The Weekend Discussion: Are Vampires Dead?

[devincf]

Link coming in a moment.

[devincf]

http://chud.com/articles/articles/17...EAD/Page1.html

[Phil]

I feel like this is a trick question.

And someone posted recently about DOZENS of vampire movies coming down the pike in 2009. I don't even want to mention my favorite l'il vampire flick for fear of Richard Rubinstein remaking it.

[devincf]

A zillion more will come because of TWILIGHT, but it's like the flood of zombie movies: just because they're getting made doesn't mean they're any good.

[EdHocken]

Exactly.

In terms of films, I would certainly cite Near Dark along with Let the Right One In. As I mentioned also, there's a great trilogy of books by Charlie Huston which looks at vampirism as a disease by way of a PI named Joe Pitt.

[Domingo]

Any vampire film I go into lately including Let The Right One In I'm completely bored with the concept... So we're done with vampires. Looks like high concept 30 Days of Night stuff is what's going to carry these films from now on.

[BrianM]

Vampires are the swiss army knives of the undead. They can animalistic ghouls or sophisticated businessmen, surly surfer teens or doomed men-out-of-time. That they've been used in a mostly boring manner lately is no reason to abandon them. You can tell so many stories with a vampire depending on which myths you choose to incorporate.

[EdHocken]

Very true. They aren't like Werewolves. They can pretty much maintain their form.

[Phil]

When I was a teen I wrote a stupid short story about a married vampire couple who were undergoing some domestic strife - the wife wanted them to live like faggy Anne Rice-type vampires in their house, all beautiful and spotless and goth-y, while the husband went full on feral, murdering children and staying out all morning, burying himself in the earth. It was, like, an allegory.

Second favorite vampire movie, completely safe from the remakers' sausage machine: Ganja & Hess. RENT IT!

[EdHocken]

That short story maybe stupid but it's a nice idea.

[BrianM]

Originally Posted by Phil

Second favorite vampire movie, completely safe from the remakers' sausage machine: Ganja & Hess. RENT IT!

Never heard of it. Netflixed. Thanks.

ETA: Some day I'm going back to Love At First Bite. I got such a kick out of it as a kid but I'm afraid it won't hold up.

[Judas Booth]

While I'm sick of vampires in general, I sincerely hope that they keep Cassidy as a vampire for the 'Preacher' movie that is being worked on.

[Doc Happenin]

I think that with any hook like that it is largely dependent on the film-makers (and sadly), the studios to risk it. Most studios look at the money your Underworlds, your Blades and your Twilights are making and go 'Well, guess that's how we're doing vampires from now on!' It's not a serious knock against vampires, they're just being handled poorly. I hope films like Let the Right One In help show that there are a thousand different variations on vampires and that just because a few movies suck or are stupid, or both, doesn't mean that we should kill it off. It'd just take a few enterprising individuals to come up with something fresh.

[matches]

I'm of the naively optimistic opinion that anything done correctly can work, and until I saw Let the Right One In I thought the vampire flick was almost six feet under (Ha!). I think the better question is are we going to see a major shift into high profile films that are specifically targeted at teenaged girls that shop at Hot Topic. I think that demographic has the potential to be a cash cow that people in Hollywood are going to take notice of after Twilight. Mainly because they are built to be followers, and any trend that appeals to their niche they take as their own and wear it like a badge of honor, however lame it may actually be in reality.

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by BrianM

Vampires are the swiss army knives of the undead. They can animalistic ghouls or sophisticated businessmen, surly surfer teens or doomed men-out-of-time. That they've been used in a mostly boring manner lately is no reason to abandon them. You can tell so many stories with a vampire depending on which myths you choose to incorporate.

Yeah, I agree. I think it's an especially strong horror subgenre because there's the option of giving the chief supernatural creature (be it the protagonist or antagonist of the story) emotional complexity.

It's one of the reasons why the flood of zombie movies was so annoying. Zombies are pretty much all the same. They may be set up as representing consumerism, plague, innate fear of death, or some other (usually completely bullshit) symbolic purpose, but, at the core, they're almost always just an excuse to load on the gore effects. You can hit a lot of this subtext with vampirism, anyway, plus you have the bonus of the afflicted possibly being articulate.

As far as supernatural entities go, only aliens trump vampires in terms of character versatility.

[agracru]

It really depends.

