One of the surest and most common means of destroying the vampire and making sure it did not return to a semblance of life was to cut off its head. This was clearly illustrated in Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula Arthur Holmwood Lucy Westenra's fiance, and Lucy's other friends could not bring themselves to cut off Lucy's head after her death. They consented only when Dr. Abraham Van Helsing demonstrated to them that Lucy had joined the undead. He and Arthur carried out the decapitation. Van Helsing did not, however, decapitate the three vampire women in Castle Dracula; they disintegrated before his eyes after he staked them. In like measure, Dracula disintegrated after Jonathan Harker and Quincey P. Morris stabbed him.
Carmilla the vampire in Sheridan Le Fanu 's tale, lost her head as part of the process of being killed, thus continuing the trend in European folklore. Severing the head to destroy a vampire was common throughout Germany and eastern Europe. When a vampire was reported in a village, and its identity determined, the body would be disinterred. Commonly, it then was impaled on a stake and its head cut off. Decapitation prevented the head from directing the body in its wanderings. In northern Europe ( Poland and Germany), the head might be placed between the knees or under the arm. There also were reports of the head being placed under the body and buried separately, so that it could not be returned to the neck and reconnected. It was also possible that the vampire could return with the head held in its arms. In some cultures, the exact instrument for severing the head, a shovel or a sword, was prescribed.
As the vampire was dramatized, the process of decapitation was, as a whole, left behind. It was a much too indelicate means of death to present to a theater audience or show on a movie screen. Nevertheless, it was not forgotten. In the reworking of the vampire legend by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro her hero St. Germain feared only two things that would cause the "true death"-fire and the severing of the spine (which decapitation would accomplish). In Blood Games (1979), he faked the death of his love Olivia as part of a plot to free her from the clutches of her husband. After vampirizing her, she died, but was revived by St. Germain and his helpers. He gave strict instructions to be followed so that the "true death" would not overtake her.
The movies from Hammer Films raised horror films to a new level with their depiction of flowing blood in full color. As society became more permissive in the last generation, directors responded to audiences' thirst for blood, developing the so-called "splatter" movies. In this atmosphere, decapitation returned to the vampire myth, not in the traditional manner, but as the climax of a fight or similar intense interaction between two characters. However, in spite of splatter movies, decapitation has remained a rare occurrence, at least for vampires.
