Sunday, July 24, 2011

Vampire's I Have Known

The show Dark Shadows came on TV around the time I was in high school.  Everyday I’d rush home to catch the next episode and see what was happening in Collinswood and how Barnabus Collins was doing. By college days, I attended more than one Halloween party wearing a black suit, cape and fangs that looked more like the choppers of a werewolf. And there were the Dracula movies with Christopher Lee who even without fangs looked creepy.

Later, I took a writing class and wanted to write something with vampires in it, but the teacher tried to talk me out of it. She said vampires had been done too much. Nothing new could revive the tired concept. Actually I finally wrote the short story under her guidance and it became a shambles.

Anne Rice came along with her vampire tales and proved the writing teacher wrong.   I read The Vampire Lestat first and then Interview with Vampire.  Didn’t care much for Queen of the Damned. But 2 out of 3 is not bad.

With the advent of the Twilight series, vampires are everywhere.  My daughter is a great fan of Edward and recently has gotten me to read Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare, which has some vampires in it. Actually I was more interested I the steampunk aspect.

Yesterday, I watched on Netflix Let Me In and found it to be a 5 star movie.  What makes it good is the vampire aspect is not the central theme.  The story is about a lonely boy, Owen, who’s confronted daily by bullies.  His mother’s an alcoholic and his father’s shacked up with a woman named Cindy. New tenants move in next door. In their first meeting, Abby, who looks like a twelve year old girl (more or less), warns him that he doesn’t want to be friends with her. Despite her quirkiness, like not being out in the day time, going barefooted in the snow, Owen accepts Abby for who she is, another lonely soul, trying to get by in life.

Enough of my vampire stories, what’s your take on this biting subject?

3 comments:

  1. While vampires can be made scary, sexy, evil, good, funny, or whatever, I still don't like most stories involving them without the characters having real stories. Too many stories just use tired vampire cliches to scare us. I still like my idea of vampire babies. "Ah, let me burp you. Eiiiya. Stop biting." "Ah, brains." Oh, wait. That's zombies.

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  2. That's why I liked LET ME IN. Also took in a few other movies this weekend. THE LINCOLN LAWYER. SEASON OF THE WITCH. It was a movie fest weenend!

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  3. I liked that movie, too :)

    I'm afraid vampires are a niche market that are not generally taken seriously. I posted pages on that page99 test and while the comments were generally positive as far as the writing itself went, most of them then had to add, "But since it's about vampires I wouldn't really read it." *shakes head*

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