CINEMA'S FIRST VAMPIRE BITE

Monster movie fans know that we never actually saw Bela Lugosi's Dracula biting his victims. It wouldn't be until Hammer unleashed Valerie Gaunt, who we see (briefly), to chomp down on the hapless John Van Eyssen in HORROR OF DRACULA. After that, the blood gates were opened and it was fair game to show vampires biting their prey.

For the first on-screen vampire bite we have to go all the way back to the silent era--to 1912 in fact--and a Danish production titled THE VAMPIRE DANCER, directed by August Blom. There's one caveat: the vampire in this film is not of the supernatural kind, but a "vamp" of the type (think Theda Bara) when women were portrayed in various films as predatory, metaphorically sucking the life out of impassioned men lured into thinking they've got the implied chance of sex. Still, the actress, Clara Wieth, is portrayed as a "vampire" and through her allure, causes the end of a man hopelessly infatuated with her.

A rehearsal scene for the play during the film.

This is a synopsis of the story from the DANISH SILENT FILM site:

The artists at a popular variety show are in an uproar when dancer Sylvia Lafont’s dance partner Enric falls seriously ill. If they are to perform the famous vampire dance, they must find a substitute in a hurry. An ad in the newspaper prompts a number of hopeful applicants to come to the theatre, and Sylvia is quick to make her decision: she chooses Oscar, a taciturn but handsome young man. During the rehearsals, Oscar falls head over heels in love with Sylvia. However, she is happily engaged to someone else. She gently rejects his fierce advances and tries to persuade him to concentrate on their performance. But Oscar’s emotions cannot be tamed: sick with jealousy, he makes a tragic decision.

The final scene of the film.

All film prints of the 25-minute long erotic melodrama are now lost, with the exception of a single "print on paper" from the US Library of Congress. The process, which projected each frame of a film onto photo-sensitive paper, was often used to file a copyright without having to submit actual reels of film.

THE VAMPIRE DANCER (1912)

IS HAXAN A HORROR FILM?

Long associated with horror films, HÄXAN was instead meant to be a study of human psychological aberrations in the vision of filmmaker Benjamin Christensen. In other words he didn't--at least purposely--intend to horrify audiences. Still, the arresting imagery of the devil (played by Christensen himself) and his minions, tortured witches and a fantastical scene of the black sabbath along with its perversions have all the earmarks of a vintage horror picture and it can't help but to be considered one.

If you are unfamiliar with this over a century-old intriguing film, the article below will provide you with enough details to--I hope--interest you enough to watch it. There is a shortened version narrated by William Burroughs, but I recommend the restored, full-length version.

WHAT TO WATCH WATCH IN MARCH: HÄXAN (1922)

Making the case for the deeply weird silent film about the history of witchcraft.

By Radha Vatsal | March 17, 2026 | Crimereads.com

Story/Mood: This atmospheric silent film, whose title means “The Witch,” is unlike any other movie I’ve seen. Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro describes it as “the filmic equivalent of a hellish engraving by Bruegel or a painting by Bosch.”

Häxan combines documentary and fantasy to create an immersive “film essay” that explores everything from the mythology of witchcraft, to the torture and trial of witches, and witches’ sabbaths where the participants kiss the devil’s ass. It culminates in musings about whether poor older women who would be helped by charitable organizations today (today being 1922), or women diagnosed as “hysterics,” might have been marked as witches in the past.

The Look: Gorgeously filmed in black-and-white, with some sequences tinted in deep blue or blood red, Häxan opens with a title card that reads: “Let us look into the history of mysticism and try to explain the mysterious chapter known as the Witch.” The first of the film’s seven sections takes the form of a cinematic lecture about cosmology and ancient beliefs about heaven, hell, and supernatural forces—illustrated with drawings, photographs, and old-style museum-y models, as well as images that are partially animated. This is the magic of early film at its finest—film as a novelty, as pictures that move. The movie then shifts to dramatic re-enactment:

“Through the imagination,” the title card says, “we now journey to the underground home of a witch in the year of our Lord 1488.” That’s when things start to get even weirder as fact blends with fantasy. We get stories about graverobbers, a poor beggar woman who is wrongfully accused of witchcraft, witch trials, lustful priests and nuns visited by Satan, instruments of torture, and witches flying on their broomsticks through the night.

