Immortal, bloodthirsty creatures that feed on humans. They have sharp teeth and hate sunlight and garlic.
Vampires may not be the heroes people usually root for, but they have fascinated us for centuries. The first short story written in English about this monster was John Polidori's The Vampyr in 1819. And there you have it: Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula inspired F.W. Murnau to make the silent film Nosferatu in 1922. It is currently being remade by Robert Eggers and is due to be released in UK cinemas in 2025, starring Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult. But what drives our thirst for vampire stories? For writer and actor Mark Gatiss, his interest in vampires began early on. The co-writer of the BBC drama series Sherlock and Dracula, he's been a "horror buff" since he was a child. Further developing his love of scary stories from his childhood, Gatiss has played Dracula in audio productions, produced a documentary about the monster, and even produced a 2020 BBC series in which the Count (played by Claes Bang) travels through London.
He said the opportunity to bring Stoker's iconic vampire to life felt "incredibly good." "Like Sherlock Holmes, it's an eternal myth, and if someone gives you the opportunity to try it, you really have to do it," he explains. Lorin Jones is executive producer and writer of the TV adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, based on the collection of novels by Anne Rice. Available on BBC iPlayer, the series tells the story of vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (played by Jacob Anderson) telling a journalist the story of his life and relationship with Lestat de Lioncourt (played by Sam Reid). He describes vampires who "come back again and again" because they "enter into your bones and possess you," many of which raise questions about immortality, death and love. The character's contemporary popularity is evident on social media, with #vampire having 2.7 million posts on TikTok. Jones added that more and more people are getting tattoos of the character's face on their bodies every day, explaining that it's a "rabid fanbase." "It scared me to death." While the characteristics of fictional vampires have changed throughout history - some burn to ash in the sunlight, others have infamously glowing skin - they still have one thing in common: immortality. Dr. Sam George, an associate professor at the University of Hertfordshire who teaches students about vampires in fiction, explains that part of the reason the monster endures is because it makes us think about "a big issue that concerns us - how we think about aging" and "what happens after we die in the grave." She adds that "vampires have always been very strongly associated with disease and epidemics," and that looking back through history, our interest in immortal monsters seems to grow in times of mass disease. "When the first fictional vampires appeared in 1819, there was a strong association with tuberculosis," she says. She said F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent film Nosferatu, about a character famously introduced to contaminated rats, was made just after the Spanish Flu. The scientist added that this is "very important to why vampires are so popular and prevalent right now. Given Nosferatu's connection to the plague, we're very interested in vampires as a contagious threat after COVID-19." Jones, the executive producer, added that understanding why vampires want to live is a key interest for him.
"When you take the mortality out of any drama, it's very interesting," he says. Jones added that Rice herself wrote the novel after losing her daughter, and that this feeling of "grief and mourning" is "very well expressed" in the book."They lure you in" Vampires help us get over our fear of death and dying, but there's something else that draws us to these fanged characters, Jones adds. "They're the sexiest, most sensual monsters," he says. "They seduce you." Jones adds that when he first picked up the novel Interview with the Vampire, "I felt like I was reading a really repressed, really messy love story." Dr. George agrees, explaining that "vampires have gotten younger and more beautiful as the years have gone by," noting the difference between Nosferatu and Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson) from Twilight. The scientist adds that there has been a "change" in how people read vampire novels, explaining that there's a lot of interest in themes of sexuality and vampirism, such as the "queer family" depicted in the novel. It's a combination of love and immortality, he says. George also starred in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, which featured the tagline "Love Never Dies." For Dr. George, "the sense that the vampire can answer so many questions at once," from death to love, is why the subject continues to interest us today.
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