Kelly WandIn Praise of Vampires (Or Not)
September 8th 2006 06:54
So, let me tell you about my dream. No, it’s more like a nightmare but it begins something like this. I have every good reason to believe this is not going to be not just a dream but a good dream. I find myself in a room with Sarah Michelle Geller and she sidles up to me in that perky blonde way she does. Some may try to stop me now because they are sure they know which way this dream is going. For my part, I’m pretty much hoping the dream is heading down that path. You know the old saying; what comes in dreams stays in dreams (or is that holidays to Thredbo – I never can remember.)
Anyway, there she is; all bouncy and wholesome in a kill crazy kind of way. She turns to me and says “Hi, I’m Buffy. Can you tell me about vampires?”
It is at this point, I realise that we are in a library. Oh my God! I’m not her potential love interest after all. It turns out that I’m Giles. I let out a loud, horrified scream of “No” even though I can tell her a whole bunch of shit about the fanged dudes. Life is hard but it could have been worse. I could have been Xander.
So, Buffmeister. This one is for you… It’s not a complete history. It is not even a partial history. It’s just four reviews linked by a common theme. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
Someone once told me that it is impossible to make a bad vampire film. This isn’t strictly true but it is true enough that it allows you to make such a bold statement and people will at least have the decency not to laugh straight in your face. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Don’t get me started with “Queen of the Damned”. Of course, that was a lost cause before they even started rolling the cameras. Take two six hundred page novels and try to compress them into one two hour movie. Whilst it is true that Anne Rice never writes a sentences where three paragraphs will do, such an act of reduction would leave even the most ruthless of City Editors dazed and confused. I won’t mention any of the film makers my name. I’m sure they have all been desperate to strike this atrocity from their collective memories and resumes.
Characters who, in the book, couldn’t be more different are combined with no recourse to reason. Characters walk into scene with no explanation of who they are or what they are doing there. We’re pretty sure they are there to fight the Queen of the Damned but I couldn’t tell you if that was supposed to be by accident or design. They wander off and are never seen again. I’ve read all those books several times and even I couldn’t make sense of the mess. After seeing it at the cinema, I re-read the books and watched the DVD. It still didn’t make any sense. Finally, I had to admit that the film was terrible. You could make a bad vampire film and this bad vampire film did not come alone. It had friends.
I don’t care if the soundtrack to “Vampyros Lesbos” is played in all the hippest joints around the world. The film, with its endless parade of arty cutaway shots to scorpions, butterflies and kites, is as dull as dishwater. One assumes these ponderous shots are there for the intellectuals in the audience to justify their presence at a wank fest. Yeah, right. If you were aroused by this tosh I’d be seriously worried about you.
I can see all the so called clever stuff in there. I know that it is Bram Stoker’s Dracula with women playing Harker and Dracula. So what? There’s no attempt made here to add any kind of comment through this “re-imagining”. It does, however, present an opportunity for the women to take their clothes off. They strip with all the enthusiasm of a “naturist” film. Some bestow cult status on director Jesse Franco but, personally, I don’t see it. He directs with all the enthusiasm of a man assigned to work in a prison laundry.
The biggest joke is that, even though it is billed as a masterpiece of erotic cinema, it completely fails to be erotic. Nobody in the cast looks like they are particularly enjoying their kinky vampire sex and kinky vampire sex is supposed to be enjoyed. (Trust me on how I know this.) Psycho sexadelic horror freakout my arse! Ninety minutes of terminal boredom. You can’t even watch it ironically because it is not bad enough to be funny. I have watched it for you, gentle reader and there is no reason for you to go there. By all means buy the soundtrack and display the poster but ignore the film.
If you really want seventies lesbian vampire fun, you’re better off going for “Vampyres”. In this film, two lesbian vampires roam the English countryside scoring lifts off of passing perverts. Not only are these men perverts, they are nineteen seventies perverts with all the dress sense that implies. So, by dispatching these travellers of the road, the girls are probably doing us all a favour even if they are reducing the potential audience for this film.
Jose Ramon Larraz instils a brooding gothic atmosphere that should go down a bomb with anyone who has ever worn black clothes and too much make-up. Marianne Morris and Anulka (the two leads) look like they’re having the best of times as they romp and butcher and then romp some more. Sex and vampirism can work well together but, in my opinion, the best vampire films are about desire.
Dan Curtis was responsible for an obscure nineteen seventies day time soap called “Dark Shadows” about the Collins Family: cursed to Vampirism and Werewolfism by the witch Angelique. I’ve only seen a couple of episodes but they did make a good argument for getting sick and missing school. Cursed as I was by a strict education authority, I was forced to keep up my habit through Comic books and a series of novels.
