Louis Feuillade's serial about a gang of master criminals, Les Vampires (1915-16), featured a strategist and operative known as Irma Vep. A silent-era femme fatale in the style of Emma Peel of The Avengers, Vep was the inspiration for the 1996 film, Irma Vep, about a director trying to re-make the French classic. The clips below show the original character from 1915, followed by Maggie Cheung's modern day (and experimental) Irma Vep.
