They Played Vampires
Vampires, those bloodsucking immortals of the night, have been a staple of the movies since the movies had staples. Our loop features a select list of famous movie vampires:
The granddaddy of lowlife vampires was played by German actor MAX SCHRECK in F. W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror. Murnau had hoped to get the rights to do a film version of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, but Stoker's widow refused. Murnau made the movie anyway, changing Dracula's name to Count Orlock. After the film's release, Stoker's widow cried foul, the production studio went bankrupt -- some say as a way to avoid paying any restitution -- and the movie was yanked from distribution. It was finally re-released in 1972 and is now widely available. A fictionalized account of the making of Nosferatu is the 2000 film Shadow Of The Vampire (see below).
Though critics say it's a bad treatment of Stoker's novel, Todd Browning's Dracula (1931) has been the benchmark for vampire movies since its hugely successful opening. Hungarian actor BELA LUGOSI played Count Dracula, a dapper villain who could make his victims fuzzy-headed with little more than a stunning glare. Lugosi went on to a career playing mad scientists and vampires, forever identified with the role of Dracula.
Lugosi was the personification of Dracula for the early era of the movies. Later generations grew equally familiar with British actor CHRISTOPHER LEE in the role. Lee was one of the best of cinema's vampires, starting with The Horror of Dracula (1958, also called Dracula). Lee is one of the biggest stars in the history of horror movies, and he played Dracula many times, often in European-made thrillers with titles such as Scars of Dracula, El Conde Drácula and Taste The Blood Of Dracula (all released in 1970). Lee's Dracula was classy and gentlemanly, but certainly no shirker in the evil department. Read more about Lee in our other feautures, The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
Until the 1970s, horror movies were generally low-budget affairs, with a few exceptions. The success of thrillers such as The Exorcist (1973) and other big-budget horror movies meant a reinvention of the vampire genre. GEORGE HAMILTON played Count Dracula in the spoof Love At First Bite (1979), a comedy about a transplanted vampire living in modern New York City. Hamilton's Dracula was still stylish, but in this case more funny than frightening.
Another updated vampire -- one who was scary -- was Miriam, the vampire queen in 1980's The Hunger, played with seductive cool by French movie star CATHERINE DENEUVE. She kept her victims/lovers alive for hundreds of years, but when she was ready to move on, their number was up rather suddenly. Rock star David Bowie played an ex-lover who enlisted scientist Susan Sarandon to help him avoid his fate.
Another beautiful female vampire appeared in Once Bitten, a 1985 comedy starring Jim Carrey. Carrey played the victim of a seductive Countess, portrayed by supermodel LAUREN HUTTON. Hutton played a centuries-old vampire who needed the blood of a virgin to keep her youth; Carrey was her chosen victim in a role from before he was a superstar.
Before he was a big star, NICOLAS CAGE took a turn as a vampire in the black comedy Vampire's Kiss (1989). In the movie Cage played a jilted lover who gets bitten by a bat. His behavior became increasingly bizarre and ultimately included violent acts of vampirism -- or did it? Maybe it was all in his head? Oooh, spooky!
Remember ADAM ANT? He was a British pop sensation in the early days of MTV, known for his hits "Antmusic" and "Goody Two Shoes." He also played a sweet, charming vampire in the 1993 movie Love Bites. In the story Ant plays a vampire trying to cope with the modern world.
With a big budget and major Hollywood stars Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, director Francis Ford Coppola made 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula. It starred British actor GARY OLDMAN as Count Dracula and stayed more faithful to Bram Stoker's novel, adding a little to the storyline and adding a lot of sex and violence. Oldman got to chew some scenery as the evil count, who at times looked less than gentlemanly in Oscar-winning make-up.
Also in 1992, PAUL REUBENS played a less than glamorous vampire, a toady to the villain Lothos in the movie Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The movie, a campy cult favorite, spawned a much more serious -- and much more popular -- TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as a teenager who battles vampires and other supernatural horrors.
Another movie that mixed teens with bloodthirsty ghouls was The Lost Boys (1987). KIEFER SUTHERLAND played David, a teen vampire who made the whole schtick seem kind of fun. Okay, he was evil...but he was also misunderstood, a good boy gone bad.
In 1994, another big-budget production took on one of the most popular new vampire legends, the vampire Lestat from author Anne Rice's novel Interview With A Vampire. The movie, Interview With A Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) starred TOM CRUISE as Lestat and BRAD PITT as Louis, a vampire with a story to tell. Together they transformed a young girl, Claudia (KIRSTEN DUNST), into one of their own.
The 2000 movie Shadow Of The Vampire exploited the mysterious past of Max Schreck, the actor who portrayed Count Orlock in the 1922 classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. In Shadow Of The Vampire actor WILLEM DAFOE portrayed Max Schreck as a real vampire who agrees to act in a Dracula-like film by German director F. W. Murnau (played by John Malkovich). Dafoe's vampire is icky, greedy and rat-like. He's no master of souls and certainly no ladies' man.
Some vampires have all kinds of personal issues that can make them even more volatile -- not that emotional problems excuse drinking the neighbor's blood or creating armies of the undead. 1998's Blade featured action star WESLEY SNIPES as Eric Brooks (a.k.a. The Day Walker, a.k.a. Blade), a no-nonsense vampire-hater who was himself half-vampire. Snipes reprised the role in the sequel Blade II (2002).
Another attempt to bring the work of Anne Rice to the screen was Queen of the Damned (2001), starring the young pop singer AALIYAH in the title role. She played Queen Akasha, waked from the dead by the vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend) and his loud rock music (and who doesn't know that feeling?). She slinked around looking vampy and dispatched a slew of other vampires in what has been described as a longer, fancier version of a music video. The role was the last screen appearance for Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash before the film was released.
In the 2003 action movie Underworld, English actress KATE BECKINSALE played a werewolf-hunting vampire named Selene. Sporting a super-tight catsuit and wielding fangs and guns, Selene did more leaping and shooting than biting and sucking, but she still got the job done. Teaming up with a human (of all things), Selene's task as a "death dealer" -- a supercop of vampires -- was to whup the world's population of werewolves in a netherworld smackdown.
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