Certainly we'll see a deluge of vampire films down the way thanks to Twilight's imminent success, and they'll probably all be bad. At the same time, films like Let The Right One In might give way to more artistic and mature vampire stories. At the very least, Park Chan-wook's vampire movie is coming down the pipeline eventually.

I doubt either Park's film (Thirst, I believe it's called) or Let The Right One In will spark a good-vampire-film movement. People are going to try to cash in on Twilight's success rather than find inspiration in more interesting films.

[James Kimbell]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but great vampire movies have always been super rare. Let the Right One In pretty much fulfilled our decade's quota; another one would be bloody gravy at this point.

[BrianM]

Originally Posted by DaveB

As far as supernatural entities go, only aliens trump vampires in terms of character versatility.

Which makes the lack of Lifeforce sequels all the more frustrating.

[Doc Happenin]

I think for starters, execs and creative types should stop using Anne Rice's vampire chronicles as "the bible", then maybe we can have more films that aren't about some "sexy, goth" pseudo-eastern European dude/dame being all dark, broody and whining.

[Fatboy Roberts]

I think that as the presence of zombies in pop-culture recedes, Vampires will replace them in that spotlight. True Blood, Twilight, Let the Right One In, 30 Days of Night, I see vampire entertainment entering into a glut in the same way Zombies did around 2002-2003.

I've also heard a cultural theory: When economic times are bad and the country's leadership is questionable, shuffling moaning undead hordes are the supernatural villain of choice. When things are looking up and confidence is on the rise, the use of vampires in pop-culture rises as well.

I think that theory's sorta thin, though.

[Arjen Rudd]

Eh, people like vampires. Even if they do go out of vogue sometime soon, they'll be back ten years later. In the meantime, they'll continue unabated, with the standard bad/good quality ratio of about 3/1. So no, they're not remotely dead.

What I wonder about is why they're so popular in the first place. I can only imagine it's some sort of primal drive in the collective subconscious to link sex and death. I'd like to read something intelligent on that, but can't be particularly bothered to think about it too long personally.

[Luca S.]

Let's see what a Sam Mendes vampire looks like if that ever gets off the ground.

Me, I've had my Blade II. I'm content.

[Dan Benenson]

Originally Posted by BrianM

Which makes the lack of Lifeforce sequels all the more frustrating.

Now that's a movie that could actually stand to be remade.

Obviously they're not dead commercially, in that sense we're entering into a boom. But yeah, to me they've been artistically dead for a while now. Basically every once in a while an interesting take on the concept will come along (hate to be unoriginal, but Let The Right One In) but otherwise they're boring.

[James Kimbell]

Originally Posted by Doc Happenin

I think for starters, execs and creative types should stop using Anne Rice's vampire chronicles as "the bible", then maybe we can have more films that aren't about some "sexy, goth" pseudo-eastern European dude/dame being all dark, broody and whining.

And there are two ways to get away from this. You can go more realistic, treat vampirism as a disease, maybe set it in the suburbs, etc. like Let the Right One In. Heck, maybe just film 'Salem's Lot one more time. Or you can use the old brooding sexy vampire but turn it into a joke, the way Buffy and especially Angel always did. I like this second tactic in theory, as long as it doesn't lead to the crap vampire films we got in the 90s.

[Iron Maiden]

Great vampire films are rare. Shit, even good ones are sort of hard to come by.

With that stuff out of the way, I wouldn't say these monsters are out of creative gas. There will always be interesting stories to tell (and retell) with vampires. It will always depend, though, on the people in charge of any given film. That's why there are so many bad ones, plus lots of people will go buy tickets to shit like Twilight instead of Let the Right One In, which brings Hollywood to the conclusion that we want more of the former and less of the other.

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by James Kimbell

And there are two ways to get away from this. You can go more realistic, treat vampirism as a disease, maybe set it in the suburbs, etc. like Let the Right One In. Heck, maybe just film 'Salem's Lot one more time. Or you can use the old brooding sexy vampire but turn it into a joke, the way Buffy and especially Angel always did. I like this second tactic in theory, as long as it doesn't lead to the crap vampire films we got in the 90s.

Actually, there are a zillion ways to get away from this. That's sort of the beauty of the concept - if you're exploring human parasitism of any kind, you're basically using vampire lore. You just pick and choose the pieces of the various mythologies that you want to incorporate.

