I’m watching the smoking hot Kate Beckinsale* in the mediocre flick Underworld and I realize that this was the first time I ever came across the Vamp v. Wolfman meme. Was there anything prior to this?
*Gotta love photoshop. Twins!
In Return of the Vampire, 1944, starring Bela Lugosi, the vampire has a werewolf as a less-than-willing slave.
Underworld 2 has scenes that are kind of softcore - highly recommended as well. Skip 3 (it is Kateless and plotless) and watch the incomparable Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil instead.
I’m currently watching Lesbian Vampire Killers, or some such. I’ll keep you informed.
I love all three Underworld films; they make for a great trilogy. But they did not originate the motif. Didn’t *Dark Shadows *back in the 60s explore similar themes?
The Real Ghostbusters did it in the 80s. (The two groups ended up infecting each other, and becoming vamwerepirewolves.)
Then, in the 90s, White Wolf’s World of Darkness had conflict between the Kindred and Garou. (In fact, they sued the producers of Underworld over the similarity of their milieus.)
And, of course, there are earlier examples posted elsewhere in the thread.
It’s probably no older than the Universal Horror movies, though I could be wrong on that.
Earliest I know of is this one.
Dracula awakens Frankenstein’s monster. The Wolfman attempts to stop Dracula with help from Abbott and Costello. Lon Chaney Jr. is the wolfman, Bela Lugosi is Dracula. I dunno why Boris Karloff didn’t participate, he worked with A&C in an earlier film.
From your bunk?
The 1940s movies cited don’t really count, in my mind – they just show werewolves and vampires together. There was already a connection of a sort earlier, because Dracula, in Bram Stoker’s book, can turn himself into a wolf.
The idea of a community of vampires against a community of werewolves seems to be pretty recent. I don’t recall hearing about it until the last couple of decades. tengu’s example sounds like the earliest for two such antagonistic groups cited so far, and i can’t think of an earlier one.
Karloff did no Frankenstein Monster movie appearances after the first three.
Interestingly, Chaney is the only actor to have done his signature character- Laurence Talbot/The WolfMan until Benecio del Toro. Also, he is the only actor to have done the main Universal Monsters- Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, The Mummy, as well as the WolfMan. The Creature of the Black Lagoon was not “an actor’s role” so I don’t count it and The Invisible Man was not a continuing character.
In the late 1960’s Creepy and Eerie (B&W horror comics largely written by Archie Goodwin) featured some werewolf vs vampire fights.
I recall one drawn by Angelo Torres with a Spanish policeman as the vampire protagonist.
But as far as I know there were no vampire clan vs. werewolf clan tales.
Curse you, superhal, I came in here to mention this.
Racing to be the first to mention Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. God, I love the dope.
As Tengu and CalMeacham said, the idea of the tribe of vampires fighting the tribe of werewolves is a recent one. Earlier battles between vampires and werewolves were generally between individuals. Dracula might have fought the Wolf Man but Dracula also fought Billy the Kid - that doesn’t mean there’s a meme of vampires vs cowboys.
The Ghostbusters episode already mentioned seems to be the earliest example yet, and aired in 1987 according to wikipedia (written by J. Michael Straczynski, interestingly enough). Whitewolf’s vampire game, with feuding vampires and werewolves, came out in 1991, and I think probably popularized the idea.
I can’t find any earlier instances, but no doubt there are a lot of dopers who are more well versed in vampire fiction then me, so we’ll see if someone else can come up with an earlier example.
Not quite up to the level of Dracula or Frankenstein but Universal did make a minor franchise out of the Invisible Man. There was the 1933 original then The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940), Invisible Agent (1942), The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944), and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951).
Yeah, but none of those Invisible Men were the original Dr. Griffin.
Then again, it could be argued that Count Alucard (Chaney Jr) in Son of Dracula and Baron Latos/Dracula (John Carradine) in House of Frankenstein & H of D were not the original Dracula, but the Dracula in Abbott & Costello Meet F was indeed the original.
Highly recommend Lesbian Vampire Killers. One third Fearless Vampire Killers, one third Evil Dead and one third Sean of the Dead.
The Underworld films blatantly ripped-off an early-90s series of excellent role-playing games from White Wolf studios that used vampires vs. werewolves as a central plot point and theme. The game company sued Sony for copyright infringement and accepted an out-of court settlement.
The notion that wolves or werewolves might be enemies of vampires actually does appear in folklore, according to Paul Barber’s excellent Vampires, Burial, and Death. The most relevant portion of the book (p.92-94) is available through Google Books.
Barber notes that there are a number of different explanations to be found in folklore for the fact that wolves (and other predator species) were seen in graveyards, sometimes digging in the ground or even eating corpses. Some people did of course realize that wolves eat meat and will get it where they can, but others apparently felt this was so unusual or horrifying that there must be darker forces at work. One folkloric explanation was that vampires could rise from the grave and transform themselves into wolves, or that werewolves were themselves undead humans. Another was that wolves or werewolves hated vampires and would dig them up to kill them, or kill them once they rose from the grave.
Band name!