D-5! Another mythical demon of literature and cinema, the vampire has excited the imagination of many authors and directors. Impalpable, immortal, multifaceted, it is the very image of death that comes to bend at the bedside of the living during their sleep.
Dracula
The Dracula imagined by Francis Ford Coppola in his Dracula, directed in 1992 and adapted from the famous novel by Bram Stoker, is the very image of the romantic vampire. In 1492, Prince Vlad Dracul went to war, beheading and planting the heads of his enemies on pikes. Meanwhile, his beloved Elisabeta is mistakenly told of her death. Desperate, she ends her life by rushing into the river below the castle. Back victorious, Prince Vlad Dracul learns of his wife's suicide. Losing all faith in God, he blasphemes and becomes cursed. Transformed into a vampire, the now Count Dracula is condemned to cross the centuries without ever finding his fiancée. However, in 1997, during his move from Transylvania to England, Count Dracula discovers Mina, who is the spitting portrait of his beautiful Elisabeta. He is then ready to do anything to conquer it. Able to turn into smoke, a winged monster, a wolf or even a werewolf, Count Dracula does not fear much except the stakes, the sunlight and the loss of Mina. Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula is above all a love story between a bewitching and endearing vampire and his lost love. With a remarkable aesthetic and accomplished realization, Dracula is a superb adaptation of an already very successful novel.
Vampires
John Carpenter's 1997 film Vampires is in a completely different register. Forget love stories and romantic vampires! Carpenter's vampires are looking for only one thing: food. Jack Crow dedicated his life to the slaughter of these creatures, one of whom killed his parents when he was a child. His virile team of mercenaries is sent by the Vatican to New Mexico to clean up this scourge. Indeed, hundreds of vampire nests have been spotted in the vicinity and are beginning to decimate the population. But if the concentration of vampires is so high in this place, it is because Valek, the great master of vampires, has started a mission of significant magnitude and does not intend to let a bunch of funny little guys put an end to his projects. In this film, women have many shapes but few brains. The one of little virtue that Jack and his team saved from a vampire massacre is dragged like a bag only because a member has a soft spot for it. Aside from the highly misogynistic aspect of the movie, Vampires is an action movie to watch to have a good time without headaches.
Interview with a vampire
Back to the seductive romance of vampires with Interview with a Vampire, directed in 1994 by Neil Jordan. Adapted from the first volume of the Vampire Chronicles written by Anne Rice, the film follows a journalist's interview with Louis, a romantic and naïve man who tells him about his life. Interview with a vampire, it is above all the story of two vampires that everything opposes: Louis and Lestat. The latter likes to enjoy the pleasures of his condition and leads a life of debauchery that will lead him to turn Louis into a vampire. The latter, despite his transformation, remains profoundly human, refuses to harm others and to eat. Their conflicted relationship will push Lestat to donate immortality to a young child, Claudia, in order to force Louis to stay by his side. In Interview with a Vampire, it's the character development that takes precedence. They evolve in a perfectly adapted atmosphere making this film a masterpiece in the same way as Coppola's Dracula . The rest of the novels includes more than a dozen novels, each centered on a particular vampire, weaving relationships between the various characters and digging deeper into the origins of vampires. The author offers us a rich and varied palette of exciting and extremely different vampires. However, the film industry has only focused on Lestat the seducer, the main character of the film Queen of the Damned, adapted from the third novel of the Vampire Chronicles. Successful adaptation in that it respects both in terms of content and staging the character of Lestat, it is a pity that the other vampires do not also have the right to the big screen. Yet they are all equally developed and interesting, giving rise to real jewels of literature, including the very striking sixth volume Armand the vampire. With the project announced by Anne Rice to create a series on the vampire chronicles, we can only hope that these oversights will be repaired very quickly!
30 Days of Night
Directed in 2007 by David Slade, 30 Days of Night is a particularly successful horror film. When winter arrives in the isolated Alaskan town of Barrow, residents prepare as they do every year to spend thirty days without sunshine. Stella was supposed to return home with the last plane scheduled before winter, but misses it due to a car accident and finds herself stranded in town with her ex-boyfriend and sheriff of the city Eden. Attacks begin to take place in the city, the perpetrators of which are quickly identified as vampires. Trapped for thirty days by the snow in the middle of bloodthirsty vampires, the inhabitants will have to organize themselves to hold out until the return of the sun. Brilliantly blending horror, love and survival, 30 Days of Night contains fascinating vampires and endearing inhabitants, making it difficult for the viewer to choose a side and hanging them in their seat throughout.
Bite me without hesitation
And finally, a touch of humor! Because an average movie can give great parodies (as 50 Shades of Black also proved), Twilight gave birth to Mords-moi sans hésitation, directed in 2010 by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Bite me without hesitation, as Twilight should have kept her original name just for the pun: Vampires suck. A parody full of humor accessible to both those who know the original novel or film and those who have never heard of it, Bite me without hesitation is a delirious film in front of which we spend a great time and whose finale is epic enough to put the viewer in a good mood for a good time. The film even allows itself to repair mistakes made in the adaptation of the novel, to the delight of fans of the book disappointed with the silly film that was based on it. As for lovers of the film, they should not be disappointed by this parody, able to put everyone in agreement!
A malleable myth at leisure, vampires open the door to many interpretations and can give rise to the bloodiest films as well as the most romantic depending on the sensitivity of their creators. Anyway, they give birth to works so diverse that there is something for everyone, contrary to the myth we will see tomorrow …
