Set text 3 - 'Kiss of the vampire' Poster advert


Kiss of the Vampire

Film Poster Analysis

See the source image

Context:

The Kiss of the Vampire is a British 1963 vampire film produced by Hammer Film Productions, and distributed by J. Authur Rank and Universal. It was intended to be the 2nd sequel to 1958's Dracula. 
In addition to Dracula, Hammer had, by 1963 success with other horror movies such as Frankenstein and The Mummy. By this point the distributes Universal had noticed an early success with films in this genre.
The 1960's audience were familiar with generic codes and conventions of Horror genre, in particular the horror trope - eg Male vilins and female victims.

PLOT:
It is set in Bavaria in 1910, where a young couple are on their honeymoon travels and find themselves in a remote village, whose mysteriously subdued inhabitants live in terror of the vampire residents of a near by castle.

Codes and conventions 

For example the Bats, blood, moon, fangs, night, castle, grey clouds are all signs and signifies that this film is a horror. The gloomy and grey/black/brown colour reinforces the dark scary atmosphere. This contrasts to the bright red blood and all the colour in the centre image.
This film is in colour which is shown in the text 'In Eastman Color' this connotates that it is a modern take on an older story, this was also the unique selling point to this film.
There are a swam of bats attacking and we can see in some they have red blooded mouths. All the red connotates danger but also could suggest an element of romance hence the word 'kiss' in the title. These symbolic codes are used to put the sense of fear in the audience. Roland Barths also talks about hermeneutic/enigma codes which are used here to create a sense of mystery and suspense, we don't know what is going on completely in this poster like if the victims are dead or just hurt and this makes the audience want to find out more so they are more enticed to watch the film.

Other codes and conventions:

  • Z-line - this starts by drawing the audiences eyes towards the name of the film, then we see the characters and the blood dripping from the letter 'V', then down towards all the credits at the bottom of the film poster.
  • Capitalised title is bold and in serif font
  • Central main image 
  • its a painted picture which is conventional for a film poster  


Theories  

Claude levi stauss' theory of structuralism also is used. Here there is use of binary opposition between the living and the dead and also we see a juxtaposition in the title. The words 'Kiss' and 'Vampire' are very opposite as 'Kiss' is referring to love and romance whereas Vampire's is stereotypically seen as  evil.

David Gauntletts theory of identity is also being seen here as typically in horror films, all the female characters are normally victims but in this we can see that one woman is a vampire and is pinning down a male. This links into the time this film was made; because during the 1960's this was a time where feminist where campaigning for more equality between men and woman. So in this film we might start to see a difference between how men and woman have normally been represented.

It is suggested that the woman is represented in a non-stereo typically dominant way. This is shown through the more aggressive gesture as she is baring her teeth whilst being bitten by the bat and the way she is holds down the male victim represent her as a strong female individual. Although on the other hand, both the woman are still wearing pale and light material dresses which reinforces their femininity and they are revealing flesh on their upper chest and arms which could be representing these woman in a sexual way again, so perhaps the older stereotypical veiws on woman are still used in this film.


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