If I bothered to associate with other vampires (most of whom, if the truth be known, are extremely tiresome creatures), I would commend to them the film The Lost Boys. Aside from the one serious flaw in the filmmakers' handling of the transformation from mortal to undead and a minor quibble detailed below, I found virtually nothing to complain about in this film. In addition, it contains one important lesson every vampire should remember: Hubris is the vampire's worst enemy.
A newly divorced mother moves with her two sons to a small but overly festive town in search of a new life with her crotchety father. Every vertical outdoor surface is littered with missing persons posters. Also, none of the myriad mortals slain during the course of the film return from their demise. I was pleased no end to see that the cineastes gave some thought to one of the primary dilemmas of predation: preventing the risen predators from outnumbering the prey (see my previous reviews for more on this important topic). Apparently, the victims are permanently disposed of, although the means of disposal is never explained. No matter. It is done somehow, and the number of vampires never exceeds the handful called for in the scenario. I find this a most gratifying conceit on the part of the filmmakers.
While I personally find the concept of a society of the undead, no matter how small it may be, distasteful, I do know of certain of my fellow creatures of the night who choose to gather in family groups. The one presented in The Lost Boys is reasonably managed. Aside from dining on human viands (including garlic! How gauche! Also impossible under any conditions of which I am aware) and recruiting new members by a suspect method, there is almost nothing in the depiction of the living dead in this movie to arouse my disdain. I am willing to grant some artistic license as regards the characters' feeding habits for the sake of the overall important message to my kind the film includes.
That being that the wise vampire pays attention to his surroundings. There are two characters who advertise themselves on the back of a comic book as being vampire hunters for hire. How did this fact escape the leader of the clan, or its membership? Regardless of how ineffectual vampire vigilantes might seem to be, it was remiss on the part of the 'head' vampire to allow two mortals to openly flaunt their knowledge of his kind and their intention of murdering him and his family. These young gentlemen should have been quietly disposed of long before the events of the film. Arrogance has its place, but it should also have its limits.
In all other respects, my kind are presented as well in The Lost Boys as could be hoped for. Would that it were so in most of the other vampire movies inflicted upon the public.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Better, but imperfect
Since my last missive to this site, I have devoted some considerable time to searching through recordings of the films about my kind, hoping to find one accurate representation of vampirism. I have yet to locate a single movie that is without flaw, but I am pleased to report that I have had one provided to me by my mortal minions that is not completely off base.
Vamp was produced in 1986, and concerns a trio of college students in search of a stripper for a fraternity party. They find themselves in a nightclub owned and operated by the undead. Having spent some time running my own, similar business, I found that I generally approved of the methods employed by this group of vampires. They located their establishment in an area of the city not willingly frequented by the representatives of local law enforcement, and catered to a degenerate clientele who would not be missed once consumed by the employees. The drained bodies are then disposed of appropriately, for the most part. A sound business plan, in my opinion, and one that takes advantage of the sensual nature of our kind.
The necessary complication arises when one of the students is brought to the owner of the club for her personal feeding. The minion who provided the meal did not realize that the young man had companions who would bring the attention of the authorities to bear on the sanguinary goings-on. This minion was suitably disposed of. Brava to Grace Jones' Katrina for appropriate ruthlessness.
My only complaints about her performance regard her actions while seducing the young man. The sexual act is not fulfilled, a fallacy common to many depictions of vampirism. I have dire plans for whichever of your scribes it was who first imagined that vampires are eunuchs. We are not. Katrina not only fails to consummate the affair, she rips open the boy's throat. As noted in my last review, indiscriminate rending open of the neck is wasteful, in that too much blood winds up on the sheets instead of flowing into the vampire's body. Worse, she missed out on the pleasures of the flesh she was entitled to as the local apex predator.
Then, there is the 'beast face' she presented prior to her attack on the doomed collegian. As far as I have been able to determine, Vamp is the origin of that odious conceit of mortal filmmakers. Although I am capable of assuming a variety of bestial visages, I never do so while feeding upon someone I'm in the process of seducing. When done properly, the victim should be so enraptured by the good and proper rogering she's receiving that such displays are wasted on her. While terrorizing the meal before feeding does increase the flavor by dumping adrenaline into the bloodstream, the midst of a seduction is not the proper time and place. Save your adrenaline-laden meals for less intimate attacks, as when picking off inconvenient stalkers or incompetent minions. One should have some respect for the sexual act and its inherent beauty.
