Post-1968 Vampires

Concerned with the political and socio-economic implications of Italian vampire cinema, the chapter identifies Italian vampires with enemies within (a specific group of people in the nation-state’s social body) and enemies without (scheming foreigners). The chapter focuses on six Italian vampire films of various genres made between 1970 and 1975. Directly referencing Karl Marx and Marxist thinkers, ...Hanno cambiato faccia (Corrado Farina, 1971), La corta notte delle bambole di vetro / Short Night of Glass Dolls (Aldo Lado, 1971), Il prato macchiato di rosso (Riccardo Ghione, 1972), L’uomo che uccideva a sangue freddo / Shock Treatment (Alain Jessua, 1973), Dracula cerca sangue di vergine... e morì di sete!!! / Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey, 1974) and Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco, ovvero: Dracula in Brianza / Dracula in the Provinces (Lucio Fulci, 1975) liken the then-contemporary ruling political caste and capitalist class to greedy, self-serving vampires that are undefeatable due to their power of adaptation, thereby providing an apocalyptic view on the post-economic-miracle period, from the late-1960s wave of anti-authoritarian protests in Italian universities and factories to the mid-1970s plans for an alliance between Christian Democrats and Communists.

Introduction

The aim of the introductory chapter is threefold. Firstly, the chapter points out the monograph’s originality by contextualising the book in relation to ongoing scholarly debates about vampire fiction and Italian film history. Secondly, the chapter presents the corpus of thirty-three films to be studied, outlining the thematic and industrial criteria behind the selection. The corpus goes from vampiric/Frankensteinian monster-mash I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire (Riccardo Freda, 1957), which is generally considered the first Italian horror film, to horror parody Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco, ovvero: Dracula in Brianza / Dracula in the Provinces (Lucio Fulci, 1975). Thirdly, in order to introduce some key elements of Italian cultural specificity, the chapter provides a brief history of literary and cinematic horror fiction in Italy prior to 1956, with particular attention to vampire-themed works.

The Italian Film Industry (1945–1985)

The chapter provides an overview of the history of the post-war Italian film industry from crisis to crisis, that is to say from the ground zero of 1945 (when the whole Italian film business had to be politically and economically reorganised, together with the rest of the war-torn country) to the ground zero of 1985 (the year in which, for the first time in almost three decades, Italian film production fell below the rate of 100 films made per year, as the culmination of a crisis that started in the mid-1970s). The chapter opens with an in-depth production history of I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire (Riccardo Freda, 1957), followed by an account of the 1958-1964 boom in the production of pepla, the historical-mythological adventures of the sword-and-sandal kind. Both cases (an isolated commercial failure the former; a short-lived box-office goldmine, or filone, the latter) are emblematic of the functioning of the Italian film industry between the early 1950s and the mid-1980s – a state-subsidised system mostly based on a constellation of medium, small and minuscule business ventures piggy-backing on popular genres/trends in the local and/or global film market.

Male Vampires

The chapter zooms in on the cultural instrumentality of the vampire metaphor in Italy by studying Italian-made vampire movies as struggles for gender definition and domination that reflect the zeitgeist of post-war Italy, when a perceived decline in masculine authority due to the vicissitudes of World War Two, the hardships of reconstruction and the post-1958 neocapitalist consumerism went hand in hand with women’s ever-increasing challenges to traditional gender roles. The chapter ventures into the so-far uncharted territory of the Italian male vampires that populate horror parodies, straightforward horrors and horror-tinged adventures. It investigates how, within a masculinity-in-crisis framework, Italian makeshift Draculas act as champions of traditional virility, irresistible Latin lovers and tyrannical patres familias seeking to reassure Italian men of their gender leadership.

Female Vampires

The chapter zooms in on the cultural instrumentality of the vampire metaphor in Italy by studying Italian-made vampire movies as struggles for gender definition and domination that reflect the zeitgeist of post-war Italy, when a perceived decline in masculine authority due to the vicissitudes of World War Two, the hardships of reconstruction and the post-1958 neocapitalist consumerism went hand in hand with women’s ever-increasing challenges to traditional gender roles. The chapter argues that the female vampires of Italian horror are not simplistically villainous, power-hungry sexual predators that misogynistic-reactionary narratives put to death as a punishment for attempting to subvert the patriarchal status quo. They also are empathy-inducing characters caught between rebellion and hyper-identification with traditional values: victims returning from the grave to seek revenge against their male oppressors, and tragic lovers dreaming of a monogamous heterosexual relationship that looks strangely similar to marriage.

Vampires of the Late 1950s and Early 1960s

Concerned with the political and socio-economic implications of Italian vampire cinema, the chapter identifies Italian vampires with enemies within (a specific group of people in the nation-state’s social body) and enemies without (scheming foreigners). The chapter focuses on the vampire movies made in the 1959-1965 period, which coincided with the 1958-1963 economic miracle that turned vastly backward, prevalently agricultural Italy into a modern, industrial country. Taking horror parody Tempi duri per i vampiri / Uncle Was a Vampire (Stefano Vanzina as Steno, 1959) as its main case study, the chapter describes a parable of class struggle pointing to the need of renegotiating ancestral class identities in order to survive the dramatic socio-economic changes brought about by the economic miracle. At the same time, a careful analysis of horror-tinged adventures reveals them to be a re-enactment of the Nazi occupation of Italy in the last years of World War Two and, possibly, an allusion to the neofascist resurgence of the early 1960s.

Italian Vampire Cinema (1956–1975)

The chapter details the success of the Hammer Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) in late-1950s and early-1960s Italy, and explains why, where, by whom and with which commercial results a series of vampire films were made by Italian companies from 1959 to 1975, with the cooperation of European co-production partners and/or American investors. While revealing the imported and derivative nature of 1956-1975 Italian vampire cinema, the industrial analysis conducted in the chapter shows how local factors such as distribution-fed production, time- and cost-saving shooting practices, state censorship and state aids made the Italian vampire rip-offs into variations on the theme mixing foreign models with distinctively national traits rather than into slavish plagiarisms.