On the Origin of the Species:
The Source of Vampirism in
Millennial Film
Over the years, fans of vampire films and novels have often found one aspect
of the plotline missing. While such stories are usually scrupulous about establish
ing their vampires’ powers, for a long time scriptwriters and authors of these tales
ignored telling us how their focal characters’ vampirism came about in the first
place. Eventually, authors such as Dan Simmons and Anne Rice began to examine
in detail the origin of the vampiric state of being. Indeed, in Children o f the Night
and The Vampire Lestat, Simmons and Rice set down extensive prose establishing
their blood drinkers’ scientific and mythic bases. Until recently, however, such
background has been treated only superficially, if at all, in feature and television
films of vampire tales. Where the novelist can stretch out vampirism’s background
for page after page, the film scriptwriter and director have only so much time in
which to establish this background. Thus, it comes as something of a surprise to
see the extent to which the vampire’s origins are established and developed in such
millennial titles as John Carpenter's Vampires, Dracula 2000, The Forsaken, and
the made-for-cable Dark Prince: The True Story o f Dracula. Continuing a trend
begun with Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), these contem
porary spins on the vampire feature expositive scenes and dialogue that exist pri
marily to establish the origin of their respective story’s vampirism.
A read of vampire anthologies, such as Ray McNally’s A Clutch o f Vampires
or Byron Preiss’s The Ultimate Dracula, shows the reader that regardless of the era
in which the story was created, there is usually little time spent in the narrative
establishing how the original vampire(s) became undead. Silver and Ursini, in The
Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula, point out that the many
“districts and peoples of Europe” carry a variety of theories regarding how one
becomes a vampire (23). Included in these beliefs are assertions that vampirism
may afflict those who have been excommunicated from the church, as well as sui
cides, murderers, apostates, sorcerers, witches, the unbaptised, a seventh son, a
man bom with a caul, a man with red hair, debauchers, evil-doers, and blasphem
ers (23). Note, however, that this list only suggests that those fitting into these
categories may become vampires. Specific mythologies-especially those positing
how vampirism originated-are few. In vampire tales such as John Polidori’s semi
nal tome, The Vampyre (featuring Lord Ruthven), James Malcom Rymer’s Varney