These are minor quibbles compared the one major flaw in the film. When the hero and his lady friend are fleeing the wrath of Katrina and her chief subordinates, they stumble upon the lair containing the coffins of the majority of the club's employees just as those vampires are retiring for the day. His reaction to his peril is to tip over a drum of some flammable liquid located at the entrance to the lair and set the contents afire, thus destroying the club and all its undead denizens. What self-respecting vampire keeps a container of kerosene in its bedchamber? The presence of that barrel is ludicrous, a plot device conjured up by a screenwriter evidently bankrupt of ideas. I was sorely disappointed in his solution to the problem he set his characters. Given the opportunity, I fully intend to express my displeasure in a manner likely to prove exceedingly painful to him.
Other than this one glaring error and Katrina's unwarranted celibacy, I found Vamp enjoyable. Would that the rest of the cinematic exploits of the undead were so.
Vamp was produced in 1986, and concerns a trio of college students in search of a stripper for a fraternity party. They find themselves in a nightclub owned and operated by the undead. Having spent some time running my own, similar business, I found that I generally approved of the methods employed by this group of vampires. They located their establishment in an area of the city not willingly frequented by the representatives of local law enforcement, and catered to a degenerate clientele who would not be missed once consumed by the employees. The drained bodies are then disposed of appropriately, for the most part. A sound business plan, in my opinion, and one that takes advantage of the sensual nature of our kind.
The necessary complication arises when one of the students is brought to the owner of the club for her personal feeding. The minion who provided the meal did not realize that the young man had companions who would bring the attention of the authorities to bear on the sanguinary goings-on. This minion was suitably disposed of. Brava to Grace Jones' Katrina for appropriate ruthlessness.
My only complaints about her performance regard her actions while seducing the young man. The sexual act is not fulfilled, a fallacy common to many depictions of vampirism. I have dire plans for whichever of your scribes it was who first imagined that vampires are eunuchs. We are not. Katrina not only fails to consummate the affair, she rips open the boy's throat. As noted in my last review, indiscriminate rending open of the neck is wasteful, in that too much blood winds up on the sheets instead of flowing into the vampire's body. Worse, she missed out on the pleasures of the flesh she was entitled to as the local apex predator.
Then, there is the 'beast face' she presented prior to her attack on the doomed collegian. As far as I have been able to determine, Vamp is the origin of that odious conceit of mortal filmmakers. Although I am capable of assuming a variety of bestial visages, I never do so while feeding upon someone I'm in the process of seducing. When done properly, the victim should be so enraptured by the good and proper rogering she's receiving that such displays are wasted on her. While terrorizing the meal before feeding does increase the flavor by dumping adrenaline into the bloodstream, the midst of a seduction is not the proper time and place. Save your adrenaline-laden meals for less intimate attacks, as when picking off inconvenient stalkers or incompetent minions. One should have some respect for the sexual act and its inherent beauty.
These are minor quibbles compared the one major flaw in the film. When the hero and his lady friend are fleeing the wrath of Katrina and her chief subordinates, they stumble upon the lair containing the coffins of the majority of the club's employees just as those vampires are retiring for the day. His reaction to his peril is to tip over a drum of some flammable liquid located at the entrance to the lair and set the contents afire, thus destroying the club and all its undead denizens. What self-respecting vampire keeps a container of kerosene in its bedchamber? The presence of that barrel is ludicrous, a plot device conjured up by a screenwriter evidently bankrupt of ideas. I was sorely disappointed in his solution to the problem he set his characters. Given the opportunity, I fully intend to express my displeasure in a manner likely to prove exceedingly painful to him.
Other than this one glaring error and Katrina's unwarranted celibacy, I found Vamp enjoyable. Would that the rest of the cinematic exploits of the undead were so.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Stupid and Wasteful
Shakespeare was spot-on when he put these words into the mouth of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
(I am only able to type that because Puck was not addressing his remarks to the deity some of you mortals credit as being your creator, but rather the fairy king, Oberon. I’ve met Oberon. A bit of a stiff, but not an altogether unpleasant sort.
I, on the other hand, am an altogether unpleasant sort.)
I have come to this conclusion after centuries of watching, sometimes with amusement, more often with disgust, your attempts to depict my kind in folklore, books, film, television and stage plays. We are shown either as genteel sensualists, angst-ridden existentialists or mindless savages. I must admit that, while there are varieties of my species who display one or more of these traits to some degree, overall we are much more complex, and at the same time much simpler beings. We just want your blood. How we go about getting it is a reflection of our personal style, and therein lie the variations on the theme that have you so confused. Not that it’s difficult to confuse you. You are a remarkably gullible race.
