(Frederik Moriss) and, of course, the original femme fatale Irma Vep (the magnificent Musidora), a hatpin-wielding stage enter- tainer who seems resourceful enough to be running The Vam- pires herself, but instead clings companionably to whoever so happens to ascend to its throne, whenever it’s vacated.


It’s absorbing from start to


finish, and goes by in a flash, but the climax of the penultimate, ninth chapter “The Poison Man”—which includes all man- ner of dazzling rope-trick es- capes, automobile chases and train jumps—still makes the heart leap nearly a century later. On a more academic level, it’s remark- able to be reminded of how much


of today’s entertainment, and the classics we most often call to mind, sprang from the fertile germ thriving here. Fritz Lang would never have found his way to Dr. Mabuse or SPIES without this example; the anagrammatic “Irma Vep” (rearrange the letters, it spells “vampire”) inspired Universal’s Count Alucard in SON OF DRACULA (1943); the scene of ballerina Marfa Koutiloff (Stacia Napierkowska) fainting while standing on point during a stage performance of “Les Vam- pires” is not only an early in- stance of cinematic recursion but inspired a key moment in Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA (1977); Olivier Assayas made an interest- ing film titled IRMA VEP in 1996,


starring Maggie Cheung and chronicling an ill-fated attempt to direct a contemporary remake of Les Vampires, which it wrongly describes as “a museum piece”; and the Vampires boast a Grand Inquisitor, a figure later sum- moned back into vampire my- thology by HBO’s TRUE BLOOD. We previously reviewed Les


Vampires as an Image Enter- tainment laserdisc in VW 51:22. This gem is now available from Kino Classics in its Cinéma- thèque Française restoration, su- pervised by Feuillade’s grandson (also JUDEX screenwriter and SHADOWMAN star) Jacques Champreux. The new presenta- tion does away with the more gimmicky color tinting and


The Grand Vampire (Jean Aymé) and his criminal muse Irma Vep (Musidora) plot their next diabolic coup in disguise in Louis Feuillade’s seminal crime serial LES VAMPIRES.


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