For as long as people have told stories, there have been vampires in our folklore: in orally transmitted tales, in novels, and more recently, in film and television. They go out of fashion once in a while, but then they come back with a vengeance and a hunger for the macabre. The vampire is a timeless element of fantasy. It’s time to dig into its history.

Mythology with Fangs

Supernatural beings who drank the blood of innocent humans have popped up in almost every culture across the globe, from Antiquity and well into the Middle Ages. From the Indian vetālas and the Babylonian Lilitu (synonymous to the Hebrew Lilith) to the Ancient Greek Lamia and the Brazilian Jaracaca, and from the Eastern European versions including the Romanian strigoi, the African Asasabonsam, the Old Norse draugr, and the old-fashioned English revenant, our storybooks are loaded with blood-drinking fiends of the night.

Our fascination with these mythical creatures even devolved into a terrible frenzy during the 18^th century, which saw corpses staked and graves dug open to identify and destroy potential revenants. In that age, the immortality that bound one’s body to the night was a work attributed to the Devil himself. The only eternity that a soul could wish for came after death and with a proper burial for those so-called true Christians. Vampires were frightful creatures, capable of terrible things, a dark mirror image of ourselves, in the end, so of course, they thrived!

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID HENRY FRISTON FOR ‘CAMILLA’ BY SHERIDAN LE FANU

A Silver Screen for Nosferatu

When the 20^th century came around, people had a new medium to tell vampire stories through. German director F.W. Murnau brought forth ‘Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror’ in 1922, which introduced Max Schreck as Count Orlok. It was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ novel of 1897—the first slightly more romantic take on the infamous bloodsucker.

In Murnau’s version, the charmingly terrifying vampire has an interest in a new residence and in his estate agent’s wife, portrayed by Greta Schröder. Today, ‘Nosferatu’ is a jewel of early cinema, even though Stoker’s heirs sued over copyright infringement. A court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed, but several prints survived. In 1929, seven years after its German premiere, ‘Nosferatu’ was released in the United States, later becoming one of the most influential masterpieces of the silver screen. So influential, in fact, that Werner Herzog revisited it through a breath-taking homage titled ‘Nosferatu, the Vampyre’ (1979).

‘NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR’ (1922)

Stoker’s Dracula Revisited

After Murnau’s foray into the vampire fantasy, Tod Browning took on the challenge of an authorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel—by proxy, since the film is actually based on the 1924 stage play written by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which, in turn, is based on the novel. Yes, this is quite the copyrighted pretzel! Garrett Fort penned the screenplay, and legendary actor Bela Lugosi played the part of Dracula in what quickly became a veritable oeuvre of its genre and generation.

It had an enormous commercial and critical success upon its release, and Lugosi’s version of Dracula quickly became a cultural icon, recognizable anywhere. He also served as the central framework for future vampire characters which would later blossom in the minds of writers like Anne Rice and Stephen King, to name but a few. The classy and deadly type. Eventually, ‘Dracula’ (1931) was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in its National Film Registry, which deemed the film as ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’.

‘DRACULA’ (1931), ©UNIVERSAL PICTURES

The Politically Infuriated Vampire

Over the decades following Browning’s ‘Dracula’, the vampire myth didn’t find much appeal within the film world. There was the occasional European dip such as ‘Daughters of Darkness’ (1971), but nothing truly notable until Bill Gunn arose and slapped America with ‘Ganja & Hess’ (1973), a racially tinted and remarkably audacious vampire tale. It chronicles a short-lived but mesmerizing affair between a wealthy widow named Ganja and Hess, a vampiric anthropologist with an impressive hold on his powers.

Hess is turned by Ganja’s husband, portrayed by the director himself, with the aid of a Myrthian dagger inherited from an ancient tribe of African blood drinkers. The film’s dominating conclusion is that even with his complex knowledge of the history of his people, Duane Jones’s Hess has not yet truly felt the anger of the tragedy that befell the African people—not until the dagger. It’s an interesting transformation to observe, dabbling through painful history and societal issues that are still hard to take off the table. Worth mentioning here is that years later, Spike Lee did a remake of ‘Ganja & Hess’ titled ‘Da Sweet Blood of Jesus’ (2014).