I propose in this space to explain to you fools just how far off your depictions of us in your media are. I only hope there are enough gigabytes in the universe to encompass the enormity of your misconceptions.
I wish to address my remarks on this occasion to a film I recently viewed, 30 Days of Night. Overall, I don't suppose it was a completely worthless cinematic exercise, but I am not here to discuss the various technical aspects of the filmmaker's craft. I am only interested in how my kind are portrayed, and on that subject I find several problems that incline me to wish all manner of painful accidents would befall the creators of this movie.
The basic concept is rather intriguing. A small town at the very northernmost part of Alaska, an area that experiences a month-long period without exposure to the sun during the deepest part of winter, is invaded by a band of, as near as I can tell, a dozen or so vampires. The population of Barrow, Alaska during the thirty days of night is roughly ten times the number of vampires, which isn't a totally ludicrous ratio of apex predator to prey, as long as they are careful to prevent any further vampires from being created. There is an attempt to do so at first, but enough victims escape the final death to complicate matters for the mortal survivors and increase the vampires' competition for a rapidly decreasing food supply. This is just sloppy work. I expected more from them, based on the relative soundness of their means of infiltration.
The vampires send in one of their mortal pets to complete the isolation of the town and remove the few protections it might have. Up to this point, I don't disapprove too strenuously. Their scheme is not completely idiotic, but their subsequent actions don't support the notion that they have sufficient brains to plan such an elaborate set-up. Frankly, once inside the town, they act like morons.
Allow me to reflect upon my statement above regarding the ratio of prey to predator. Among the lesser creatures of jungle and plain, a ten-to-one proportion is serviceable, as long as the numbers remain more-or-less consistent. This requires restraint on the part of the predator.
The vampires in 30 Days of Night display no such restraint. They descend upon the town at the moment the long night begins, and rampage through Barrow in a paroxysm of wasteful violence that reduces their food supply well below any semblance of a tolerable level. Within moments, no more than a handful of mortal survivors huddle in attics and crawlspaces. What do these imbecilic vampires expect to feed upon for the remaining twenty-nine days? Raw hamburger? Spam? Bran flakes?
Their table manners also leave a great deal to be desired. Apparently, the filmmakers were possessed of huge amounts of synthetic blood they were contractually obligated to spew indiscriminately. Each kill was accompanied by vast spurts of blood as the vampires sprang from victim to victim, rending open jugulars and carotids in a most slovenly manner. Most of the victims' blood, the source of unlife to these incompetent predators, wound up decorating the snow instead of flowing into the vampires' bodies. Each drop of blood is precious, and yet the vampires of 30 Days of Night allowed the bulk of their sustenance to spatter unconsumed. They gobbled when their purposes would have been better served by sipping.
And what is you mortals' fascination with our so-called language? There is no vampire tongue, common to all the undead. We speak whatever language we learned in life, and any we pick up through the centuries. I plan to address this issue more fully in my dissection of the abominable Blade films.
My last major objection is the whole notion of vampirism as a communicable disease. Three characters in this film turn without dying from vampiric exsanguinations, or any other of the recommended means of attaining post-life animation. There is no vampire germ, spread through the bite of blood of the undead. You have to die to come back as the living dead. I find it highly objectionable when your so-called creative minds reduce my condition to the same status as the common cold or influenza. The Blade films must also answer for this inaccuracy, upon the occasion of their own dissection.
Apart from the half-hearted and ultimately ineffectual attempt to restrict the creation of new vampires, I did find one aspect of the vampires' modus operandi laudable. The disposal of the pet who enabled them to establish themselves in Barrow was handled sensitively and accurately. I have had thousands of occasions to end my association with a mortal servant once his or, more usually, her usefulness was at an end. When the time came in the film for the unnamed stranger to meet his fate, I found the actions of the vampire leader admirable. Evil is not always unkind, and the actor demonstrated a most appropriate level of sympathy for his doomed pet. In these two respects alone, I approve of 30 Days of Night.
In all other respects, however, I am appalled. In symbolic protest, I plan to feed upon two of your fellow humans this evening, rather than one. Let that additional death be on the heads of every mortal involved in the production of this abomination.
Yours truly, Valdemar Soltiescu, Vampire
(I am only able to type that because Puck was not addressing his remarks to the deity some of you mortals credit as being your creator, but rather the fairy king, Oberon. I’ve met Oberon. A bit of a stiff, but not an altogether unpleasant sort.
I, on the other hand, am an altogether unpleasant sort.)
