic counterpart, it at-</p><p>tacks its victims (far more likely to be</p><p>livestock than human) during sleep. The</p><p>vampire does not alight directly on its</p><p>prey, preferring to land at some distance,</p><p>making the final approach with a stealthy</p><p>hopping crawl. It seeks out a warm place</p><p>where the skin is unprotected and the</p><p>blood supply copious—the neck, the eyes,</p><p>the anus—and there painlessly opens the</p><p>skin with a pair of razor-sharp incisors.</p><p>The bat's saliva contains an anticoagu-</p><p>lant, which keeps the blood flowing for</p><p>the length of the meal (and sometimes longer, leading to debilitating</p><p>blood loss and infections). The feast is over in about twenty minutes, with</p><p>the bat often so bloated that it can barely fly.</p><p>One of the earliest descriptions of a human encounter with the vampire</p><p>bat was written in 1565 by Benzoni, who made his observations in what is</p><p>now Costa Rica: "There are many bats which bite people during the night</p><p>. . . while I was sleeping they bit the toes ofmy feet so delicately that I felt</p><p>nothing, and in the morning I found the sheets and mattresses with so</p><p>much blood that it seemed that I had suffered some great injury. . .</p><p>." The</p><p>fact that bats are also common vectors for rabies did nothing to improve</p><p>the animals' image historically.</p><p>Bat-winged demons are a common fixture of religious and occult</p><p>iconography; such creatures were, of course, travesties of angels. The mo-</p><p>tif of wings grafted onto the human form is an ambiguous image, one that</p><p>(in the case of feather-winged angels) can represent man's highest aspira-</p><p>tions, or (in the case of the leathery bat-demon) divine presumption. The</p><p>idea of flight has always captured the human imagination in a double-</p><p>edged manner. Freud tells us that flying dreams are sex dreams; dreamlike</p><p>images of flying monsters, therefore, contain a distinct air of dangerous or</p><p>forbidden sexuality—a powerful component of the vampire mystique. The</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 2</p><p>1</p><p>bat is nocturnal, and night is associated with unknown forbidden realms,</p><p>not to mention death. In one Australian aboriginal variation on the Adam</p><p>and Eve myth, a woman is warned to stay away from a bat instead of an</p><p>apple; when curiosity gets the better of her, she approaches the bat and</p><p>frightens it away—only to learn that it was guarding the cave in which</p><p>death was hidden.</p><p>The first theatrical use of a batlike vampire cloak may have been made</p><p>by Dion Boucicault in his play The Vampire in 1852. Bram Stoker's use</p><p>of the bat in Dracula (1897) is somewhat ambiguous; the shape-shifting,</p><p>winged thing that Dracula becomes is simultaneously described as resem-</p><p>bling a lizard or a bird. Perhaps the most important stabilizing factor in</p><p>the relationship between theatrical vampires and bats was the 1927 Broad-</p><p>way adaptation of Dracula, at which early audiences hooted the attempt</p><p>to depict the vampire in werewolf form with an unconvincing stuffed ani-</p><p>mal. The taxidermist's beast was summarily withdrawn, and it fell to the</p><p>bat to provide all the evening's animal pleasures—werewolves thereafter</p><p>became a separate horror category.</p><p>The first convincing on-screen bat transformation was accomplished by</p><p>Lon Chaney, Jr., in Son of Dracula (1943), and repeated by John Car-</p><p>radine in House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula</p><p>(1945). Bela Lugosi, whose transformations in Dracula (1931) were</p><p>achieved discreetly off-camera, was seen fading up over a flapping bat in</p><p>Mark of the Vampire (1935), but only got the chance for full, frontal</p><p>transvection in the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein</p><p>(1948), where the effect was treated like an animated cartoon. In his</p><p>screenplay for Horror of Dracula (1958), Jimmy Sangster took pains</p><p>to let the audience know that the bat/vampire business was just folklore,</p><p>and indeed, Christopher Lee made no transformations. But by the time of</p><p>Hammer's sequel, Brides of Dracula (1960), the studio seemed to have</p><p>a change of heart, and the vampire Baron Meinster is twice seen flapping</p><p>about his bloody rounds. One of my favorite bat sequences occurs in John</p><p>Badham's remake ofDracula (1979), when Frank Langella quite unex-</p><p>pectedly takes leave of gravity to attack a visitor on the stair of his lair.