Curtis went on to make the “Night Stalker” and “Night Strangler” television movies (excellent) and the TV series that followed (not bad but increasingly unbelievable as reporter Kolshak managed to stumble across a new monster every week.) Curtis also produced and/or directed a series of television movies based on classic horror stories.
His version of “Dracula” has just been released, in the shoddiest of packaging (MRA should employ someone who at least has more than a casual acquaintance with photoshop), to DVD. The print is slightly lacking. Like many films shot on a tight budget, it occasionally suffers from all the ugliness associated with shooting day for night but it is an absolute lost classic of the genre.
As ridiculous as this sounds, Jack Palance owns the role of Dracula. He plays it as a man trapped by circumstance. Yes, he is evil but we understand him. Here is a man damned by his quest for his lost love. When Francis Ford Coppola made “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” it is fairly obvious he’d been running this film a couple of times. The romantic subplot Coppola introduces doesn’t come from Stoker’s novel. Besides, Gary Oldman seems to have gone out of his way to mimic Palance’s delivery.
Curtis is an excellent director – one of the few who knows how to work the frame of a 1.33:1 production. His use of vanishing points to produce depth is particularly stunning. (In art, a vanishing point is where lines that indicate depths converge.) He extracts brilliant performances from a mostly British cast and moves the action along at the kind of pace television demands.
Television movies are usually (with some justification) sneered at. This one should not be.
Anyway, there she is; all bouncy and wholesome in a kill crazy kind of way. She turns to me and says “Hi, I’m Buffy. Can you tell me about vampires?”
It is at this point, I realise that we are in a library. Oh my God! I’m not her potential love interest after all. It turns out that I’m Giles. I let out a loud, horrified scream of “No” even though I can tell her a whole bunch of shit about the fanged dudes. Life is hard but it could have been worse. I could have been Xander.
So, Buffmeister. This one is for you… It’s not a complete history. It is not even a partial history. It’s just four reviews linked by a common theme. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
Someone once told me that it is impossible to make a bad vampire film. This isn’t strictly true but it is true enough that it allows you to make such a bold statement and people will at least have the decency not to laugh straight in your face. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Don’t get me started with “Queen of the Damned”. Of course, that was a lost cause before they even started rolling the cameras. Take two six hundred page novels and try to compress them into one two hour movie. Whilst it is true that Anne Rice never writes a sentences where three paragraphs will do, such an act of reduction would leave even the most ruthless of City Editors dazed and confused. I won’t mention any of the film makers my name. I’m sure they have all been desperate to strike this atrocity from their collective memories and resumes.
Characters who, in the book, couldn’t be more different are combined with no recourse to reason. Characters walk into scene with no explanation of who they are or what they are doing there. We’re pretty sure they are there to fight the Queen of the Damned but I couldn’t tell you if that was supposed to be by accident or design. They wander off and are never seen again. I’ve read all those books several times and even I couldn’t make sense of the mess. After seeing it at the cinema, I re-read the books and watched the DVD. It still didn’t make any sense. Finally, I had to admit that the film was terrible. You could make a bad vampire film and this bad vampire film did not come alone. It had friends.
I don’t care if the soundtrack to “Vampyros Lesbos” is played in all the hippest joints around the world. The film, with its endless parade of arty cutaway shots to scorpions, butterflies and kites, is as dull as dishwater. One assumes these ponderous shots are there for the intellectuals in the audience to justify their presence at a wank fest. Yeah, right. If you were aroused by this tosh I’d be seriously worried about you.
I can see all the so called clever stuff in there. I know that it is Bram Stoker’s Dracula with women playing Harker and Dracula. So what? There’s no attempt made here to add any kind of comment through this “re-imagining”. It does, however, present an opportunity for the women to take their clothes off. They strip with all the enthusiasm of a “naturist” film. Some bestow cult status on director Jesse Franco but, personally, I don’t see it. He directs with all the enthusiasm of a man assigned to work in a prison laundry.
The biggest joke is that, even though it is billed as a masterpiece of erotic cinema, it completely fails to be erotic. Nobody in the cast looks like they are particularly enjoying their kinky vampire sex and kinky vampire sex is supposed to be enjoyed. (Trust me on how I know this.) Psycho sexadelic horror freakout my arse! Ninety minutes of terminal boredom. You can’t even watch it ironically because it is not bad enough to be funny. I have watched it for you, gentle reader and there is no reason for you to go there. By all means buy the soundtrack and display the poster but ignore the film.
