Image Credit: Disney/Dreamworks
Can we please put a stake through the heart of the thoughtful, sensitive vampire?
You know, the kind that just needs the love of a nice girl to keep his deathly cold body warm through night? The poetry-reading kind. The sparkly kind.
This is why I am grateful for the whacked-out, Friday-night-at-the-summertime-drive-in vibe of this weekend’s Fright Night remake, which takes the vampire out of the gothic, mist-shrouded castle and plunks him into the middle of suburban life — but unlike Twilight or The Vampire Diaries, or (most recently, unfortunately) True Blood — Colin Farrell’s bloodsucker isn’t here to be a prom date.
For too long, we’ve had to deal with the cuddly kind. I’m making the case for the bad guys …
When I interviewed Farrell a while back about Fright Night, he described his character Jerry (a hilariously vanilla name for a dangerous dude) as “a predator,” and that’s the subtext of this update on the 1980s cult classic. Ever look at your neighborhood on a sex offender registry and felt uneasy at the proximity of some of those listings? This is the real fear that fuels the eeriness of this Fright Night. You can’t control who your neighbors are, so what if a real monster moved in next door?
The key is making it a real monster. Vampires don’t want your freakin’ company. They want to rip out your jugular and feast on your baby! They don’t want to be chums; they want to turn you into chum.
Sexy and seductive? Sure, great. That’s part of what makes a vampire so dangerous (and fun for storytelling.) But that mystique, that raw sexuality, it’s all just a charade, a way to bait you into letting down your guard. But the best vampires, even if they are ones struggling to maintain some humanity, are those that are truly just 6-foot-tall humanoid versions of mosquitoes. Disgusting, right? That’s the point.
Image Credit: Everett Collection
Bram Stoker certainly gave Dracula appealing qualities, but he never lost sight of his inhumanity. This is the role vampires play in our storytelling tradition — they are the representation of us at our worst: selfish, ruthless, careless, voracious. Maybe it was Anne Rice and Interview With the Vampire that began to inject a more soulful quality into these monsters, and I have no problem with that book or movie, but the success of Twilight has just taken the trend too far. We are in danger of losing one of our most precious natural villains.
I didn’t even mind Twilight so much until it started spawning so many imitators. Stephanie Meyers’ use of the monster as metaphor for kids struggling to stay celibate? Uh, okay not my cup of tea, but a legit concept. I get it. Then she went and made Edward so damned … well, toothless.
Lately I’ve been watching True Blood with apprehension: Eric Northman, the cool and heartless 1,000-year-old Nordic vampire, has had his memory erased by a coven of witches, so a millennium of bad deeds are no longer a part of his psyche. All right, cool … for a while. But he has been mooning over Sookie like a heartsick schoolboy for a couple of episodes now. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of him ripping and biting again in a midnight graveyard massacre last week.
Image Credit: Everett Collection
Obviously, Dracula is the template for these creatures, Patient Zero if you like, and everything else is just spinning off from that. We all remember Bela Lugosi’s take on it, and God love his widow’s-peaked little head, but for me F.W. Murnau’s silent version of the story, Nosferatu, is by far the creepiest — and the standard to which I wish more vampire stories aspired. Something about that bald, long-fingered, buck-toothed weirdo still gives me the heebie jeebies. Here’s the test: picture seeing this dude at the end of a dimly lit alleyway. Scared? How about if it was Robert Pattinson standing there? Hell, maybe I’d mug him.
Second best Dracula, for my money, was Francis Ford Coppola’s version in 1992. Remember just how strange Gary Oldman seemed the first time you saw him looking very ancient with those two white buns of hair on his head? Then he licked Keanu Reeves’ bloody shaving razor! Gaaah! He was apparently part wolf, could turn into a disgusting heap of bats, and then, all right, yeah, the smooth, sunglasses-wearing count in chic Victorian style. But mostly he was The Weirdest Effing Thing You’ve Ever Seen.
He didn’t sparkle.
I’m not saying we can’t play with the idea that vampires have a shred of humanity left in them that they secretly crave. In the sensitive, charming vampire category we have to look with admiration at Angel, Joss Whedon’s creation for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who much more adeptly traversed the line Twilight often stumbles over. David Boreanaz’s character made girls swoon, but a big part of his storyline on that show (before he got his own) was that he was cursed with a soul. Cursed, as in: being good was painful for him. And when that curse was lifted, hoo boy … Time to kill some people!