</p><p>The Bat People</p><p>Cinema, USA 1974. When a scientist (Stewart Moss) is bitten by a vam-</p><p>pire bat on his honeymoon, he ends up with more to worry about than</p><p>Erzebet Bathory, the original Hungarian</p><p>blood countess.</p><p>Ingrid Pitt as Erzebet Bathory in Countess</p><p>Dracula. (Photofest)</p><p>rabies. I'll leave it to psychoanalytically inclined readers to decode the</p><p>cave-exploration-on-the-honeymoon motif; the rest, of course, is pre-</p><p>dictable junk. Moss' bat-face makeup, created by Stan Winston, might be</p><p>regarded as a prototype for Greg Cannom's design for Gary Oldman's</p><p>bat-form in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Directed by Jerry Jameson, screen-</p><p>play by Lou Shaw. With Marianne McAndrew, Michael Pataki, and Paul</p><p>Carr. (American International)^</p><p>Bat Thorn</p><p>A fictional plant, similar to wolfsbane, offering protection against vam-</p><p>pires. Bat thorn made an appearance in the 1935 film Mark of the Vam-</p><p>pire, a last-minute replacement for the screenplay's original "wolf's claw."</p><p>The substitution may have been made out of MGM's concern that it</p><p>might be treading heavily on the wolfsbane in Dracula, to which rival</p><p>studio Universal held sole motion picture rights at the time. See also</p><p>ACONITE; FOLKLORE.</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 2 3</p><p>Bathory, Erzebet</p><p>Given the legendary reputation of the Hungarian noblewoman Erzebet</p><p>(Elizabeth) Bathory for bathing in the blood of virgins to preserve her</p><p>youth, it is indeed disappointing to learn that the beauty treatments may</p><p>never have really taken place.</p><p>Born in 1540 into a powerful family (her cousin, Stephan Bathory,</p><p>would be prince of Transylvania and king of Poland), Erzebet was by</p><p>all accounts an intelligent, highly educated woman sometimes subject to</p><p>fits and rages, but otherwise exhibiting no hints of the homicidal maniac</p><p>she was soon to become. Following the death of her husband, Ferenc</p><p>Nadasdy, in 1604, her interest in disciplining peasant servants seems to</p><p>have made a quantum leap from the commonplace cruelty meted out to</p><p>peasants by nobles. One is tempted to conclude that the death of her hus-</p><p>band triggered some kind of psychotic break revolving, perhaps, around a</p><p>dawning awareness of her own mortality and an envious hatred of the</p><p>buxom virgins she chose as victims—but this is pure speculation from a</p><p>modern psychological perspective. Bathory's lurid crimes—she is reputed</p><p>to have beaten and butchered anywhere from dozens to hundreds of</p><p>women, depending on the account—have the prerational air of an ugly</p><p>fairy tale; archetypically evil, she seems to have committed the atrocities</p><p>largely because nobody stopped her. She was inordinately fond of letting</p><p>Leona Helmsley-style snits over housekeeping matters and petty thievery</p><p>escalate into ferocious bloodletting, abetted by a retinue of sadistic crones.</p><p>Her victims were usually beaten beyond recognition, often had their fin-</p><p>gers cut offwith scissors, and were sometimes hauled naked into the snow,</p><p>there to be drenched with buckets of water and frozen to death. Even ill-</p><p>ness did not deter her murderous gusto: Bathory's 1611 trial transcript</p><p>contains descriptions of peasant girls being brought to her sickbed, the</p><p>better to have pieces of flesh bitten from their faces and shoulders. There</p><p>is no documentary evidence, however, that Bathory ever believed virgin</p><p>blood would actually rejuvenate her, but such stories were popularized in</p><p>nineteenth-century accounts of her life and were widely accepted as fact.