‘GANJA & HESS’ (1973), ©KELLY/JORDAN ENTERPRISES

A Parody of Bloodsuckers

Once upon a time, the vampire was still a relatively young creature in the pages of cinema, so certain directors (Paul Morrissey) and certain producers (Andy Warhol, of all people) decided that it would be a fabulous idea to create a farcically impotent version of Dracula, brought to life by Udo Kier in ‘Blood for Dracula’ (1974). This particular bloodsucker’s problem is that his body is getting weaker due to the dwindling number of virgins for him to feast on. His quest for ‘pure blood’ takes him to Italy, where eye-candy Joe Dallesandro bangs his way through the countryside with a thick Brooklyn accent in order to literally starve Dracula out.

With no virgins left, the night-lord will eventually wither and perish, giving a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘morning wood’. On one hand, viewers would find it easy to laugh at an impotent vampire, but Kier’s portrayal also represents the slow death of classicism in the face of a sexual revolution.

‘BLOOD FOR DRACULA’ (1974), ©ANDY WARHOL PRESENTATION

Mr Romero’s Take

George Romero was no stranger to the horrors of supernatural. The vampire, in fact, was one of the primary influences for the filmmaker from a young age. Most might remember the master’s legacy through works like ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968), but it’s ‘Martin’ (1977) that made it into our vampiric compendium. It is a surprisingly inventive gem of its genre, uplifting the vampire mythos through its titular teenager. The kid gets his blood through syringes, and he’s one hell of a seducer. Mr Lugosi wouldn’t hold a candle to the strangely dazzling Martin.

There have been numerous imitators who have tried to claim Romero’s crown for ‘Martin’, though few filmmakers were ever able to deliver such psychological malaise by challenging the viewers’ imaginations. This young vampire holds his ground as a splendiferous anomaly and as an homage to the blood drinkers’ trope.

‘MARTIN’ (1977), ©LAUREL PRODUCTIONS

The Vampire Next Door

It’s safe to say that this trend started in 1985 with Tom Holland’s ‘Fright Night’, starring Chris Sarandon as the deviously seductive vampire who taunts his teenage neighbours by bringing a new girl home to victimize every night. There is a hilarious twist here, as the unexpected teen heroes enlist the services of an actor who kills vampires on TV to destroy the debonair bloodsucker. It’s an interesting collision between the voyeuristic cinema that Brian De Palma was better known for in the early ‘80s—works like ‘Body Double’ (1984) and ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980), among them, and the teen comedy style that frequently pitted the unpopular boys and girls against the star athletes and mean bubble-gum cheerleaders.

It was the first time that the vampire was connected to adolescent angst, and it created an interesting effect over the following decades, as both the big and the small screen gradually noticed the nocturnal fiend’s appeal to younger audiences. By then, Anne Rice’s ‘Interview with the Vampire’ novel was already sparking raucous fires among readers with its romanticized immortals, though it would take another nine years for Lestat to reach the silver screen. ‘Fright Night’ was remade in 2011 by Craig Gillespie and featured intense performances from Colin Farrell, David Tennant, and the late Anton Yelchin.

‘FRIGHT NIGHT’ (1985), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES

Of Mullets and Biters

Ever the adaptable and chameleonic creature, the vampire found yet another formula to work with, this time through ‘The Lost Boys’ (1987), a cult darling directed by Joel Schumacher and featuring the memorable Kiefer Sutherland with a bleached mullet and a dreamy-looking Jason Patric. The story follows two brothers who move to a new town, only to discover that it’s swarming with badass vampires.

This time, it’s easy to see who the villain is. The vampire’s role is rendered simple, defined by bloodthirst and violence. While the film didn’t do much in terms of box office immediately after its release, ‘The Lost Boys’ gathered a loyal following across generations, made timeless by its delightful melange of spunk, gore, and everything else that was so ‘80s and worth immortalizing on cellulose acetate.

‘THE LOST BOYS’ (1987), ©WARNER BROS.

Coming Full Circle

Back to ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ (1992), directed by the luminary Francis Ford Coppola. I find it sad that too many people judge him solely based on the ‘Godfather’ trilogy—yes, we all know that ‘The Godfather: Part 3’ (1990) was bad, but from there to calling his take on the Dracula lore as no more than ‘campy’ was a painful stretch. Alas, that was what many critics said when the film was released. Never mind the stellar cast, featuring exquisite performances by Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, and even an ingenue Keanu Reeves. It was branded and set aside to rot in the shadows of greater works like ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979).