Image Credit: The WB
Whedon used Angel to represent a very familiar character from real life — the nice guy who turns out to be a total a–hole. Only instead of not calling you back after sleeping with you, this guy maybe preys on your friends and family. Angel was not a good guy. He was a bad guy seeking redemption for an impossibly savage past.
Fright Night‘s Jerry the Vampire isn’t burdened by any crisis of conscience. He’s hungry.
It’s no coincidence that this movie is written by Buffy alum Marti Noxon, who knows how to bring out the worst in these kind of guys. For years I’ve been wondering: When a vampire wants into your house but can’t get in because of that rule dictating they must be invited … why don’t they light the joint on fire? Jerry finally settles that issue.
There’s a lot of awful stuff in the world. We live in a country where the big debate is whether billionaires with corporate jets should be slightly more taxed than the struggling middle class and poor, and for some reason, America seems to be on the side of the selfish, heartless billionaires. When did parasites become our heroes?
I’m grateful for Jerry, because he deserves a stake through the chest, and nobody is confused about that.
The world was a better place when we didn’t romanticize our monsters too much.
Bite back on Twitter: @Breznican
Great article. I wasn’t very excited about this movie at first, but now I definitely want to see it.
See it. It’s actually REALLY good. Colin Farrell was the scariest vampire I’ve seen on-screen since “30 Days of Night.” He was awesome (and sexy).
He’s the main reason I want to see this. He’s so good. Loved him in “In Bruges” and even “Horrible Bosses.” This seems like a role he could have fun with.
Vampires have always seemed kind of toothless to me. I don’t know if it was Stoker or the old Hammer movies that titillated with the monster just going for those nubile young women who must be protected at all costs, that being basically a metaphor for young women discovering s*ex. Well, what a horror for the victorians! Excuse me while I yawn. Even the original Fright Night, which I enjoyed, was a lot about the kid’s fear of losing his girlfriend to some other hotter guy, right? Twilight and the book The Historian were total snoozes. Salem’s Lot is still the one truly scary modern vampire movie/TV show because, go figure, the guy in the basement is a Nosferatu type, not a suave seducer, and the vampires he makes are more like zombies in that they don’t even communicate, they just propagate and eat. Anyway, I hope that Fright Night will be badass and scary enough… for a vampire movie.
I was totally thinking of Salems Lot, both the book and the movie were scary as heck. I can’t wait until the make movies out of the Strain trilogy by Del Toro, no more nice vampires!
You spoke my mind, THANK YOU. Ironically, the toothless, sparkly, sentimental and EMO “pretty boy/girl” vampires have to be some of the creepiest, nastiest garbage I’ve ever seen hit the screen. And the mush-brains that fall for this are even scarier, because they are the real undead who walk amongst us. I fantasize about seeing a real monster coming onto the scene and shredding every one of these creepy, nasty things on the screen, then breaking through the screen and shredding every starry and teary-eyed moonbat in the audience.
Wow….Dude, it’s just a movie. Entertainment. Fantasy… You want those of us that enjoy a bit of romance to die???? Geez…..
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Great Article. I’m really tired of vampires being sensitive adolescents instead of bloodthirsty monsters.
hear, hear!
Can’t wait to see Fright Night. I definitely prefer my vampires Byronic: Beatiful, alluring, and deadly dangerous–half wanting to hang on to the small shred of human decency they have left, and half wanting to suck you dry and cast aside your used up corpse.
I thought I was the only one who saw the stupidity of a sparkling vampire. Twilight has almost ruined vampire flicks for me. Perhaps the most crucial rule of all is that vampires cannot walk around in the daylight, but S. Meyer clearly forgot about that.
Go see Fright Night; I still prefer the original, but the new one is pretty good.
Actually, Dracula could walk around in the daytime, but he was functionally human (no powers like turning into wolves, bats, etc. Couldn’t shrink, couldn’t turn into mist, couldn’t hypnotize, etc) And still had all of his weaknesses (like not crossing running water) and he sure as heck didn’t sparkle.