</p><p>The best book on Erzebet Bathory is Dracula Was a Woman by Raymond T.</p><p>McNally, which draws judiciously on earlier texts. Film treatments have</p><p>included Countess Dracula, a 1970 Hammer Films production starring</p><p>Ingrid Pitt that presented the rejuvenation theme literally, followed in</p><p>1971 by Daughters of Darkness, in which Bathory is depicted as a</p><p>24 David J. Skal</p><p>soignee vampire slinking around European resort hotels, looking for</p><p>young lives to corrupt and destroy. The Legend of Blood Castle (1972), a</p><p>Spanish/Italian coproduction, played up the sensationalism while retain-</p><p>ing much of the original story. Pablo Picasso's daughter Paloma played</p><p>Erzebet as a lesbian monster in Three Immoral Women, an anthology film</p><p>released in 1974. The story gave way to laughs in Mama Dracula (1979),</p><p>starring Louise Fletcher. Perhaps the low point of Erzebet Bathory's film</p><p>homages was The Craving, a 1980 Spanish film which pitted her against a</p><p>revenant werewolf—and bombed at the box office. The Bathory legend</p><p>also provided a loose inspiration for / Vampiri (1956), photographed and</p><p>codirected by Mario Bava, and The Devil's Wedding Night (1973), which</p><p>featured a guest appearance by the ring of the Nibelungen. The Mysterious</p><p>Death of Nina Chereau (1988) seems to be a standard psychological</p><p>thriller until its climax, when a female murder suspect is revealed to be</p><p>the rejuvenated Bathory. A novel based on Bathory's legend, The Blood</p><p>Countess by Andrei Codrescu, was published in 1995.</p><p>Batman vs. Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1964. Andy Warhol may have lent his name to the Ameri-</p><p>can release of Paul Morrissey's 1973 film Andy Warhol's Dracula, but</p><p>the only Dracula movie Andy directed himself was this one, starring Jack</p><p>Smith and Baby Jane Holzer. (Film-maker's Cooperative)</p><p>Baudelaire, Charles</p><p>The high priest of poetic decadence, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was</p><p>a major influence on the development of the femme fatale motif in all the</p><p>arts in the late nineteenth century. Two poems in Baudelaire's Flowers of</p><p>Evil, "The Vampire" and "Metamorphoses of the Vampire," deal explic-</p><p>itly with vampirism. Both were censored from the original 1857 edition.</p><p>Baudelaire's characteristic depiction of female sexuality in terms of PROSTI-</p><p>TUTION, vampirism, and rot is captured in Jackson Mathews' memorable</p><p>translation of "Metamorphoses":</p><p>When she had sucked the marrow from every bone,</p><p>I turned to her as languid as a stone</p><p>To give her one last kiss . . . and saw her thus:</p><p>A slimy rotten wineskin, full of pus!</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 25</p><p>Misogynistic or not, Baudelaire was a profound literary force, in many</p><p>ways the first "modern" poet. He introduced the French-speaking world to</p><p>Edgar Allan Poe through his extensive translations, including, of course,</p><p>the vampirish story "Berenice."</p><p>Bauhaus</p><p>The short-lived (1979-1983) but seminal gothic-rock group whose first</p><p>hit, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," served as its anthem and was featured on the</p><p>soundtrack of the 1983 film The Hunger.</p><p>Bava, Mario</p><p>The celebrated director of Black Sunday, Mario Bava (1914-1980) be-</p><p>gan his career as a cinematographer in the late 1930s, assisting such direc-</p><p>tors as Roberto Rossellini, but developed a distinct knack for directing</p><p>when the nominal director of 7 Vampiri (1956), which Bava was lens-</p><p>ing, walked off the set. Bava stepped in and completed the directorial</p><p>chores on the stylish CinemaScope thriller. Following photographic as-</p><p>signments on films like The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), Caltiki, The Im-</p><p>mortal Monster (1959), and Hercules Unchained (1960), Bava returned</p><p>to</p><p>the velvety black-and-white shadow-world of I Vampiri to direct, co-</p><p>author and photograph Black Sunday (1960). The film would be recog-</p><p>nized almost immediately as a classic of the genre, as was "The Wurdalak"</p><p>segment of Bava's Black Sabbath (1963) and Planet of the Vampires</p><p>(1965)—perhaps the definitive cinematic treatment of extraterrestrial</p><p>exsanguination.