The vampire we all know and love today has been created and refined
over the years by Hollywood. Movies such as Dracula, The Lost Boys,
The Hunger, and Queen of the Damned have continually fed the legend
of the vampire as a desirable, beautiful creature of the night.
However, there are no legends, regardless of origin, that paints
this picture of the vampire. In a few cases, such as the Dearg-Due
of Ireland, the vampire is a beautiful female that uses her beauty
to seduce her victims. In most cases though the vampire is a
walking corpse. It is not beautiful. It has no intelligence. He is
no more than a reanimated corpse that feeds on the blood of the
living to sustain his reanimated form.
F.W. Murnaucreated the first surviving film adaptation of the
novel. In his "Nosferatu -- Eine Symphonie des Grauens", Count
Orlock was ugly, with pointy ears, a bald head, and large pointy
incisors. The vampire held true to the European myths, at least in
physical appearance.
Tod Browning brought a new image to the vampire with his filming
of Dracula. Bela Lugosi portrayed the Count as a handsome creature
of the night. He was very suave and debonaire, speaking in his
Hungarian accent, hypnotizing women with his stare, and moving in a
slow, yet smooth manner. Women all over America fell in love with
this Count Dracula, men all over America desired to be this Count
Dracula.
Hollywood (as well as America's fiction writers) has, in fact,
created a true American Vampire by combining the old myths (staking
the vampire, garlic, crosses, sunlight, native soil, ...) and the
American dream of power, beauty, and immortality. That vampire has
become the "True American Vampire."