As I mentioned in my previous post on silent film, I was reading David Annwn Jones’ monograph which goes over the cinematic infancy of vampire film. I first came across this monograph when doing my research on American vampire film, and used the section on vamps to great effect. But now I have come back to reread the study in it’s entirety, and I must say that his argument did not leave me entirely convinced. First, let me say that Jones is a phenomenal scholar with a ton of excellent knowledge into the occult and a great understanding of the early twentieth century. That said, I had at times felt an anguish as Jones would come close to a point that was convincing, only to then jerk it away to some perpendicular idea. His focus on the occult, and it’s centrality in the study, seems more and more reductive as the argument progresses. Which is a true shame, because I was hoping for a more complex investigation into the other factors that led to the production of these films. To be sure, his analysis is complex, but as the occultic analysis gluts into an unwieldy creature, other factors seem to starve in the desert of context.
The title is set up into eight chapters, each focusing on either a small corpus of films with similar themes or on one major title on its own. Naturally, it begins with the folkloric and literary tradition that vampires come from. Thereafter, he goes into the creation of film and diverges into the world of magic lanterns, where he first asserts that demons and vampires are intrinsic during the late nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. The subsequent chapter goes into the first silent films, and Jones gets into the much debated question: what is the first vampire film? He has some suggestions, but it is ultimately unclear. The next chapter is easily the most controversial of his study, as he discusses the serial Mysteries of Myra (1916). Its controversy lies in the fact that Jones claims that the fire elemental seen in the sixth installment of the serial is a vampire. We will get to this later. The fourth chapter focuses on a warlock in the movie Magia (1917), which continues his connection between vampiric need for blood and occultism. And finally after investigating two whole films that have no vampires in them, the fifth chapter discusses Lilith Und Ly (1918). There is some good connections between the Hebrew tradition and more Kabbalistic interpretations of Lilith as a mythic being, which serves to connect her to her vampiric title. The sixth chapter speculates heavily on the contents of the lost film Drakula halala (1921), and Jones ultimately claims that the supposed Drakula of the film is not a vampire. The penultimate chapter is on Genuine: The Tragedy of the Vampire (1920), and connects it to not only contemporary horror film like Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), but to the wider context of Weimar Germany during the Interwar Period. And finally, Jones ends his study by looking at Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), and establishes a conclusion for his findings.
As with anything as large and as vague as the term “vampire film” is, there is of course a need to define what makes something vampiric. Jones provides his definition of vampires; and it borders on conceptual laziness into narrative manipulation. In his introduction, he posits, “My major criteria for identifying a vampire on celluloid is this figure’s two most significant characteristics: that the subject consumes blood by some means and that they are generally predatory towards mortals.” (Jones, 2023, p. vii) The first characteristic is reasonable, and although difficult to find in silent films he does well with understanding censorship and the limitations in showing blood and violence in these earlier films. The second characteristic; however, is demonstrably vague for any level of classification. “Generally predatory” is a phrase that would invite all of the folkloric monsters to be perceived as a vampire, and if anything can be a vampire than nothing is a vampire. But Jones needs this secondary piece in order to fit his throughline narrative of occultism into his study.
The third chapter, as previously mentioned, is one of Jones’ hottest takes. And let me be clear, I do not dislike the man himself. In fact I think this is one of the better chapters. and I need to preface this because while I respect the chutzpah that it takes to put out something academically challenging, what Jones claims in this chapter is definitely going to be challenged here. He states clearly that:
“Myra’s Fire Elemental meets all criteria for establishing and identifying a viable vampire figure. He is identified as a vampire by Alden in the serialisation. He is a demonic or malefic force with supernatural powers and is generally hostile to humans. He is attracted by and feeds on blood. Whether or not he does this exclusively to satisfy his own blood-thirst, (an intended reward for destroying Myra both mortally and psychically), or whether this gorging on blood is in order to regurgitate or express some for the Master’s hinted-at ‘blood sacrifice’ later is unimportant. (The newspaper’s variant ending would hint that the former is true.) Blavatsky, Wright and many other writers had been writing for decades about elementals as vampires and vampires that could feed on blood at a distance. The elemental’s vampiric blood-consuming pedigree is overwhelmingly established.” (Jones, 2023, p. 73)
Revolutionary if true. And Jones brings up the connections made by scholars in the seventeenth century between the fire elementals and vampires. But in so doing, Jones makes the mistake of not contextualising this period in time, which vampirologists call the Vampire Debate. Said debate was after the accounts of Serbian vampire attacks were brought back by the Catholic Church to Western European polities, and western scholars tried to make sense of them in their own preconceived notions of the cosmos. So while there is a connection through these theosophical and philosophical debates between vampires and fire elementals, that does not mean they reflect the ways that people perceived vampires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jones says that, ““The projection of the Stokeresque vampire onto horror films pre-1922 as an exclusive template for vampirism would obscure myriad other possibilities to hand drawn from Classical and Greek vampire lore” (Jones, 2023, p. 74), which to some extent is valid. To purely use Dracula as what is and what isn’t a vampire is reductive of vampire fiction. Rather, Stoker fits into a much larger canon of Romantic period authors like Le Fanu and Polidori, So it would be more appropriate to call them capital R Romantic vampire stories, or to split them into the two categories of byronic (male vampires of status and authority) and Carmilla (female vampires that exhibit attractions to victims of the same sex) vampires. But to suggest that we should make the jump from seventeenth century esoterica to early film requires much more than speculation and inference into authorial intent.
The only section that I believe has the most weight when viewing vampires under an occultic lens is the last, which is on Nosferatu. I find it to be his best chapter, and as it should be. Murnau’s film is a seminal moment in not just vampire film but film in general. And with the understanding that Prana Films was to be an explicitly occultic production company makes Jones’ expertise truly a delight. My only critique for the section is that Jones does not tie back the idea of contagion and pestilence to the original folkloric beliefs that made any of this possible.
I encourage any one interested in the beginning of vampire film or are interested in twentieth century occultism to pick up this book and read it for yourselves. Obviously I was not convinced by the more hot takes in the study, but don’t let that discourage you. Jones is incredibly thorough in his references, and I implore you to look at the information for yourselves and come to your own conclusions. And if you agree with Jones in the end, please feel free to tell me your reasoning and the evidence that supports it below in the comments!
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