Case Study; Kiss of the Vampire

Using the technical codes, explain how the film poster creates meaning about the following elements for its audience:

Genre conventions (horror and vampire sub-genre)
Representations of gender
Cultural contexts (e.g. social change, equality, 1960s pop culture)

Make sure you analyse the poster as it would appear to its 1960s audience and research the era carefully.

The poster for Kiss the Vampire is a product from the era, that acknowledges the 2nd wave feminism being developed through the main image. The woman at the middle of the frame is the only active one, mimicking a heroine due to her posture, (fighting off the bats). She's a direct juxtaposition from the woman at the left, representing the 'desired woman' of the early 1960s, submissive due to her body language and facial expressions. However they have a similarity, their clothing is the same, a dress, a symbol of tradition still ruling over the conventions of gender roles.
This poster may not be challenging the circumstances of equality in the 1960s society, but rather be evoking the fear of the loss of power by the males. This is conveyed through the binary oppositions of the brave woman and the weak male, indicated by the posture (kneeling) and the ripped shirt. It could be the poster's illustrator's way of representing theirs and the main audience's fear: social change.
The audience would be interested in the genre of horror, specifically the sub-genre of vampires and the supernatural. The poster effectively targets them due to the iconography of bats, a castle, blood... that is generally associated with vampires as they're linked to the darkness. The mis-en-scene in the background contains a bleak colour palette, with mostly greys and blacks along with some red. Furthermore there's more straightforward links like the lexis of "vampire", which immediately establishes the eerie mood the film will probably have. The formal clothing of the vampire, a black cape with buttoned shirt is very telling of the time, as in the 1960 vampires were conveyed that way, as wealthy supernaturally unreachable beings, not necessarily attractive (i.e. the "scary vampire" is scared himself). This is a representation which has evolved along with pop culture, with vampires being automatically linked to beauty and charm e.g. Twilight, The Vampire Diaries... Nevertheless, the myth has always been linked to sex, romance and desire, proved by the poster's predominance of red, colour imagery that symbolises those conventions.