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There are lots of different genres in the history of filmmaking. One of those genres are monster movies, which offer a sense of suspense and fear to the audience who is deeply mesmerised by what is happening on the giant screen. Will someone die? What will happen to the protagonist? How can that monster be so awful? This research paper will focus on only one kind of monster who invaded the many movie screens around the world for ages; the mysterious vampires. I will mostly talk about three films in particular : « Nosferatu » made by F.W Murnau, « Dracula » made by Tod Browning and « Bram Stoker’s Dracula » made by Francis Ford Coppola, which I think are great vampire movies, but I will also briefly talk about what has been made lately in Hollywood on vampires. But before giving a description of those movies, one has to know what defines a vampire persona. Though each vampire movies have a different portrayal of their main character, because each filmmaker has a different version as to what the vampire should look like and in what setting should he be placed, they shared a lot of similar characteristics. According to the book « The Vampire Film » by James Ursini, a vampire is someone « with a tapering face, sharp, shining teeth, an abundance of thick hair, a peculiar voice and expression and lastly, a typical odour that is usually bad. »Although vampires have unattractive physical attributes, they have this incredible charisma and strength that allows them to have the power to change themselves into bats and to catch their « prays » easily. Other attributes linked to vampires have been invented by 19th and 20th-century filmmakers and writers such as Bram Stoker like the vampire’s inability to be under the sun and that a vampire must be killed with a stake through his heart or by putting a cross on him. First of all, it is important to talk about « Nosferatu » by F.W Murnau, which was one of the first film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s « Dracula ». This movie, made in 1922 in Germany, still remains one of the most imaginative vampire movies of all-time. What makes this movie so original is its different approach to Bram Stoker’s novel. The characters’ names are changed; Dracula becomes « Orlock », Jonathan Harker becomes « Waldemar Hutter », Mina becomes « Ellen Hutter », and so on. The setting is somewhat different, especially when Nosferatu goes to Bremen in Germany instead of going to London as described in Stoker’s version. The way Murnau portrayed Dracula is also very different from the hundreds of movies that has been made on that monster.
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