We are almost done w/ the Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass. It starts off as a creepy scenario where “miracles” occur within the context of church. It pretty quickly turns out to be a vampire flick. But at no point does any character mention the word vampire.
Now I know it would not make for good new books/shows if every character could say, “Oh - this sounds like a werewolf. Crack out the silver bullets.” But OTOH, it seems kinda weird for a character to be presented as a full developed 21st century person who never heard to Dracula. Or slasher movies - so they wander into the dark cellar.
What are some of your favorite examples where characters were blindly unaware of pretty obvious horror conventions. Are there examples of horror-lit “aware” characters done well? Maybe Buffy? But they aren’t just “normal” for.
My favorite has always been George Clooney in “From Dusk Til Dawn”, and the follow-up discussion. “Has any here read an actual book on vampires, or are we all just repeating things we’ve seen in movies?”
This bothered me about The Walking Dead. I know the point was that it was a world in which nobody had ever heard of zombies, but come on.
There’s kind of a whole category of ‘meta-horror’. The ‘Scream’ franchise and ‘Cabin in the Woods’ being two prime examples. How ‘done well’ they were is a matter of opinion. I thought ‘Scream’ was a little too much up its own ass, but I enjoyed Cabin in the Woods.
Actually, this brings up an issue that fascinates me.
1.) Most of our “knowledge” of a lot of these supernatural beings comes from the books and, to a large extent, the movies (thank you, George Clooney). In particular, your example of silver bullets. That’s a 20th century invention. It first appears in , I think, print fiction, but most werewolf “lore” comes from the movies. In particular, the Universal movies, where most of it was invented by screenwriter Curt/Kurt Siodmak, who came up with the whole “Even a man who goes to church by day…” poem, and the Pentagram in the palm thing. Originally it wasn’t werewolves, but witches that were killed by silver bullets. Look it up.
2.) as I’ve remarked before, Bram Stoker is responsible for codifying and in many cases inventing many of the features of vampire lore. Not all of them (staking a vampire in a coffin long precedes him, and sunlight or ultraviolet light killing them came well after him), but enough of them.
3.) But once you get this list of properties of your monster, and you know how to avoid or deflect or kill them, a lot of the horror is gone. A lot of the suspense and insecurity in stories and especially movies about monsters is that you don’t know their capabilities and weaknesses (while they seem to be pretty sure of yours). In an effort to restore that insecurity, I’ve noticed a lot of filmmakers indulging in the subversion of those apparently ironclad rules.
So in the Francis Ford Coppola version of Dracula Harker (Keanu Reeves) is wearing a crucifix around his neck as protection, but when he meets Dracula’s seductive “wives” it simply melts off his chest – some protection. In John Badham’s version of Dracula (1979 – the one with Frank Langella), someone holds up a crucifix to ward him off, and he grabs hold of it and it bursts into flame. In one of the Hammer Dracula films with Christopher Lee he pulls the stake out of his heart and goes after the Vampire Hunters. All of these have in common that they show what was thought to be sure-fire weapons against the vampires failing, which leaves your hero in a “what do I do now?” conundrum, unsure if anything will stop the monster.
Good post. But shouldn’t characters at least say, “Man, this sounds like a vampire.” “Boy, the books were wrong about garlic.” Or debate fast vs slow zombies.
I’m trying to think of a non-horror type of ignorance that would be vital to a plot. Like if someone had never heard of Hitler/Nazis, or the American Revolution or something.
I read it a few years ago. Not so bad for late Victorian fiction, but it was interesting to see the bits of lore that were introduced. It really made me want to visit Whitby though.
I liked what they did in Fright Night. On seeing a crucifix, the vampire briefly recoils, but then recovers with a grin: “It doesn’t work unless you believe.”
I thought it originated with The Wolf Man (1941), but you’re probably right about it first being in print. Note that in An American Werewolf in London (1981), regular bullets can kill werewolves.
