Bloodsuckers (leeches) and vampire bats have always intrigued and frightened people from cultures around the world. Demonic or supernatural possession was often juxtaposed with blood-drinking, sex, and corpses. Many religions, myths, folk-tales and cults espoused the idea of obtaining the life-essence from blood – in its extreme was the practice of cannibalism. Vampires began to emerge in popular fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, during which time Anglo-Irish writer Bram Stoker’s 1897 vampire novel Dracula was written. It has become the most popular, influential and preeminent source material for many vampire films. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 lesbian vampire tale Carmilla came a close second to Stoker’s writings. Stoker’s seminal book hatched all the elements of future vampire films — predatory female vamps who kissed the neck of male victims for their human blood, an elderly Count who vied for their prey, and a vampire hunter with garlic toward off the “Prince of Darkness” and with a wooden stake to drive through Dracula’s heart.
The first horror movie, only about two minutes long, was made by imaginative French filmmaker Georges Melies, titled Le Manoir Du Diable (1896, Fr.) (aka The Devil’s Castle/The Haunted Castle) – containing familiar elements of later horror and vampire films: a flying bat, a medieval castle, a cauldron, a demon figure (Mephistopheles), and skeletons, ghosts, and witches – and a crucifix to dispatch with evil. It appeared that Quasimodo, from Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris 1831 novel, became the first horror figure in the 10-minute short by female director Alice Guy titled Esmeralda (1905, Fr.), and soon after was seen in the full-length horror film Notre-Dame De Paris (1911, Fr.) (aka The Hunchback of Notre Dame).