Thursday, September 15, 2011

The problem with this town...all the damn Vampires!

Grandpops classic final line from "The Lost Boys",  a genuinely cool Vampire movie (despite the Corey bros)with young, cool Kiefer Sutherland (who worked the mullet!) and a studly Jason Patrick before hair loss got to him. This movie was a hit long before vamps became our new goth/pop du'jour.  I think that every 10-15 years or so some new stylistic approach hooks the younger generation on the classic creatures and brings them back to the front of the entertainment fold.  The Ann Rice vampire novels were popular in the 80's and 90's and led up the Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise movie most people probably know the story by and, very safe to say, inspired the current crop of vamp writers and show runners.

We now have the new YA vampire/supernatural book trend that has led to equally successful movies and TV shows.  My wife is hooked on True Blood which is almost a guarantee that the show will go off the air, especially now that they've killed half the cast. Always happens to her shows. The prime time  vamp TV show I've never noticed and, to be honest, I'm surprised we haven't had more thrown together vampire movies and shows featuring young, cool blood suckers.  

Now instead of Lestat and Louis (who was a "good vampire" but ultimately accepts his new, dark nature) we have "progressive" vampires. They ask before they drink from you or, having retained their morality and humanity, skip feeding from people all together and reserve their appetites for animals. They can go out in the sunlight and only twinkle and they have evening jobs in southern dinners to pay the bills vice pilfering the wealth of their victims. Awfully moral of them. Good upright citizens.

That's why Lost Boys and Ann Rice are so relevant now I think. They were, to my knowledge the first vampire stories where there were "good vampires" instead of the age old tale of men fighting monsters far out of their weight class. This was repeated, very well I thought, in "30 days of Night" where Ethan Hawke infects himself to gain their powers as the only means to fight the towns undead attackers.  

As for our current trend credit can clearly go to Stephanie Meyers. God bless her for her meteoric success but honestly, I'm not that well read on her.  My Tyler Lautner obsessed daughter has all the Twilight books and, again, honestly, I haven't been able to get through the first one.  So far they're just not what I'm used to reading hundreds of pages of.  There has to be something there though so I'll give them another shot I guess.

So we have a new generation of consumers eating up a new style of vamp. I'm sure a lot of purist's don't care for the new breed and my own personal jury is still out.  Maybe I'm just used to the traditional tales, which may, from a point of view, just make me an old fart.

Whose your favorite Vampire character?

3 comments:

  1. I love Lost Boys. :) But my favorite vampires are the scary ones. Salem's Lot comes to mind. Dracula never did it for me (ala Bela Legosi) but Nosferatu. yeah, creepy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why thank you Miss Kitt, you're my first blog poster.

    Seriously, I should spend more time crafting posts here instead of replies at Joe and Dave's blogs.

    I might have more followers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah I know - my blog is neglected too. We should be blog buddies or something. It might actually motivate me to write it! lol

    ReplyDelete