Everyone knows that a pair of prominent
canines in the upper jaw, fangs to you and me, is the most obvious
characteristic of the vampire. Oddly enough, however, this has little
basis in folklore or literary tradition. In the original novel Dracula,
author Bram Stoker made reference to the traditional belief. This
was that vampires had only one fang in the lower jaw, and a complementary
one in the upper, both being incisors at the front of the jaw. With
this arrangement the bloodsucker could lift a flap of skin on the
victim to get at its plasma feast.
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It was cinema that changed
all that. In the 1921 German classic Nosferatu the vampire (played
by Max Schreck) has two prominent incisors at the front, just like
a rat, or indeed a bat. If not traditional, this arrangement certainly
makes rational sense as a convenient way of opening a jugular. Hollywood
horror star of the silent screen Lon Chaney played his vampire in
the 1927 film London After Midnight. This bloodsucker had a whole
array of pointed teeth – which would surely have been very messy indeed
(though he turns out to only be pretending to be a vampire at the
film’s climax). Bela Lugosi, who made the role of Dracula his own
in 1931, never bares any fangs at all. |
It was in 1958 that Britain’s Hammer studios established the
popular image of a vampire as a monster with two prominent upper canines
in Dracula. The role was played by Christopher Lee; an appropriate
canine Dracula as the most wickedly wolfish actor to adopt the cape
to date. In practical terms it makes little sense, as having the teeth
that far back (and canines are tearing not piercing teeth), would
make the whole business so much more awkward and complicated than
necessary.
But it looks better that way and (as is so often the case in the Gothic
world), who gives a damn about convenience just so long as it looks
good?! |
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