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Here's a question for you- and it's OK, you can take as much time as you like with it; you can mull it over, you can call your family up and ask them if you need to, you can do a little research if you must.
Ready? Here goes.
Do you remember the first time you were told about vampires? I mean, what a vampire was, how they operated, all that kind of stuff. Do you remember the moment when you moved from not knowing what the word 'vampire' meant to the very sound of it conjuring up images of capes and fangs and blood in the night?
I don't. I cannot remember a single moment when I didn't know what a vampire was. I'm sure there must have been a time- I just don't remember it. Because they're everywhere, man. They're in books, they're in comics, they're in music- they've even got their own cereal.
And vampires are most definitely in the movies. Since as far back as 1922 when NOSFERATU was filmed (and Bram Stoker's wife sued the hell out of the studio behind it) vampires have been as comfortable on the silver screen as in a silk-lined coffin.
And they sank their teeth into the public's wallets back when the movies were still finding their feet as a medium. Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee made sure of that with their various portrayals of the most famous vampire of all time, the big D. Count Dracula has a longevity on the screen that he never had in the original book- in Stoker's original text, they only had to kill the undead Transylvanian once to put an end to him. As far as movie versions of the toothy fellow go, he's immortal. Audiences could not get enough of Dracula, or any other vampires for that matter, and studios like England's Hammer Film Productions, always ready to cash in on a quick buck that involved monsters, were more than happy to provide. With monster movies gaining momentum around the world, vampires were coming out of the night and terrifying generations who hadn't yet been desensitized. But, as time went on, literary and cultural views of the vampire gradually changed and the film world kept up- while some of the new breed of bloodsucker was just like the old, more sensitive, new-age vampires began to emerge. But they all follow the number one rule- the blood is the life.
Fascination with vampires is nothing new. Before the idea of movies, they made for best-selling books. Before Polidori wrote The Vampyre and gave the world its first vampire novel, they were present in legends, in ghost stories, in myths. It's a popular idea partly because it's just so cool. You get to stay young and pretty forever, never get sick, and do all kinds of cool tricks. Of course, you do have to drink blood, which is kind of a downer.
But it does make for some great moral quandaries, and some better movies. Vampires got the teen movie treatment as Joel Schumacher, back when he was still making good movies, took an all-star eighties cast and filmed THE LOST BOYS. Kiefer Sutherland as an ice-cold vampire? Jason Patric as a tormented and moody rebel who can't bring himself to feed on his fellow man? The two Coreys as teen Van Helsings? It was always going to be impossible to go wrong. THE LOST BOYS not only gave the vampire myth a brilliant contemporary twist but also featured classic lines such as 'Death by stereo' and 'My own brother! A god-damn shit-sucking vampire! Ooh, you wait until Mom finds out, buddy!'
Genius.
Schumacher gave us the trials and tribulations of a normal family who suddenly had to deal with the fact that they'd moved to the vampire 
80s fashions will never go out of style, right? |
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capitol of the USA. And Jason Patric had to deal with his new thirst for the red stuff. It's the classic case- the vampire that fights to retain his humanity.
The flip side of the vampire that wants to stay in the human world is the human that goes way too deep into the vampire world. A second all-star cast was assembled for the original movie of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER- Kristy Swanson, Luke Perry, Donald Sutherland, Ben Affleck, Hilary Swank, Rutger Hauer. That guy that played Peewee Herman. Before it was the hit show, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was a movie with incredibly similar themes- rising to meet your destiny, modern life as opposed to tradition, and staking a whole lot of vampires right through the heart.
The beauty of the updated vampire movies are that the best of both worlds is on display. Vampires driving motorbikes and kicking ass in basketball games, riding carousels and buying Chinese take-out. It taps into everybody's fantasies- never grow old, never die. It's fun to be a vampire. But it's not just teen movies that have reaped the benefit of the vampire legend. We've got gunslinging vampires, half-vampires, tortured vampires. You name it, it can suck your blood.
UNDERWORLD and UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION were really the fruition of every monster moviemaker's dream. Vampires AND werewolves, duking it out with heavy artillery. And also, Kate Beckinsale wearing painted-on leather pants. The elements of vampirism, the process of becoming a vampire, the morality of it all… all totally unimportant in this scenario. It's impossible to care about the whys and the hows when you've got vampires and werewolves shooting the hell out of each other with machine guns and then closing in to beat each other up close and personal. This is the cool side of the legend, where it's all about the perks. Stronger than normal people, better-looking than normal people, jumping around and doing back flips. And really, what's not to love? Sinking your teeth into people's jugular veins is a small price to pay for a sudden knowledge of kung-fu and looking very good in black.
