Magda Reviews One Bite Too Many

The Vampire on Page and Screen - an assessment

by Andrew Greenfield Lockhart

copyright Andrew Greenfield Lockhart 2012

Magda Green Books

www.magdagreen.co.uk

One Bite Too Many

[Vampires have been popular lately in the world of books. So have wizards, witches, werewolves, zombies and Doppelgnger, and nowhere more so than in young adult fiction.]

Bram Stoker did not invent the vampire but he might well have done so. In the century or so since his Dracula novel was published it has probably spawned more copycats, spin-offs, parodies and sequels than any other novel of its genre. That is without a mention of the countless film adaptations of the work. However, Stoker was not the first Irishman to write a vampire story. About 25 years before Dracula, Stokers countryman J Sheridan le Fanu wrote a short novel entitled Carmilla
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, about an undead countess who preys on young girls among the

castles and forests of central Europe. Le Fanus work has not endured in popular imagination like that of Stoker, yet he had a greater literary pedigree as hinted by his middle name. His grandmother was a writer and, perhaps more notably, her brother was the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Neither of these nineteenth century works can be described as romances. They are gothic horror stories, adult in theme and plot, and when translated for the screen they are intended to terrify and shock their audiences. And from the first vampire silent film a hundred years ago, through to the proliferation of the genre in the middle decades of the twentieth century, the British film industry invariably classified these movies as A, H, X. In later years they became classification 18. Hammer Film Productions, who branched out into horror movies in the mid-1950s, gave - if not glamour stardom at least a successful villainous career to several actors such as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt, by casting them again and again in horror roles. The horror genre in fiction was by no means dead but was in the meantime relegated to a fringe interest. Then, in 1975, Stephen King published Salems Lot, a vampire story set in New England. A year later appeared Anne Rices Interview with the Vampire, which introduced Lestat, the anti-hero of later Rice books. Both authors, like Edgar Allen Poe before them, and writers of the occult such as Dennis Wheatley, aimed

their writing at adult readership. No one seemed to have thought seriously about writing such stories for children and it is only in recent times that the undead have migrated to young adult fiction, and romantic fiction at that. And what an explosion it has been! In the past, film makers have drawn their ideas from literature. It seems however, in the 21st Century, that cinema and television have been the trigger for the proliferation of novels in which teeth, blood and tender white necks have become a kind of inverse euphemism for what the kids are thinking and probably doing but whose uncensored expression in print is forbidden by either literary convention or by law. But when exactly did the explosion begin, and why vampires and werewolves?

Human beings, adults and children alike have always been fascinated by the supernatural and the occult. They have always been fond of giving human form to hopes, fears, desires and abstract ideas, as did the ancient Greeks when they spoke of the Furies, the Muses or the Fates. People love to invent legends, myths, gods and devils to explain the inexplicable. Moreover, terror has always been a weapon in the armoury of priests of all religions to dominate and subdue the less educated masses. And what can be more inexplicable and terrifying than teenage emotion? But although teenagers have always read stories about the supernatural and about growing up, reading such stories and enjoying them does not explain the Twilight phenomenon. The pen is mightier than the sword, wrote Lord Lytton in 1839, and that may be true, even today. But Lytton might have added, had he lived in this century: the big screen is mightier still! Ever since the high-kicking Buffy came into our living rooms in 1998, kids have known that there are good as well as bad vampires. And even if they have not read Harry Potter, they now know there are good as well as bad wizards and witches. My guess is that, despite film censorship, movie makers have a greater freedom in the matter of content than do writers, and the impact of their work on the public is both more immediate and more dramatic. It may come as a surprise to some young TV and cinema fans that the first four of LJ Smiths Vampire Diaries
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were in print nearly fifteen years before Stephanie

Meyers Twilight. But it is surely no coincidence - why should it be? - that following

the success of the Twilight film series and of the TV adaptation of Vampire Diaries that the publishers of Ms Smiths first vampire books have reissued them, and that Ms Smith herself has returned to Fells Church to take up where she left off two decades ago. [It is rather a shame that she has now sub-contracted the writing task to others.] Such is the power of the screen! And it is the screen that has been used to promote yet another series in the same theme, with the title True Blood. It is based on a series of stories by another American writer of teen fiction, Charlaine Harris. Ms Harris is a most prolific author, having turned out no fewer than 10 of her Sookie Stackhouse books since 2001. She has been writing ghost and detective stories for the past twenty-five years but there seems little doubt that television and the popularity of the spooky vampire genre has brought her the greatest success. In similar vein are the stories of the mother and daughter team Phyllis and Kristin Cast, as yet not as far as I know adapted for television or cinema. But who knows; perhaps 2012 will bring House of Night too into our living rooms. But however relentless the power of image, there is still power in words too, one that is missing in the superficial representation of characters on film. And we find that power in books, fantasy or otherwise. It is tragic that schools or governments should ban Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone because it encourages witchcraft and magic, yet in the same year as Buffy first hit our TV screens a few did just that! There is surely more about growing up, and about good and evil in JK Rowlings stories than in a dozen lectures on the subject. And when young people tire of vampires, wizards and the like, there will be another kind of imaginative literature to take up the baton. Through fiction, we all learn in a kindly way about life and death, right and wrong, love and hate, good and evil without the moral preaching of priests. Teenagers know there are really no such things as vampires, werewolves, wizards or dark lords. These creations are merely the embodiment of dangers and temptations lurking in the real world. The various elements of the modern teen vampire romance can be seen as God and Devil substitutes. They are bound up in the age-old human search for a meaning of life that transcends our material existence for a hidden realm in which we do not age and where, ultimately, good will triumph over evil. I believe most writers of stories for young people know that.

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Carmilla by Bram Stoker's countryman Sheridan Le Fanu, great-nephew of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, predates Dracula by a quarter of a century. A girl befriends a mysterious stranger, unaware that she has a hidden agenda. To someone brought up on Hammer films, the action is predictable. Le Fanu plays games with anagrams of the title, demonstrating either a lack of imagination or great originality depending on the readers mood. Whichever it is, the vampires alter personae are suitably ghoulish and she gets through her victims in typical Hammer fashion. Carmilla is very much a novel of its time and the style is heavy by today's standard. However, because it is short, it is less laborious to read and indeed is very enjoyable as an early example of the genre.
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Midnight, the seventh story in the Vampire Diaries series, appeared in early 2011. In this, what we assumed was to be the last book in the series, LJ Smith seemed to have tired somewhat of her characters, the too-good-to-be-true Elena and her wimpish vampire boyfriend Stephan. As a result, the plot flies off in new fantastical directions with only Damon becoming more likeable as time goes on. We have to remember this is a novel for young adults but, even so, it disappoints compared to the books written in the early 1990s. Having said that, there are some good bites, especially towards the end.