Reflecting the Vampire: How the Use of Twins in the Vampire Genre Can Engender the Uncanny
摘要
The vampire is known to have no reflection, but the genre allows the vampire to reflect in innovative ways not restrained by the mirror. Through this it creates contested spaces and brings the uncanny into relief. This essay examines the use of twins in the genre and concentrates on key texts in which twin actors played against each other, either as vampires or contrasted between vampire and the innocent. These texts include the works of Jean Rollin who, it is argued, deliberately cast the Castel twins to create that sense of the uncanny and Twins of Evil, where the Collinson twins were cast to titillate the audience but served to help create one of the darkest of the Hammer oeuvre.