The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema

by Jeffrey Weinstock

Overview

This introductory volume offers an elegant analysis of the enduring appeal of the cinematic vampire. From Georges Méliès' early cinematic experiments to Twilight and Let the Right One In, the history of vampires in cinema can be organised by a handful of governing principles that help make sense of this movie monster's remarkable fecundity. Among these principles are that the cinematic vampire is invariably about sex and the vexed human relationship with technology, and that the vampire is always an overdetermined body condensing what a culture considers other. This volume includes in-depth studies of films including Powell's A Fool There Was, Franco's Vampyros Lesbos, Cronenberg's Rabid, Kümel's Daughters of Darkness, and Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231850032
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/03/2012
Series:	Short Cuts
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jeffrey Weinstock is professor of American literature and culture at Central Michigan University. He is the author of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2007) and Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (2008) and is an editor for The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Vampire Cinema
1. Vampire Sex
2. Vampire Technology
3. Vampire Otherness
Coda: Vampirising Genre
Filmography
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Isabella van Elferen

Jeffrey Weinstock's analysis of vampire cinema is challenging, elegant and persuasive. On the basis of a large number of critical film readings, the author assesses vampire cinema's disturbing relation to sex, technology, and otherness. Vampire films, Weinstock demonstrates, simultaneously screen cultural anxieties surrounding these key themes and invert them. The well-known tropes of the lesbian vampire, the vampiric mediality of film, and the monstrous otherness of the vampire all come back from the undead to haunt the reader of this book. Ambitious in scope yet lucid in structure, Weinstock's The Vampire Film will prove an indispensable resource for vampire researchers, students and lovers alike.

— Isabella van Elferen, Utrecht University

Editorial Reviews

This book provides a perfect introduction to the vampire subgenre that does not completely abandon historiography whilst vouching for a more organic thematic arrangement. Essential reading for vampire cinephiles and horror aficionados alike.

The Gothic Imagination - Xavier Aldana Reyes

The Vampire Film is well written and engaging. Jeffrey Weinstock has provided both scholars and general readers with yet another useful tool with which to hunt the vampire.

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts - Jim Holte

The Vampire Film is certain to provide a novel, penetrating look through the layers of meaning surrounding the bloodsucking undead.

Rue Morgue

This timely book on the vampire film highlights the continued attraction of the genre.

Folklore - Juliette Wood

This book provides a perfect introduction to the vampire subgenre that does not completely abandon historiography whilst vouching for a more organic thematic arrangement. Essential reading for vampire cinephiles and horror aficionados alike.

— Xavier Aldana Reyes

The Gothic Imagination