Crew: Benjamin Christensen, Häxan’s Danish writer and director, also plays the devil in this film, lasciviously wiggling his tongue as he bursts into the frame. His goal, he explained, was to “throw light on the psychological causes of these witch trials by demonstrating their connections with certain abnormalities of the human psyche, abnormalities which have existed throughout history and still exist in our midst.”

Also, Christensen wanted to understand “whether a film is able to hold the public’s interest without mass effects, without sentimentality, without suspense, without heroes and heroines—in short, without all those things on which a good film is otherwise constructed.”

Where to watch: The Criterion Channel as well as other streaming services. I watched Häxan on the big screen with a packed crowd at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY. The film had long been lingering in my drawer as a DVD (yes, from way back when!). Seeing it on the big screen with live piano and a fully engaged audience as part of the museum’s Halloween line-up was a great way to appreciate the stunning visuals and the strangeness for the first time.

Other notes: 105 minutes, black and white. The Criterion version features music from the 1922 Danish premiere. In his essay, “Häxan, The Real Unreal,” film scholar Chris Fujiwara says that censors in several countries, including Germany, France, and the United States—“objected to the movie’s numerous scenes of torture, sex, nudity, and anticlericalism, and only after undergoing extensive reediting could it be publicly shown in those markets.”

Some companion pieces if you’re interested in the subject (and I know there’s a lot out there, so these are just two): Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), in which the filmmaker treats witches as part of a belief system and therefore real; and Rivka Galchen’s 2021 novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch—set in Germany in the 17th century, about the witch trial of the famous astronomer, Johannes Keppler’s mother.

HOW TO PROMOTE A GOLEM

ballyhoo; noun

bal·​ly·​hoo

1: a noisy attention-getting demonstration or talk

2: flamboyant, exaggerated, or sensational promotion or publicity

3: excited commotion

Aside from the box office attraction of popular stars and the heavy advertising by studios of their films, movie theater owners employed their own kind of promotion to lure customers. One of the earliest and most common was the use of large, colorful and dramatic posters and lobby cards supplied by the studios themselves, but it was left to theater owners to make sure they were plainly visible both on the outside and the inside of their venue. Later, pressbooks were printed by studio publicity departments and distributed to exhibitors with information on how to order posters and other visual displays, as well as suggestions on how to effectively bring added attention to their latest feature using canned radio spot scripts and other ideas. 

Among numerous other promotional strategies was to decorate the interior or exterior (or both) of the theater using thematic elements from the film advertised on the marquee (KING KONG is a good example). Often facilitated by the studios, these marketing gimmicks were dubbed ballyhoo (aka exploitation) by the press, and it was all designed specifically to create interest and excitement, as well as stimulate profits.  

One very early example of ballyhoo was for the 1920 German silent expressionist film, THE GOLEM, starring Paul Wegener, released in the United States on June 19, 1921 by Paramount Pictures.

Paramount exploitation representative Fred V. Greene, Jr. devised an idea that was fairly spectacular for the day: he had a sculpture designed of Paul Wegener as the mystical Jewish avenger known as The Golem for display at the Criterion Theater in New York. Purported to be 18 feet tall, it doesn't look quite that when compared to the man standing next to it in the photo, but it's still visually impressive. The statue was created at Brunton Studios (later bought by Paramount) at a cost of the then-princely sum of 50 dollars! An additional number of 3 foot statues were made for the purpose of window displays. There were also several hundred Golem figures cast in lead (!) and distributed as watch charms.

Greene's second idea was to add advertising for the picture printed on the top of beach umbrellas, which was ingenious as it was the height of summer season in New Jersey.

Exhibitors Herald, September 10, 1921.

