4 Vampire Movies That You May Not Have Seen (And 2 You Probably Have)
Here we are in the month of Halloween, enjoying the freaky festivities as we creep closer and closer to Christmas, preparing for the cheer, family time and of course… Robert Eggers' Nosferatu! If you know me personally, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of Eggers, you’ll also know that I’m a horror fan with a love for gothic fiction. What’s more gothic than vampires? From the serious to the comedic, vampires have long been a staple of fiction in all of its forms.
So with that said, let’s sink our teeth into some of the best bloody vampire stories told on the silver screen, shall we?
Dracula (1931)
Not the one you’re thinking of. I bid you welcome to this journey through some of film's best vampire stories by first transporting you back to a Hollywood landscape before dubbing. Of course these days, dubbing makes movies accessible to other countries but in the early stages of sound film before that was possible, movies had to be shot twice to accommodate foreign language versions. One of the most famous examples of this came in 1931, when Spanish cast and crew would, at night, take over the sets of Tod Browning’s Dracula, with George Melford in the director’s chair and Carlos Villarías donning the fangs.
Whilst you might expect this to be simply a shot-for-shot remake in Spanish, well, my humble apology, but you would be wrong. George Melford’s Dracula expanded much of the dialogue exchanges and re-arranged scenes which as a result, added almost half an hour to the runtime of its English-language counterpart. The advantage that they had was shooting their scenes after Browning had shot his, and so could watch and adapt but also improve upon them- resulting in a film that many consider to be superior to the iconic Hollywood film with Bela Lugosi.
Let the Right One In (2008)
One of the most acclaimed vampire movies of all time, Let the Right One In is by director Tomas Alfredson and centres around the budding romance of two pre-teens (Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson) in Blackeberg, Stockholm in the 1980s. If you haven’t seen this film then you may be asking yourself, “Well where does the vampire come into it?” Well dear reader, there shan’t be any vampire here unless you explicitly invite them in, which is what our innocent friend Oskar finds out about a girl, Eli, that just moved into his neighbourhood.
Oskar is a shy and bullied kid and finds a friend in the mysterious Eli, who turns out to be a little more than, or perhaps exactly what he needs, in a friend. That is, somebody who can give him the confidence and the security to be able to stand up to those who beat him up as he spends his evenings fantasising about his revenge. So, Oskar wants to kill, and Eli needs to kill. Whether or not this is a recipe for something terrible or lovely is a matter of perspective but what it does conjure up is a touching story and one of the most spectacularly graceful and gruesome finales of all time.
It is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay. It also spawned a US remake in 2010 with the slightly altered title Let Me In starring Chloë Grace Moretz, by director Matt Reeves. The remake, despite your probable assumption that it sucks (lol sucks) is also very good.
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Another vampiric love story except this time, it’s both of them, having been married for centuries. But now one of them is depressed and resentful of what the world and humans have become. So much so that the pair, Adam and Eve, (Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston) no longer source their blood directly from the necks of unassuming humans and their dirty 21st century environment, but rely on local suppliers to deliver the good stuff. Adam also is and has been a famous musician and composer, having influenced the careers of many others throughout the years.
In a lot of ways, this is exactly how one would imagine a vampire might be in a real-world setting: well-read, educated, cultured, historically informed, really into music and nice clothes, reclusive, talks using lots of big words and philosophies, and a little unsure of their place in the modern world. Or maybe that’s just your goth emo friend from 2006. Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive is as intelligent as vampire movies get, there is no on-screen violence, and very little actual blood. Instead, it explores love, grief, changing times, addiction and imperfections across all things.
The film was also named the fourth greatest film of the 2010s by The Hollywood Reporter's chief film critic Todd McCarthy.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night centres around a girl who the majority of the time is, in fact, walking home alone at night. This Persian-language horror movie at a glance feels like it could’ve been made in the 30s but at the same time feels unquestionably modern. The “girl” in question is a nameless vampire portrayed by Sheila Vand who prays on men who disrespect women. She also rides a skateboard.
This multi award-winner has a much larger focus on atmosphere, emotion and underlying meanings than pushing along a story, which is aided by its use of high-contrast black and white throughout and its eerie lighting. In addition to drawing influence from and paying homage to horror classics like Nosferatu, it also borrows elements from old school spaghetti westerns through use of a lone antihero as well as graphic novels like Sin City inspiring its aesthetic.
Regarding her take on a vampire, Lily Amirpour said: “a vampire is so many things: serial killer, a romantic, a historian, a drug addict- they’re sort of all these things in one”, and the film examines all of these qualities in different ways.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
The only comedy on this list, What We Do in the Shadows imagines what it would be like if a group of vampires lived together in a flat in the modern day. It is one of the most original and creative takes on the mythical blood-suckers with a Modern Family-esque set up as a group of vampires of varying personalities and ages from 183 to 8000 cohabitate and argue about who has or hasn’t been doing the dishes.
Co-written and directed by and starring both Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, What We Do in the Shadows brilliantly plays with vampire tropes like having their rivals be a group of werewolves à la Twilight and not being able to enter clubs as they have not been explicitly invited in (see Let the Right One In). Each of the vampires is distinct with eccentric personalities that are products of their respective times and if millennials and boomers can’t be on the same page then what makes you think that somebody from the Victorian era and somebody from the Stone Age won’t get at each other’s throats?
It also spawned a TV series of the same name, which so far has been nominated for 29 Emmy awards over its five seasons.
A Fool There Was (1914)
1914’s A Fool There Was directed by Frank Powell and starring Theda Bara is technically not a vampire movie- at least not in the traditional sense. She is described in the film as “a woman of the vampire species” and her official credit is “The Vampire”, but these are both metaphorical. Despite this however, it is often cited as the first vampire movie. Whether or not that’s true, it is one of film’s earliest instances of the femme fatale.
“Vamp” or “vampire” was a term used in early Hollywood to describe a woman who “seduces, fascinates and then exhausts her victims.” As a vamp, Bara would become a sensation, largely due to the fictionalised biography that Fox Studios promoted her with: An Egyptian woman involved in the occult. Really, she was just Theodosia Goodman from Ohio.
The film is based on the 1909 Broadway production A Fool There Was by Porter Emerson Browne, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's (The Jungle Book) poem The Vampire. It is also one of the few films starring Theda Bara to still exist in its entirety, with the majority of them being lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire. She never appeared in any sound films.
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