Yet the American director’s vision of the vampire went beyond the increasingly mainstream sexual interpretation. His Dracula was an expression of immortality and an unstoppable lust that transcended the physical, desperately treading through the marshes of a surreal hunger. His Dracula carried himself with a sharp sense of danger, a predator on the prowl that instilled a sense of dark madness.

‘BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA’ (1992), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES

After all, what is the vampire nowadays, after centuries’ worth of fabled evolution? A damned creature, a destroyer of hearts, a thief of bodies, and mankind’s guilty pleasure. Immortality is usually out of our reach, but we live eternally and vicariously through the vampire, at every turn reminded that a price must be paid if one wishes to never die. A deal with the devil, in a way, and a choice that many openly contemplate, otherwise vampires would never be so popular.

The first half of the 20^th century got off to a slow start in terms of cinema, but as the artistic medium and its technology evolved, so did storytelling for the silver screen. The golden era opened the doors for many writers, directors and actors, their names forever inscribed in the annals of movie history.

With the development of cinema came numerous milestones—from new camera movements and plot building methods to revolutionary dramatic performances and editing breakthroughs that virtually changed how we view films today. This decade further established the industry, paving the way for the billions of dollars of box office profits that followed and later turned California into one of the world’s largest economies. Of course, the changes occurred globally, with European, Russian and Asian directors making their mark. But as we take another stroll down memory lane, it’s hard not to notice that America’s contribution to the silver screen is fundamental and impossible to deny.

1928: The Genius of Comedy in the Great Depression

Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Circus’ is one of the crown jewels of cinema. Rich in both comic invention and tender sentiment, it’s a beautifully crafted masterpiece of comedy which centres on the familiar figure of the Tramp, who inadvertently becomes the star of a circus as a clown, only to have his heart broken by Merna Kennedy’s gorgeous equestrienne. The brief final scene crystallizes all that is wonderful about Chaplin—for it is not only entirely his creation, it is also only about him.

In that moment of solitude, he is no less ‘the funny man’ the circus audience clamoured for, nor less the touching man, the resilient man, the poetic man. As Charlie Chaplin the filmmaker perceives the Tramp, he is all of the above, an eternal figure. His genius is distilled in an ending that is at once simple and sublime.

‘THE CIRCUS’ (1928), ©CHARLES CHAPLIN PRODUCTIONS

1929: From Spain and Russia with Love

Luis Buñuel’s first movie, a collaboration with Salvador Dalí titled ‘Un Chien Andalou’, is still taught in film schools today. Its ‘slice of eye’ opening scene is one of the most provocative moments in cinema. It qualifies as gore, though there’s a clear lack of realism, since the victim doesn’t move back at the sight of the blade and the special effect is obvious. The image is disturbing and voluntarily shocking, but it’s also a metaphor of the director’s desire to show us what’s really inside human beings: urges, passions, and desires. The visual assault brilliantly expresses the theoretical angle of the Surrealist revolution while simultaneously applying it.

‘UN CHIEN ANDALOU’ (1929)

While the Spanish were fiddling with shock value, the Russians were nurturing their documentary making skills through Dziga Vertov. In ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, the scene where the city comes to life is now remembered as a seminal moment, part of the greatest work of experimental documentary in cinema. In it, a camera seems to raise an entire city from the dead. Nearly eight decades after it was made, this film is an important chapter in academic studies, as the ‘20s Soviet Union was basically the cinematic think tank of the world. Soviet films themselves might seem ideologically shrill, but the sheer artistic joy that they exude is ever present.

Away from the European continent, however, a key event worth noting happened in the United States. On 16^th May, 1929, the first awards ceremony hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences concluded with the presentation of two, not one, Best Picture Oscars. Briefly making a distinction between artistic achievement and middlebrow success, the Academy gave the ‘Best Picture, Production’ statuette to William Wellman for his spectacular WWI aviation epic ‘Wings’ (1928), and the ‘Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production’ to F.W. Murnau’s ‘Sunrise’ (1928).

