My Top 10 Vampire Movies...

I tend to take a dim view of vampire films. For the most part, they seem to me to be simply an excuse for various production companies to dress down a bunch of good-looking (semi-) thespians and splash blood all over them. Vampire stories are, for the most part, thinly-veiled morality tales about lust and whether or not to cave into lustful inclinations, so they tend to be made into movies directed at the 18-35 year old cinema crowd. “Don’t give into your cravings!” they seem to cry, “or some stern authority figure will come along and give you what for!”; but probably not a stake through the heart…

Big budget takes on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula have come and gone and few have done anything innovative with the source material. Bela Lugosi dressed up as Fantomas for his 1932 turn, but the film is about as lacklustre as it gets: many scenes are of the ‘talking heads’ variety and about as interesting to watch as a Punch & Judy show on mogadon (they made a Spanish version at the same time, using the same sets and costumes but shooting at night with a different cast – it’s much better). Todd Browning’s best work still remains “Freaks”; he was just phoning this in. The 1992 “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” by Francis Ford Coppola was a by-the-numbers re-telling aimed at those who don’t read and need to catch up: apart from Gary Oldman’s impersonation of the Count, it’s a weird exercise in wardrobe and set design but little else.

The Hammer studios released a bunch of vampire films in the ‘60s-‘70s but they tend to rely more on titillation than scares. Christopher Lee grunts and roars along in most of them but it’s more about the boobs than the blood. “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” (1966) is the best of these, but the sequels don’t repay watching. “Count Yorga: Vampire Hunter” and “Countess Dracula” are of interest but again, they’re not exactly high art.

Every now and then, however, along comes a vampire flick that does something different, that takes the concept and explores it in unexpected ways. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I discover one of these and they make up the bulk of what I’m going to call my “Top 10 Vampire Films (for now)”. These are in chronological order, so please don’t think I’m ranking them in terms of merit!

F.W. Murnau: “Nosferatu - eine Symphonie des Grauens” (1922)

An oldie and a goodie. Murnau has been tagged with all kinds of occult misbehaviour due to the set design in this (and other) of his films, even to the point of having been dug up from his grave in Germany to have his skull stolen. This is what happens when you play up your ‘dark side’ in order to boost movie sales. Stoker’s widow hounded Murnau mercilessly over this film, attempting to destroy every print due to copyright infraction. This meant that it passed from view in Europe for awhile before prints that had been sent to the US came to light and re-issues could be generated.

The moodiness and creepy aura of this film cannot be underestimated. Add to this the fact that “Count Orlock” looks more like Stoker’s vampire than any that came later has got to be a bonus. For the simple reason that there were no Hollywood clichés to fall in line with, this movie opens new ground by virtue of just having been made.

Murnau’s other movies partake of the same moody chalice and, even when they aren’t about things supernatural, they repay investigation: “Sunrise” is brilliant, as is his “Faust”. If you’re keen, take a look at “Shadow of the Vampire” (2009) which stars Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck from “Nosferatu”, if the vampire had really been a vampire – it’s a nice piece of post-modernist deconstruction that pays warm homage to the source material. The remake of the film starring Klaus Kinski is for completists only: apart from being in colour, it doesn’t improve on the original and there are some ‘Punch & Judy moments' between Renfield and Orlock that are quite wince-worthy.

Carl Theodor Dreyer: “Vampyr” (1932)

Moody and mysterious this is a quality example of the surrealist’s art. Faced with having to make his movie in three different languages, Dreyer kept the dialogue at a minimum and resorted to the outdated use of intertext titles to push his drama along. The story revolves around a young man who stops in a village inn and is gifted with a volume of vampire-hunting lore. His efforts to expose and thwart the vampire preying on the townsfolk see him almost buried alive, and we see him being carried to his grave in a coffin with a convenient window in the lid, enabling us to watch every second of his mounting horror. There is extensive use of montage photography here allowing us to observe characters’ shadows behaving strangely and the ghostly forms of increasingly off-kiltre characters to emerge. The film’s reception was quite poor upon its release; a later release in France did little better. Nowadays, the movie has resounding critical acclaim and it’s easy to see why.