I have come to this conclusion after centuries of watching, sometimes with amusement, more often with disgust, your attempts to depict my kind in folklore, books, film, television and stage plays. We are shown either as genteel sensualists, angst-ridden existentialists or mindless savages. I must admit that, while there are varieties of my species who display one or more of these traits to some degree, overall we are much more complex, and at the same time much simpler beings. We just want your blood. How we go about getting it is a reflection of our personal style, and therein lie the variations on the theme that have you so confused. Not that it’s difficult to confuse you. You are a remarkably gullible race.
I propose in this space to explain to you fools just how far off your depictions of us in your media are. I only hope there are enough gigabytes in the universe to encompass the enormity of your misconceptions.
I wish to address my remarks on this occasion to a film I recently viewed, 30 Days of Night. Overall, I don't suppose it was a completely worthless cinematic exercise, but I am not here to discuss the various technical aspects of the filmmaker's craft. I am only interested in how my kind are portrayed, and on that subject I find several problems that incline me to wish all manner of painful accidents would befall the creators of this movie.
The basic concept is rather intriguing. A small town at the very northernmost part of Alaska, an area that experiences a month-long period without exposure to the sun during the deepest part of winter, is invaded by a band of, as near as I can tell, a dozen or so vampires. The population of Barrow, Alaska during the thirty days of night is roughly ten times the number of vampires, which isn't a totally ludicrous ratio of apex predator to prey, as long as they are careful to prevent any further vampires from being created. There is an attempt to do so at first, but enough victims escape the final death to complicate matters for the mortal survivors and increase the vampires' competition for a rapidly decreasing food supply. This is just sloppy work. I expected more from them, based on the relative soundness of their means of infiltration.
The vampires send in one of their mortal pets to complete the isolation of the town and remove the few protections it might have. Up to this point, I don't disapprove too strenuously. Their scheme is not completely idiotic, but their subsequent actions don't support the notion that they have sufficient brains to plan such an elaborate set-up. Frankly, once inside the town, they act like morons.
Allow me to reflect upon my statement above regarding the ratio of prey to predator. Among the lesser creatures of jungle and plain, a ten-to-one proportion is serviceable, as long as the numbers remain more-or-less consistent. This requires restraint on the part of the predator.
The vampires in 30 Days of Night display no such restraint. They descend upon the town at the moment the long night begins, and rampage through Barrow in a paroxysm of wasteful violence that reduces their food supply well below any semblance of a tolerable level. Within moments, no more than a handful of mortal survivors huddle in attics and crawlspaces. What do these imbecilic vampires expect to feed upon for the remaining twenty-nine days? Raw hamburger? Spam? Bran flakes?
Their table manners also leave a great deal to be desired. Apparently, the filmmakers were possessed of huge amounts of synthetic blood they were contractually obligated to spew indiscriminately. Each kill was accompanied by vast spurts of blood as the vampires sprang from victim to victim, rending open jugulars and carotids in a most slovenly manner. Most of the victims' blood, the source of unlife to these incompetent predators, wound up decorating the snow instead of flowing into the vampires' bodies. Each drop of blood is precious, and yet the vampires of 30 Days of Night allowed the bulk of their sustenance to spatter unconsumed. They gobbled when their purposes would have been better served by sipping.
And what is you mortals' fascination with our so-called language? There is no vampire tongue, common to all the undead. We speak whatever language we learned in life, and any we pick up through the centuries. I plan to address this issue more fully in my dissection of the abominable Blade films.
My last major objection is the whole notion of vampirism as a communicable disease. Three characters in this film turn without dying from vampiric exsanguinations, or any other of the recommended means of attaining post-life animation. There is no vampire germ, spread through the bite of blood of the undead. You have to die to come back as the living dead. I find it highly objectionable when your so-called creative minds reduce my condition to the same status as the common cold or influenza. The Blade films must also answer for this inaccuracy, upon the occasion of their own dissection.
Apart from the half-hearted and ultimately ineffectual attempt to restrict the creation of new vampires, I did find one aspect of the vampires' modus operandi laudable. The disposal of the pet who enabled them to establish themselves in Barrow was handled sensitively and accurately. I have had thousands of occasions to end my association with a mortal servant once his or, more usually, her usefulness was at an end. When the time came in the film for the unnamed stranger to meet his fate, I found the actions of the vampire leader admirable. Evil is not always unkind, and the actor demonstrated a most appropriate level of sympathy for his doomed pet. In these two respects alone, I approve of 30 Days of Night.
In all other respects, however, I am appalled. In symbolic protest, I plan to feed upon two of your fellow humans this evening, rather than one. Let that additional death be on the heads of every mortal involved in the production of this abomination.
Yours truly, Valdemar Soltiescu, Vampire
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)