‘SUNRISE’ (1927), ©FOX FILM CORPORATION

1930: Eisenstein Goes to Hollywood

After the worldwide success of ‘Battleship Potemkin’ in 1925, the Soviet government sent its star director on a tour of European capitals with the purpose of studying the new sound process. He only had $25 on him. While in Paris, Sergei Eisenstein signed a six-month contract with Paramount to develop and direct films in the movie capital. At the time, Paramount Pictures were Hollywood’s most sophisticated and continental studio, having already worked with Lubitsch, Sjöström, and Murnay—who’d already achieved artistic and financial success in the capitalist mecca.

Eisenstein had his fun while he worked in Hollywood, but he confounded expectations with his disdain for professional actors and his insistent focus on indicting capitalism, smack in the middle of ‘An American Tragedy’. A right-wing campaign then sought to deport Paramount’s ‘Jewish Bolshevik’, so the studio chose to put aside their yearning for artistic respectability. They drew a stiff line between commercial concerns and progressive art by cancelling Eisenstein’s contract. In that precise moment, profitability and formalist art forever parted ways in Hollywood.

SERGEI EISENSTEIN IN NEW YORK, 1930, ©SPUTNIK

1931: City Lights and Dracula

One of the most sublime and most definitive moments in cinema came with the last scene of ‘City Lights’. Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp is just out of prison and more down and out than ever when he meets Virginia Cherrill’s Girl—a witness to his discomfiture but also one who’s been laughing at him behind his back. When she asks: ‘You can see now?’, he says ‘Yes, I can see now.’ The film fades to black on a closeup of the Tramp looking at her, smiling but still torn between joy and a state of tension and uncertainty. It’s one of those rare scenes that doesn’t need words—so exquisite that merely remembering it is enough to bring tears through its profundity.

The vampire continued his own evolution through Tod Browning’s ‘Dracula’, starring Bela Lugosi. It is the first great talking horror film, giving us a memorable scene with Mr Lugosi’s Count as he makes a grand entrance at the top of a cobweb-draped staircase, immaculately clad in evening clothes and his black cape, saying: ‘I… am… Dracula.’ At the time, the Hungarian actor’s command of English was still shaky, so he had to learn his lines phonetically, adding to the curiousness of his cadences. Others have played the role and were required to put their own spin on the line—among them, Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman, to name but a few, yet Lugosi is still the definitive Dracula.

‘DRACULA’ (1931), ©UNIVERSAL PICTURES

1932: Of Venus and Gangsters

Two films made history in 1932. The first, in my humble opinion, was ‘Blonde Venus’, directed by Josef von Sternberg and featuring the exquisite talents of Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. The ‘Hot Voodoo’ scene is especially worth remembering, as it not only marks one of the flashiest entrances of all times, it also signals the intention to subvert conventional morality—Ms Dietrich revealing herself from beneath a gorilla costume, the beauty within the beast, hirsute virility shed for teasing female eroticism.

Unfortunately, there were many racist elements in that era’s cinema; in ‘Blonde Venus’, we have the black-faced backup dancers to look past in order to see how Ms Dietrich’s character is pushed beyond the genre conventions, reinventing herself in every variety of womanhood available in Hollywood back then: devoted mother, cabaret star, drunken harlot.

‘BLONDE VENUS’ (1932), ©PARAMOUNT PICTURES

The art of screenwriting was taken to a superior level with Ben Hecht’s penning of ‘Scarface’, directed by Howard Hawks. He was a Chicago newspaperman, a novelist and a playwright, making his entrance onto the Hollywood stage at the end of the silent era. After writing Sternberg’s ‘Underworld’, the very first gangster picture, Hecht told Howard Hughes that he could double the body count of any previous gangster film and write one twice as good. For $11,000, he finished the script in 11 days and delivered what is arguably the best of the ‘30s machinegun mafioso cycle.

‘SCARFACE’ (1932), ©THE CADDO COMPANY

1933: Nazis, Marx Brothers, King Kong

Shortly after Hitler took office, Joseph Goebbels took over the newly founded Ministry of Propaganda in March of 1933. Fritz Lang’s ‘The Testament of Dr Mabuse’, which was scheduled for its theatrical release in that same month, was banned by the Ministry’s censorship office. Not long afterwards, Goebbels allegedly summoned Lang to his office, apologized for the banning, then told him that both he and Hitler were big fans of his films, inviting him to head a new agency supervising German film production. It isn’t yet clear if Mr Lang’s account of this meeting is entirely true, but we know that a few months later, he left Germany and the Nazi regime behind.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, silent comedies continued to live on in the talkies, best exemplified by the work of the Marx Brothers. ‘Duck Soup’ gave us yet another variation of the mirror gag, which had previously been used by Charlie Chaplin in ‘The Floorwalker’ (1917) and by Max Linder in ‘Seven Years Bad Luck’ (1921)—it also inspired future productions, such as Roman Polanski’s ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’ (1966).

