I’ve noticed this on a number of TV shows. When they’re making jokes about vampires, the vamp will often make say “bleh!” for no discernible reason, like it’s supposed to be scary.
Cites: Greg the Bunny’s Count Blah, of course. I’ve seen this on The Simpsons and a few other shows as well.
I’ve read Dracula, and though it was a while ago, I’m pretty sure Vlad never says “Bleh!” to Harker. Likewise, I’ve seen Nosferatu, and none of the title cards had Orlok saying “bleh!” to anybody. Does anyone know where this silly thing came from?
Actually, thinking about it a sec, I’m hearing a hundred-odd bad impersonations of Bela Lugosi in my head, doing the “I vant to suck your blood!” line. Blood, in the bad accent, becomes bluh (with a shortened, almost silent, d or t sound at the end of the word), which just becomes the one readily identifiable word when you think of someone’s bad Hungarian/Transylvanian vampire-speak.
Or possibly not.
Possibly I need to stop posting shortly after taking antihistamines.
Thanks. I aim to entertain as well as… well, this isn’t really informing. Okay, I just aim to entertain. (Remember: aim low, and when you hit the ground, you’ll bounce.)
Now really, would this board be any fun if people stopped posting while on drugs?
I remember an episode of The Monkeys where they encountered several movie monsters including Dracula. Davey was dressed up like a vampire having a conversation with him, and the conversation went something like:
“I want to suck your blood!”
“Bood? Bleh!”
“Bleh?”
“Bleh! Blood? Bleh!”
I think it’s just a comical mockery of the horrible accent used in many low budget vampire films, etc.
In the old Pink Panther cartoons, there was occasionally a pudgy vampire character that would menace the panther and hilarity would ensue. Of course, the cartoons were “silent”, so the only spoken line was the vampire saying “Blooh! Blooh!”, which I always took as a parody of Bela Lugosi’s accent. As far as I know, this is the source of the other “Bleh” phenomenon.
The only vampire I ever saw doing this was Count Floyd, on Second City TV (late seventies early 1980s). I vote for the “bad imitation of East European Accent” theory, too.
I think the “blood=bleh” cheesy accent explanations are the closest. It’s one of those bad voice impression tag lines like “You dirty rat!” when you’re supposed to be doing Cagney, or “Nyah!” for Edward G. Robinson, or “Judy, Judy, Judy” for Cary Grant. I don’t think any of them ever actually said those things, but if bad impressionists didn’t we’d have no idea who they were trying to impersonate.
I don’t know but I long for a return to the good ole days when vampires wore capes, turned into bats and said “bleh! bleh!” I’m sick of these pretentious, introspective vampires who hang out in raves all night wearing leather pants, Armani shirts, listening to techno and carrying customized Belgian machineguns.
Vampires aren’t supposed to reflect - in mirrors or on the meaning of their existance. “Ooooo! Woahh is me! I’m a Vampire! I can’t go out in the daylight! I have to drink blood to live! Dude…suck it up (excuse the pun). You don’t here The Mummy acting like a little bitch!”
Yeah, if all I did was suck blood for a living, I’d be “bleh!” too.
The girl always has on a low cut dress, showing ample cleavage. Something I’d really like to suck, but NO!! All I get to do is lay a turbo hickey on her neck. Picture Sharon Tate in “The Fearless Vampire Killers” and tell me all you’d suck would be her neck.
I believe that it was David Skal, in The Monster Show, who traced the current type of vampire imitation (including the “bleh”) to a Lenny Bruce parody of Dracula as an aging Yiddish gent.
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