But I don't think there's anything wrong with the old-fashioned, aristocratic vampire, either, if done well. The Eurotrash vampire goes way further back than Anne Rice.

[Phil]

The Eurotrash vampire goes way further back than Anne Rice.

Lord Ruthven! When they adapting that?

Awesome, sort of vampire short story - "The Girl With The Hungry Eyes" by Fritz Lieber. Poorly adapted a couple of times, including once as an episode of Night Gallery. Read it.

[James Kimbell]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Actually, there are a zillion ways to get away from this. That's sort of the beauty of the concept - if you're exploring human parasitism of any kind, you're basically using vampire lore. You just pick and choose the pieces of the various mythologies that you want to incorporate.

But I don't think there's anything wrong with the old-fashioned, aristocratic vampire, either, if done well. The Eurotrash vampire goes way further back than Anne Rice.

True, true. There's always another spin to put on the parasitism angle. Whether it's a new setting, or a new way of looking at the "disease," or a new combination of lore. My suburbia example was just one possibility, but we've seen vampires in space and whatnot, all with the same goal of modernizing the old archetypes or looking at them with fresh eyes.

I suppose that brings up the question of how far can you change lore while still calling yourself a "vampire" film, but who cares. If a story's good, it's good, and if a story's interestingly questionable when it comes to categorization, that's even better. A lot of these movies even make sure to never say the word itself, which I think is a bit silly.

(You know what, I just thought of something: there are no visible fangs in Let the Right One In.)

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by James Kimbell

True, true. There's always another spin to put on the parasitism angle. Whether it's a new setting, or a new way of looking at the "disease," or a new combination of lore. My suburbia example was just one possibility, but we've seen vampires in space and whatnot, all with the same goal of modernizing the old archetypes or looking at them with fresh eyes.

I suppose that brings up the question of how far can you change lore while still calling yourself a "vampire" film, but who cares. If a story's good, it's good, and if a story's interestingly questionable when it comes to categorization, that's even better.

(You know what, I just thought of something: there are no visible fangs in Let the Right One In.)

Heck, even the classic seducer-of-the-innocent-style vampire can be used to good effect without any kind of modern "disease" junk coming into it. Fright Night's a pretty damn enjoyable movie, and that doesn't really attempt to innovate on the mythology. Joss Whedon kept his vampires traditionally mystical in origin, too.

I think this modern tendency to pathologize all of our boogeyman displays a disturbing lack of imagination, actually. It shows that we're increasingly reluctant to acknowledge that metaphor and symbolism have a place in horror (and fiction, in general). Instead, we seem to need our horrors to be annoyingly literal in origin. Why can't a vampire be a manifestation of an evil spirit or some kind of inexplicably magical device? Why does it have to be an AIDS-like disease? I mean, what's more boring than saying vampirism is like a virus if, to do so, you have to make the literal manifestation of vampirism in the text explicitly virus-like? Why must our zombies be some a manifestation of a viral infection?

I guess I don't see this as a particularly fresh way to deal with the archetypes. I mean, you're really just fucking with the origin by sticking some bullshit pseudo-science on it. I think it's way more interesting to retain the mystical stuff and go in new directions with the subtext.

[Xagarath Ankor]

As others have said, Genuinely goiod vampire films are rare as anything. Given that there are so few of them, I don't think the potential of the things has been exhausted yet.
What the world doesn't need is any more versions of Dracula.

[BrianM]

Originally Posted by Xagarath Ankor

What the world doesn't need is any more versions of Dracula.

True dat. Why mess with perfection:

[Schwartz]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Heck, even the classic seducer-of-the-innocent-style vampire can be used to good effect without any kind of modern "disease" junk coming into it. Fright Night's a pretty damn enjoyable movie, and that doesn't really attempt to innovate on the mythology. Joss Whedon kept his vampires traditionally mystical in origin, too.

I think this modern tendency to pathologize all of our boogeyman displays a disturbing lack of imagination, actually. It shows that we're increasingly reluctant to acknowledge that metaphor and symbolism have a place in horror (and fiction, in general). Instead, we seem to need our horrors to be annoyingly literal in origin. Why can't a vampire be a manifestation of an evil spirit or some kind of inexplicably magical device? Why does it have to be an AIDS-like disease? I mean, what's more boring than saying vampirism is like a virus if, to do so, you have to make the literal manifestation of vampirism in the text explicitly virus-like? Why must our zombies be some a manifestation of a viral infection?

