From the Archive — Stake a claim
This is another entry from the archives — this time originally published by the Bryan/College Station Eagle. It was written about the time “30 Days of Night” hit theaters.
Vampires and movies about them have one thing in common: They mostly suck. The number of quality films starring the undead can be counted on the hand of a character from Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”.
Sure there are the guilty pleasures (“Fright Night,” “The Lost Boys,” “Blade”), but while these movies are fun to watch, they will never be lauded for character development or innovative story lines.
Perhaps a vampire movie doesn’t have to be innovative. Maybe some viewers find comfort in a genre that constantly rehashes itself. It could be that vampire movies, with their penchant for being as bloody as they are sexually charged, are the comfort food of the goth kids who shop at Hot Topic.
What does this mean for David Slade, who, according to the advertising campaign for “30 Days of Night,” is out to reinvent the vampire genre?
Slade is talented, no question. He did, after all, direct “Hard Candy,” a edge-of-the-seat thriller about a pedophile who is caught and tortured by a teenage girl. But can he do something rarely done before: Make a truly scary vampire movie?
Time, and the price of movie admission, will tell whether Slade was able to save vampire movies from a future of endless recycled plot points and character designs.
Seeing how vampires are a Hollywood staple lately, there will always be new movies staring your favorite bloodsuckers.
Depending on the director’s vision (and budget), the nosferatu can have many different faces and demeanors. Besides “Night”‘s savage creatures, here are a few other ways vampires are portrayed on the screen:
The Recluse
The reclusive vampire is often found in dark castles or crypts, venturing outside only to prey on the weak. Unlike Dracula, these vampires rarely have concubines or lavish wardrobes to parade around in. Instead, they are often deformed or elderly. One of the earliest versions of this vampire can be found in “Nosferatu”, a silent film about a German vampire who is more vermin than man. But who wants to watch a silent film?
In “Shadow of the Vampire,” John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe star in a fictionalized version of the events behind the filming of “Nosferatu.” To achieve absolute realism, the director of the film (Malkovich) hired a real vampire to play the lead in his movie. Dafoe plays Max Schreck, a would-be actor who’s too concerned about snacking on the crew than memorizing his lines.
The Suave Seducer.
Perhaps made most famous by Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula, this vampire’s primary weapon is his sexiness. Able to seduce women with his eyes, the vampire prefers snacking on young women — preferably in some state of undress.
Besides “Dracula,” there have been many other uses of vampires as seducers. In fact, this seems to be the favorite version of the monster.
I blame Anne Rice’s series of slightly homoerotic novels for the lack of truly scary vampire movies in the last several decades. Directors seem more interested in using the bloodsuckers as some kind of metaphor for sexual escapism than for actual escapism.
Case in point: “Modern Vampires,” a 1998 film directed by Richard Elfman, brother of composer Danny. Casper Van Dien stars as Dallas, a rogue bloodsucker who is bored with the posh lifestyle that vampires are forced to live. Van Dien sleepwalks through his role as a pretty-boy angsty vampire.
The real star of the film, though, is Rod Steiger. Steiger plays Van Helsing, a revenge-driven vampire hunter in search of Dallas. Arriving in Las Vegas with few resources, Van Helsing puts an ad in the classifieds looking for fellow vampire hunters. What he gets is the Crips (as in the Bloods and). Together, the fearless vampire slayer and his gang-banging cronies attempt to end the vampire threat once and for all. If the filmmakers had decided to spend the entire movie on Steiger teaching the Crips how to properly slay vampires, this could be considered one of the best vampire movies ever.
Instead, audiences have to put up with more Casper Van Dien than any one person should.
The most cunning vampire, though, is The Count. A purple-faced, monocle-wearing vampire, The Count utilizes his autistic like need to constantly count things as a way of putting people (specifically children) at ease. He lures them into a false state of friendship, teaching them how to count things and winning their hearts.
When the sun goes down on Sesame Street, though, The Count attacks. Overpowering the children, he drinks their blood. One, two, three screams! A-ha, a-ha, a-ha!
The Not-Quite-Vampire.
Lately, it seems directors go out of their way to explain vampirism, turning the centuries-old legend into cheap science-fiction claptrap. In movies such as “Ultraviolet,” “Blade” and the soon-to-be-released “I am Legend,” vampirism is a disease that has the potential to be cured in a laboratory. Oohhh … scary.
One director who managed to take the vampire legend and turn it into something different while retaining some real atmosphere is Guillermo del Toro.
His 1993 film “Cronos” stars Rederico Luppai as Jesus Gris, an elderly antique collector who comes across a small mechanized scarab that, when opened, stabs whoever is holding it.
Gris learns, though, that the wound brings renewed youth and, along with it, a thirst for blood. This Spanish-language film from Mexico is an overture to the rest of del Toro’s career, offering a peek at the ideas, visuals and actors that del Toro would continue to work with.
“Who wants to watch a silent film?” How unkind. Theaters across the country are more than ever showing silent films in revival, and in NY, Bologna, LA, Seattle, and DC, where I play for silents, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people come to cheer, laugh, cry, scream at the wonderful films from the great silent era. Open your mind!
It was (mostly) meant as a joke. While there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of really terrible silent films, there are some really good ones that are, yes, made even more enjoyable by watching them with live musical accompaniment. Consider my mind opened … to the fact that musicians can’t take a joke. But seriously, thanks for the comment.