‘KING KONG’ (1933), ©RKO RADIO PICTURES

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack presented one of the great and truly iconic pieces of cinema with ‘King Kong’, the tale of the giant gorilla that took on the big city and developed a soft spot for the delectable Ann Darrow, played by Fay Wray. The greatest moment is, of course, when he stands atop the world’s tallest man-made structure with the same fierce pride and compelling dignity as at the top of his mountain on Skull Island.

1934: Frank Capra Becomes a Legend

Ten years after Harry Cohn founded Columbia Pictures, the studio had an unexpected smash with ‘It Happened One Night’. Frank Capra’s no-frills direction meshes perfectly with Robert Riskin’s rat-a-tat screenplay, giving us the now-famous scene from this original Hollywood romantic comedy: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert must share a rural motel room; he uses a blanket he dubs ‘the walls of Jericho’ to block their views from each other, and a delightful, ageless dialogue ensues. ‘It Happened One Night’ was one of the first films to win all top-five Oscars—production, director, actor, actress, and screenplay.

‘IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT’ (1934), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES

1935: Technicolor Vanity Fair

Rouben Mamoulian’s ‘Becky Sharp’ is an impudent stripping down of Thackeray’s classic panorama of social climbing. It caused quite a few monocles to drop at the time. But despite the film’s witty nuances and Miriam Hopkins’ stellar performance, its core purpose was to display the new technology of three-strip Technicolor, which was finally perfected after twenty years of experimentation. The old processes only registered variations of red and green, while the new one used with ‘Becky Sharp’ offers brilliant, distinct shades of buttercup yellow, burnt orange, and Wedgwood blue, along with a more natural skin tone—a technological landmark in film history.

‘BECKY SHARP’ (1935) RESTORED THREE-STRIP TECHNICOLOR SHOT, ©PIONEER PICTURES CORPORATION/UCLA FILM & TELEVISION ARCHIVE

1936: The Foundation of the Cinémathèque Française

Most of us likely remember Ernest Lindgren from the United Kingdom, Jacques Ledoux from Belgium, Henri Langlois from France, and Iris Barry in the United States as founding fathers and mother, respectively, of film archives. They all shaped the art and science of collecting, preserving, and making available the moving image heritage for posterity at a time when cinema was merely seen as a minor form of art. But it was thanks to Henri Langlois’ efforts of establishing the Cinémathèque Française that turned the endeavour into a cultural phenomenon.

It is only his name that is associated today with the venerable institution, and that is mostly because of Mr Langlois’ knack of turning his passion into a ‘cause célèbre’. His agitprop genius helped propel the Nouvelle Vague movement, and his way of amassing and concealing film prints is pretty much the stuff legends are made of.

HENRI LANGLOIS, ©STEVE MUREZ

1938: Angels with Dirty Faces

To this day, Rocky’s death scene is still shocking—James Cagney’s screams sound so real. Nevertheless, what an incredible Hollywood-schmaltz moment!

Convicted for the murder of a double-crossing, no good rat played by Humphrey Bogart, Cagney’s Rocky Sullivan is visited by Father Jerry, his boyhood friend, the night before he’s due to die on the electric chair. Rocky promises to die the way he lived, spitting in the eye of authority and refusing to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him break.

‘ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES’ (1938), ©WARNER BROS.

His demise is perhaps one of the most chilling snippets ever projected onto the big screen. Realizing that the youngsters who adore him might end up just like him, Rocky puts on a cowardly act and starts screaming as he’s dragged off the next morning to his execution, as a last attempt at pushing others away from his path. It turns him into a genuine martyr, as he proves he is man enough to recognize his fragility and to do one last good thing in this world.

Ever since we could walk upright and huddled around the fire for warmth and safety, mankind has imagined all sorts of stories. Most of them revolved around the things we could not fully understand—the stars, the moon and the sun moving across the sky, the violent storms and any natural phenomena that forced us to adapt, to build stronger homes or move to friendlier lands altogether. But the most enduring tales of ours revolved around monsters and other things that go bump in the night.

