The vampire we all know and love today has been created and refined over the years by Hollywood. Movies such as Dracula, The Lost Boys, The Hunger, and Queen of the Damned have continually fed the legend of the vampire as a desirable, beautiful creature of the night.

However, there are no legends, regardless of origin, that paints this picture of the vampire. In a few cases, such as the Dearg-Due of Ireland, the vampire is a beautiful female that uses her beauty to seduce her victims. In most cases though the vampire is a walking corpse. It is not beautiful. It has no intelligence. He is no more than a reanimated corpse that feeds on the blood of the living to sustain his reanimated form.

F.W. Murnaucreated the first surviving film adaptation of the novel. In his "Nosferatu -- Eine Symphonie des Grauens", Count Orlock was ugly, with pointy ears, a bald head, and large pointy incisors. The vampire held true to the European myths, at least in physical appearance.

Tod Browning brought a new image to the vampire with his filming of Dracula. Bela Lugosi portrayed the Count as a handsome creature of the night. He was very suave and debonaire, speaking in his Hungarian accent, hypnotizing women with his stare, and moving in a slow, yet smooth manner. Women all over America fell in love with this Count Dracula, men all over America desired to be this Count Dracula.

Hollywood (as well as America's fiction writers) has, in fact, created a true American Vampire by combining the old myths (staking the vampire, garlic, crosses, sunlight, native soil, ...) and the American dream of power, beauty, sexual irresistibility, and immortality. That vampire has become the "True American Vampire."