A later edition of the EXHIBITORS HERALD (September 24, 1921) more correctly states the height of the Golem statue as being 12 feet tall. Written by another Paramount publicist, Eli M. Orowitz, he emphasizes that exhibitors "will make a gross error if they narrow the appeal [of THE GOLEM] to the Jewish population alone" (it played heavily in New York's East Side, known for its concentrated Jewish population), and goes on to explain the uniqueness of the film and what has been done in the way of ballyhoo to promote the film to all audiences. One of his suggestions to get the word out was to pass out handbills printed in English on one side and Yiddish on the reverse.

THE MAN IN THE BEAVER HAT

A relative of the Laemmles, Antonia Carlotta has a splendid channel over on YouTube. She posts regularly about all things Universal, especially their monster movies. Miss Carlotta always provides insight on whatever topic she covers, including Lon Chaney's long-lost film, LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT.

Highly recommended!

Antonia Carlotta on YouTube:

THE FIRST HORROR FILM

Widely considered the be the first horror film in cinema history to be distributed to the U.S. and UK and viewed by theater audiences is Georges Méliès 3-minute, 12-second short, THE HAUNTED CASTLE from 1897. Sometimes also known as THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, it was preceded by an earlier, 45-second film, LE CHÂTEAU HANTÉ, containing a hand-colored scene (by Elisabeth Thuillier's color lab) similar to one in the later, longer black and white version.

Ironically, it does not show up in many cinema history books as what is most likely the earliest example of a horror film, even though it contains prototypes employed later by genre pictures: an old, Gothic interior, a giant flying bat, a skeleton, ghosts, a hunchback dwarf and even the Devil himself. While there are comedic elements to the story, it still appears to be primarily intended to scare audiences.

Perhaps best known for A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) with the familiar image of a rocket from Earth crash-landing into the face of the idealized "Man in the Moon", Georges Méliès, was an illusionist and pioneering master of early cinematic special effects, using trick photography to accomplish shots that would have been otherwise impossible.

In his seminal book, "An Illustrated History of the Horror Film" (Putnam, 1967), noted film critic Carlos Clarens wrote: "To Méliès, the camera became a machine to register the world of dreams and the supernatural, the mirror to enter Wonderland."

Scenes from THE HAUNTED CASTLE:

THE HAUNTED CASTLE:

LE CHÂTEAU HANTÉ:

A CLOWN ISN'T FUNNY IN THE MOONLIGHT

"A clown is funny in the circus ring, but what would be the normal reaction to opening a door at midnight and finding the same clown standing there in the moonlight?"

- Attributed to Lon Chaney

And there you have it. This saying -- supposedly by Chaney himself -- has numerous variations, all without solid citations. One thing is for certain: the sentiment surely invokes an unsettling image.

In his 1968 book, “An Illustrated History of the Horror Film”, critic Carlos Clarens writes similarly:

As a boy, Lon Chaney used to watch the clowns on the stage of a theater in Colorado Springs and years later, at the peak of his career, he gave them credit not only for teaching him the basic rules of makeup but also for the inspiration of his more sinister roles.

Chaney contended that clowns are only funny when seen in context and that their painted faces and perennial smiles could project the same eerie quality of such characters as the Phantom of the Opera, for instance. There is nothing laughable about a clown in the moonlight, he used to say.

Chaney played a clown more than once in his film roles. The rare photographs below depict him "showing off" his makeup for HE WHO GETS SLAPPED (MGM, 1924). Also starring was Norma Shearer, one of the film's producers. Once Carl Laemmle's personal secretary, Thalberg became Universal's general manager, then jumped to MGM.

RARE METROPOLIS POSTCARDS

Most would agree that Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS is the most visually stunning science-fiction film of the silent era and indeed, one of the best ever made. Despite its criticism for being "overly-long", "trite", "ludicrously simplistic" and "silly" (this from H.G. Wells himself), it has remained as one of the most revered in the canon of German expressionistic films.

The film was heavily promoted before its first run in January 1927. One of the promotional items was a set of post cards with images from the film and its stars. The 12-card set is now considered rare and the collection in average grade is valued at $1,000.

Shown here are all 12 cards and an autographed "star card" of Brigitte Helm, considered quite rare by itself.

Post card back.

Brigitte Helm autographed card.