In many ways, these monsters are just reflections of ourselves, of a darker side of mankind, to be specific. They draw their origins from their makers, and they tend to outlive us all in varied forms of fiction and in different mediums. Of all the creatures that our minds have conjured—werewolves, ogres, snake gods, zombies, ghouls, changelings, dragons and so on, none have been more enduring and more versatile than the vampire.

Gifted with eternal life but forced to live in the shadows of the night and to only drink human blood, the vampire is one of our most recurring fictional motifs. It has been imagined and reimagined, invented and reinvented across different cultures and decades, and it’s not showing any signs of redundancy. We cannot get enough of these beautiful monsters—because they are most appealing in almost every piece of lore out there. They’re known to be seductive and charming, carrying the wisdom of centuries. They’re hedonists, and they are violent. They’ve traded their humanity for immortality, and they’re a treasure trove of stories.

GARY OLDMAN IN ‘DRACULA’ (1992), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES

From the Eastern European folktales, vampires were known as undead creatures that tormented their loved ones, gruesome and portly monsters that brought death and misery wherever they went. It wasn’t until John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’, published in 1819, that the monster was revamped into the charismatic and sophisticated figure of modern fiction. Bram Stoker got inspired from the folk tales of Transylvania about Vlad the Impaler and gave humanity ‘Dracula’ in 1897, a masterpiece of gothic fantasy. Many writers and filmmakers have tried their luck at vampire stories over the years since—some flopped and were never heard from again, while others became cult cinema or bestselling novels.

‘THE LOST BOYS'(1987), ©WARNER BROS.

Each time, however, the vampires won because they got to keep living in our collective imagination. Who could forget Joel Schumacher’s ‘The Lost Boys’ (1987), for example? Starring Jason Patric, Corey Haim and Kiefer Sutherland, this cult darling follows the story of two brothers moving into a new town and discovering that the place is overrun with vampires—the gritty, evil and violent type. How about Neil Jordan’s ‘Interview with the Vampire’ (1994), featuring dazzling performances by Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas and a very young Kirsten Dunst? The screenplay was penned by Anne Rice, author of the same title bestselling novel in ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ series and it offered us a more romantic approach to the legendary creature.

In the 21st century, the vampire was once again reimagined with the ‘Twilight’ saga and ‘The Vampire Diaries’ (2009-2017) TV series, both garnering new generations of fans worldwide. They offered us vampires that could walk in the sunlight and young-adult-oriented romance, putting a new twist on the old monster. There is just something about them that we cannot seem to get enough of across generations.

‘TWILIGHT’ (2008), ©SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

As the year 2020 goes full steam ahead, we’re going back to the vampire’s original, grimmer roots. Anne Rice, creator of some of the most beloved undead literary characters, has recently announced that there is an ongoing effort to turn ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ into a TV series. This means we’ll get some fresh versions of Lestat, Marius, Armand and all the other blood-drinking debonair fiends that have become staples of modern fantasy. What makes her published works stand apart from everything else is the unique way in which she combines the lust, the hunger, the violence and the seduction of eternal life, creating larger-than-life characters that stay with us forever, long after we’re done reading the books.

CLAES BANG IN ‘DRACULA’ (2020), ©NETFLIX/BBC ONE

And while we’re all gearing up to find out how that particular project will come out, the new year has already given us a bloody delicious surprise, as Netflix dropped a remixed version of the most famous vampire of them all. ‘Dracula’ (2020) is a BBC One TV mini-series created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. The duo have made quite the name for themselves with ‘Sherlock’ (2010-2017) and their take on Dracula is simply fantastic. It would be hard to believe that something new might come out of something so old and with so many existing silver screen adaptations, but Mr Gatiss and Mr Moffat have certainly delivered.

Starring Claes Bang and Dolly Wells, the series takes us from 1897 Transylvania to Victorian London, as the bloodthirsty Count makes his way into a new world. Since Dracula’s arrival to England would mean only death and violence, it’s up to Sister Agatha Van Helsing and a few other good men to stop him. Needless to say, the formula that Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have come up with for ‘Dracula’ works on different levels.

