The Vampire is one of the most enduring figures in horror cinema.

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The Vampire is one of the most enduring figures in horror cinema. In fact, the very first vampire movie, Frederich Murnaus' Nosferatu (Prana Film Company G.m.b.H) was made in 1922, and with Metropolis (Fritz Lang: UFA:G: 1926) and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Robert Wiener: Transit Film-Gesellschaft mblt: 1919) make up the great trilogy of German Expressionist film. Starring Max Schreck in the title role, it was also the first of many adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel. Even if you haven't seen Nosferatu, there is one image from it you do know: the hunched shadow of Count Orlok, clawed hand outstretched towards Mina's room. So potent is this image that in the 1990 film Vampire's Kiss (Robert Bierman: Magellan), Nicholas Cage provides a perfect, and hilarious, imitation of it.

What is the nature of the Unnatural? Basically, why do audiences find vampires so attractive? Between Nosferatu and Vampire's Kiss there are many differences, but I propose that every, as it was, resurrection, holds those same key elements.

For many people, 'vampire' means 'Dracula', which is a pity, as some of the most interesting forays into the genre fall outside the precedent of the male Master Vampire with the accent. I am using the term 'Master' to refer to that single creature, in the vampire tale, that carries the Threat to the hero, the heroine, and that other crucial figure, the doctor or priest. We shall come back to this. Dracula, i.e. the adaptation of the novel that keeps the title and the ending; was first made in 1932 by Tod Browning for Universal, with the still, all clichés, all imitations aside, spectacular Bela Lugosi. Dracula was not, however, Nosferatu's successor chronologically. The Danish/German Vampyr (Tobis-Klang film) was made by Karl Dreyer in 1931. It also had a literary source, Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. It actually features the first female Master Vampire, the grisly Marie Chopin played by Henriette Gerard; an Undead so powerful she can trap the hero in a dream of his own funeral, viewed from within a glass-topped coffin.

The 'vampire-tale' is simply the action, of the Master carrying the Threat. The immediate question is what the threat is and what too, but this we shall find only by making a journey. Several journeys in fact, for Murnaus' Nosferatu, Browning's Dracula and Vampyr all begin with the hero, or protagonist/victim in the case of Browning's 'Mr Renfield', travelling into a remote and desolate area, far out of their usual society. Renfield, and Harker, are on business; in Vampyr David Grey is holidaying at an inn where he receives a strange parcel from an old man, labelled 'not to be opened until after my death'. It contains the Book of Vampires, a marvellous plot device that also appears in Nosferatu. Each traveller then proceeds, against the reverent advice of the local peasantry, to a large, half-ruined Gothic manor or castle.

Thirty four years later in the third of the 'Dracula' films made by Terrence Fisher for Hammer's House of Horror, Dracula, Prince of Darkness with Christopher Lee (though he was denied his favourite adversary, Peter Cushing, this time round) the dialogue of characters caught in a thunderstorm during their Carpathian holiday tends to provoke screams of laughter. "Oh, we'll find shelter in that old castle."

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Even Count Yorga, Vampire (Robert Kellian: Enrica/AIP) in 1970 finds himself one in what was then, contemporary America. In more recent films, vampires have started appearing in other settings: the strip club in Vamp (Richard Wenk: New World: 1986) for instance, or the cave of Joel Schumacher's Lost Boys (Warner Brothers: 1987). But even these last two still incorporate all the signifiers of 'Gothic'.

So what is 'Gothic'?

"The Gothic Castle itself, that formidable place, ruinous yet an effective prison, phantas-magorically shifting its outline as ever new vaults extended from their labyrinths. Scene of solitary wanderings, cut off from light and ...

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