In Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992), the vampire count (Gary Oldman) strolls through London, depicted in grainy footage that appears to have been shot at 16 or 18 frames per second. The sound of a projector clicks in the background while a street barker invites everyone to experience the “Amazing Cinématographe.” Dracula and Mina (Winona Ryder) attend the exhibition, the images quickly arousing the vampire's passions. On two occasions, a phantom-like train appears on the screen.

Coppola created these images for his film, inspired by such early moving pictures as L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat/The Arrival of a Train (Lumière Brothers, 1895) and The Ghost Train (American Mutoscope and Biograph, 1901). Bram Stoker's Dracula thus links vampirism and the cinema. Indeed, Stoker's novel first appeared in print in 1897, at approximately the same time that public film screenings became commonplace. As he wrote, “It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance.”

Connections between vampirism and silent cinema resonate loudly. E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire (2000) stars Willem Dafoe as actor Max Schreck. In this fantastical alternate history about the production of Nosferatu (1922), Schreck is an authentic vampire, hired by director F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) to add realism to his film. Murnau confidently declares, “If it's not in frame, it doesn't exist.” In one scene, Schreck becomes fascinated by a film projector, peering into its lens without speaking, the light flickering on his face. The project has become the projected.

We need only consider the question of where cinema resides to understand the potency of these metaphors. Film is archived on a film reel or on a DVD or in hard drives, but that is not where the audience sees it. Rather, light pulses temporally and temporarily on a screen.