When Catherine Hardwicke's "Twilight" was released in November, the film based on Stephenie Meyer's young-adult novels was taken very seriously at the box office -- $372 million worldwide from its adherents known as Twi-hards -- less so by observers who sniffed that the film defanged the vampire movie by making it a teen fantasy about a gallant specimen of the undead who does not want to turn the girl he loves into a beast like him. Unusual for a vampire film, Edward (played with humor by Robert Pattinson), is abstinent. Evidently, The critics of "Twilight" didn't get their bloodlust slaked. (If you haven't already seen it, the DVD is being released tonight at midnight.)
The vampire is a shape-shifting metaphor. Usually the creature is one of society's outsiders with an insatiable appetites for crime or sex.or violence. Or all three. In Louis Feuillade's fantastic serial "Les Vampires" (1915), the vampire known as Irma Vep (an anagram for vampire) is a villainess and seductress, ringleader of a Parisian gang of thieves. In F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1924), the vampire is an accursed and feral creature living on the fringes of society, a bat-eared man who cannot control his thirst for blood. The genius of "Twilight," which is about the erotics of chastity, is how it inverts the story by presenting a vampire who not only can control himself, but is reluctant to initiate his beloved. Whether a teenager, monster, aristocrat or hillbilly, the vampire generally represents what society most fears.
Now, I would put "Twilight" in my top five. That would be: Todd Browning's "Dracula" (1931) with Bela Lugosi, caped, coffin-creaking and suave; Kathryn Bigelow's "Near Dark" (1987), teen bloodsuckers from the wrong side of the tracks; Tony Scott's "The Hunger" (1983), with Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve as elegant lesbian vampires; and. of course, "Nosferatu," with the eerie Max Schreck. As Roger Ebert said sbout it, "To see Nosferatu is to see the vampire movie before it had really seen itself." I also have some affection for Roman Polanski's "The Fearless Vampire Killers" and "Andy Warhol's Dracula" (1974), in which the bloodthirsty Udo Kier insists, "I must have the blood of wirgins." That's right, virgins with a W.
Your favorite neckbiters?
Daughters of Darkness aka Les Levres Rouges (1971) w/ the great Delphine Seyrig.— ccjroberts- My favorite is (of course) Carl Dreyer's incomparable VAMPYR (which has - finally - been restored and is available through the Criterion Collection). Though DRACULA (1931) is justly renowned for Bela Lugosi's performance, it's rather static: much better in the Universal series is DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936), which is really spooky and suggestive. I love vampire movies, and i think it's a genre that is infinitely adaptable. So it doesn't surprise me that the latest development of the "tween" genre would be a series on vampires. (The problem with so many - male - reviewers is that they seem to think that vampire movies should be a subset of the slasher movie, looking for the the bloodiest bites possible, and so they were turned off by TWILIGHT, but then, how would they react to NOSFERATU and VAMPYR or even Vadim's remake of VAMPYR, BLOOD AND ROSES?)— darylchin53
- As a kid, I enjoyed Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins in "Dark Shadows" as after-school fare. He was kind of tragic, as I recall, though not particularly sexy. But Louis Jourdan, as the title character in "Count Dracula" definitely WAS sexy, as was Frank Langella in "Dracula." And I liked everything about "Bram Stoker's Dracula," especially Francis Ford Coppolla's cast, which included Gary Oldman as a simultaneously repulsive and attractive Count.— MojoMama
- I enjoy John Landis's "Innocent Blood." I has a nice balance of gore and humor, and makes a pretty incisive bit of satirical comment in saying that the Mafia are natural bloodsuckers. Anne Parillaud is good as the lead vampire. My favorite work in the genre, though, by leaps and bounds is the TV version of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Smarter, funnier, more heartbreaking than any others I've seen, they could retire the form after this one, as far as I'm concerned.— wwolfe
- Easy, Carrie. Roy Ward Baker's "The Vampire Lovers" (1970) with the delectable Ingrid Pitt as a lesbian vampire (she preferred to bite women only) and Peter Cushing (natch). That's my favorite, with Tony Scott's "The Hunger" (1983), with Deneuve, Sarandon and Bowie, running a close second.— Pash
- Great choices. I'd definitely add Dreyer's "Vampyr," John Landis' "An American Werewolf in London," and "Let the Right One in," which is also out on DVD this week.— carrierickey
Carrier, hate to break it to you, but "Werewolf in London" is about, well, werewolves, not vampires.— verve
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