Vampire Movie Rant - Part 1

I’ve been putting this on off because it doesn’t have a starting place. It’s going to be a true rant as I don’t know what’s it’s going to encompass, where it’s going to go, or how it will end.

I have been a fantasy fan forever. I have always lamented that it had not been a genre that the movie industry took seriously. The only movies we had were either BAD (Conan, Dungeons & Dragons) or really poorly received because they were just too weird (Legend, Labyrinth). Then Harry Potter came along and the world took fantasy seriously, both as a writing genre, and finally as a movie genre. We were given stunningly beautiful and basically book-accurate movies. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was more popular than anyone would expect coming from a previously cheesy genre.

No such savior has yet arrived for the poor neglected vampire genre. I have also been a vampire fan forever. I get it from my mother. She used to chase me around the house as a child saying “I vant to bite your neck and drink your blood.” Weird but true. It ensured that I grew up with no fear of the critters and always wanting to see them in movies, and usually wanting them to win.

But what have I been faced with all my life? CHEESY VAMPIRE MOVIES! Crap like Love at First Bite, Once Bitten, My Best Friend Is a Vampire, all stupid not even trying to be horror movies. Treating vampires like they’re a running gag instead of a MONSTER. Then we have movies like The Hunger, which every Goth on the planet will tell you to see because it’s “the best vampire movie ever”. Uh-huh. It sucked. It’s only redeeming quality was it had David Bowie in it, and HE DIED!!! Which made me wondered why I bothered watching the rest of the movie. Then we have flicks like Fright Night which at least are trying to be horror, but as we are in the eighties, we are smack in the middle of slasher flicks and Hollywood wouldn’t know subtle horror if it hit them in the face. So that leaves us with The Lost Boys. This is the best vampire movie we have. This is the best vampire movie we have? A Corey Haim/Feldman eighties movie with a vampire gang that looks like it stepped out of a bad heavy metal video is the best we have to offer? Yep, ‘fraid so.

In the early nineties, it looked like we might be saved. Francis Ford Coppola decided to do Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Since he was the one doing it, we knew it was going to have a budget, differing it vastly from its predecessors. He also signed up some REALLY good actors, Gary Oldman (sorry Leila, I really like him) and Anthony Hopkins. There was hope. But then he turned it into a love story. This was NOT Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We also were forced to watch Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves try to speak with British accents. And for no particular reason, he turned Lucy into a whore. Well, it was pretty. Maybe we can just watch it on mute.

Two years later, there was again hope in the form of the movie version of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I was already cynical. I didn’t particularly like the book (I’m not being fair here, actually I CAN’T STAND her vampire books – but that’s a different rant). Again it had a budget and big name actors were signed up for the parts. Big named actors for their big names, not because they had anything in common with the book’s characters, in looks or personality. Well, it had a really cool scene in which the vamps turned into ash in the sunlight…and blew away.

And then we had years of crap again, Vampire in Brooklyn, Bordello of Blood, From Dusk Till Dawn. And then Blade comes along. It’s based on a comic book, they didn’t have to think about it, it’ll be good! And I truly believed it would be. The most amazing early scene in a vampire movie – the rave in the meat packing plant, really cool, and really horrific. And then down I come, with Blade’s one-dimensional character (or Wesley Snipe’s one dimensional acting) and the most moronic villain ever – “I’ll turn the whole world into vampires”. Yeah, what will you eat, genius? And if Blade had all the strengths of vampires why did the rest of them fight like second grade school girls?

Blade began the tradition of seeing all new vamp movies with my mom, and ripping them to shreds afterwards.

<> Must stop, more to come.