When we think about vampires, our expectations have inevitably been shaped by popular literature, which has in turn – for the last century – also found expression in cinema. In the nineteenth century, popular reading habits created a set of cultural expectations about vampires. The birth of horror fiction, which stemmed in turn from the […]
They’ve been regularly made since the very first film of the kind in the 1920s, but perhaps the 1970s were particularly unusual for the sheer volume of vampire horror films which emerged. Many different varieties of vampire horror appeared, too: Hammer Studios toyed with classic stories and folklore to create their own lurid, luxuriant spin, […]
I first encountered the cinema of Jean Rollin via the UK’s Redemption Films, whose founder, Nigel Wingrove, became good friends with Rollin over the years; the film company deserves far more awareness of the great service they did by bringing so many of these films into the common consciousness in the Nineties, making the films […]
The vampire – at least as we used to know it – seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years. By no means has it disappeared, but certainly, as on-screen monsters go, it’s no longer in its ascendant. Terrific, spellbinding horrors continue to be made, sure, even if more often than not as […]