Juliet Landau follows fantasy phenomenon

The actress, director and producer has lived and breathed the fantasy phenomenon for the better part of the past 20 years.

While her Drusilla days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are far behind her, her intrigue in everything fantasy has led her down the path of reality.

For the past two years she has been co-directing two feature length documentaries.

 A Place Among the Dead investigates the crime and reality when people take the fantasy of vampirism too far.

While the second documentary, A Place Among the Undead, covers every aspect of vampires in myth and pop culture; movies, TV, art, literature, comics, music, video games and young adult literature. 

“Working on Buffy really intrigued my interest into the world of vampires,” she said.

“A Place Among the Dead and A Place Among the Undead really started from stepping into that world and seeing how incredible it is.

“We have been crowd-funding on Indiegogo to put together the documentaries and my husband and I really do loads of it ourselves.

“Some of the interviews for it have really been incredible, we have spoken to Joss Whedon (Buffy), Gary Oldman (Dracula), Tim Burton (Dark Shadows), Charlaine Harris (True Blood), Willem Dafoe (Shadow of a Vampire), Kevin Grevioux (Underworld) and the list goes on.”

While researching, Landau admitted there was also a more sinister subculture to the fantasy.

“We spoke to a criminal profiler and they said in the United States alone there were 13 actual cases where people were killing in the style of a vampire,” she said.

“That is obviously very upsetting and dark, but we have started to follow that angle.”

Over her career Landau has starred in more than 20 films, made regular appearances on television.