TERRE HAUTE — A special one-night VampireFest film festival of five double features and one triple feature — 13 films in all — plays Saturday at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
The festival will showcase such classic horror films as “Dracula,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “From Dusk Till Dawn.”
The event, open to the public, is planned from 7 p.m. to midnight in five classrooms in the Olin Advanced Learning Center.
The VampireFest event is the culmination of the horror literature classes being taught this winter by English professor Mark Minster. Several short films created by Minster’s students and Rose-Hulman Film Club also will be presented.
Films of five different genres will be featured. One double feature, in Room O-167, will have the 1922 classic “Nosferatu,” viewed as the most influential and aesthetically best vampire film of all time. To avoid copyright infringements on Bram Stoker’s novel, German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau changed names and introduced new details — Count Dracula’s preference for the night became Count Orlok’s terror of sunlight. The other part of the feature will have “Shadow of the Vampire,” a 2000 fictionalized account of making “Nosferatu,” with Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich.
Two classic movies with Dracula as the central character, “Dracula” (1931) and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) will be shown in Room O-169. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” is a visually compelling remake with Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman in lead roles.
Teen vampire films, being shown in Room O-257, include “Lost Boys,” a 1980s teen favorite that features Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman; and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” a 1992 film that has Hilary Swank, Luke Perry, Paul Reubens and Donald Sutherland in prominent roles.
Shown in Room O-259 will be the 1990s action films “From Dusk Till Dawn,” a 1996 feature written by Quentin Tarantino and including George Clooney, Juliette Lewis and Salma Hayek in the cast; and “Blade,” whose main character (depicted by Wesley Snipes) is half-vampire, half-mortal.
The European horror classics “Vampyr” (1932) and “I Vampiri” (1956) will be shown in Room O-267, while the Hammer Studios films ”Horror of Dracula” (1958), “Brides of Dracula” (1960) and “Dracula Has Risen From The Grave” (1968) will be shown in Room O-269.
For more information, call Minster at (812) 877-8535 or the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at (812) 877-8276.
