Vampire Musicals

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

For some reason, musicals about vampires had a huge run of popularity at the turn of the millennium. The ones that made it to Broadway flopped, and it's become common knowledge that Vampire Musicals don't work.

Examples of Vampire Musicals include:

Comic Books

  • In this as in so many other things, Jack Kirby was ahead of his time. In Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, rogue DNA Project scientist Dabney Donovan created an artificial minature planet called Transilvane and populated it with vampires and werewolves by exposing it to horror films. Superman tried to fix it by playing Oklahoma!. Unfortunately we never got to see the result...

Fan Works

Film

  • Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
  • Barackula
  • In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the main character wants to make a Dracula musical with puppets. He ends up doing it and we get to see just how awesome it really is.
    • There actually *is* a Dracula musical with puppets, a Quebecois production that subsequently toured around Europe to blockbuster sales and is called "Dracula: Entre L'amour et La Morte". It's set in the future and there's heroin and leather and, well, puppets.
    • At the end he explains that he realised that he should play the thing for comedy instead of angst, possibly Lampshade Hanging this trope.
  • Suck: Vampires Rock is not exactly a musical, but it is a film about a rock band hitting it big after their bassist becomes a vampire and starts to turn the rest of the band, so obviously there are a lot of performances throughout.
  • Rockula, naturally.
  • Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, a vampire musical snooker film.

Live-Action TV

  • The Buffy Musical Episode Once More With Feeling may be the only vampire musical that has been well-received. This may be because there's really not a whole lot of vampirism driving the plot (lots of demons, sure). Spike however does open his heart about his feelings for Buffy in several songs.
  • In Joan of Arcadia, there was a zombie musical.
  • The Vampyr a Soap Opera, a 1992 miniseries setting an updated story to the music of Heinrich Marschner's opera Der Vampyr.

Theatre

  • Dracula Spectacular
  • Vampire operas are nothing new—for example, Marschner's Der Vampyr (premiered 1828); however, while this one is still performed occasionally, vampire operas aren't hugely popular.
    • The Dracula Diary is modern chamber opera by Robert Moran, concerning a vampire opera diva and her hapless impresario.
  • One of the Sailor Moon musicals swapped out the Death Busters for Dracula.
    • There were actually four vampire Sailor Moon musicals, the one mentioned above, a sequel, a re-make of the sequel (which is the one that is considered part of the arc) and another sequel.
  • There is also a Dracula ballet that has been filmed as Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary.
  • The Takarazuka has had at least two.
  • Apparently, a musical based on Angel was recently[when?] performed in Tel Aviv of all places.
  • The Cure, an Our Vampires Are Different musical in the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival.
  • The original European Tanz der Vampire, of course, which was wildly successful.
  • Jim Steinman's Dance of the Vampires, a vastly rewritten version of Tanz der Vampire. It's horribly ironic that one of the most popular and profitable musicals in European history was mutated into the most prominent nail in the genre's coffin.
  • Lampshaded in Gutenberg! The Musical!, which is partially about writing musicals.
  • Frank Wildhorn's Dracula: The Musical
  • Elton John's Lestat.
  • Vampire's Rock a Jukebox Musical using the music of ACDC, Guns N' Roses, Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Meat Loaf, Joan Jett, Suzi Quatro, Queen etc. Which has the basic plot of, "The year is 2030, and the evil BARON VON ROCKULA is looking for his eternal bride!".

Web Original

Western Animation


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