It’s the year of the vampire!” declares Christopher Frayling.
He’s certainly got a point when it comes to anniversaries. This year marks 175 years since the first book publication of Varney the Vampire, by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, which was originally published in serial form in the Victorian penny dreadful magazines. It’s 150 years since the 1872 release of the gothic novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, and 125 years since the daddy of them all, Dracula, first made it into print at the hands of his creator, Bram Stoker. It’s 30 years since Francis Ford Coppola released his lush, epic film version of that, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. And 25 years since Sarah Michelle Gellar first kicked bloodsucker ass to a college rock soundtrack in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
But the anniversary that Frayling is most concerned with is the centenary of the release of the first ever vampire film, 1922’s Nosferatu, and all that followed on the big and small screens. Sir Christopher, to give him his full honours (he was knighted in 2001 for services to art and design education), is a writer with a special interest in the pop culture of the arcane, and his newest tome, out now, is Vampire Cinema: The First 100 Years.
