By Lubna Abdel-Aziz Escape! Who wants to face the bitter reality of daily life? Throughout history man has used his vast imagination to create means of escaping from the sinister existence of the routine. He has created mythological and folkloric tales, fantasized about the moon and the stars and explored the mysteries of the supernatural. By the time he reached the 20th century, he created the cinema. There, he could relax and escape for a few hours from the everyday, to the everywhere. He lost himself in tales of everlasting romance and adventure, or danced to the music of the doleful soul, or laughed gleefully till his sides split. He also loved to be horrified, screaming and cringing at the strange creatures from a bottomless pit. Ghosts and ghouls, monsters and werewolves, mysteries and murders, he also found entertaining. Such is the mystifying complexity and perplexity of the human mind. Among man's bizarre inventions is the vampire. Vampires live in frosty grey worlds tempered with gloom and trepidation. It is a chilling fright that we ourselves invite and welcome, that sends a pleasurable shiver down our spine. We are ready again and again to descend crooked stairs to basement secret laboratories, revisit isolated hilltop castles, and wander through dark decaying mansions where vampires roam at will. It all started with the Count, that infamous, beloved, blood- sucking Count-Dracula. Simultaneously revolting and admirable, the Count established the vampire trend in film. A superbly crafted genre, bleak and enigmatic, it is a testament to the ingenuity of its creator and our lure to blood and gore. Vampires have been with man since the beginning of time. They are well familiar to us. We have seen them, heard them, feared them, burned them, but they only exist in our minds. Mythological and folkloric beings, vampires subsist by feeding on the blood of the living or the undead. Stories of vampire creatures have been recorded in many cultures. The belief in "blood-sucking demons" is as old as man himself, but the term "vampire" was not popularized until the 18th century. The word first appeared in English in 1734, via French "Vampyr", from the German "Vampir", derived from the Serbian "vampir" and other Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for witch "ubyr". Most vampire tales originated in Eastern European and Balkan countries. The most famous vampire of all was the creation of Irish author Bram Stoker (1848 - 1912) in 1897 -- Dracula. Stoker based the character of Dracula on Vlad Teyes, a cruel prince of Walachia, Transylvania (now part of Romania). Vlad was actually nicknamed Dracula, which in Romanian means, "son of the devil, or son of a dragon". Bram Stoker's account of Count Dracula became one of the most famous horror stories of all time. The several-hundred-years-old nobleman changed into a bat at night and flew about the country-side sucking blood from the necks of sleepy victims. He is finally killed by a stake driven through his heart. German filmmakers started drooling over the image of the Count on the silver screen, the century's new art form. In the skillful hands of German expressionist director F. W. Murnau, the supernatural edginess of vampires came alive. The result was "Nosferatu" (1922), a cinematic masterpiece of the silent era, based loosely on Stoker's Dracula. Though not the first vampire movie, it is often referred to as such, and is still a subject of study and research among film students. Hollywood tackled the tale of the Count in 1931. The role was to go to Lon Chaney who had had enormous success in horror films. Director Tod Browning was dismayed when Chaney died before the production started. The search for a Count ended at the doorstep of Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. With his lilting voice, his slight accent, his piercing eyes, his proud stance and his measured walk, he was the quintessential Count Dracula. Who else could announce more splendidly: "I am Dracula"? Vampires come and go, but there is only one, as Bram Stoker must have imagined him -- Bela Lugosi. The refined, sophisticated Dracula became the archetype of vampires, using seduction as a means to harvest humans for food. Several Dracula films followed, and the genre became a staple in film production companies since. The nineties saw a brisk revival of the macabre on the screen, with "Interview with the Vampire" listed as one of the best vampire films starring two heartthrobs Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. In 1998 director John Carpenter's "Vampires" though grossly violent is an important view in vampire film history. The new millennia embraced the surreal fantasy of the grotesque with an endless list of vampire films from young boys to seductive females, and a constant nod to the character of the Count. Ninety years after "Nosferatu", Vampires are still thriving, in fact they are kicking with wholesome invigorating new blood. Novelist Stephenie Meyer's "Twighlight" series were not only fast best-sellers, they were gobbled up by Hollywood, which usually can savour a good meal as well as a good book. The first in the series "Twilight" (2008) was a major box office success, by far the best vampire money-maker of all time. The film starred young, relatively unknown actors, and brought a new ingredient to the genre -- romance. Filmgoers have admitted to have seen "Twilight" up to a dozen times. Last month, the sequel "New Moon" broke all previous records for a midnight showing. In the US and Canada, it grossed an estimated $ 26.3 million, breaking the record previously held by "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince", which grossed $ 22.2 million. On its opening day, the film grossed $ 72 million, becoming the biggest single day opening in US history. So far, the film's worldwide gross has reached an estimated $ 311.1 million.While the leading lady has received kudos from all critics, Kirsten Stewart could not bring too many of them to praise the film itself. It matters little to director Charles Weitz, the studio, the author or the viewers. The record breaking returns are ample proof. Why do audiences rush to see such freakish hallucinatory films? They must satisfy a need within our deepest soul. The horror genre becomes more prevalent during the worst of times. There is a quiet comfort in viewing such torture and terror happening to others. It helps us forget an even worse fate awaiting us outside the theatre. Our desire to escape our horrific surroundings and lose ourselves, relax, avoid, evade, depart, disappear - simply escape our worries and concerns, our struggles and travails, our ominous menacing, foreboding, fearful existence - an existence even more fearful than the sucking fangs of a bloody vampire. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy -- Hamlet, William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
