# What does a Vampire look like?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** movies
**Created:** [January 28, 2025, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532 "2025-01-28T14:27:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/41 "2025-01-29T15:29:33Z")
> What does a Vampire look like?
I’d tell you, but I can’t see my reflection in the mirror. 😆
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### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/42 "2025-01-29T15:42:45Z")
Thank you. Are any of them more worth picking up than another? I did enjoy Klinger’s Dracula.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/43 "2025-01-29T15:48:29Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> I’d tell you, but I can’t see my reflection in the mirror. 😆
This is one of the vampire features that’s getting played down these days. When it was new to stage and movies (and the original novel) it was an intriguing, creepy idea. It’s used in the Universal films – not just the original Dracula (both English and Spanish), but in _House of Dracula_ John Carradine’s Dracula isn’t reflected in the mirror.
But nowadays it just seems silly, and is often played for laughs (see _Dracula: Dead and Loving It_ or _Van Helsing_). Furthermore, even before this vampires were frequently shown reflected in mirrors. Nosferatu is, for instance, in the original silent film. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is pretty blatantly shown in a mirror in _Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein_. And a couple of movies show vampires reflected from water.
The idea looks like a bit of old folklore – Mirrors are said to reflect the soul of a person, or can capture souls. But vampires don’t have souls, so they cast no reflection.
But there is no such old tradition. Bram Stoker invented the trope for _Dracula_. Before then there was no suggestion that vampires didn’t appear in mirrors. It’s Fakelore, not Folklore.
I did a whole webpage about this on my site:
> **[Vampires and Mirrors](https://srichardwilkcom.wordpress.com/vampires-and-mirrors/)**
>
> The September 1964 issue (#30) of Forrest J. Ackerman’s monster-culture magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland published a list of the powers of Dracula. It was a pretty impressive and specific list…
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/44 "2025-01-29T15:53:29Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> The idea looks like a bit of old folklore – Mirrors are said to reflect the soul of a person, or can capture souls. But vampires don’t have souls, so they cast no reflection.
>
> But there is no such old tradition. Bram Stoker invented the trope for _Dracula_. Before then there was no suggestion that vampires didn’t appear in mirrors. It’s Fakelore, not Folklore.
I seriously did not know that. Thanks! I did know that werewolves being vulnerable to silver was introduced in Universal’s original Wolfman movie. Folklore says you can wound a werewolf or cause them to revert to human form by-
Touching them with a church key (not a bottle opener! the actual key to a church!)
Drawing three drops of blood from them with an iron dagger
or calling them by their Christian name- the folklore is silent on what to do about Jewish lycanthropes.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/45 "2025-01-29T15:57:52Z")
Originally posted by **Bram Stoker** :
> His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
This is a pretty good description of the historical Vlad III, Voivode of Wallachia
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Vlad_Tepes_002.jpg)
It’s also a decent description of Bram Stoker’s employer, the actor Sir Henry Irving, particularly when he was made up to play historical figures such as Richelieu or Charles II.
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Henry_Irving.jpg)
There is some speculation that Stoker hoped to turn the novel into a stage play, with Irving in the title role. (Irving apparently nixed the idea.) A number of contemporaries noted that the relationship between Dracula and Renfield bore a striking resemblance to the relationship between Irving and Stoker.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/46 "2025-01-29T16:10:35Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is pretty blatantly shown in a mirror in _Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein_.
Although that trope-breaking could also be mostly for reasons of comedy, a nudge-nudge-wink-wink at the audience.
Overall though I completely take your point about the no reflections thing being a minor and increasingly optional feature of vampirism.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/47 "2025-01-29T16:35:12Z")
> [@DocCathode](#):
>
> I did know that werewolves being vulnerable to silver was introduced in Universal’s original Wolfman movie.
The werewolves being killed by silver bullets thing always bothered me – surely such a tradition couldn’t go back to, say, medieval times, when there were no guns. Did they use silver slingshot weights, or silver-tipped crossbow bolts?
I was VERY surprised to learn that the trope genuinely is an old one. But not with respect to werewolves. I found in some 18th and 17th century literature the notion that WITCHES could be killed with silver bullets! Its application to werewolves came much later, in the 20th century (despite claims that it’s older).
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/48 "2025-01-29T16:46:12Z")
Considering that the traditional method of becoming a werewolf was to sell your soul to Satan in a black magic ritual, I think the conflation of witches and werewolves is understandable.
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### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/49 "2025-01-29T17:18:48Z")
> [@mbh](#):
>
> I think the conflation of witches and werewolves is understandable.
Not witches; but rather the Lone Ranger according to Curt Siodmak, the screenwriter.