If you really want seventies lesbian vampire fun, you’re better off going for “Vampyres”. In this film, two lesbian vampires roam the English countryside scoring lifts off of passing perverts. Not only are these men perverts, they are nineteen seventies perverts with all the dress sense that implies. So, by dispatching these travellers of the road, the girls are probably doing us all a favour even if they are reducing the potential audience for this film.
Jose Ramon Larraz instils a brooding gothic atmosphere that should go down a bomb with anyone who has ever worn black clothes and too much make-up. Marianne Morris and Anulka (the two leads) look like they’re having the best of times as they romp and butcher and then romp some more. Sex and vampirism can work well together but, in my opinion, the best vampire films are about desire.
Dan Curtis was responsible for an obscure nineteen seventies day time soap called “Dark Shadows” about the Collins Family: cursed to Vampirism and Werewolfism by the witch Angelique. I’ve only seen a couple of episodes but they did make a good argument for getting sick and missing school. Cursed as I was by a strict education authority, I was forced to keep up my habit through Comic books and a series of novels.
Curtis went on to make the “Night Stalker” and “Night Strangler” television movies (excellent) and the TV series that followed (not bad but increasingly unbelievable as reporter Kolshak managed to stumble across a new monster every week.) Curtis also produced and/or directed a series of television movies based on classic horror stories.
His version of “Dracula” has just been released, in the shoddiest of packaging (MRA should employ someone who at least has more than a casual acquaintance with photoshop), to DVD. The print is slightly lacking. Like many films shot on a tight budget, it occasionally suffers from all the ugliness associated with shooting day for night but it is an absolute lost classic of the genre.
As ridiculous as this sounds, Jack Palance owns the role of Dracula. He plays it as a man trapped by circumstance. Yes, he is evil but we understand him. Here is a man damned by his quest for his lost love. When Francis Ford Coppola made “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” it is fairly obvious he’d been running this film a couple of times. The romantic subplot Coppola introduces doesn’t come from Stoker’s novel. Besides, Gary Oldman seems to have gone out of his way to mimic Palance’s delivery.
Curtis is an excellent director – one of the few who knows how to work the frame of a 1.33:1 production. His use of vanishing points to produce depth is particularly stunning. (In art, a vanishing point is where lines that indicate depths converge.) He extracts brilliant performances from a mostly British cast and moves the action along at the kind of pace television demands.
Television movies are usually (with some justification) sneered at. This one should not be.
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Nothing wrong with being Xander, though. He gets to do Faith.
Comment by Bob Short
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I do think however that there are far more crap vamp films(eg: Buffy TV, Dracula 2000, Underworld, Queen Of The Damded, Interview With The vampire etc) than good ones.
A few modern faves are:
Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark- On the weekends between shooting James cameron's Aliens all the cast worked on this quality western/vamp hybrid.
Timur Bekmambetov's Nightwatch- Russian vampire epic that has 2 enticing sequels on the way.
Micael Almereyda'sNadja- produced by David Lynch, shot in b&W witha spoundtrack by Portishead. This is moody, atmospheric vampism at its best.
Abel Ferrera's The Addiction- It's Ferrera and you have Christopher Walken as the head of a group of vamps who inject blood rather than rip throats.
Simon Wests Razor Blade Smile- spanning hundreds of years this tells the tale ofthe erotically charged, super cool fem vamp Lilith Silver
Comment by Bob Short
I did like "Interview with a Vampire" probably because it was so damn miserable and hopeless and packed full of angst. It was also funny seeing Tom Cruise being camper than a weekend in the Royal National Park.
Did you really not like the Buffy TV series? I can understand you not liking the original film but...
Ah, well. To each their own.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Frightens me how silmilar our tastes seem to be on some things.
Try to get your hands on the VHS in Oz or the DVD from the UK of RazorBlade Smile.
Me thinks it will make you grin.
Comment by Bob Short
It's funny. I used to remember every film I saw in tremendous detail. Now that I have watched so many thousand films, it is hard to just pull them out of my hat. It infuriates my friends who pluck a DVD off the shelf and talk in great detail about a favourite scene. I look at them blankly. They maybe watch two or three flicks a week. Left to my own devices and the absence of economic considerations, I can do five or six a night.
I now, however, find a quicly penned review is the best way to stick them into my mind. At least I can look up what I thought last time and violently disagree with myself.
I'm a big guy. I have plenty of room for contradictions!