The aim of this essay is to use the discussion of the context of three films as examples to make it clear that a theory of the significance of the vampire as a film figure should start from a broader understanding of the vampire film. If in perhaps the most significant (classic) vampire film, *Murnau’s Nosferatu. Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), a character is introduced in the form of Count Orlok, a ‘real’ vampire in the film’s plot, whose decipherment, or initially his embedding in the film’s plot, opens a door to an understanding of the actual performance of the work of art, and thus also to its contemporary diagnostic content, the same applies analogously to two films that are not usually considered vampire films: In both Rudolf Thome’s Rote Sonne (1969) and Ridley Scott’s The Counselor (2013), vampiresque plot elements serve as moments of complex interpretation with aesthetic reference to classic vampire films in a way that is thoroughly analogous to the function of Count Orlok in Murnau’s film.