I guess I don't see this as a particularly fresh way to deal with the archetypes. I mean, you're really just fucking with the origin by sticking some bullshit pseudo-science on it. I think it's way more interesting to retain the mystical stuff and go in new directions with the subtext.

The clinical approach to vampirism is not an exclusively modern tendency. Bram Stoker's novel is heavy on the new light of science and reason banishing the old ghosts of mysticism and superstition. Van Helsing's not a doctor by coincidence.

[DaveB]

This is from the other thread in reference to Brian's post below and Nordling's assertion that Meyer and Rice have "de-balled" the vampire. I think the surface de-balling may be a good thing, at least under some circumstances.

Originally Posted by BrianM

It's interesting that among the alleged Anne Rice "ripoffs" I don't know of any that kept the no-sex aspect Dave is referring to. Rice didn't focus on it much that I can recall but I think it would make for an interesting take. Would a vampire mourn such a loss? Is the need to slake their thirst for blood intended to fill the absence of this other thirst, or does it exist in spite of that absence?

I always figured it would be too much to harp on it, thus the effects are left somewhat implicit - these vampires clearly receive nourishment and get off sexually on the act of vampirism.

Say what you will about her writing (on second thought, don't - I think we can agree Ms. Rice isn't exactly Fitzgerald), but I consider this variation on the legend pretty ingenious (and I'm not sure if it's a Rice original). If vampires have sexual options, why such a focus on the orgasm-like appeal of sucking blood? Without that sexual aspect, it would be more like having a really great dinner, right? So to emphasize both the "other"-ness of a highly-sexualized creature and the beyond-food importance of neck-biting, she removes the actual sexuality and replace it with a vampire-specific metaphoric stand-in.

The idea of vampires fucking is kind of bizarre, anyway, when you think about it. Sex is inherently a life-affirming activity. Even if a vampire's just firing blanks (one would think, lest we get vampire babies, half-vampire babies, etc. - I'm sure it occurs in plenty of vampire fiction, but that puts us more in the world of silly sf rather than archetypes), the act of sex celebrates life of a sort. It makes more sense that a creature associated with death would get more turned on from the draining of blood than from a fertility ritual.

[Alan "Nordling" Cerny]

I haven't seen LET THE RIGHT ONE IN yet (Wednesday!) but so far I'm of the opinion that the best vampire movie is Romero's MARTIN. It keeps the romantic aspects of the vampire and also keeps the horrific aspects as well. It's genuinely creepy.

[Phil]

On the asexual front, I recall one of the more interesting things about Anne Rice's stuff was the vampire who was a wise, worldly individual stuck in a little girl's body, and what that did to her emotionally.

[BrianM]

I guess the Claudia character (the little girl?) in the first book mourns the fact that she will never be a woman, never be sexual in THAT way. But I wonder why, as I recall, neither Louis nor Lestat ever talks about missing sex, or seems to have any opinion on it one way or the other. Maybe Rice covers that and I'm forgetting.

BTW I actually liked the first book a lot. The writing isn't great but the ideas and atmosphere I always found very appealing. And isn't that the only one of the books she didn't write in the first person?

ETA: I was typing as Phil posted but yes, she was always the most interesting character to me. Dunst forever gets a pass because of the good job (IMHO) she did in the movie.

[Alan "Nordling" Cerny]

Claudia was Anne Rice's surrogate for her own daughter, who I believe died when she was very young. I'm not too sure about that, though.

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by Schwartz

The clinical approach to vampirism is not an exclusively modern tendency. Bram Stoker's novel is heavy on the new light of science and reason banishing the old ghosts of mysticism and superstition. Van Helsing's not a doctor by coincidence.

Sure, but Dracula, himself, remains supernatural in origin. It's just that those who seek to destroy him happen to have access to modern methods and scientific inquiry. It's been a while since I've read it, but I don't remember anyone attempting to diagnose him or consider vampirism in terms of "disease." There's still a bunch of religious and mystical stuff driving the vampire aspects of the story.

If anything, the story's using Dracula as a representation of the old and mystical and Van Helsing as the modern, scientific man. If Stoker had decided that Van Helsing found Dracula's affliction to be a rare blood disorder rather than leaving it supernatural in origin, you'd lose the effectiveness not only of the horror of the unknown, but of the new world/old world subtext.

