The Vampire Cinema

Along with Pirie's equally excellent "A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema 1946-1972," this book helped convince me that you could write intelligently about horror movies without being a pedantic bore (I bought both when they were first published in the '70s). Comprehensive and well-organized, "The Vampire Cinema" breaks down its subject by country and was my first exposure to the surreally beautiful vampire films of Jean Rollin ("Levres du Sang") and nutty Jess Franco pictures like "Vampyros Lesbos." Pirie covers US vampire movies thoroughly, from Bela Lugosi's "Dracula" to the "Count Yorga" and "Dark Shadows" pictures, putting them into historical context and examining their roots in literature and painting. And, of course, he's in fine form on the Gothic roots of Hammer's contributions to the genre, starting with the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing "Horror of Dracula." Since it was published in 1977, "The Vampire Cinema" obviously doesn't cover the last 20 years of vampire pictures. But its critical positions are in no way dated; it's heavily illustrated and more than 20 years after it first came out, some of them are still rarely seen. I highly recommend "The Vampire Cinema" to anyone interested in the subject -- and of you weren't, you'd hardly be reading this, would you?