What do you think?
Rate this book
The vampire film
The book is unread and the dust jacket is in near new condition. It has slight fading from age.
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 22, 2023
The vampire keeps fascinating me for many years now. In this book you'll see the vampire in film and literature, the legend, sources, great movie stills from all classic horror movies, all the major vampire actors (e.g. Lee, Lugosi). Then the author deals with the male vampire, Dracula, Nosferatu, Count Yorga, the Hammer films, House of Dracula, Blacula. After that the focus is set on female vampires, Elisabeth Bathory, Carmilla Karnstein and some other daughters of darkness. The second part of the book is a filmography and a bibliography. Nice collection with all the classic stuff. Really recommended!
December 21, 2014
Exactly what it says - 1975 book exploring vampire films.
What is particularly nice about this one is the amount of b/w stills and posters, many full page, which I haven't seen anywhere else.
Being written in the mid 70's its able to cover a lot of older films in great depth that have been sadly overshadowed in later years by the underworlds, blades twilights, Lost Boys, Bram Stoker's Dracula and From Dusk Till Dawns out there.
Its split into 4 chapters: Sources of vampire lore in film, the male vampire, the female vampire and emerging traditions (including a whole section on Mario Bava vampire films.)
There is also an excellent filmography that even has a few films on there I don't have!
Downsides - it doesn't cover anything post 1975 and so of course misses a lot of trends, and films that can back up its points. Also the language; even for film criticism this is particularly dense. I managed to fill an A5 side of paper with words that I (an English graduate) didn't know and had to look up in a dictionary. The writing is a little pretentious and seemed at times to be ooh I know big words lets show them off.
Still language aside, this is a very useful book for students of vampire cinema. It covers a lot of older films in depth, uses lots of quotes, has stacks of pictures and an excellent filmography.
What is particularly nice about this one is the amount of b/w stills and posters, many full page, which I haven't seen anywhere else.
Being written in the mid 70's its able to cover a lot of older films in great depth that have been sadly overshadowed in later years by the underworlds, blades twilights, Lost Boys, Bram Stoker's Dracula and From Dusk Till Dawns out there.
Its split into 4 chapters: Sources of vampire lore in film, the male vampire, the female vampire and emerging traditions (including a whole section on Mario Bava vampire films.)
There is also an excellent filmography that even has a few films on there I don't have!
Downsides - it doesn't cover anything post 1975 and so of course misses a lot of trends, and films that can back up its points. Also the language; even for film criticism this is particularly dense. I managed to fill an A5 side of paper with words that I (an English graduate) didn't know and had to look up in a dictionary. The writing is a little pretentious and seemed at times to be ooh I know big words lets show them off.
Still language aside, this is a very useful book for students of vampire cinema. It covers a lot of older films in depth, uses lots of quotes, has stacks of pictures and an excellent filmography.
July 26, 2011
I received this book for my birthday last year. Having finally gotten around to reading it I found this to be a university level film school textbook of the history of vampire film in cinema. The book came out in 1975 so it only documents up to then. Interesting fact from the book, up till 1975 about 80% of all vampire films were produced between 1958 and 1960. Keeping that in mind the book had a heavier focus on that era specifically the Hammer horror films of the 60's. It covers a wide selection of international films but goes deeper into english, american, italian, and mexican films. Being a textbook it gets pretty deep into the directors choices in framing shots etc... It also has an extensive filmography at the back.
At one point I was getting bored with all the discussion on old films I've never seen, but I had an epiphany. Duh, 21st century. YouTube! Once I started looking up all these moves on YouTube the book instantly became far more entertaining! In the end, 2 stars without YouTube, 3 stars with it. Bonus star if you are a fan of Christopher Lee a heavy book focus.
At one point I was getting bored with all the discussion on old films I've never seen, but I had an epiphany. Duh, 21st century. YouTube! Once I started looking up all these moves on YouTube the book instantly became far more entertaining! In the end, 2 stars without YouTube, 3 stars with it. Bonus star if you are a fan of Christopher Lee a heavy book focus.
December 23, 2011
very interesting textbook for Uni students focusing mostly on the Hammer Horror Vampire films from the late 50's to 60's
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews