Vampire Films

The Pocket Essentials: Film

by Colin Odell

Vampire movies are almost as old as film itself. Constantly remade and reinvented for each new generation, the films, like the vampires themselves, adopt many shapes - from the faithful adaptation of Francis Coppola's Dracula (1992) to the art movie approach of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu remake (1979] via the high-school horror of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). This handy book traces the vampire film from its beginnings to the present day, acknowledging on its way all the classics of vampire cinema from the original Nosferatu (1921) right up to 30 Days of Night (2007) and beyond. From saucy French vampires to hopping Chinese ones, from Hammer horrors to Hollywood blockbusters, whatever your favourite bloodsucker you'll find it here.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Horror

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2000

Reviews

[Mizuki · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for vampire movies from different periods of time and all over the world, Colin Odell's Vampire Films is a good book for you. Guess what? Twilight is NOT mentioned in this book! ^___^

Although some of the words used by the author are quite difficult to understand (at least to me, it's difficult!) still I absolutely love how the author panned those badly written, poorly made and ridiculous vampire movies with his playful and colorful words.

But strangely enough, the author didn't mention much about homosexual vampire movies aside from a few notes about The Vampire Lover and Daughter of Darkness, etc. Hell, I'd thought the homosexual vamp movies deserve a lot more highlighting than this.

After reading this book, I am once again being made aware of the fact that there's so many goddamn vampire movies out there and I just haven't watched enough of them---not by far. Eventually I ended up buying From Dusk Till Dawn just for the fun of it, and I will keep a close eyes on plenty of old schooled vampire movies such as a French cult director Jean Collin's from now on.

[Irma Pérez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un librito sobre el cine de vampiros bastante majo, aunque muy breve para lo interesante y extenso del tema. Desarrolla muy poco los capítulos, pero resulta útil como libro de referencia para descubrir películas nuevas o quizás algo más oscuras de temática vampírica.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a bit more up-to-date on vampires as it was released in the year 2000. Pleasures and wayward directions, early risers (vampires in Europe, USA and Universal), it's Hammer time (Dracula), the Karnstein trilogy, European sauce, the king of vampires, Chinese vampires, vamping all over the world, offbeat indies, sci-fi suckers, bloody Hollywood and redefining the genre (From Dusk Till Dawn, Blade, Underworld). This was a very interesting read on all the developments on vampires in the recent years. Really enjoyed it and can recommend reading it!

[Rebeca Prats · Rating 3 out of 5]

**TFG

[Angela Maher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good overview of vampire movies. Every sort of fanged flick is covered, with the bad ones mentioned as well as the good. It's pre-Twilight, and this is, in my opinion, a good thing. I found plenty of films I want to track down, and enjoyed reading about the ones I have seen, some of which I now want to watch all over again.