Just as the transgressive acts of domestic violence were conveniently displaced far from contemporary Britain in some historically/geographically remote castle, themes of dark eroticism and ruthless seduction were also distanced by transforming them into demonic fantasies. As sexual predator Blue-Beard is thus closely related to the Vampire. In assuming this new role as one who first debauches then sucks the blood of his victims, the vampire underwent a considerable transformation from his earlier eighteenth-century identity to his peculiarly urbane post-Revolutionary character. Once no more than a resurrected corpse that preyed upon the living, the new vampire was a nobleman of the ancien régime. In the figure of the sophisticated vampire, sexual transgressions were blended with the Sadistic themes of the sexual libertinism of a decadent aristocracy. In addition, the stage vampire was an evil antagonist and defiler of religious orthodoxy, whose worship of Satan included the blasphemous parody of drinking the blood, not of Christ, but of a victim or new “convert” to the dark ways of the living dead.

The vampire melodrama performed during the 1820s introduced a disturbingly different transgressive behavior. In imposing his spell on his victims, male as well as female, the stage vampire controlled all witnesses to his act. Members of the audience, no less than characters on the stage, succumbed to the Wirkungsästhetik of the vampire's gaze. The viewer of the play, as another “convert,” is presumed to fall under the vampire's thrall.