</p><p>Benson, E. F.</p><p>See "Mrs. Amworth"; "Room in the Tower, The"</p><p>"Berenice"</p><p>Edgar Allan Poe's 1833 short story about a man's obsession with the teeth</p><p>of a beautiful, cataleptic woman is frequently discussed in relation to vam-</p><p>pire fiction, and with good reason. While the story is a tale of madness,</p><p>with no real vampires in sight, Poe manages to evoke, in just a few short</p><p>pages, an atmosphere of necrophilic orality more chilling than that of any</p><p>number of "classic" vampire stories:</p><p>26 David J. Skal</p><p>The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and every where,</p><p>and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow and excessively white,</p><p>with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their</p><p>first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania,</p><p>and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In</p><p>the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for</p><p>the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire.</p><p>Following one of her trance-seizures, Berenice is pronounced dead and</p><p>is buried. We learn, in the story's closing paragraphs, that her grave has</p><p>been violated, revealing Berenice not to be dead at all, but "a disfigured</p><p>body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!" The na-</p><p>ture of her disfigurement is made clear when the distraught narrator,</p><p>stained with grave-mud and gore, drops a little box: "[It] fell heavily, and</p><p>burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some</p><p>instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white</p><p>and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the</p><p>floor."</p><p>Billy the Kid vs. Dracula</p><p>Cinema, USA 1966. Westerns and vampire movies are both perennial</p><p>American genres, so it's not surprising that they occasionally get together</p><p>for some heavy necking. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula is an awful film, even</p><p>though John Carradine as Dracula valiantly stares his eyes out in a futile</p><p>attempt to convince audiences they are seeing something worthwhile.</p><p>Nonetheless, it must be admitted that both vampire stories and Westerns</p><p>are about the obsession with transcendence of boundaries, be they geo-</p><p>graphical or metaphysical, and their confluence is worth some degree of</p><p>cultural meditation. Directed by William Beaudine. With Chuck Court-</p><p>ney, Melinda Plowman, and Virginia Christine. (Embassy Pictures)T</p><p>Bite marks</p><p>Styles in vampire lesions have proved as changeable as hemlines. They mu-</p><p>tate not only in appearance but in location as well—throughout much of</p><p>the nineteenth century, the vampire feasted not at the throat but over the</p><p>heart, where it left a sickly, metaphoric bruise. As the traditional seat of</p><p>the emotions, if not the soul, the heart added poetic resonance to the</p><p>V IS FOR VAMPIRE 27</p><p>bloodsucking act. Vampires made breast incisions in such works as Sheri-</p><p>dan Le Fanu's "Carmtlta," first published in 1872. A similar bite strat-</p><p>egy can be seen in Philip Burne-Jones' decadent painting The Vampire,</p><p>unveiled in 1897. Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, published the same</p><p>year, marked a radical shift in bite dynamics; Stoker medicalrzed vampirism</p><p>to a large extent, choosing the jugular vein, perhaps, because it was the</p><p>logical, accessible place from which a copious quantity of blood could</p><p>be quickly quaffed. The anxiety which Stoker's characters exhibit over the</p><p>marks on the victim's skin can be read as an unintentional allegory of the</p><p>real-life terror inspired in Victorian society by the appearance of the signs</p><p>of syphilis, a major scourge of the time that was seldom addressed directly</p><p>in the arts.