I was battling a case of insomnia last night, and happened to catch the 3:30 showing of From Dusk 'til Dawn on HBO. Hadn’t seen the movie in quite a long while, so I settled in to watch it.
When the movie gets to its huge plot shift in the middle where everyone in the bar is a vampire except the main characters, I was shocked to realize that this movie had the vampface switch complete with sound effects several years before Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit the airwaves.
Granted, in the Jossverse virtually all vamps have a similar vampface, while in Tarantino’s movie, some have a vampface, some look like giant lizards or bats, and some just have fangs and pale blue eyes.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder. Did Joss rip off this movie? If so, intentionally or unintentionally?
Well, the Buffy movie came out in 1992, whereas “From Dusk till Dawn” came out in 1996. So maybe the other way around?
Regardless, I would say there’s a good chance one was “inspired” by the other in this regard. I can hardly fault anyone for doing this, seeing as how pretty much every movie/television show is “inspired” by prior works.
[ol][]Robert Rodriguez directed From Dusk 'til Dawn; Tarantino is listed as one of the writers.[]Buffy the movie came out in 1992, although without the extensive face makeup. Dusk came out in 1996. Buffy the series began in 1997. I think it’s a pretty good bet that part of Buffy’s first season was already in the can by the time Dusk hit the screens.[]Vampire mythology stories have been around for a long time, all borrowing from each other.[]Tarantino, master synthesist that he is, would probably be the firs to tell you that there’s no such thing as “stealing” in the movies; it’s all been done before, and all we can hope for is a fresh approach to the same old material.[/ol]
Even better, years ago I read that Tarantino spent the night (you know what I mean) with a woman who, knowing who he was, unloaded her plot idea on him. The next morning (I guess they had a breakfast date) he came to an agreement with her to pay $10,000 for the previous night’s plot idea. If the story isn’t true it should be.
By the way does synthesist work like it does with Andrew Lloyd Weber - rip off one person and you’re derivative…rip off many and your a genius?
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[list=1][li]Buffy the movie came out in 1992, although without the extensive face makeup.[/li][/QUOTE]
Oops, I have to withdraw my resounding “no” to the OP, since the question was about the “vamp faces”. It appears the movie vampires were basically pasty-faced guys with plastic teeth, and my memory was faulty. I still hate to give FDTD any more credit than I have to.
How about if we say BtVS ripped off “Star Trek”? Remember how the Klingons went from looking not that much different than everyone else in the original series to having bumpy forehead appliances in the movies? It’s the same thing – except backwards – and different.
In fact, I’ve heard that Eddie Murphy’s character transforms into a Klingon-like being in some scenes of “A Vampire in Brooklyn” (1995), although I’ve never had the good fortune of seeing that particular example of his work.
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the effects companies involved borrowed concepts from each other? I’m pretty sure that QT and JW don’t sit around making drawings of what a vampire should look like-- they just work with what the technology allows 'em to do.
FWIW, Joss Whedon has stated that the design behind his vampires was based on wanting to have human-looking antagonists for the acting scenes, but monstrous-looking antagonists for the action scenes so he didn’t have Buffy killing hordes of normal looking people. Working from that premise, it would be hard to not end up with vampires that bore at least a passing resemblence to the ones in From Dusk 'til Dawn.
Joss said he did the vamp-face thing (and the dusty thing) because he didn’t like the image of Buffy killing her class-mates if they looked basically normal and then leaving their corpses all over town. I don’t know if he ripped off From Dusk Til Dawn, but I doubt it. I imagined he just told his make-up people to create a vamp mask. One of the DVDs–S2 I think–has an interview with the make-up people, they might mention how the design was made. If I wasn’t lazy, I’d check it out, lol.
James Marsters added to that saying that Joss wanted the vampires to be as scary and monstrous as possible. That’s why the only vamp in the history of the show who got to be in “human face” with fangs was Dracula. (Something james regretted because he thinks the look is “dead sexy”–it’s not something I regret too).
They share the central character and the basic premise: seemingly ordinary high-school girl must defend world against vampires (expanded to included all sorts of demonic forces in the series). Whedon claims that he never intended the movie to be as farcical as it was. The differences in tone can be explained in part by the fact that the head writer of a TV series has much more control over the result than a motion-picture screenwriter does.
In story terms, the series picks up where the movie left off, so it also makes sense that Buffy would be both wiser and more jaded.