I was planning on seeing the new Nosferatu today ... maybe tomorrow.
What was the first vampire film? Maybe a now lost film with Theda Bara from the 1910s, whom I was reading about recently. She was one of the movies first sex symbols, maybe the original 'femme fatale,' or 'heartless vixen,' as the term would have known back then.
Anyway, one of her earliest hits was 'A Fool There Was', which was based loosely on the Rudyard Kipling poem, “The Vampire.” Hence, the term 'Vamp' ... a term she popularized.
Apparently, as this vamp, or evil seductress, of the film, she lures and then drives to ruin a young New York lawyer whose socially prominent wife had made the mistake of snubbing her. It's said that her final line, uttered to her defeated prey, became legendary:
“Kiss me, my fool!”