I’ve been watching a few low-budget vampire films recently, and there’s a common…vein…in them that bugs me…
No Fangs!
the “vampires” in these “modern” vampire films are lacking the “nasty, sharp, pointy teeth” (what an eccentric performnce!) that vampires are supposed to have, after all, it’s one of the defining charateristics of cinema vampires, and it makes feeding on blood more efficient, and less messy
so far, here’s my last group of vampire films;
Rise; Blood Hunter - No Fangs
The Insatiable - No Fangs
The Thirst - No Fangs
Night Junkies - No Fangs
ReVamped; Immortality Sucks - Fangs a’ Plenty, and a good fun “B” Film to boot
without fangs, the movie isn’t a vampire film, it’s a zombie film without the fun of zombies, these “fangless” vampire films also tend to be whiny angst-fests, they truly “suck”
Bring back the classic vampire style with sultry vixens with pointy teeth, and lose the “Whiny Emo-Kids on a liquid diet” thing, fast!
The emo thing is the very REASON there’s so many vampire movies around. Vampires are the ultimate teen fantasy; they’re rebellious, get plenty of action, stay up all night, and shitty black clothing suits them. Vampirism is an inherently emo-ish state to be in.
If it wasn’t for the goth and emo teen set you wouldn’t have this glut of vampire movies at all.
Is this related in any way to the transmogrification of vampires from horror villains to action heroes? The Underworld and Blade movies are both more action films than traditional vampire movies.
Of course, in the Underworld movies the vampires have fangs. So maybe I’m collapsing my own point.
Spot on - and to take it further, vampires are misunderstood, but secretly powerful; they’re also damned to live forever in a world that rejects them. All highly emo.
All of that is true about modern vampire movies. I haven’t watched a vampire flick in a very long time because I’m not entertained by watching a bunch of Eurotrash play goth dress-up. Vampires are more entertaining to me when they are portrayed as something to be feared and loathed. Action flicks and vampire flicks have been resembling each other more and more in the last few years and I don’t like it.
Dear Og, is Night Junkies BAD, and not bad-in-a-good-way or so-bad-it’s-good, it’s just…bad
it’s Emo OVERLOAD!, and not the funny Emo either (Emo Phillips), it’s the most plodding, tedious, navel-gazing, self-important tripe I have EVER had the misfortune of watching
I’d rather watch UN-MST’ed Manos (or the Star Wars Holiday Special sans Rifftrax), while getting a root canal with no novocaine than watch a bunch of whiny Fangless British Vampires (Band Name!) whine about how their “addiction” to blood makes their life hard…
It’s, so far, the only Vampire film I have STOPPED watching halfway through, it’s…just…plodding…and…BAD!
What I usually see is fangs that come and go; that are only present when they’re needed. Like the vamp-face on Buffy and Angel. (Although I don’t watch horror - I prefer good-guy vamps.) If the fangs are there all the time then it’s hard for the vampire to pass for human, which limits the storyline.
Well, I haven’t seen the movies you described. But the trend, according to the Blade and Underworld films is that vampires should be portrayed as moping Eurotrash douchebags who wear black leather and carry exotic Belgian machineguns. Gee, where is that mall with the 24 hour Sunglass Hut and Armani store?
Incidentally, Buffy completely demolished any respect I had for vampires *qua * vampires, By Season 4 or so, they were basically orcs - cannon fodder the heroes had to fight through on their way to the REAL bad guys. In one finny sceme, a group pf vamps accosts Buffy on her way to a mission, and she just rolls her eyes, picks u a sharpened staff and kills all five or so of them in under 10 seconds, brushes herself off, and goes on her way.
The vampires were actually cool were cool despite the fact that they were vampire, not because of it.
Can I just tack on my bugbear about the perception of Vampires.
Vampires are not incredibly long lived they are no longer alive,they are ambulatory corpses,animated dead bodies they are the undead.
If you shag one,no matter how hot you are commiting necrophilia ,you are making love to a corpse,there now I’ve said it.
I write stories with vampires in them, and they’re not dead…they’ve been transformed into vampires by a bloodborne virus. They’re basically a different species. They’re not allergic to the sun, they don’t turn into bats and they really are very long-lived, but it’s like having to live forever with a chronic disease, where you always need medicine.
They’re also not whiny emo kids.
I agree that I would not want to be shagged by Dracula or some other icky dead vampire, though…
That seems like a silly point. I mean, the important difference between dead things and alive things is that dead things don’t think, talk, move, eat, sleep, fuck, etc. All the stuff that alive things do. So, if a being does do all those things, what’s the point in calling it “dead”? They’re undead, that is: Not Dead. They’re not totally alive, either, but they act a lot more like they’re alive than dead.
They are corpses animated by an unclean spirit in the European traditions. They are no more “alive” than a dead cat made to twitch by an electric shock. The consumption of blood isn’t the same as the consumption of food by a living creature. The unclean spirit is taking the victim’s life; the taking of the blood is rooted in the widespread ancient perception of “the blood is the life.” You don’t find too many vampire legends that describe vampires as in any way even remotely sexy, either. Back when more people genuinely believed in such things they were most often described in horrible terms and regarded with revulsion as well as fear. In the part of Eastern Europe where my family originated, they were described as bloated, hideous things (to differentiate them from the incorrupt remains of saints) that were often found awash in blood when exhumed for destruction.