Jean Rollin: “The Iron Rose” (1973)

Moving on, we skip ahead to the ‘70s, vaulting over a slew of vampire flicks which did little more than build a brick wall of cliché that later directors were forced to contend with. With this film, I’m being a little cheeky, because it’s doubtful that it even counts as a vampire film, but it’s a great movie nonetheless.

The film follows the night-time wanderings of a young French couple as they break into a graveyard for the night, as part of their tryst. Getting in is the easy part; getting back out proves to be entirely more problematic. Having encountered each other at a funeral for a mutual acquaintance, the pair are fairly ambivalent about each other – he thinks that he’s God’s gift to women; she’s at a loose end and wanting to see what will happen, if only to break her existential despair. They become lost; they hole up in a tomb; some tentative sexual fumblings occur and he oversteps the line. Next thing he’s hurt and in danger of dying; she locks him in the tomb and tries to find her way out of the cemetery.

Many peculiar and unexpected images litter this film, including the appearance of a clown paying a visit to a dead friend’s grave (clowns have dead friends too). The mood is uneasy and strange and unexpectedly sexy in places. The spell ends with the sunrise and the girl escapes to the beach revelling in having survived the night. This may not be a vampire film, but its obsession with death and sex, along with the mystical entrapment within the boneyard, certainly allow the viewer to read it that way.

Kathryn Bigelow: “Near Dark” (1987)

I’m a Kathryn Bigelow fan from way back – this film and “Blue Steel” are two of the best thrillers going, for my money, although they work from two very different premises. “Aliens” fans enjoy the fact that some of the more colourful actors from that film show up in this one, and Bigelow certainly lets them run wild and chew up the scenery; none of it is to the detriment of the film, however. Upon its release in the US, a print of this film was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be catalogued amongst their collection of essential American cinema works, so you have to ask yourself – why did it take so long for Kathryn Bigelow to get her Oscar? There’s far too many years between this flick and 2008’s “The Hurt Locker”.

Out on the town with his country friends, Caleb spots May (Jenny Wright) and escorts her out to the middle of nowhere in his truck. Just as dawn is nearing, he asks May for a kiss and she bites him on the neck, before running away across the fields. Caleb walks home and begins to burn as the sun rises. He gets abducted by May’s friends before he completely immolates and they add him to their motley collection of miscreants.

It’s interesting to note that not once is the word “vampire” used in this story, although it’s entirely obvious that that is what they are. The scene in the remote bar where they chew through all the staff and patrons (except for one) is graphic and designed to play mercilessly on your nerves. When the last victim escapes by breaking through a back window, you’re actually relieved, not so much for his sake but for the fact that the sequence is finally over. Tension is Bigelow’s forte and she winds it up to fever pitch here.

The rest of the movie resolves itself satisfyingly and a particular feature that I like is the increasing ambivalence in Caleb and May’s relationship. The film got overrun by “The Lost Boys” which appeared at the same time and buried it in the background; however, if you like your vampires vicious and bloodthirsty, this is the film to watch.

Phillip Ridley: “The Reflecting Skin” (1990)

Again, technically, this is not a vampire film. However, it is a story about Seth Dove, a young boy in the American mid-West, who thinks that his beloved older brother is being seduced by one, even though that’s not at all what she is. What she is, is a whole lot more scary than that…

Set just after the Second World War, this remote and desolate township, lost among vast golden wheatfields, is home to many messed-up, post trauma men, trying to find their way back home to a place that stayed still while they fundamentally changed. Dolphin’s husband kills himself a week after their marriage, leaving her bereft and traumatised; Luke – the young protagonist’s father – kills himself when his other son is found murdered and the blame points his way; Cameron, Seth’s older brother just returned from the War, dying of radiation poisoning and guilt-ridden over his part in the atomic weapons program, finds solace in Dolphin’s arms, causing Seth to come to his aid.

