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The Fatal Attraction of the 1910s! The film that established Theda Bara as a vamp overnight. It is in fact an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem The Vampire which was written at the turn of the century and which Porter Emerson Browne had successfully reworked as a bestselling novella in 1909 under the title of A Fool There Was. However, two earlier films, now deemed to be lost, had already popularised the theme of the vampire in the films The Vampire Days and The Vampire (1913, produced by Kalem). A Fool There Was picks up the figure presented in these two films, i.e. the figure of the woman who plunges men into ruin, in the form of a psychological social drama – this because, as the film makes clear, the vamp seduces the man only to climb the social ladder. Indeed, the theme is introduced right at the start of the film as we are let into the idyll enjoyed by the Schuyler family. But their peaceful excursion to the seaside is disrupted by the first main appearance of the Vampire woman. Sophisticatedly attired in a tight fitting dress with black top, black hat and striped skirt, she approaches the family. The tale of a fallen man takes it course – set against lavishly furnished decors and sumptuous costumes. In the 1910s, at a time when the USA was undergoing a high increase in the divorce rate, this story was accepted as at once fantastical and utterly realistic. The film was a huge commercial success and, on account of her role in it, the main protagonist Theda Bara advanced to notorious glamour queen status – the prototype of modern demanding