Lately, however, our fascination with the vampire has progressed to the point where they've become so attractive, so sexy, so sympathetic, that screenwriters just can't seem to kill them off. Even if audiences for New Moon arrived at the theater completely unfamiliar with Stephanie Meyer's books, was there really a moment where they believed that Edward was going to walk out in the sunlight, out the existence of vampires to the crowd and thereby insure his destruction by the Volturi? And what about the doe eyed child vampires of Let the Right One In and Let Me In? How could someone, or something, who was the only friend of a bullied kid, no less a kid herself, end up with a stake through her heart, reduced to dust or ash?
At least director Neal Jordan allowed the uber-creepy Claudia to be destroyed in Interview with the Vampire, even if her death was at the hands of other vampires. That little blonde vamp was so soulless, so evil, that her destruction seemed ensured. Not so with the mopish Louis or the amoral Lestat. Of course, Anne Rice wrote the screenplay for Interview with the Vampire based on her novel, and since that debut launched a series of very successful sequels, she could hardly have killed off the vampires that were the heroes of her unique universe.
Before the financial appeal of the sequel prevented celluloid vampires from meeting their just ends, filmmakers were pretty creative when it came to killing them off. Here, then ,are some of the most creative undead deaths:
- In Underworld, the lycans shoot vampires with bullets filled with daylight
- In Jess Franco's erotic Vampyros Lesbos, the preferred method of killing vampires is to either cleave their heads with an axe or to pound a stake into their brains.
- In the Hammer classic, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Dracula falls from a cliff and is impaled on a cross
- In Frost - Portrait of a Vampire, vampires are shot with wooden bullets
- In Interview with The Vampire, Claudia - before she herself is killed by sunlight - believes she has killed Lestat when she lures him to drink blood from a corpse
- In Ganja and Hess, the two titular vampires destroy themselves with the shadow cast by a cross
- In Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire, head vamp Sebastian is done in by drinking the blood of a woman who drank holy water
- In Daughters of Darkness, Countess Elizabeth Bathory is impaled on a tree branch (which is far more dramatic than being walled up in her castle.)
- In John Badham's 1979 version of Dracula, the count, as played by Frank Langella, is impaled on a ship's hook and hoisted into the sunlight, his body aging, then decaying, with each rotation of the hook.
Check out this little bit of dialogue, from Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk Til Dawn for a comprehensive primer on killing vamps:
SETH
...Now since we all believe we're dealing with vampires, what do we know about vampires? Crosses hurt vampires. Do you have a cross?
JACOB
In the Winnebago
SETH
In other wrds, no
SCOTT
What are you talking about? We got crosses all over the place. All you gotta do is put two sticks together and you got a cross
SEX MACHINE
He's right. Peter Cushing does that all the time.
SETH
I don't know about that. In order for it to have any power, I think it's gotta be an official crucifix.
JACOB
What's an official cross? Some piece of tin made in Taiwan? What makes that official? If a cross works against vampires, it's not the cross itself, it's what the cross represents. The cross is a symbol of holiness.
SETH
Okay, I'll buy that. So we got crosses covered. What else?
FROST
Wooden stakes in the heart been workin' pretty good so far.
SEX MACHINE
Garlic, holy water, sunlight...I forget, does silver do anything to a vampire?
SCOTT
That's werewolves.
SEX MACHINE
I know silver bullets are werewolves. But I'm pretty sure silver has some sort of effect on vampires.
KATE
Does anybody have any silver?
No.
Then who cares?
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