Sunday, May 31, 2015

VAO13 Of The Most Successful Vampire Hunters

vampire_hunting

13  Hunters

Stories need heroes and villains, or at least a protagonist vying with an antagonist. Usually. When it comes to vampire stories, that nearly always comes down to come kind of vampire hunter. For your consideration, the following certainly rank among the top thirteen such:
1. tumblr_nknj5qBr171rkiwdfo1_1280Abraham Van Helsing
Originally a character inBram Stoker’s novel Dracula,this characterhas since appeared nearly as often as the titular Count! More, he’s spawned an entire clan of vampire hunters with the same last name  in such stories, films and t.v. shows as Young DraculaDracula: The Series, the Alex Van Helsing books and even Penny Dreadful.
2. tumblr_lgbbew6owp1qbj0fio1_500Buffy Summers
Star of the t.v. series bearing her name (as well as motion picture), Buffy spent at least seven years slaying vampires as well as more than a few other kinds of monster, including two robots and at least one god. She was Joss Whedon’s ingenious flipping of a trope–the blonde cheerleader (up until then the obvious victim in every horror flick) against whom the forces of darkness fled in terror!
3. tumblr_md1i2gIFUx1qf2m9lo4_500The Winchester Brothers
Supernaturaltells the tale of two brothers who spend their days and nights combating creatures that go bump in the night. This has led to some epic storylines, but for this article let us simply note Sam and Dean have successfully hunted not only a good number of vampires, but at least one who claimed to be the first of his kind! Along the way one of them even ended up a vampire (but he got better).
4. vampire-hunter-dVampire Hunter D
In a post-apocalyptic world many thousands of years in the future, the enigmatic man known only as D makes his way from town to town, across weird wastelands and deserted cities. His goal is to protect others, nearly always against the once-mighty nobles. Nobles in this context are vampires.
5. tumblr_mvyg7aSXcr1rhcgoho2_500Blade
First a comic book, then a movie, then a t.v. series, then even more movies, we most likely have not heard the last of this character, another Dhampir but this one a native to our own time. Wesley Snipesevidently remains eager to play the role once more!
6. tumblr_lshtk83PEB1qj7u8ao2_500Frog Brothers
The motion picture Lost Boys eventually became a trilogy as well a run of comic books, focusing in general on the Frog Brothers. Imagine a pair of comic book nerds who take all those horror stories seriously then actually run into some real vampires! More, imagine they survived and went on to survive more adventures!
7.tumblr_lwvxv5hhk81qdv84j Angel
The (in-series) fulfillment of prophecy,Angel aka Angelus aka Liam was that rarity, a Vampire With A Soul. Introduced on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a mysterious helper, we slowly learned more about him. Eventually, the revelation that he himself was undead didn’t stop him from becoming a hero, even getting his own spinoff series. What made him especially heroic was his firm belief that all these good deeds made little difference in terms of his own fate. For all his prior deeds he remained convinced Hell awaited. Yet he went on, risking his life to save others.
8.tumblr_mvjj1mZrzo1ra6id4o6_500Akasha
Although a vampire who personally destroyed a very impressive number of vampires herself, Akasha in the motion picture Queen of the Damned is not doing humanity any favors. She just wants to get rid of her lesser children, allowing a chosen few to help rule the human “animals.” This makes quite a change from the novel’s character, who destroyed vampires (and was going to kill the vast majority of men) for the sake of peace.  Either way, she wiped out all but a very few undead. A wildly successful vampire killer!
9.tumblr_lzhrczmHsS1r2bgg3o1_500Abraham Lincoln
As fictional conceits go, this one contains more than a bit of charm. The sixteenth president of the United States re-imagined as a secretdestroyer of vampires (who naturally enough support the South in the Civil War).  A best-selling novel (which spawned a sequel), then a movie,Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter meticulously built up a back story to explain its premise. Young Abe saw his mother murdered by one of the undead, and gave him the motivation to grow and seek their final defeat. As a result, with the defeat of the Confederacy he broke their political power and toke away the human chattel they fed upon.
10. tumblr_nndn5aN8zj1riui0bo1_r2_500Mina Harker
Quite possiblyno other characterin Bram Stoker’s novel has been re-imagined in so many ways.  Little more than an intensely clever assistant to the men in the original story, everything changed in the silent classic Nosferatu when she ends up the one to lure Count Orlock to his doom. Not for decades did anyone make of her more than this, but in Bram Stoker’s Dracula she again gave the killing blow to the Impaler himself. In musical versions she does the same, more than once.  Comic books and other stories even give her a vampire-hunting career after that described in the classic novel!
11.tumblr_lqtfhfyD7l1qems7ao1_500General Spielsdorf
In Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, this retired Austrian army officer avenged his niece’s death by hunting down the vampire who killed her. In subsequent film versions, he has sometimes gone missing (rather like Quincy Morris) but sooner or later he shows up once more.  Peter Cushing played the role in Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers. The character has turned up in radio versions, stage plays, as well as in the motion picture Styria.
12.tumblr_nj9lupzVki1qlny4mo1_500Count Dracula
This name might surprise you, but it shouldn’t. Looking at all the various and extensive re-tellings and adaptations that expand on Dracula’s centuries of existence, he has destroyed more than a few of his own kind.
13. anigif_enhanced-buzz-22085-1374852851-10The Doctor
Bear with me for a moment. The title character in BBC’sDoctor Who has four times successfully battled powerful vampires. In “State of Decay” the fourth Doctor discovered the last remaining member of an ancient race of gigantic space vampires. In “Curse of Fenric” he vied against a horde of vampires created by a creature from the last days and nights of the dying Earth ages in the future. Since the series returned he beat a Plasmavore hiding on Earth, and thwarted plans to turn all of Renaissance Venice into a new colony of alien vampire creatures.
 COPY BU MEGAWOLF
David MacDowell Blue blogs at Night Tinted Glasses.  He graduated from the National Shakespeare Conservatory and is the author of The Annotated Carmilla. and Your Vampire Story (And How to Write It) as well as a theatrical adaptation of Carmilla.

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