Our fiendish friends have had a storied and sordid history in film. Each of them holds a dark position amongst the more primal fears of man, each preying upon our nightmares, always residing just out of sight, but close enough to make your skin crawl. Though each of these classic monsters has hundreds, if not thousands, of incarnations they have certainly changed over the years, adapting to the natural desensitizing of the world. As we grow up, so do these folkloric beasts, always a step or two behind us in the shadows of our imagination.
Sadly, the years have not been kind to many of these monsters and out of the humble respect we filmmakers have for them, THEMOVIEPOOL has chronicled the slow and persistent course of change that has both blessed and cursed them. See here now, through the realm of cinema, how your favorite beastie has evolved through the ages. And remember, though many of these creatures have upwards of a thousand films to their credit, we're focusing on the movies that have changed the collective view of them. The ones that garnered the most attention resulting in how they are perceived today, tracking them via the Scare Factor score.
THE VAMPIRE
The undead demonic fiend has been apart of human mythology and legend since before recorded time, but the term "Vampire" wasn't coined until the 18th century. And for the past 300 years, the legend has remained apart of our folklore, always lurking in the shadows, forever tempting us with their dark embrace.
Easy to identify with, the Vampire is a pragmatic and dark vision of humans themselves. They are a perverted reverse image. Humans crave the light, Vamps the dark of night. The living embrace death with their daily sustenance, our food always dying to sustain us. Vampires require life in order to survive. They are cold, removed, and embittered by centuries of wisdom with no concept of a mortal end, yet humans are plagued by a limited understanding of death and fear it as such. They are everything we cannot be and embrace all we fail to truly see in our lives. They are the cruel reality that death is a messy, scary, and alien concept full of mystery and doubt.
As the leading legendary monster, these night stalkers have experienced more mutation in their cinematic treatments than any other classic monster.
Nosferatu (1922)
The landmark film which first showcased the vampire as a supernatural, blood-thirsty night-stalker. He was violent, he was ugly, he was scary. He was a true monster. Nosferatu took the original Roma/Italian legend and brought him full bore into the limelight. Little did the production staff know back in 1922 what they were creating and the results have been as varied as the demon's form itself.
SCARE FACTOR: 8.5
Dracula (1931)
The icon receives character enhancement, gaining phenomenal power, devastating weaknesses, and through a love interest we first see the vampire as a tragic figure. He is terrifying and a predator of the night, but he has not lost his human persona, it is merely masked. Lugosi's Dracula was deeply lonely and longed for an unseen end to his torment. Though he relished the hunt and the seduction, in the end, it was more painful than he would ever admit.
SCARE FACTOR: 9.5
The Lost Boys (1986)
50 years has passed and the vampire was unchanged, until the concept of young vampires is presented, enhancing all manner of adolescent deviance, making it cool to be undead. Here we see the adolescent vampire emerge which in turn gave birth to the young, vibrant, and remorseless monster in all youth. When you can never die, what do you do with all that time on your hands...party, party, party!
SCARE FACTOR: 7.0
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993)
Twist and turn, the vampire myth gets it regal nature back, but is beginning to see a strong erotic nature injected. Vampires are now as regal and romantic as they are scary and violent. The concept of a lifetime of sexual experience and devotion to the craft coupled with the vampire's mesmeric capability makes for an experience no human could ever truly imagine.
SCARE FACTOR: 8.0
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Ann Rice capitalizes on the vampire craze with her books which inspires the films. Here the regal nature is a delicate facade that hides an immoral, sexually minded, violent creature. We also see that vampires have as many questions about their own existence as humans do...they just have more time to contemplate those questions, the answers still as elusive as the ones we living beings search for. A true example of the dark, reverse image of ourselves.
SCARE FACTOR: 6.0
Blade (1998)
Vampires once again turn the curve back to the nightmarish, blood-thirsty, raving creatures of the night. Their diabolic nature is expounded as superior, sexual, and visceral again. The trilogy serves us examples from every vampiric concept in cinema.
SCARE FACTOR: 5.5
30 Days of Night (2007)
The last ditch attempt to solidify vampires as ravening monsters. These bloodsuckers don't play around. Vicious, methodical, without erotism or pathos. They live strictly to feed and kill. A blight upon humanity, they themselves conjured the "legend" and use it to hide from society as they play behind the scenes, feasting upon our ignorance. The ultimate parasite.
SCARE FACTOR: 9.5
Twilight (2008)
Vampires change little until the tween craze not only brings the monster full-bore to the romantic light, but de-fangs them as struggling against their nature. Embrace the Emo-pire! Though the Underworld trilogy gave us a romantic, aristocratic version of the undead, it failed to gain steam after the first film. With Twilight so pervasive in all it's forms, we see a shift down. These creatures are almost humans playing vampires. As vampires though, they don't make any sense.
SCARE FACTOR: 3.0
OFFICIAL SCARE FACTOR: 7.0 Vampires have lessened in recent years, shedding their demonic nature for a more acceptable romantic/erotic one resulting in a larger salable demographic. Though it remains official that they are in fact undead creatures that feast on the life of others, both cursed and blessed in their permutations, it is obvious that general culture has begun to soften up on them as a whole, seeing the species as varied and alluring characters as they are cunning and brutal killers. Perhaps though the cinema will swing back to the original fear and the villain will inspire the terror it once did.
Next we will shed a harsh light onto that most notable of predatory monsters: The Werewolf.
-Jarod
