Abstract
This handbook will show just what a many-splendid thing the vampire and vampiric entities are, how the genre has gotten to where it is, and that even 90+ essays on the various historical and multicultural aspects of creature are really only the tip of the vampire iceberg. It also shows the amazing range of researchers and research being undertaken on and around the vampire genre, as in many ways it is their fascination with and ever-growing knowledge of the genre that provides it with the “blood” that powers it with undead life.
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Notes
- 1.
This excludes the more recent releases of Life and Death (2015), which is a gender-swapped retelling of the story, and Midnight Sun (2020), the story told from Edward’s perspective, as they’ve had substantially less impact on the vampire genre as a whole.
- 2.
It’s worth noting that while David Slade directed the very violent and feral vampires in 30 Days of Night, he also later directed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse in 2010.
- 3.
The franchise as a whole has been hugely influential, not just in the way it spawned copycat films and series across the world, but in how it encouraged greater investment in the genre in general – would we have had The Vampire Diaries or True Blood without Twilight? (Even though the original The Vampire Diaries books and the Southern Vampire Mysteries [True Blood] were released 10+ and 4 years, respectively, before the first Twilight book).
- 4.
Dark Shadows was seminal in introducing vampires to soap operas, and its plot of a centuries-old vampire finding the reincarnation of their first and greatest love has inspired endless amounts of soap-opera vampires (particularly in Brazil and Southeast Asia).
- 5.
War of the Worlds was first published as a complete book in 1898.
- 6.
It’s difficult to overemphasize the influence of the series of Hammer vampire films on the genre during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in Europe. The success of Terence Fisher’s Dracula [The Horror of Dracula] in 1958 not only saw Christopher Lee typecast as a lord vampire for the next 20 years but every director of horror trying to copy the colors and sensational style of Hammer in their own productions.
- 7.
Unlike Murnau’s Orlok (Max Schreck), Herzog’s Count Dracula can infect others with vampirism, and his demise at the films denouement does not signal the end of the outbreak, but its beginning and a passing of the undead baton from Old World vampires to those of the present, as seen in the newly vampirized Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) riding off into the distance.
- 8.
Nightwing, while superficially attempting to raise issues around indigeneity and the environment, can also be seen to be cashing in on the popularity of “creature features” post Jaws (Spielberg: 1975).
- 9.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Kenton: 1948) is not included as Dracula (Bela Lugosi) was a figure made fun of rather than one that was supposed to be funny in the way that Grandpa Munster (Al Lewis) and Count von Count were.
References
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my frequent vampire partner in crime Andrew M. Boylen for all his help and patience in assisting me put together the lists of films and texts that needed to be covered in the Handbook (do check out his vampire film and literature review site http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com). I’d also like to thank Anthony Hogg for his encouragement and suggestions in getting the project together and finished and for the support of the Vampire Studies Association (https://vampirestudies.org/) and The Journal of Vampire Studies. Also the members of the FB groups SCMS Horror Studies Scholarly Interest Group; Vampire Scholars; The Lord Ruthven Assembly; Open Minds, Open Graves; and the International Gothic Association who have given suggestions and taken part in this project. Heartfelt thanks to Lina Aboujieb, Ruth Lefevre, and Swetha Varadharajan without whose help and support this project would never have come into being or successfully completed. Finally and as always, I would like to thank my amazing wife Kasia who makes this and everything worthwhile and possible, our two not-solittle monsters Seba and Maja for being their wonderfully distracting selves, and Mam and Tata Bronk for their constant support and never-ending supply of sernik Magdi.
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Bacon, S. (2024). “Introduction to the Handbook of the Vampire”. In: Bacon, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36253-8_97
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