CLAES BANG AND DOLLY WELLS IN ‘DRACULA’ (2020), ©NETFLIX/BBC ONE

First, the writing is exceptional, which is to be expected from the team that gave us ‘Sherlock’. There is tension and mystery. Stoker’s original story is brought back to life with different elements but without disregarding the darkly absurd core, skilfully spiced with clever and sharp dialogue, heaps of humour and drama, along with plenty of blood and gasp-inducing twists. It is dark and it is funny. It is probably everything Stoker would’ve wanted to see, if he were alive today.

Second, the performances are beyond stellar. Claes Bang, known best for ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ (2018) and ‘Bron/Broen’ (2013), is one of the best versions of Dracula ever made. His smouldering gaze and ruthless wit make him infinitely more appealing than Gary Oldman’s portrayal in ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola, and that is not an easy thing to say… But this newer Dracula is the baddie we can’t help but fall in love with, even if all he brings is gruesome death and eternal misery to his victims.

DOLLY WELLS IN ‘DRACULA’ (2020), ©NETFLIX/BBC ONE

Perhaps the show’s best character and certainly one the greatest to grace the screen in the 21st century is Sister Agatha van Helsing. Her dry wit and fearless heroism make her a downright legendary badass. She is bold and determined, even when her life is no more. One can see why some viewers were less thrilled about the third episode in the series, which no longer features Sister Agatha but one of her distant descendants—unlike a vampire, all good things must come to an end, but Ms Wells delivers as Zoe Helsing, too. Even so, it’s hard to say goodbye to someone as brilliant as Agatha van Helsing, especially considering her incredible onscreen chemistry with Dracula.

Mina, played by Morfydd Clark, plays a lesser role in this story and John Hefferman’s Jonathan Harker is Dracula’s unfortunate victim. Lucy is given a fresh but enticing reality, thanks to Lydia West’s refined and rambunctious performance.

DOLLY WELLS IN ‘DRACULA’ (2020), ©NETFLIX/BBC ONE

Another winning aspect of ‘Dracula’ is its cinematography, where Julian Court of ‘Killing Eve’ (2018-2019) and Tony Slater Ling of ‘Electric Dreams’ (2017) manage to create a truly immersive experience for the viewer. Their effort is amplified by the series’ production design, signed by Arwel Jones, better known for his work on ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Doctor Who’ (2005-2019). The gloom of Dracula’s castle with its labyrinthine corridors where Jonathan Harker gets desperately lost, the passenger ship with its mysteries and dim lights, the apartment where Dracula takes residence while in London with its violet lighting and floor to ceiling window—it all serves as the perfect stage for a new and truly extraordinary rendition of Bram Stoker’s canonical work.

This ‘Dracula’ is all the more intriguing through its split timeline—demanding of the viewers, but offers bountiful rewards at the end of the journey. And while not everyone found the series’ finale palatable, it was a demise most fitting for the story’s fearsome and lonesome fanged villain. More than once along the way, there will be an ‘Oh!’ or an ‘Aha!’ heard from the viewer as the story unfolds across different times. Multiple timelines are never an easy feat, but Mr Gatiss and Mr Moffat eloquently rise to the challenge, without creating confusion but simply enriching the overall mystery vibe that the series conveys.

CLAES BANG AND DOLLY WELLS IN ‘DRACULA’ (2020), ©NETFLIX/BBC ONE

This new take is a much-needed breath of fresh air, making vampires cool again—realistic and gothic, seductive and ultimately dangerous. We all remember Bella Lugosi as Dracula back in 1931. We remember Christopher Lee back in 1958 and Frank Langella in 1979. Gary Oldman’s Count is a precious piece of cinematic history, now. Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Luke Evans have also played him in the ‘Dracula’ (2013-2014) TV series and in ‘Dracula Untold’ (2014). There were many others in-between, including a parody starring Leslie Nielsen. This character has been recycled so many times, it was hard to believe there was anything left to draw from Bram Stoker’s classic novel. However, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat prove that there is.

Consider 2020’s ‘Dracula’ as an homage to all the other Draculas before it. Consider Claes Bang’s Count as an ode to all the other Counts before him. And despite all that, consider it something new and fresh and perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet—proof that the real vampire of Stoker and Rice yarn is the best and most enduring in the genre. It is a reminder that our constant flirting with the idea of immortality on paper and on the screen is, in itself, eternal.