Kung Fu Vampire: I Count.
Viy (Forbidden Empire) / Вий ( Director: Oleg Stepchenko )
Starring:
Jason Flemyng
Andrey Smolyakov
Aleksey Chadov
An 18th century English cartographer, Jonathan Green, sets out on a journey to map the uncharted lands of Transylvania, only to discover the dark secrets and dangerous creatures hidden in a cursed, fantastical Ukrainian forest.
Vampire Dog ( Director: Geoff Anderson )
Starring:
Collin MacKechnie
Julia Sarah Stone
Amy Matysio
A boy unwittingly adopts a 600-year-old talking vampire dog. Together, they discover that with each other's help if they face their fears, they can do anything.
Thomas Emson: Vampire Babylon (Vampire Trinity)
Skarlet
Fear grips London as dozens of people die after taking a sinister new drug called Skarlet. But that's only the beginning. Forty-eight hours later, the dead partiers wake up and begin butchering the living for their blood. Soon, London gives a name to its terror: Vampires.
Jake Lawton, bitter and betrayed after the Iraq War, finds himself fighting another battle - against the growing army of immortal hunters and their human cohorts. Lawton joins forces with the journalist who brought about his downfall and the dealer tricked into distributing the drug. Together they take on the spineless authorities, the ruthless cohorts, and the hungry dead. But the vampire plague unleashed in London is nothing to what lurks beneath the streets. Waiting to be fed ...Waiting to be resurrected ...Waiting to reign again over a city of human slaves.
Krimson
The vampire plague continues to spread.
The vampire plague continues to spread.
Kardinal
Jake Lawton returns to Babylon to face the resurrected vampire god who spawned the trinity.
Victoria Samuelsson: What Manner of Man is This? The Depiction of Vampire Folklore in Dracula and Fangland
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:533934/fulltext03
Abstract
What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?
- Bram Stoker
The vampire is a famous literary symbol that has played a role in the pop-cultural
dialogue for the last 200 years. The vampire is nothing new to literature; vampire
motifs can be traced back far through the ages.
1
During the Romantic period several
vampire narratives emerged in Western literature, and the genre peaked during the
Victorian Gothic in the mid to late nineteenth century.
2
During this century, the
vampire started the development from fantastical monster towards romantic hero as
the canon of vampire literature came into being. But before the romantic vampire
there was a completely other revenant who had quite a different place in culture: the
folklore vampire. This figure, which can be seen as both similar to and different from
the modern day vampire, can be found in myths, legends, and folktales from all over
the world: from India and Egypt, Greece and Romania to Britain and Germany. The
pictures of this vampire range from something similar to the English Brownie to a
half-rotten, bloated ghoul-like creature.
Despite the fact that he is not the first, and certainly not the last, Bram
Stoker’s Count Dracula is almost certainly the most recognisable vampire in the
English speaking world. The famous Transylvanian Count was born through Stoker’s
equally ingenious and terrifying epistolary narrative, which, when published in 1897,
became instantly successful (Ellmann vii). Stoker made such an impression on
Western literature that Dracula was not only followed by storylines that developed
the story past Stoker’s narrative (like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula [1992]), but also
inspired the American author John Marks to reimagine the story in the novel
1 The difference between vampire motifs and the vampire figure will be discussed later in the paper.
2 For a list of vampire novels, and their publication dates, see Summers, p. 346. (Sadly, this list is in
alphabetical order by the author’s surnames and not in chronological order.)
Abstract
The vampire figure is very much a part of the literary landscape of today, and has
been so for the last 200 years. The vampire has not always appeared as it does today,
as the rich, urbane gentleman, but has its origins in old folklore legends. The idea that
the vampire figure has changed over the course of history is not new, but instead of
discussing the phenomena influencing, and changing, the vampire motif, this essay
will try to shed light on the aspects of the folklore vampire that are still part of the
vampire of today. By applying the theory of folklorism (folklore not in its original
context, but rather the imitation of popular themes by another social class, or the
creation of folklore for purposes outside the established tradition), presented by Hans
Moser and Hermann Bausinger among others, this essay attempts to prove that the
modern vampire is in fact a folklorism of the old folklore legends. The essay
examines the more recent incarnation of the vampire, the literary vampire who
emerged during the 18th and 19th century, with the intent to prove that, while it is
different from its origin, it has several features in common with its ancestry as well.
To show this, examples from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and the more recent
novel Fangland (2007) by John Marks have been chosen to serve as basis for the
analysis. Both novels clearly show instances where folklore has been brought into the
narrative as a way to define and depict the vampire.
Keywords: Stoker, Bram; Dracula; Marks, John; Fangland; vampire; folklore;
folklorisms; folklorismus; vampire figure; vampire motifs.What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?
- Bram Stoker
The vampire is a famous literary symbol that has played a role in the pop-cultural
dialogue for the last 200 years. The vampire is nothing new to literature; vampire
motifs can be traced back far through the ages.
1
During the Romantic period several
vampire narratives emerged in Western literature, and the genre peaked during the
Victorian Gothic in the mid to late nineteenth century.
2
During this century, the
vampire started the development from fantastical monster towards romantic hero as
the canon of vampire literature came into being. But before the romantic vampire
there was a completely other revenant who had quite a different place in culture: the
folklore vampire. This figure, which can be seen as both similar to and different from
the modern day vampire, can be found in myths, legends, and folktales from all over
the world: from India and Egypt, Greece and Romania to Britain and Germany. The
pictures of this vampire range from something similar to the English Brownie to a
half-rotten, bloated ghoul-like creature.
