The vampire tradition of Transylvania is back on screen with the remake of the century-old Nosferatu but West Cork has its own folklore surrounding this mythical creature, writes ROBERT HUME.
A REMAKE of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire film masterpiece Nosferatu arrives in cinemas this week, starring Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok, and Johnny Depp’s daughter, Lily-Rose, as Ellen Hutter.
Robert Eggers’s new Nosferatu comes packed with blood-curdling screams, wicked laughter, the slamming of heavy doors.
All very different to the silent but equally terrifying black and white original, with its soft drum rolls, occasional cymbal crash, and the eerie shadow of Orlok’s long claws.
But West Cork has its own fiend in the vampire tradition.
On August 4th, 1580, Cormac Tadgh McCarthy, High Sheriff of Cork, allegedly invited his enemy James Fitzgerald to dinner at Carrigaphooca Castle, near Macroom, on the pretence of broaching a peace agreement.
Carrigaphooca Castle, where Cormac Tadhg McCarthy's gruesome deeds were alleged to have occured. (Photo: Shutterstock)
But the meal was poisoned.
Not content with simply killing Fitzgerald, he ordered his body be drained of blood and then cooked.
He then ate the flesh and washed it down with goblets of Fitzgerald’s blood.
McCarthy’s clansmen tried to excuse his actions to horrified guests by saying the castle was haunted by the Pooka, a terrifying shapeshifting creature – sometimes appearing as a long-horned goat, at others as a vicious dog – whose evil had spread through Cormac’s veins.
But his friends turned on him and he was forced to leave West Cork and flee to France.
After his death, goes the tale, the spirit of Cormac McCarthy was drawn back to the castle as a vampire.
Stories persist that wailing can still be heard at night coming from the ruins, and that fresh blood has been seen on the castle gates!
In recent years, another West Cork site has been connected with vampire activity.
Neil Jordan’s film Byzantium (2012) was shot on the Beara peninsula between Castletownbere and Adrigole, and shows vampire Clara Webb (Gemma Arterton) rejoicing as she bathes in a flow of blood from the Mare’s Tail Waterfall on Hungry Hill.
Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter in the latest Nosferatu.
The fiend has visited West Cork cinemas before, beginning with the 1952 horror comedy Mother Riley Meets The Vampire starring an ageing Bela Lugosi (who died in 1956) which screened in Bandon in 1960, and Kiss of the Vampire! which came to Bantry in 1964 and was billed as ‘shocking, horrifying, and macabre!’
Our modern fascination with vampires, and slayers such as Buffy, is rooted in the life of 15th century Transylvanian ruler Vlad Tepes III, ‘The Impaler’, believed to have burned the old and sick alive, forced mothers to eat their own children, impaled his enemies and dipped his bread into their blood.
Visitors to Times Square in walk beneath an advertisement for the Nosferatu film remake of the 1922 silent vampire film, which opens this week in Cork. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The first vampire novel in English was simply called The Vampyre (1819), by John Polidori, who based his creature on poet Lord Byron.
In 1872 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu from Chapelizod, Dublin, set his novella Carmilla in a lonely castle in darkest Central Europe, where a blood-drinking lesbian vampire slept most of the day, before entering her victims’ locked rooms at night to bite their throats with her ‘long, thin and pointed’ teeth.
A generation later, Bram Stoker from Clontarf, Dublin, creator of Dracula (1897), was inspired by childhood escapades in the local cemetery, darting between the graves of highwaymen and robbers – all destined to become vampires.
During other visits to his family’s tomb in the murky vaults of St Michan’s Church, he glimpsed open coffins, which exposed the brown leathery bodies, arms and legs protruding, their heads thrown back, their mouths open – he called them the ‘undead’.
Cometh the New Year, Nosferatu is back in West Cork, ready to scare the pants off you!
Nosferatu is screening in cinemas in Cork, including Bantry Cinemax from Friday January 3rd.
