The horror genre usually uses paradigmatic iconographic features like blood, gore, abandoned settings, horrified facial expressions, distorted body language and references to paranormal activity. Specifically vampire sub-genre uses more features like bats, castles, capes and dripping blood.
The poster uses a z-line so that people look at the poster in a certain way. The first thing the audience is drawn to is the title of the film. It then follows to the images of the characters and then to the names of the people featuring in the film down below. This makes a pattern of the significance of each feature to the poster.
The capitalised , serif font of the title creates connotations linked to the vampire film genre with its 'wooden' styling(referencing the vampire coffin) and the blood dripping from the V's 'fang'.
The use of a painted main image is highly conventional of films of this period- the fact it is in colour makes us see it is a modern telling of an older story.
The gloomy grey, black and brown colour scheme reinforces the film's dark scary conventions while the red is used to highlight the attacking bats, the vampire and the blood- all visual signifiers of the genre.
It also uses the innocent colour of peach to present the 'damsel in distress' characters; their dresses are a symbolic code for the weaker woman character that is to be saved from danger, and it's tight fitting sexualises the womans body. Here, a gender stereotype is formed, making the female character vulnerable and the male character mostly in power.
Suspense is created through the enigmas surrounding the connoted relationship between the male and female vampires(emphasised by the "kiss" of the title) and the fait of their two victims (Barthes Hermeneutic Code).
*1963- Beatlemania, 'swinging sixties'
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