It seems to me that we've been spending way, way too much time on Heroes and Lost lately, so I figured I'd turn my attention to something near and dear to my heart: a (brief) retrospective on vampire movies. I mentioned The Lost Boys a few days ago, so I won't cover that ground again.
I'll probably do this over a couple of weeks, and do my best to link the various postings together so readers won't get lost.
This is by no means a comprehensive review, nor is it intended to be in the least bit scholarly. I'll spend time talking about movies that I like, movies that I used to like, and movies that we all just ought to stay away from. Initially, I intended to make this a chronological review, from older movies to some of the more recent ones, but that just seemed a bit too much like work to me, so I'm going to jump around a bit.
My interest in vampires goes way, way back to elementary school. I was nuts about them. I read everything I could on the subject, from Stephen King's Salem's Lot to Stoker's epistolary novel Dracula. I read fiction, work claiming to be non-fiction, pulp fiction, saw the movies -- if it involved fangs and blood, I gave it a go. Fortunately, I'd like to think that I've matured over the years, but I still enjoy a good vampire movie whenever I come across one.
Unfortunately, the list of flicks to avoid is considerably longer than the ones to watch.
Let's start with an excellent book that was turned into a movie which I am somewhat ambivalent about today -- although it worked exceptionally well for me when I was still in grade school: Salem's Lot. This was a 1979 made-for-TV movie, and I saw it the night that it aired. I was terrified. I distinctly remember the eerie images of Danny Glick floating outside a window, encouraging his victim to come outside. I flinched when Barlow's hideous green face filled the screen without warning. I remember David Soul struggling to hold a cellar door shut as the hungry undead clamoured for his blood. I remember Father Callahan pitting his faith against the evil Barlow, with his crucifix shining its defiance against the vampire's evil.
It was awesome.
Of course, I was 12, and as jaded as I thought I was on the topic, it didn't take much to get my imagination going. I had already gone through the novel on which this movie was based so many times that I was primed to be terrified long before the show aired.
I did have the misfortune to go back and see this again as an adult. What a let down. If you enjoyed it as a child, don't wreck the memory by trying it again as an adult. Let sleeping dogs lie, as it were.
To be fair, I have been told that the DVD version I watched as an adult has been "butchered" from the original version on TV. It must have been, as I remember it being much, much better than that... (update: apparently you can buy the complete miniseries, uncut, on DVD now. Amazon has details here).
Apparently there was a remake of this in 2004, with Rob Lowe as Ben Mears. I have not seen it, and cannot comment, except to say that the IMDB user score is 6.1/10. Of course, the 1979 version has 6.3/10, so that's really not much to go on.... In any case, you can get a copy from various places on DVD. Amazon has one here. Before you shell out any cash, though, be sure to give the various user reviews a scan. I did, and lines like this jumped out at me:
It seems the fellow who adapted the novel, Peter Filardi, ... went hog-wild with it. The end result is that the only [thing] the movie characters have in common with their book counterparts are the names. Ben Mears was once held captive by the Taliban? Matt Burke is gay? Susan Norton is a waitress? Did Filardi even read the novel?Not terribly encouraging, to say the least.
Now let's jump to 1994, and the film adaptation of Anne Rice's (wildly popular) novel, Interview with the Vampire. Despite the fact that Tom Cruise is in it, and despite the fact that the novel did very little for me, I genuinely like this movie. Director Neil Jordan seemed to be able to pick up everything that is good in the novel, and leave out those things that would not translate well to the screen, as well as those things that are just plain silly. Despite the fact that it has a "star studded" cast (which in my opinion does not always bode well for a film), the various roles are cast extremely well. Brad Pitt is suitably morose, and his ethical quandaries and moral dilemmas (he's supposed to be a vampire who hates the notion of taking human life) come across very well.Tom Cruise plays Lestat, and his over-the-top freneticisim is perfect for this role. He is both believable and well cast. This may be the best role he has ever played. We also get to see Kirsten Dunst before she was Spiderman's significant other -- she plays a rather spooky vampire child, Claudia, and she does that very well .Most of the criticisms that arose from this film fell into two categories: either (a) those who liked it but had a problem with the way the film differed from the book; or (b) those who said it was "hyper-violent," with too much blood. Neither school of thought carries much weight from my perspective; I think it draws all the good things from the book while safely ignoring the bad, and as for blood -- it's a vampire movie. Get over it. I actually plan on purchasing this DVD at some point and adding it to my collection.
Here's one that I had great hopes for, and I still enjoy some things about the movie: John Carpenter's Vampires. This film came out in 1998, and it had a fair bit of hoopla leading up to its release. I saw it with a crowd of co-workers (I had just started a software development company, and it seems like virtually everyone came with me to see it). The reviews from the various coders, designers, and so forth were predictably mixed, although there was one fellow who had what I thought was an excellent observation: if you took away the sound track, with a heavy rock back beat, the movie lost much of its appeal.That may be true, but it's still worth seeing if you are a fan of vampire movies.
In this film, James Woods (one of my favourite actors) plays Jack Crow, a vampire hunter -- and he's not the creepy, disturbed Van Helsing type, either; he works for the Catholic Church, and he is armed to the teeth. I was a bit puzzled by some of the criticisms that came out after this movie was released. Several critics complained about the misogynist undertones running through the film. I've seen it twice, and looked for them both times. I didn't find them.
But that could just be me, I suppose.
I'll stop here for now, and pick this up again in a couple of days.