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by BrianM

I guess the Claudia character (the little girl?) in the first book mourns the fact that she will never be a woman, never be sexual in THAT way. But I wonder why, as I recall, neither Louis nor Lestat ever talks about missing sex, or seems to have any opinion on it one way or the other. Maybe Rice covers that and I'm forgetting.

I think it might have come up once or twice, but, like I said above, I always figured it was implied that they got off in other ways. What's to miss if you enjoy biting necks as much as or more than having sex?

[deepfix]

I've always felt that when you get to the point when some concept or idea is considered dead is right before said idea makes a staggering comeback. The Twilight kids and their ilk are the culmination of the Anne Rice approach; when the current idea is debased as fodder for kids (Abbot and Costello Meet The.....) Somewhere, the vampire of the future is being conceived (and it may even be Let The Right One In.)

I say someone make a good film out of Charnas' The Vampire Tapestry.

[deepfix]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Sure, but Dracula, himself, remains supernatural in origin. It's just that those who seek to destroy him happen to have access to modern methods and scientific inquiry. It's been a while since I've read it, but I don't remember anyone attempting to diagnose him or consider vampirism in terms of "disease." There's still a bunch of religious and mystical stuff driving the vampire aspects of the story.

If anything, the story's using Dracula as a representation of the old and mystical and Van Helsing as the modern, scientific man. If Stoker had decided that Van Helsing found Dracula's affliction to be a rare blood disorder rather than leaving it supernatural in origin, you'd lose the effectiveness not only of the horror of the unknown, but of the new world/old world subtext.

I agree. In fact Lucy's death and resurrection as a vampire immediately discounts the use of science against Dracula. The blood transfusions don't work so get a stake and some holy wafers.

[James Kimbell]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Heck, even the classic seducer-of-the-innocent-style vampire can be used to good effect without any kind of modern "disease" junk coming into it. Fright Night's a pretty damn enjoyable movie, and that doesn't really attempt to innovate on the mythology. Joss Whedon kept his vampires traditionally mystical in origin, too.

I think this modern tendency to pathologize all of our boogeyman displays a disturbing lack of imagination, actually. It shows that we're increasingly reluctant to acknowledge that metaphor and symbolism have a place in horror (and fiction, in general). Instead, we seem to need our horrors to be annoyingly literal in origin. Why can't a vampire be a manifestation of an evil spirit or some kind of inexplicably magical device? Why does it have to be an AIDS-like disease? I mean, what's more boring than saying vampirism is like a virus if, to do so, you have to make the literal manifestation of vampirism in the text explicitly virus-like? Why must our zombies be some a manifestation of a viral infection?

I guess I don't see this as a particularly fresh way to deal with the archetypes. I mean, you're really just fucking with the origin by sticking some bullshit pseudo-science on it. I think it's way more interesting to retain the mystical stuff and go in new directions with the subtext.

I hate midi-chlorians, too. But I can't think of any vampire films where they go that far; it's usually a faux-scientific perspective that leaves the door wide open for magical elements.

As for Whedon, his shows went on for years, so they had to tackle this from many angles, ending up somewhere in the middle. Sometimes the mystical foes could only be stopped by cold, modern technology - the Judge in season 2, magically impervious in his time, shows up in the modern day and gets blown up by a rocket launcher. However, efforts to pathologize the monsters always failed - the Initiative in season 4, the epitome of order and Science®, gets overrun by its creations and its specimens, because it was wrong to think that magic can be fully controlled.

Movies, which tell one story, once, don't have to be as fussy on the exact nature of the monsters, but they usually take the same in-between approach. Let the Right One In works if you think of Eli's vampirism as a physical disease, but it also works as magic, and it works best as a combination of the two. And the ambiguity makes it scarier. Until sequels ruin the fun, this is the way a lot of monster stories work, I think.

[BrianM]

Originally Posted by James Kimbell

I hate midi-chlorians, too. But I can't think of any vampire films where they go that far; it's usually a faux-scientific perspective that leaves the door wide open for magical elements.

SPOILER For Near Dark below:


Well the vampirism of the Blade universe sort of has it both ways, with "vampire god" talk in the first movie and by the third they are developing bio-weapons that target vampire DNA or some such nonsense.

And the fact that vampirism in Near Dark can be cured by transfusion certainly implies a scientific basis instead of a magical one (and has always bothered me, by the by).