Really, S. Meyer gets one thing about Vamps right (According to THE book anyway, Dracula) and she turns it completely wrong!
There are multiple vampire myths out there, Stoker just popularized bits of Romanian lore. And he does turn into a large dog (getting off the ship when he arrives in England) at one point; he communes with wolves; he does have some hypnotic elements, because his connection with Renfield and Mina exist on a psychic level. It can be argued that they have the psychic connection to him because they are half turned, but in the end his eyes are spell binding to many (just not in the way Lugosi portrayed it). Sorry for the academic quibbling–I teach a class on vampire lit/film and we talked about this very issue: the emasculated vampire. The Victorian emphasis on sexuality was morphed in the 20th century into a medicalized version of vampires–they were infected, victims of a virus (read The Passage, or even the original story of I Am Legend). We moved from sexuality to germs. Personally, I think Stephen King’s retelling of Dracula in Salem’s Lot was the best contemporary version of the vampire story.
i really get tired of the Meyer bashing. she wrote a YA novel about vampires that are different from other novels. get over it. if you don’t like them, don’t read them. so what if her vamps sparkle? its fiction, damn it.
Sorry…eh, not sorry, cause Meyer’s novels deserve the bashing. They’re pure CRAP!
And forget the wonderful message of the Twilight series; girls, without a man you are nothing.
It’s really badly written fiction. That’s part of my problem with it. It also romanticizes some really, really unhealthy relationship patterns. And, yeah, I get that literature and film do that all the time, but considering the target demo here… it’s distressing.
@your english teacher: Spot on.
@English Teacher: Your entire post is filled with awful sentence structure.
No, it’s not.
@cheeseburgers: While I don’t disagree with you, the message isn’t anything they haven’t been subjected to courtesy of any Disney princess movie. At least they’re reading this time.
This is referring to the bashing he r take on Vampires, which is not an issue at all. There are many different types of Vampire, with different powers and weaknesses. Bashing these books for that is annoy and frankly asinine…
@ M: The sentence structure is a choice. I wanted the post to sound conversational, rather than formal.
@ Mark: Excellent point! As much as I enjoy the spectacle of a Disney movie, the relationships modeled in Cinderella or The Little Mermaid, for example, are far from healthy and equal.
After reading the first 10 pages of Twilight, I was scarred for life by the horiffic prose. High school sophomores turn in better work for class. So, there is a major reason for the twilight hate – and I’m not even going into the fact that the protagonist, Bella, is an embarrassingly bad character.
Dave Barry wrote an excellent Twilight parody. His English major roots were showing.
At the beginning of Eclipse, when Bella says “take my soul, without you I don’t want it” I threw up in my mouth. Somebody please help these girls.
maybe if the twilight books weren’t constantly being rammed down our throats we could “get over it”
I thought the first movie would be awful but it turned out to be one of my favotire vampire movies of all time. Then I thought the remake would, well, suck. And they got Colin Farrell. I think I might even see this in a theater – but forget the 3d!
AND Dark Shadows next year with Johnny Depp brings the dark, gothic bad vampire back.
Ugh. Another cookie cutter movie with Burton and Depp.
Jealous much? :p
LMAO. Burton & Depp cookie cutter? Ed Wood, Edward Scissor-hands, Corpse Bride, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Sleepy Hollow are cookie cutter movies? The antithesis of cokie cutter more like. Some people may hate his style, bt the last thing Burton is is cookie cutter; he’s pretty unique.
Burton has a unique style, it’s true. Unfortunately, he has used it to create his own special cookie cutter.
@therealeverton Pretty unique? There are not degrees of unique. Something/someone is either unique or not unique.
@ Lizabet: Wait a minute… What does jealousy have to do with it? It’s arguable that most Burton/Depp collaborations have a similar tone. Personally, I can take it or leave it, but if Ryan doesn’t enjoy it, he must me jealous? Jealous of what, exactly?
Who the hell cares whether they are sensitive or vicious? They are fictional creatures in the public domain and writers could do what they want with them.