Despite the fact that he is not the first, and certainly not the last, Bram
Stoker’s Count Dracula is almost certainly the most recognisable vampire in the
English speaking world. The famous Transylvanian Count was born through Stoker’s
equally ingenious and terrifying epistolary narrative, which, when published in 1897,
became instantly successful (Ellmann vii). Stoker made such an impression on
Western literature that Dracula was not only followed by storylines that developed
the story past Stoker’s narrative (like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula [1992]), but also
inspired the American author John Marks to reimagine the story in the novel
1 The difference between vampire motifs and the vampire figure will be discussed later in the paper.
2 For a list of vampire novels, and their publication dates, see Summers, p. 346. (Sadly, this list is in
alphabetical order by the author’s surnames and not in chronological order.)
Kiss of the Damned ( Director: Xan Cassavetes)
Starring:
Joséphine de La Baume,
Milo Ventimiglia,
Roxane Mesquida
The vampire Djuna resists the advances of Paolo, but soon gives in to their passion. When her trouble-making sister unexpectedly comes to visit, Djuna's love is threatened, and the whole vampire community becomes endangered.
The Night Flier (Director: Mark Pavia)
Starring:
Miguel Ferrer
Julie Entwisle
Dan Monahan
Michael H. Moss
A reporter is on the trail of a vampiric murderer who flies by night, lands at secluded airports and attacks local residents.
Molly McArdle: Blood Soup: The End of "True Blood"
Molly McArdle is working on a novel at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
I’M STILL NOT sure how I was convinced to start watching True Blood.
I hate blood. As I type this — at this very mention of the liquid that I
am admittedly full of — my hands have shrunk back into the cuffs of my
sweater and I’ve scrunched my shoulders up around my neck. Few things
make me feel as vulnerable as this life stuff, for which there are few
available metaphors because it is itself so potently symbolic. Blood is
the blood of blood. There, I have disappeared into my sweater again.
True Blood is full of blood. Vampires sucking human blood.
Humans sucking vampire blood. Vampires crying blood instead of tears.
Bottled blood. Microwaved blood. Walls covered in blood. Fabrics soaked
in blood. Hair made sticky with blood. Characters in rubber gloves
scooping up, mopping up, scrubbing out blood. (True Blood’s
commitment to showing how a mess is cleaned up, not just made, is one I
appreciate.) Often, when it is explosive or particularly bizarre
(Seasons 5 and 6 had a fair amount of naked people caked in blood), I
don’t really mind it. It’s too unfamiliar to be true. But other times,
when a wound is mundane enough, I cannot help but sink into myself, to
guard the places where my blood beats loudest.
True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire
Mysteries series, first premiered in 2008. I got on board the summer of
2011, precipitating a desperate marathon of the first three seasons in
my un-air conditioned apartment, and have followed it faithfully since
then. Until Game of Thrones came along, it was the most popular HBO show after The Sopranos. True Blood,
all sex and gore and weird silly magic, is a consummate summer show,
something to watch with a sweaty drink in hand and a fan blowing in your
face. Its seventh and last season premiered this June 22nd (even they cannot resist making death jokes), and soon the bloodiest TV show I have ever watched will be over.
The vampire we know today comes from southeastern Europe in the early
1700s, when its folklore was first recorded in print (and so
publicized), pushing local communities’ preexisting belief into frenzy
and introducing the stories to an international audience. Vampires
terrify for obvious reasons: they are animated, bloodthirsty corpses.
(Several bodies in what is now Serbia were exhumed and then mutilated
during this time; and over one hundred graves in Bulgaria have since
been found impaled with metal.) Just as real as the fear it inspired,
this body of folklore also offered a potent (if grotesque) relief to
mourners. In those early stories, vampires always sought out their
spouses first. So much of vampirism is about the horror of getting what
you want.
True Blood begins when Sookie
Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in the northern Louisiana town of Bon
Temps, meets and dates the ex-Confederate vampire-next-door Bill
Compton (“Bill? I thought it might be Antoine or Basil or like Langford
maybe, but Bill? Vampire Bill?”). Bill was born in a house across a
field from Sookie’s own, though he’s moved back to Bon Temps for the
first time since he left it, alive, to fight in the Civil War. Creator
Alan Ball — whose Six Feet Under shared True Blood’s
predilection for death and the surreal humor that accompanies it — has
described the show as being about “the horrors of intimacy,” and it’s
true the series charts how desire by itself can be complicated, and
ultimately unsatisfying. But True Blood is also about the
enormity and complexity of the world, though much of it is hidden in
plain sight. In Season 3, Sookie’s charming, dense brother Jason balks
at the existence of supernatural beings in addition to vampires:
“There’s werewolves?”
“Yes.”
“Shit. Bigfoot, is he real too?”
“I don’t know, I guess it’s possible.”
“…Santa?”
“Yes.”
“Shit. Bigfoot, is he real too?”
“I don’t know, I guess it’s possible.”
“…Santa?”
Les femmes vampires by Jean Antoine Valentin Foulquier (1853)
%2C%2Bpor%2BJean%2BAntoine%2BValentin%2BFoulquier%2B(1853).jpg "Les femmes vampires by Jean Antoine Valentin Foulquier (1853)")
Gheorghe Coşbuc: Strigoii (Vampires)
The Christians that are awake, with fear they call
The Mother of Christ and-light rushed
Incense and garlic on a bronze vessel
She's single in the lodge, poor mother
image sits stunned...
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