[Schwartz]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Sure, but Dracula, himself, remains supernatural in origin. It's just that those who seek to destroy him happen to have access to modern methods and scientific inquiry. It's been a while since I've read it, but I don't remember anyone attempting to diagnose him or consider vampirism in terms of "disease." There's still a bunch of religious and mystical stuff driving the vampire aspects of the story.

If anything, the story's using Dracula as a representation of the old and mystical and Van Helsing as the modern, scientific man. If Stoker had decided that Van Helsing found Dracula's affliction to be a rare blood disorder rather than leaving it supernatural in origin, you'd lose the effectiveness not only of the horror of the unknown, but of the new world/old world subtext.

Perhaps, but in the end it is the scientific approach which yields the information on the vampire "rules" and gives them the knowledge and tools to defeat the unknown.

Just saying, if Stoker had lived in a time when more was known about biological disorders, I could see him writing in a physiological explanation of vampirism. As it is, it seems to reflect the dawn of the modern age of medicine, where we were still kind of in the dark about the origins of disease, but science was starting to find ways to counter them.

Now, my scientific history could be off here (I'm kind of guessing at the state of contemporary progress based on the text, or subtext), and if much was known about the root causes disease at the time of its release, it would make the scientific aspects of Dracula very intentional allegory rather than an expression of a certain zeitgeist. If that's the case, apologies to Mr. Stoker.

[Trav McGee]

I remember years back reading about a supposedly brilliant script that kept getting tossed around but never took hold, SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. COUNT DRACULA, or something near that. Goofy high-concept title but with a genuinely compelling execution. Whatever happened to that? Seemed like it'd get name-dropped on AICN every other month years back. Then nothing.

[deepfix]

Originally Posted by Schwartz

Perhaps, but in the end it is the scientific approach which yields the information on the vampire "rules" and gives them the knowledge and tools to defeat the unknown.

Just saying, if Stoker had lived in a time when more was known about biological disorders, I could see him writing in a physiological explanation of vampirism. As it is, it seems to reflect the dawn of the modern age of medicine, where we were still kind of in the dark about the origins of disease, but science was starting to find ways to counter them.

Now, my scientific history could be off here (I'm kind of guessing at the state of contemporary progress based on the text, or subtext), and if much was known about the root causes disease at the time of its release, it would make the scientific aspects of Dracula very intentional allegory rather than an expression of a certain zeitgeist. If that's the case, apologies to Mr. Stoker.

If I remember correctly, Dracula was written a good many years after Pasteur and others developed the modern microbe approach to sickness and disease. The information was there if he wanted to use it. And I don't believe that it WAS science that gave them the "rules." It was because Van Helsing was quite a disgrace in the scientific field who actually believed in all that mystical hogwash. He knew the "rules" because he was an expert on vampires, not because he happened to be a doctor.

[Schwartz]

Kind of a tangent, but one thing I liked about the Hellboy movies was how the BPRD is able to effectively use science and technology against explicitly magical creatures. I thought it was cool in the first one how Hellboy, himself an undeniably otherworldy being, mixed up his own cure-all "cocktail" bullets full of various creature-killing materials*. It suggested that just because you're facing the irrational or inconceivable, there's no need to be stupid about it. Which is kind of what Van Helsing does; it doesn't really matter how Dracula has these powers, he goes about deducing what works against him in an intelligent way and can worry about why it works later.

*Or how in 2, I was sure they were setting up "Big Baby" to be ineffective against the forest god, and he'd have to some kind of magical video-game boss weakness to take it down, but no, it turns out that most of the time, giant guns kill things just fine.

[maceodkat]

http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Blue-.../dp/1565049004

the only good that can come out of this twilight crap is hollywood diving into amazon looking for a good vamp story, and the one written by nancy collins is easily one of the coolest takes in the genre.

[deepfix]

Now that Neil Gaiman is getting all the Hollywood love, I'd be nice to see his old writing partner Kim Newman get some love as well. A Dracula as presented in Anno Dracula would be rather swell to see on the screen: all brute barbarism and all.

[Phil]

Originally Posted by deepfix

I've always felt that when you get to the point when some concept or idea is considered dead is right before said idea makes a staggering comeback. The Twilight kids and their ilk are the culmination of the Anne Rice approach;

You know what would have been a cool flip side for that trend? A properly faithful adaptation of I Am Legend.