NEWS: Vampires: State of the Genre Report

GEEK: Vampires: State of the Genre Report

Vampires are awesome. Everyone knows that. And that's a fact that's unlikely to change anytime soon. For some reason the vampire genre never seems to go out of style, despite all manner of shitty and sub-par efforts. Blood, sweat, tears and cash are wasted in vain attempts to bring newer, shinier product to the public, which, most often, is ultimately inferior. It's a process that repeats itself every couple of months. Vampires are kind of bulletproof which maybe explains why people just throw stuff together and expect it to do well.

Another problem is that the genre has already peaked. The greatest vampire work of all-time is obviously Blade 3.

Uh, now that I think about it, actually, it's the Joss Whedon masterpiece Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hilarity, heart, depth, meaning, re-invention, subtext, metaphor, genius, and bad-ass villains galore... Yeah, not so top-able. Then came Angel which took everything great about Buffy, moved it to Los Angeles and had it open a detective agency. Yup.

"Hey, look at that proverbial bar, it's rising up into the clouds! Oh well, let's make movies about Aliens."

Only they didn't. They kept making vampire products. Admirable if not ill-advised. And here we are, years later, looking around at a mixed bag of vamp offerings.

Moonlight is still hanging around, I believe. A show that tried to go the Angel-vamp-detective route without the whole Joss Whedon part, which, to say the least, is a rather curious strategy.

One of the greatest vampire books of all-time, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, had a shot at being a pretty good vampire movie last year until they decided to take all the vampires out of it.

Twilight is on the horizon but it's a kid's movie based on kid's books.

The most promising recent offering was HBO's True Blood. It had HBO and a critically acclaimed writer/director attached, what more could you want? The answer was "many, many things." Alan Ball seems to have made a piece of vampire fiction without having ever seen a piece of vampire fiction (which, he kinda admits). The heavy-handed vampires as a minority group set-up has already been done. Puns like "God Hates Fangs" are atrocious and shouldn't have been done.

This show also commits the common sin of mistaking "updating" vampires for "putting tattoos and S&M gear" on vampires. I was all set to stop watching this series when last week's episode gave us the show's first enjoyable moment, a vampire mind-controlling a cop into handing over his gun. That was cool but not "wait four episodes to get to" cool.

All is not as bleak on the vamp-front as it appears, however. This looks intriguing.



Not bad at all. And did that kid use the phrase "go steady"? I wonder, is that the mistake of the sub-titler, in assuming we still use that phrase, or do they actually use that phrase in Sweden? Charming either way.

When all else fails, there's always Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8., which is easily the best vampire stuff around. God damn it, does Joss Whedon have to do everything vamp-related all by himself? Apparently he does.



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He doesn't, but he bloody well should.

I think you forgot to mention Blood Ties, which I haven't seen but is being heavily promoted down here. Based on the ads, I think it will suck about as much as Moonlight with its non-dusting vampires.

werewolves > vampires



also, Starz made a really good docu examining vampire films throughout the ages

My God. "Jokes' like that one are the reason I decided to not watch the show. Seems I made the right decision.

i'm kinda enjoying True Blood, or at least not not-enjoying it enough to stop watching. i don't wanna be that guy who bitches about how the books were better, but, well... in the books, the whole 'vampire style' thing was basically a joke. some vampires went for it, but the ones that the books presented as being likable tended to dress sensibly. i'm hoping that the show will eventually follow suit.

It is, and I like the TV show. It's not my favorite vampire work of all time but it's entertaining and I want to see it every week.

I think it already does follow suit. Notice that Bill Compton dresses perfectly normally. And we have yet to see Eric, Pam, or that crowd away from Fangtasia, where obviously they have expectations to meet. And then there was the country-style vamp in the opening scene of the pilot.

Agreed.

It's not as good as Fringe, if that gives you any indication.

Tough call... Maybe?

Buffy and Angel have their moments, especially in the later seasons, but ultimately they're WB-style soap operas with monsters written for teenagers. It's Power Rangers meets 90210. I've watched the entire Buffy series and most of Angel, and it's not that good. It's okay, but it's not that good.

Blade 2 and Blade 3 were pretty awful attempts at cashing in on the success of the first film and the comic book craze it helped to start. The original Blade was good.

John Carpenter's Vampires is a good one.

Interview With a Vampire is also good.

The Lost Boys is still great.

Shadow of the Vampire is great and very under appreciated.

EDIT: I forgot From Dusk 'Til Dawn! Great movie.

that movie Let the right one in looks cool, can't wait for an american studio to get ahold of it and age the kids to teenagers, a good choice would be to have Miley Cirus star. And it'll be in english so's I don't hasta read words while watching it.

Near Dark, that's a good vamp movie

The UK Channel 4 seies, Ultraviolet was one of the best treatments of vampires in original TV for many a year.

i enjoyed the "vampire" episode of Highlander.

the OP forgets the highly influential, The Little Vampire

I really liked it - apart from the slight drawback that I didn't really get the sense that the events of the film actually took place over the course of 30 days. Perhaps a mini series would have conveyed that better. And I haven't read the comic.

Yes, that was good too.

I was never too bothered about Buffy.

werevolves aren't utilized enough, honestly. has anything really topped "an american werewolf in london"?

it was great until the vapires started communicating with each other. those scenes ruined the movie for me.

Please tell me they kept the main character's name the same in True Blood. I haven't read the books but (I work at a book store) Sookie Stackhouse is the most awesomely bad name ever.

How long before we see a SG named Sookie?

As far as other vampire related things, I'm intrigued by Mike Mignola's Baltimore. A novel written with someone else (whose name is escaping me). Anyone read it?

I read that the film of The Informers, that Bret Easton Ellis co-wrote the screenplay for, doesn't have the vampires in it. The vampire, Jamie, was played by Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) but his scenes aren't in the movie. The source was one of the actors, Jon Foster. He said:

Dude, that sucks. I'm not as stoked about the movie as I was. It would have been a trip to watch Superman as a vampire.

I think Buffy is lame, though I did like the movie.Blade 3 is just horrible, he best Vampire movie ( not even mentioned by the threads author ) is " Near Dark " ....the Kathryn Bigelow masterpiece which will likely get remade and be crappy. I also like most but not all of John Carpenter's "Vampires " , as well as Coppola's "Dracula"

Yeah, it's the same.

But it's Anna Paquin and I like looking at her for an hour, so I'm willing to let it slide

Christopher Golden. It's pretty decent. Mignola's art is wonderful, as per usual. Golden is only so-so as a writer. (Though I don't know what Golden wrote and what Mignola wrote, if anything.)