</p><p>The first visible bite marks in a motion picture appeared in the 1931</p><p>Spanish-language version of Dracula. The American version featured</p><p>much talk about the marks—"white, with red centers"—but never showed</p><p>them. In the Spanish version, the vampire stigmata, viewed through a</p><p>magnifying glass on the throat of actress Carmen Guerrero, resemble</p><p>nothing so much as a snake bite. The punctures are closely spaced; it is ob-</p><p>vious from this evidence that director George Melford imagined Dracula's</p><p>damage to be inflicted bv frontal fangs in the ratlike style of 'Sosferatu</p><p>1 1922 ), a film which Universal had studied closely in preparing its English-</p><p>and Spanish-language versions of the film. (There is a certain contradic-</p><p>tion, it should be noted, between the "two-hole punch" style in vampire</p><p>lesions and the physical mechanics that would produce the same—the</p><p>slow, seductive love bite favored by filmmakers would leave upper and</p><p>lower bite marks. Two holes would be left only if the strike was truly dart-</p><p>ing and snakelike; no doubt this would be a startling effect, though no</p><p>one to my knowledge has used it in a film.</p><p>Vampire wounds became increasingly ragged and realistic traumas with</p><p>the coming of color and explicit violence in the cinema, especially in the</p><p>blood-soaked oeuvre of Hanlmer Films. In The Brides of Dracula</p><p>(I960), they are treated as a symptom, "the seal of Dracula." which, if</p><p>treated with a cauterizing brand, will cure the disease. By the time of John</p><p>Landis' INNOCENT Blood (1992), discreet perforations—the kind that</p><p>could be easily hidden with a velvet choker or chiffon scarf-—were things</p><p>of the antique past; the vampire now ripped out huge chunks of flesh,</p><p>disguising all evidence bv blowing off the heads of her victims with a</p><p>shotgun. See also FANGS.</p><p>28 DavidJ. Skal</p><p>The Black Room</p><p>Cinema, USA 1982. Released near the very beginning of the AIDS epi-</p><p>demic, The Black Room was one of the last films whose sexual content and</p><p>body-fluid imagery was not particularly colored by the metaphors of the</p><p>disease, and so has a certain nostalgic charm. A restless family man rents a</p><p>Hollywood Hills fuck pad from a decadent brother and sister; he doesn't</p><p>know that the brother suffers from a rare blood condition that necessitates</p><p>complete blood transfusions, drawn from a series of throwaway tenants.</p><p>They also lure the lessee's wife to the black room, and finally their children</p><p>are also drawn in. There is an interesting implied parallel between the</p><p>characters who use each other for sex and those who use each other for</p><p>blood, and the whole thing finally seems an acerbic comment on the cur-</p><p>dled state of heterosexual relationships following the swinging seventies.</p><p>Despite some strong atmosphere and a couple of real shocks, The Black</p><p>Room is not completely successful, and one wonders what a larger budget</p><p>might have done for the material. Directed by Elly Kenner, screenplay and</p><p>codirection by Norman Thaddeus Vane. With Stephen Knight, Cassandra</p><p>Gaviola, Jimmy Stathis, and Clara Perryman. (Ram Productions)</p><p>Y</p><p>Black Sabbath</p><p>Cinema, Italy 1963. Boris Karloff, best known for his association with the</p><p>left-brain side of the horror formula (mad scientists, man-made monsters,</p><p>etc.) made his first and only appearance as a vampire—or more precisely, a</p><p>wurdalak, in Mario Bava's impressive and faithful adaptation of Alexei</p><p>Tolstoi's story "The Family of a Wurdalak," the most accomplished seg-</p><p>ment of this trilogy film. Karloff plays Gorca, a family patriarch who warns</p><p>his brood to shun him if he does not return from a hunt within ten days;</p><p>nonetheless, they take him back, not willing to believe he is a vampire who</p><p>will destroy them all. The film is one of the few examples of vampire cin-</p><p>ema that captures a common theme of European folklore: namely, that</p><p>the vampire primarily feeds on members of its own family. (Psychoanalytic</p><p>commentators often relate such beliefs to the guilty repression of incest.)</p><p>Bava deviates</p>