VAMPIRES

• In the USA, Universal produced many "Monster Movies" among which very popular ones including Count Dracula played by Bela Lugosi in the 30s.

• Then, the Hammer Film Productions, a company based in London, England, became known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-50s until the 1970s, often starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula.

The VAMPIRE, so reliant on light and darkness, is indeed a HIGHLY CINEMATOGRAPHIC CREATURE.

Let's have a look at a few extracts all more or less based on Bram Stocker's famous novel, DRACULA published in 1897.

NOSFERATU by F.W. Murnau (1922) - Task 4 on your worksheet

Task 6 on your worksheet

The Fearless Vampire Killers by Roman Polanski (1967)

Task 7 on your worksheet - an interview of Gary Oldman who played Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's version.

DRACULA by Francis Ford Coppola (1992)

EXTRACT 1 - prologue

EXTRACT 2 - Arrival of Jonathan Harker at the castle

"(Jonathan Harker’s journal) 5 May - I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. In the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is. I have not yet been able to see it by daylight.

When the caleche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his hand to assist me to alight. Again I could not but notice his prodigious strength. His hand actually seemed like a steel vice that could have crushed mine if he had chosen. Then he took my traps, and placed them on the ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of massive stone. I could see even in the dim light that the stone was massively carved, but that the carving had been much worn by time and weather. As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook the reins. The horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared down one of the dark openings. "

- First encounter with the Count

"Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue,as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone.The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely.Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively, "Count Dracula?"

EXTRACT 3 - Jonathan is shaving

MORE ABOUT VAMPIRES

Among the numerous variations around the vampire figure, some less famous adaptations of the myth may deserve a closer look.

- Vampyr by Dreyer (1932)

- The Hunger by Toni Scott (1983)

- The Addiction by Abel Ferrara (1995)