Vampirism in/as Family: Filmic Avatars of the Vourdalak

Philippe Met

Résumé


Through the diachronic survey of Italian, French and late-Soviet era screen adaptations of Count A. K. Tolstoy’s 19thc. French-language novella introducing the Slavic vampiric figure of the “vourdalak,” whose trademark is to feed on its loved ones, this study shows how the disintegration and/or reconfiguration of the family structure is diversely treated in terms in diegetic, thematic, stylistic and sociohistorical terms.


Mots-clés


Vampirism; vourdalak; family; European film

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Références


Bibliography

Alaniz, José & Graham, Seth “Early Necro Cinema in Context.” In Necrorealism. Context, History, Interpretations, ed. Seth Graham. Russian Film Symposium, 2001.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Poems of Goethe. Transl. by Edgar Alfred Bowring. Hurst, 1853.

Mérimée, Prosper. Songs for the Gusle. Trans. by Laura Nagle. Frayed Edge Press, 2023.

Tolstoy, Aleskey Konstantinovich. Vampire Stories of the Supernatural. Trans. by Fedor Nikanov. Hawthorn Books, 1969.

Woll, Josephine. “Exorcising the Devil: Russian Cinema and Horror.” In Horror International, eds. Steven Jay Schneider & Tony Williams. Wayne State UP, 2005.

Filmography

Bava, Mario. “I Wurdalak,” in Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura), 1963.

Beau, Adrien. The Vourdalak (Le Vourdalak), 2023.

Calvete, Santiago Fernández. A Taste of Blood (Sangre Vurdalak), 2020.

Ferroni, Giorgio. The Night of the Devils (La notte dei diavoli), 1972.

Ginzburg, Sergey. Vamps (Vurdalaki), 2017.

Klimov, Gennadiy & Shavlak, Igor. The Family of the Vourdalaks (Semya vourdalakov), 1990.

Páramo, José Antonio. “La familia vourdalak,” in The Fifth Horseman (El quinto jinete), 1975.

Yufit, Yevgeny. Daddy, Father Frost is Dead (Papa, umer Ded Moroz), 1991.

Tales from the Crypt (HBO series created by William Gaines & Steven Dodd), 1989-1996.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/kh.2026.0.69-83
Date of publication: 2026-10-20 13:44:14
Date of submission: 2026-04-06 09:57:23


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