Vampires on the Big Screen

by Libby Pelham | More from this Blogger

29 Nov 2008 02:51 PM

The film Twilight, about the teen Bella Swan who finds herself in love with vampire Edward Cullen, brought in a staggering $70.6 million on it's opening three day weekend. The success of the first of Stephenie Meyer's books on the big screen started me to thinking of classic vampires through the years.

There was the first vampire character, played by Max Schreck. Schreck was a German actor who played the lead role in Nosferatu. I've heard that Schreck was so convincing that some moviegoers actually thought he really was a vampire.

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Then, there was Bela Lugosi. Lugosi, who was of Austrian-Hungarian descent, played Dracula on Broadway then took the role to the big screen. The only problem was that Lugosi was so good as Dracula, that he found himself typecast as a horror villain. Later in life, Lugosi was living in poverty when infamous filmmaker Ed Wood decided to cast him in several of his films.

English actor Christopher Lee played the character in 1958's Dracula. For some reason, he turned down 1960's The Brides of Dracula, but he would go on to appear in Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Scars of Dracula, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and Dracula A.D. 1972.

While Christopher Lee became known as THE Dracula in the Sixties and early Seventies, it was during the late Seventies that suddenly, vampires became really, really sexy. That was when George Hamilton played Dracula in 1979's Love at First Bite, which I remember as the first comedic vampire movie.

Jim Carrey played a vampire in Once Bitten in 1985, another comedy, but by the Nineties, vampires were back to being strictly horror, yet still sexy. Gary Oldman starred as Dracula in Brom Stoker's Dracula. But, the best was yet to come when Tom Cruise would play Lestat alongside Brad Pitt's Louis in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.

And now with Twilight, vampires have entered the teenage stage. It looks as if vampires, in one form or another, will always be with us.

Learn more about Libby Pelham

Libby Pelham is a work-at-home mom located in Jacksonville, NC. She has a beautiful little boy, Will, born in July of 2004.

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