Sorry my mind is just racing away now with notions and wild imaginings about vampires and Sauron and so on...
I think firstly that in Tolkien's case the image of the vampire to his generation was not necessarily similar to ours. We see them as seductive creatures, even attractive, whereas in his day Dracula was part of the Boys' own adventure genre and the figure of the Vampire would just have been a thrilling enemy or baddie to be defeated. Yet a very impressive one nevertheless. And Morthoron is right that Vampires are very alien to Western European culture - that very 'foreign-ness' I think makes them that bit more exotic and frightening to many readers.
Now there's nothing to say that Tolkien had to stick to Western European images in creating his work, he was free to do as he pleased of course - and he did. And he was a master of Gothic (as were many Catholics) and why not bring in the most Uber-Goth of all Gothic icons, the Vampire?
What does interest me in the Vampire/Elf comparison is that not
all Elves
are these good, perfect people! There is the information that Tolkien gave us about Elves who lingered in Middle-earth eventually seeing their hroa burn away and becoming sinister, shadowy inhabitants of trees and rocks. There are greedy, bloodthirsty Elves like Feanor and his kin became. There are seductive, Byronic Dark Elves like Eol.
Now another thing which interests me is that Sauron seems to have been able to take 'Vampire form'. Does this mean that it was simply that - a kind of costume available to Maiar or does it mean it already existed as a form? Or does it mean that if one took the form of
a Bat then it would mean one would not
be a bat but would be a kind of
corrupted bat - i.e. a Vampire? And by extension, was a werewolf a specifically
corrupted form of Wolf? I'm leaning to that as Tolkien in the one phrase uses both 'bat-like' and 'bat':
Quote:
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By the counsel of Huan and the arts of Luthien he was arrayed now in the name of Draugluin, and she in the winged fell of Thuringwethil. Beren became in all things like a werewolf to look upon, save that in his eyes there shone a spirit grim indeed but clean; and horror was in his glance as he saw upon his flank a bat-like creature clinging with creased wings. Then howling under the moon he leaped down the hill, and the bat wheeled and flittered above him.
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So it is metaphorically like a bat and also literally a bat.
Bit like the Balrog's wings eh?
I think left there deliberately like that to suggest a mercurial nature that cannot quite be defined - in the case of Vampire, Werewolf and Balrog alike.
And I still incline towards the Vampire being able to take bat and humanoid form as why else would Thuringwethil's name mean 'woman of shadow'?