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The cinema has the majestic ability to show us who we really are, what we dream of, and where we may be going. We are drawn to this intoxicating medium like moths to the flame. Since the beginning, the wonderful subtleties of celluloid film have repeatedly haunted us with the pale shadow of the vampire, growing more terrifying over the years as the vampire became more like us, or maybe, as we've become more like the vampire than we'd like to believe.

Why are we so fascinated with the vampire?

The ancient mythos of the undead, always craving life-giving blood, has captivated our interests for millennia. We want more life, or maybe, a better life, in control of our destiny. As such, we both admire and loath powerful people like Prince Vlad Dracula, who heroically defended his country against invaders, yet became insanely evil, twisted by cruel wartime captivity.

Dracula's horrific tragedy inspired Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, the wellspring of the cinematic vampire. The earliest film, Vampire of the Coast (1909), exposed the monstrous vampire to a shocked public, but it's widely accepted that Nosferatu (1922) firmly fixed the pathos within the public's mind.

The years passed as the movie industry blossomed. No longer silent, a whole new reality evolved. In the 30s and 40s, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney resurrected the dry Victorian classic novel from its grave. The monster began to show some vague remnant of human behavior. We recognized the monster in ourselves, the taboo of doing what was necessary to survive on a personal, national and worldwide scale.

In the 50s and 60s, Hammer Horror and Christopher Lee cultivated the vampire's godlike aura of personal freedom, and its vulnerability to good's undeniable truths, still within reach of its lingering human conscience. There was no escaping the exhilarating and frightening temptation of what vampirism could do for us (and to us).

Temptation often leads to a choice between good and evil. Free will decides if our life's reflection emulates an empty darkness or a shining light. The vampire is a monster that we know very well. The shallow pursuit of acquiring possessions doesn't exist with favor in God's eyes. And what better dark possession... stealing another's life.

Do we redeem ourselves by fighting the monster or do we end up becoming the monster? The razor-edged, us-versus-them plot line raged over the decades from Salem's Lot (1979) to Vampires (1998). The Blade series (1998 and onward) straddled both

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