PUBLICATION DATE: HALLOWEEN 2022
Published by Reel Art Press, VAMPIRE CINEMA: THE FIRST 100 YEARS sees the light of day this October. Championing and charting a century of cinematic representation, this book explores one of Western culture’s most compelling, immortal, myths. Not only a feast for the eyes but also for the mind, VAMPIRE CINEMA delves deep into our fixation with the Vampiric in its many forms, thanks to acclaimed cultural historian and connoisseur of the Gothic Christopher Frayling, who has been called “the Van Helsing de nos jours.”
This stunning coffee table volume invites us to time travel from castles and graveyards to high-schools and shopping malls. The bloodline has spread from the silent nightmare of Nosferatu to Hollywood’s Dracula and progeny (1931-48); from Hammer’s Dracula and sequels (1958-74) to versions of Sheridan Le Fanu’s story Carmilla and other lesbian vampires (1970-2020); from the best-selling novels Interview with the Vampire and Twilight to vampires who have shed their capes, hereditary titles and period trappings to become assorted smalltown oddballs, addicts, delinquents, psychopaths, rednecks, fashionistas, gay icons, comedians and even comic-book heroes (1975-2022). No longer confined to cobwebs and coffins, the vampires of contemporary imaginations have evolved to seek kinship with misfits and lonely newcomers as we yearn them to walk among us. With each cultural era passing by, there is a vampire franchise which helps to define it; fear and desire distilled in every form.
The book is dripping with stills, posters, artworks, press books—many of which have not seen the light of day for a very long time. The perfect Halloween gift.