What was that movie where the guy holds up a Star of David to a vampire and, when the vampire isn’t impressed, he says ‘Oh. It’s the other one, isn’t it?’
I understand they’ve made a tourist industry of Dracula there.
By the way, if you re-read it, I recommend an annotated edition. There are quite a few of them – two by Leonard Wolf, one by Leslie Klinger, and Dracula Unearthed by Clive Leatherdale – arguably the best.
I haven’t seen Fright Night, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen (or at least heard about) movies where the characters got into trouble because of what they thought they knew about vampires (or werewolves, or zombies) from pop culture.
Don’t know about that, but in The Fearless Vampire Killers, when a woman holds up a crucifix, the vampire says (in a heavy stereotyped “jewish” accent) “Oy, have you got the wrong vampire!”
In the Marvel comic book Tomb of Dracula a Star of David works perfectly well against the Count. In Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend the hero holds off a Jewish vampire with a Torah.
People in TV & movies are traditionally unaware of TV and movies, but that’s usually to keep them from aging badly due to too many pop culture references. They should know about stuff that’s in the public domain, though.
In Near Dark, they never actually use the word “vampire.” The closest they come is one of them says “We’re… different.”
Reminds me of the scene in The Mummy (1999), when Imhotep is coming for Beni, and Beni is trying all of the many amulets on his necklace to see if any of them will help. The Star of David is the one that catches Imhotep’s interest.
In The Wolf Man, he is killed by being clubbed to death with a silver-handled walking stick. We don’t get silver bullets until later in the series.
In 1935’s Werewolf of London, Universal’s first attempt at a werewolf, he is killed by (presumably lead) bullets from a policeman’s gun. There’s no reference to silver at all in that film.
The movie Johnny_L.A. is thinking of (“Shit, it’s the other one, isn’t it?”) is Love at First Bite.
I hope y’all don’t mind me mentioning something from another genre.
In science fiction movies, when one character is trying to explain something about time travel to another character, it seems increasingly common for the character on-screen to say something like, “Like when xyz happened in Back To the Future”, and then the second character understands, responding “Oh, right.”
Doc Brown had to draw diagrams on the blackboard in order for the audience to understand, but now, one throwaway line is all the writers need for exposition.
In his Popular Science column and his book Completely Mad Science Theodore Gray shows how to make silver bullets, but strongly suggests that you don’t try firing them. And this from a guy who tried to make salt by mixing sodium metal with chlorine gas.
By the way – a short story appeared in Famous Monsters of Filmland back in the 1960s about a werewolf in the Old West, the last words he ever hears being “Hi-yo Silver, away!”
The Lone Ranger stories were set in 19th century Texas, so if the “silver bullet” myth started in the 20th century, it couldn’t happen.
I feel like this warrants the same conclusion that was in an episode of Buffy, when they were discussing how to kill the Monster of the Week. “…and then I Stake it in the heart!”
“Stake in the heart is for killing vampires”
“Stake in the heart kills lots of things…”
Also used in The Lost Boys, “Garlic doesn’t work, boys!”
There was a time travel novel I read, in which the bad guy wanted to help the Confederates win the Civil War, so he took the plans and a physical copy of the Sten submachine gun back in time. His plans were ultimately foiled because he used the Harper’s Ferry arsenal to build the weapons, and all his equipment was destroyed when John Brown attacked the arsenal.
The hero confronts the villain after the attack, and asks him why he used a location that was going to be attacked before the proper Civil War even started, and it turned out, the villain had never heard of John Brown, and so missed this crucial bit of information.
There is a movie called, “I Sell The Dead,” about grave robbers and selling bodies to the university. It has a priceless Homer Simpson-type sequence where the GRs are picking up a corpse for the university professor (he’s blackmailing them) not realizing she’s a vampire that’s been dispatched via stake. They pull it out, she comes alive, they shove it back in, she’s dead. Out, in, out, in. And so on. Hysterical.
You might want to give it a gander, there’s some funny stuff. Plus Angus Scrimm. And Ron Perlman.