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### Author:  [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/50 "2025-01-29T17:25:54Z")
I never understood the Larry Talbot wolfman. He could’ve built a stout iron cage for those full moon days and charged a pretty penny to witness the transformation. Then he could have compensated the victims he was moping about the whole picture.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/51 "2025-01-29T17:43:50Z")
In early drafts of the script, the writers wanted to be ambiguous about whether lycanthropy was a magical curse that physically transformed him, or simply a mundane mental illness. So, like a lot of mental patients, he dithered and equivocated, and set himself up for failure.
Also, in the 1940s, Britain still had capital punishment. So, admitting any connections to the deaths would have been dangerous.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/52 "2025-01-29T17:45:48Z")
Some people handle it better than others.
_[Oz]: [on the phone] Aunt Maureen? Hey, it’s me. Um, what? Oh. It’s, uh… actually it’s healing okay. That’s pretty much the reason I called. Um, I wanted to ask you something. Is Jordy a werewolf?_
_[pause]_
_[Oz]: Uh-huh._
_[pause]_
_[Oz]: And how long has that been going on?_
_[pause]_
_[Oz]: Uh-huh. What? No, no reason. Um… Thanks. Yeah, love to Uncle Ken._
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/53 "2025-01-29T17:54:26Z")
> [@mbh](#):
>
> In early drafts of the script, the writers wanted to be ambiguous about whether lycanthropy was a magical curse that physically transformed him, or simply a mundane mental illness.
Quite right. See my webpage _Secrets of the Wolfman_
> **[Secrets of the Wolfman](https://srichardwilkcom.wordpress.com/secrets-of-the-wolfman/)**
>
> Lon Chaney Jr. As Larry Talbot, the Wolf Man As a Boomer, I grew up in the cultural fallout of the 1940s — the cartoons I watched, many of the movies I saw on TV, much of the fiction I…
“The screenwriters” was Kurt (or Curt) Siodmak, a man who deserv es to ne mucgh better known than he is, for all the cultural input he’s had. e’s responsible for much of the wolfman “fakelore” we have. He’s also one of the people responsible for popularizing the idea that vampires dissolve under sunlight. His novel “Donovan’s Brain” (and the three movies made from it) popularized the notion of the “disembodied brain in an aquarium”.
As I point out on the webpage, Siodmak later did write a movie script in which the question “is it a real monster? Or only a fake?” was answered “a fake”. The movie flopped fantastically. It was **Curucu – Beast of the Amazon**. There was a Universal movie with the same dilemma about a real transformation into a werewolf or if it was all in their mind – **She-Wolf of London** Again, it was all in her mind. If you haven’t heard of this movie before, that’s probably why.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/54 "2025-01-29T18:05:09Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> **Curucu – Beast of the Amazon**.
I saw that on Svengoolie. Besides the extremely disappointing reveal ‘it was all stage magic trickery’ instead of finally seeing the monster on screen and having a battle to the death, it was just not a good movie.
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/55 "2025-01-29T20:33:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> But you look at him and you instantly think “vampire”.
Sadly, the way the Nosferatu character was designed, many people at the time would have instantly thought [“Jew”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu#The_Other).
> The physical appearance of Count Orlok, with his hooked nose, long claw-like fingernails, and large bald head, has been compared to stereotypical caricatures of Jewish people from the time in which _Nosferatu_ was produced. His features have also been compared to those of a rat or a mouse, the former of which Jews were often equated with. Orlok’s interest in acquiring property in the German town of Wisborg, a shift in locale from the Stoker novel’s London, has also been analyzed as preying on the fears and anxieties of the German public at the time. Professor Tony Magistrale wrote that the film’s depiction of an “invasion of the German homeland by an outside force […] poses disquieting parallels to the anti-Semitic atmosphere festering in Northern Europe in 1922.”
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### Author:  [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/56 "2025-01-29T20:43:22Z")
He looks like Barnabas Collins. Of course.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/57 "2025-01-29T21:00:29Z")
> [@markn\_1](#):
>
> Sadly, the way the Nosferatu character was designed, many people at the time would have instantly thought [“Jew”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu#The_Other).
Truly scary.
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### Author:  [@EnolaStraight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EnolaStraight)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2025, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/58 "2025-01-30T03:18:15Z")
I believe the stereotypical vampire has a Widow’s Peak hairline.
[OIP.PjQwvAJ2q84597KX3vdNMwAAAA (474×333)](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.PjQwvAJ2q84597KX3vdNMwAAAA?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain)
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2025, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/59 "2025-01-30T06:40:36Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> . As far as I know, no modern movie or stage interpretation gives us the smelly, bad breathed, untidy and bloody mouthed or eyed vampire
No _Western_ movie, possibly. But that’s often how Chinese vampires are depicted.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2025, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-vampire-look-like/1013532/60 "2025-01-30T09:34:07Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> But that’s often how Chinese vampires are depicted.
That, and all the hopping around.
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