Vampires Used to be Scary

It's Halloween season and one of my favorite times of year. The weather finally cools down and it's time to watch scary movies. That means I won't be watching any movies (or TV shows) with vampires because vampires aren't scary anymore. What's happened to the vampire is rather undignified for a creature that has haunted and terrified but also intrigued every civilization for hundreds if not thousands of years. They've gone from demons of the night to PG-13 leading men and heartthrobs. I've never really been a big vampire fan but that just seems wrong. It's a well known fact that anything 12 year-old girls fawn over can't be scary.

I remember not wanting to watch movies like From Dusk Til Dawn, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even The Lost Boys because they had vampires and vampires were the stuff of horror movies. I recently watched The Lost Boys and while it's not scary like you typically think of a horror movie being scary, it is an entertaining movie about vampires. The third act where the vampires attack the house the main characters are holed up in is like a demented version of Home Alone. The teenage vampires act how teenagers would act if they were immortal, had superpowers, and pretty much no consequences for their actions. They enjoy being vampires and don't act like moody emo kids. The gang of vampires in The Lost Boys has the allure and intrigue that makes teenagers turn goth, sells Anne Rice books, and was first put on the screen by Bela Lugosi. Lugosi is the ultimate Dracula; dangerous, but appealing in spite of, or because of, that fact. But even before Tod Browning's 1931 version of Dracula, the vampire appeared as a monster, not a lover, in F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu. If you haven't seen Nosferatu, I highly recommend giving it a watch. It's not only one of the first and best of the horror genre, but also one of the great movies of the silent era. It's creepy and haunting and perfect for watching late at night.

Despite the German poster shown above giving it a 4 fedora rating, I think Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Coppola's 1990 version) is largely underrated and overlooked. Of course it won't hold up when compared to Tod Browning's 1931 classic version, but it does just fine as its own version of Bram Stoker's novel. In this version especially, we see the vampire as both a monster and alluring lover. I don't find the presence of Keanu Reeves or Winona Ryder distracting and I think Anthony Hopkins' performance as Dr. Van Helsing is so over the top it's great; it makes Van Helsing an eccentric jerk which is a great spin on the character. Coppola's Dracula uses a lot of in-camera effects and old fashioned, low-tech special effects and it gives the movie the creepy, spooky feel of older horror movies that had to rely on mood and atmosphere to effect the audience. It also has one of the spookiest and craziest movie scores I've ever heard.
Interview with the Vampire is where the vampire becomes less of a monster and more sentimental - which is the point of the movie: how do you deal with going from life as a human to life as a vampire? It's an effective movie that again relies on mood and atmosphere, which is helped by the period setting. It lets us in on the "realities" of life as a vampire that other movies don't touch on. The vampires are still fearsome, though the emphasis is on the allure of the undead creature. I don't view 2008's Let the Right One In so much as a vampire movie as a movie about two lonely people, one of whom just happens to be a vampire. I thought it was one of the best movies of 2008 and was disappointed to hear that an American version was being made. The TV spots make the remake look better than I was expecting it to be and I'll probably check it out before Halloween, if only to see how it was adapted for American audiences.
For my money, the last good vampire-as-monster movie was 2000's Shadow of the Vampire. It tells the fictional story of the making of F.W Murnau's Nosferatu, in which Murnau (played by John Malkovich) hires a real vampire, Max Shrek (played by Willem Dafoe) to give his film a truly authentic feel. Dafoe gives an incredible and chilling performance as the monstrous vampire and even received an Oscar nomination. Shrek begins to feed off of the crew and cast and Murnau struggles to gain control of the undead beast and finish his movie. It's a great vampire movie, but it's also a movie about making movies, a favorite genre of mine. Shrek can't help being a vampire which is jeopardizing the movie production. Murnau keeps the production going even though he's risking the lives of his cast and crew because he can't help what he is either, a filmmaker.