Seriously, this whole clutching of pearls and being indignant about vampires being made “gay” is so ludicrous. I took an English Composition class in which the final object was to do a ten-page essay on any topic, and some dude, completely devoid of irony, went in front of the class to present his paper. The title: “‘Twilight’; How Stephanie Meyer ruined the vampire myth for all of us’….(?????) Seriously? You spent time and energy on a ten-page essay about how a writer “destroyed” vampires for those of us who don’t care about Twilight? Like Twilight has somehow destroyed (physically destroyed) every film, book, TV show and memory of vampires pre-Edward Cullen? Jeez.
What was given as the final grade for his paper?
what does being over emotionally and whipped have to do with ebeing gay? the new kind of vampire is being written to appeal to women who want Edward type men which has nothing do with beng gay. The old brand of vampire like Lestate and Spike and Angel had more hints of bi sexuality and were more sexual due to it becausse of their attraction to other males so you don’t know want you are talking about if anything all the gay has been taken out them and made them hetero and boring and weak to appeal to today’s female view or do you not know history. The soft gay male is an American creation does the words Rome and Sparta mean nothing to you?
Damn! Have you ever heard of punctuation? Upper-case? Jeez!
Not to mention grammar, tense, syntax and spelling. Get off the computer and take some classes.
Ok, this article was good until you brought politics into it.
Listen, I’ve always only had enough money to get by. But when you think about the socio-economic classes of this country, the rich are the ones who are parasites to you? Really?
And your point is that the middle class and poor are the “parasites”?
Absolutely not. My point is that one particular subset of poor people is parasitic. They are the one who use up welfare money that could be going to more deserving families because they’re lazy and irresponsible.
I think that’s a better fit for a description of a parasite rather than the rich. You can call them other names all you want, but they aren’t parasites.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, whatevs.
And why can’t the rich be parasites? The wealthy are able to buy laws and politicians, unlike the lower classes, and they often do. It’s great there is discussion about the differences in class because the income gap is getting wider and wider.
Parasites are those who live off the output of other creatures. How do you define “rich”? I define it as someone who makes six figures while essentially producing nothing substantive, and then refusing to give back to the country in any way. It doesn’t have to be taxes–some of the most venal human beings in the world back in the old days (Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.) were also incredible philanthropists who started universities, supported the arts, and so forth. Where are those types of rich people now? Bill Gates, Oprah, etc., are noteworthy in their charity because it’s the exception, not the norm.
I agree that there are plenty of poor parasites sucking up public money without giving in return, but the money they such out of the system is pretty small compared the money sucked out by the rich putting money into over seas banks and sending American jobs over seas just to make more money.
i wanna see a Twilight spin-off where Blade stabs Edward Cullen in the jugular. That sounds like a good vampire movie for a change.
I would gladly go opening day to see that movie.
that would make my day! i would definitely go see that!
Blade is too good to waste his time on that sparkly wannabe vamp.
Check out Buffy Versus Edward on YouTube. So brilliant, so satisfying.
Thank you for that visual. It made my day.
I’ve always seen the seduction as just another tool in the predator’s arsenal. Not that they _really_ need the love of a good woman, but it benefits them to want you to believe that.
It’s possible to write a genuinely good-guy vampire, but those were more interesting when they were the exception and not the rule. Even Anne Rice’s vampires, who unfortunately shoulder a lot of the current blame for “toothless” undead, were fueled by murder when it comes right down to it.
Dude, you forgot Spike. Granted, he’s like Angel in that he also seeks redemption later in the series, but he was still a bad ass vampire.
Am I the only one who has read the Joe Pitt series by Charlie huston? It is by far the most interesting vampire fiction I’ve ever read because there’s nothing mystical or romantic about the vampires. They’re just people who got infected with a disease and now have to deal with a chemical addiction to human blood. It’s that simple! And they’re amazing books!
sooo glad there is finally a movie where vampires aren’t sensitive and depressed and moody. instead they are only seductive so you’ll willingly follow them into their house where noone will be able to hear your terrified, helpless screams as you’r neck is torn apart and your blood is drained slowly while you’re still alive, able to feel every bit of the pain. i can’t wait to see this. it’s gunna be awesome. a refreshing change of pace from the romantic, “gorgeous glittery” vampires of late.
If you’re looking for non-romantic vampire flicks, don’t forget 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and NEAR DARK.
LET ME IN with Chloe Moretz.