Then there's the other type of vampire flick, where there's no pitched gun battles, no fighting tooth and claw, just endless questions, endless considerations. This is Anne Rice territory. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE and QUEEN OF THE DAMNED gave new hope to Goths everywhere that their star was on the rise. The popularity of Rice's books hit an all new high, fueled by the star power of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Vampires had never been so emotional, so introspective, and so human. Brad Pitt wasn't a bad guy; he was just out to understand what was going on and try not to feel too sad about the life he'd left behind. Here was a vampire that we could connect with on a personal level- he was a bit lost, a bit confused and just trying to make everything work, much like just about everyone else on the face of the planet. But his isolation and his frustration were made all that much more poignant by his complete removal from human society.
As always, it's a lot more fun to forget about thinking and feeling and simply give a bunch of people guns, surround them with vampires and let them have at it. FROM DUSK TIL DAWN operated on that principle and did very well by it. Starting out with a very Tarantino-esque approach to style (an early sign of the creative partnership between Quentin and the director, Robert Rodriguez), it very quickly turned into a vampire free-for-all as the night grew longer and George Clooney 
Not helping those rumours, Tom. |
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started having more and more fun with his role as the smooth-talking leader of the few holding out against the forces of the evil. Throwing back to old monster movies, FROM DUSK TIL DAWN is the old tale of a group of strangers pitted together against a common enemy. And it tapped right into everyone's secret fantasies to be part of a bad-ass, suit-wearing vampire-hunting posse. The sequels sank almost without a trace, but the original is still a fond favourite of everyone who grew up on both Tarantino and vampire stories.
The unstoppable vampire hunter of recent cinematic years (and who briefly had his own TV series as well) is Marvel's Blade the Vampire Hunter. The success of 1998's BLADE was one of the movies that led to a revival in comic-to-screen adaptations. 2002's BLADE 2 and 2004's BLADE: TRINITY were also both worldwide box office successes (BLADE 2 being the champion money-earner of the three) and showed that vampire movies were very much alive and well. The character of Blade is the ultimate in vampire action movies- he doesn't drink blood but he kicks a lot of ass. And he's packing a couple of machine guns and a sword. That kind of action is a long way removed from BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, Francis Ford's Coppola re-telling of the classic novel. BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA was a success as well- one of the ten highest grossing movies of 1992. BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA and the BLADE TRILOGY couldn't be more different, with the exception that they both revolve around vampires. And yet the public was eager to shell out their hard-earned bucks to watch them both- just another sign of our love affair with vampires.
And as years go past the wheel comes full circle and the theme and tone of the first vampire movies returns. SALEM'S LOT, adapted from the Stephen King novel, starring Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer (seemingly unable to keep away from vampire movies) is a modern re-telling of those classic Hammer and Universal pictures where the small band of heroes is pitted against an evil that menaces a small, secluded country town. While the town around them refuses to believe the few who know what is really going on have to posse up and go on stake out duty. At about three hours long. SALEM'S LOT is the kind of immersive experience that leaves you wistfully hoping that some day, you too will get to go out with a full sack of stakes and a water pistol full of holy water. Sure, it was lambasted by many of King's fans, who felt that too many liberties had been taken with the original story, but hey, you just can't please everybody.
The big question is this- why is it that we love vampires and vampire movies so much? And I don't mean in that whole 'dressing up in black' Goth way; I just mean that we love stories about vampires. We all know all the tricks- garlic, crucifixes, holy water, sleeping in coffins, sunlight. We know them because vampires and vampire movies are big business- everyone has seen at least one vampire movie. And why is that?
It's a good question. You might say that we love the idea of staying young forever. You might say that we love that kinda kinky idea of people biting our necks. And the best part of being a vampire is that you don't really need to hold down a steady job.
Personally, I think they just make for damn good movies. There's something about sitting back with your arm around someone, lights off, watching a bunch of guys take on the living dead. It appeals to that teen drive-in movie night in all of us, and that's no bad thing.
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| Simon Smithson |
Simon was crushed when he found out that 'Ghostbuster' was not an actual vocation, and so went with the next best thing - writing columns for Internet movie sites. He's working on a proton pack of his own, but it's going to take some time.
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