Vampires: The Myths, Legends, and Lore by Aubrey Sherman

Author:Aubrey Sherman [Sherman, Aubrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440580765
Amazon: 1440580766
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2014-07-29T22:00:00+00:00

Forward or Backward?

In the 1990s, two films made a significant attempt to stimulate the vampire genre. One looked backward for inspiration to the most famous of all vampire legends; the other took a more modern twist.

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a stylish and taut retelling of Stoker’s masterpiece with an exceptional cast and stellar performance by Gary Oldman, who as Prince Vlad is arguably one of the best vampires ever to grace the silver screen.

This telling begins in 1462 in Transylvania when Dracula, who is really Vlad the Impaler, loses his true love. The film jumps to the late 1800s when the vampire imprisons Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) and embarks to London to pursue Harker’s fiancée Mina, the reincarnation of Vlad’s beloved wife Elisabeta. Along the way, Vlad must deal with the traditional Stoker characters and match wits with Abraham Van Helsing, a role owned by the brilliant Anthony Hopkins. It should also be noted that Tom Waits’s performance as Renfield is perhaps one of the most underrated of the film. With its stunning visual appeal, tense story line and action sequences, and strong sexual undercurrent, this rendition was seen by many as the definitive version of the original Dracula story.

Two years later, in 1994, yet another blockbuster bloodsucker arrived in the long-awaited film adaptation of Anne Rice’s best-selling novel Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. To great controversy, Tom Cruise was cast as the charismatic Lestat (Brad Pitt assumed the role of Lestat’s disciple Louis). Much ado was publicly made by Rice herself when the final casting was announced, but she later recanted her comments after viewing the film. What appeared on the screen was a lush—though not entirely accurate—portrayal of Lestat. Interview is largely faithful to the novel and rife with the interplay of Lestat’s arrogance matched up against Louis’s pensiveness and the wicked countenance of their adopted “daughter” Claudia, played by Kirsten Dunst.

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