Question: What can drive a stake through the heart of any vampire movie?
Answer: A vampire that…sucks.
Sure, a director can orchestrate atmosphere with enough moonlit fog and shadows. But all that brooding mood dissipates like mist in the morning sun if the character is flat or the actor miscast.
Likewise, a well-written vampire role, brought to life by an inspired actor with the right look for the role, can elevate even an average production into something worthwhile.
Here are ten who, in my opinion, are truly deserving of their undead immortality.
1. Anders Hove played the vampire Radu in Full Moon Features’ four Subspecies films. Obsessive, vicious, and a touch insane, Radu thirsts for blood from the mythical “bloodstone” like a junkie yearns for his next fix. Hove’s threatening rasp, goth-rock-meets-Orlock appearance and impish, blood-dripping grin made Radu the kind of fiend you almost find yourself rooting for, and a far richer character than his straight-to-video surroundings might lead you to believe.
2. Frank Langella, who played the count in John Badham’s 1979 remake of Dracula, was dashing, aristocratic and smoothly seductive. Imbuing the legendary nobleman with a powerful charisma, Langella’s Dracula captures forever on film the performance he’d spent months perfecting on the stage.
3. Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in several Hammer Studios productions (most notably Horror of Dracula and Dracula: Prince of Darkness), was by turns a perfect gentleman and a sadistic monster. Lee’s towering black-draped count was equally imposing whether glowering malevolently atop a staircase or hissing viciously with fangs bared.
4. Chris Sarandon, who played Jerry Dandridge, the vampire next door in Fright Night, exuded a smug, sarcastic smarminess that somehow was just right for the early 1980s in which the film was set. Oh, but he could turn deadly serious when messed with.
5. David Peel played the handsome (and cunning) Baron Meinster in Brides of Dracula. After tricking an innocent young woman into freeing him from the chains that kept his evil in check, the debonair baron descends on a girls’ boarding school and begins taking victims. Locked in combat with a resolute Van Helsing during the film’s final act, he meets an inventive demise (which, although not exactly correct according to standard vampire lore, is clever enough to be appreciated).
6. Max Schreck played Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau’s silent German classic, Nosferatu. Schreck’s ratlike fangs, trancelike wide-eyed hunger stare and skeletal thinness created a creepy image that has remained unsettling for nearly 90 years.
7. Willem Dafoe played Max Schreck in Shadow of The Vampire. The film’s premise is that Schreck was an actual a vampire who, for the making of Nosferatu, masqueraded as a dedicated method actor who chose to stay in character, even offstage. As the aged Schreck, Dafoe evokes sympathy for the once-regal count who has now sunk into lonely decrepitude. Although Shadow comes up a scene or two shy of perfection, the ones in which Dafoe appears are brilliant (verbally sparring with John Malkovich as Murnau or describing why a particular passage in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was “the loneliest part of the book”). Seldom does an actor make an audience feel so sympathetic towards a character who survives by feeding on innocent beings.
8. Kiefer Sutherland, played David, a hellraising delinquent whose motorcycle-straddling gang of vampires stalked a West Coast boardwalk by night in The Lost Boys. Although every sunset signaled party time for David’s gang of hoodlums, Sutherland’s character conveys intelligence brooding beneath the hedonist rock and roll bravado.
9. Kate Beckinsale, who played the assassin vampiress Selena in Underworld, is a dark deadly vision of undead chic in leather and latex. The film is essentially a high-style action movie, so her role isn’t especially deep. But Beckinsale’s cool efficiency as a killer, relentless quest for a hidden truth and occasional vulnerability combine to create a character that’s fairly intriguing. Also, it doesn’t hurt that she’s hot.
10. Stuart Townsend, who played the vampire Lestat in Queen of the Damned, gives his character plenty of sexy swagger and rock star recklessness. But what makes Townsend’s performance great is when he shows us the shred of humanity Lestat still retains despite being more than two centuries old.
Honorable Mention: Vincent Perez played the vampire Marius (in Queen of the Damned), who enjoyed his undead existence despite being charged with the gravest of responsibilities—as caretaker of Akasha, the sleeping mother of all vampires. Perez finds elements of humor in his character. And as Lestat’s “father” he convincingly conveys the paternal attributes and emotions that his “son” Lestat evokes in him: pride, disappointment, patience, anger and pain.
So those are my favorites. Who are yours?