This is a truly tragic film of the first water. If films like “Paperhouse” or “Let’s Kill Uncle” – movies where children completely misunderstand what the adults are up to – are your meat and drink, you will love this edgy and terrible (in the good sense) film.

Guillermo del Toro: “Cronos” (1993)

Again, not a vampire film. You can see a picture emerging here.

This was one of the first Guillermo del Toro films I ever saw and it made me a fan for life. It involves the owner of an antique shop in Mexico, who finds a strange clockwork device inside a plaster statue of an angel. He encounters a bunch of heavy gangster types who ask him if he’s seen the object, but he denies having found it, thinking, like any antique dealer, that he needs to check into it more fully before offering it for sale. The device turns out to contain the secret of immortality, injecting its operator with alchemical fluids; there is a drawback though: the newly-immortal user must imbibe fresh blood to stay alive. Our antiquarian fails to conceal his newly-energised self from the villains – who all work for a dying and eminently shady multi-millionaire – and his life gets turned upside-down.

This is the best of del Toro’s two vampire flicks (the other one is “Blade 2” – don’t go and see it. Don’t.) Once you’ve seen this film, you’ll recognise from where del Toro gets his fascination for angel statues in plastic bags and for clockwork insects. Not only is it tense and scary – the scene where the old man wakes up just before being cremated is especially good – but there’s also room for pathos as the old man and his grand-daughter come to terms with his new state of being. It’s less hard to find nowadays, thanks to the Academy Award for “Pan’s Labyrinth”, so find a copy and get ready for bloody fun.

David Slade: “30 Days of Night” (2007)

I have no time for vampires who look like rock stars, or movies that celebrate the sexy vampire ideal. I want leeches, not vamps. For this reason, I eschewed most of the Hammer horror line-up along with “Interview with the Vampire” (1994) and (although it pains me to say it) Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive” (2013) which is simply an awfully tedious inside joke, padded out with a lot of name-dropping. No, I want vampires that are completely out there, and who look as though they’ve just dug themselves up for a night of bloody debauch.

Just so, are the bloodsuckers in Slade’s re-telling of the ground-breaking Dark Horse graphic novel. In this film, a shipload of vampires arrive in Barrow, Alaska, just as the town is about to lock itself down for a month of darkness as the earth tips its hat away from the Sun. The vampires’ human ally creeps into town to kill dogs, break helicopters and destroy all the satellite ‘phones and, just when Sheriff Eben works out that trouble is afoot, it’s night-time and the vampires start to run amok.

These are festy buggers. Their faces are covered in blood and they bounce and run about like they’re on wires. The most creepy thing about them is the fact that their eyes are smaller than normal, giving them a rat-like aspect. They’re also just a little bit to the left of what passes as human – as you would be if you’d become a vampire. They’re bestial and remorseless and their sheer brutality will give you pause. They also lie through their pointy teeth, as their nasty little helper learns to his cost.

For my money, this is what vampires would look like if they were real – not suave cape-wearing aristos with an excess of world-weariness. They made a sequel to this film, into which they tried to inject some sexy overtones (read: boobs). I’d advise against it.

Tomas Alfredson: “Let the Right One In” (2008)

Making bad sequels which undermine the original is bad enough; but when they re-make a movie from a perfectly decent foreign-language original, that’s just money wasted. This film (and the book it was based on) broke box-office records when it came out, so of course Hollywood chose to give it a makeover into English and into an American setting. Avoid it, that’s all I have to say.

The focus of this story is the question of what happens to a vampire when their devoted human helper starts to approach its use-by date. In this tale, a lonely little boy becomes embroiled in the life of the little girl who moves into the flat next door, a little girl who walks barefoot in the snow and who lives with an aging older man who takes orders from her. They become friends and she saves him from some particularly evil school bullies. The fallout from her bloodsucking nocturnal activities soon mounts up and her keeper sacrifices himself to prevent her exposure. Our little boy steps up to take his place.

I may seem to have overstated things here, causing some to cry “spoiler alert!”, but the path of this narrative is not what makes it so special. The nuances are what’s important here and while the little girl is quite inhuman, our hero brings out her humanity and it makes for an engaging and ultimately satisfying spectacle.

Now: on to 2014!

Ana Lily Amipour: “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (2014)

There must have been something in the water this year, because a whole slew of vampire films appeared and there was virtually not a bad one among them. The first of these is undoubtedly my favourite. As you start to watch it, you’d find yourself hard-pressed to decide whether or not this movie is taking the piss; it will delight you to learn that it’s doing both.

The eponymous girl spends her days in her basement flat listening to 80s records. At night she emerges wearing her hijab and wanders about the town seeking whatever comes her way. Early on, she encounters a colourful pimp who takes her back to his place to induct her into his stable of whores. Imagine his surprise when she shows her fangs and bites off his thumb!

Eventually she meets a young man with some heavy problems: his uncle has been partaking of the heroin with which he has been supplied, rather than selling it as ordered. Our young man tries to resolve things and the gangsters abscond with his new car as part-payment on his uncle’s debt. Into his life, scooting along on a purloined skateboard with her headgear billowing like Count Dracula’s cape, comes the girl, and the rest – as they say – is magic.

The image of the vampire, like any monster character in film or literature, has often been interpreted as a symbol of the outsider, the one who doesn’t belong and who finds it difficult to fit in. In this instance, the vampire does extra work: this time she’s a woman, and, just as the vampire stands outside of human society, so woman stands outside the patriarchy. There are no glass ceilings holding our vampire back! Amipour began filming this in her homeland of Iran, but decided that the story didn’t make sense there. So she re-located her farsi-speaking cast to the US and set the story in a desert-encompassed boondocks town. The day that Hollywood makes an English-speaking version of this will be a black one indeed, so get out there and find it while you can!

Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead: “Spring” (2014)

Another piece of strange fruit that emerged in 2014 was this delight, which frankly defies description. It’s the tale of a young man who loses his mother to cancer (compare and contrast her death scene to the mother’s death in “Guardians of the Galaxy” – it will blow your mind!) and goes into a tailspin, losing his job and flirting outrageously with danger. He decides to travel and heads off to Italy where he starts a road trip with a pair of British yobbos that seems destined to continue his run off the rails. Then he washes up in a small seaside town outside of Naples and meets the girl.

At that point he bites off more than he can comfortably choke down. She puts him through the emotional wringer and, each time he thinks he’s got her worked out, she moves the goal posts and he’s back to square one. Let it not be said however, that this is a film all about the guy chasing some fleeting mirage of a fantasy woman: she may be fantastic, but her concerns – everyday and emotional – are realistic (after a fashion) and bring as much weight to bear upon the relationship as his destructive, “poor me!” catharsis. This is, in fact, a love story and love is at the heart of the problem, and both partners in the relationship stand to lose a great deal in the outcome (and not just their lives).

I was a third of the way into this film before the supernatural cat was let out of the bag. As it was, I was engrossed with the travails and travels of our hero and had no issue with watching right through to the end; however, seeing our heroine half-transformed into some octopoid monstrosity really sold me. Ideally, you should do as I did – take the disc, sit on it for months until you find there’s nothing else to put on your DVD player and have your socks knocked off in the second act. If you don’t get hooked, then just chill and watch all of the innovative camerawork which was done using drones mounted with tiny cameras – gobstopping!

*****

That’s my Top 10. There are others I could have added – most noticeably Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s “What We Do in the Shadows”, another gem from 2014 – but I think this reveals my quintessential list. You’ll notice that other classics like “The Hunger” and Polanski’s “Fearless Vampire Killers” are absent – to be absolutely frank, I haven’t seen either of them so, until that happens, they’ll be MIA. I have also stayed away from television shows like “Penny Dreadful” (great!), “The Strain” (meh!) and “Ultraviolet” (excellent!), but if I ever put together a list of vampire TV shows, you’ll know where to look.