Vampires, Generally Speaking
Being very brave (or, perhaps, very stupid) I am going to confess here, for all the world to know, that I think vampires are…..silly. And I’ll tell you why: there’s too damn many of them.
The genre itself was tired and worn out even in Lovecraft’s day; it was his distaste for the stale cliches of vampires and ghosts, mad scientists and werewolves that partly spurred him on to developing his vision of cosmic horror.
That’s not to say there weren’t some classic vampire tales out in the world like Dracula and Le Fanu’s Caramilla; but by the time I got acquainted with the literature and movies, “I vant to bite your neck” and “I vant to drink your blood,” related in a sing-song, cartoonish European accent were staples of grade school humor. Frankenstein might appear frequently in jokes, but the monster didn’t exactly leave a trail of memorable quotes behind him; same can be said for the Wolfman and the Mummy. To my original point, however, they didn’t multiply like vampires and zombies. Man-made monsters and mummies don’t create new versions of themselves when they kill people; werewolves do, but because they are only active for a brief time once a month, they don’t spread the family traits as fast as vampires and zombies.
When there was only Dracula to think about, I was more interested. Stoker’s no
vel is an unsettling story, full of mystery and horror if a little stilted in the writing. I think the first third of the 1931 Dracula with Lugosi are great, with incredible atmosphere and one of the most famous performances of all time, though it falls flat after that both in atmosphere and fear factor. The Spanish version, shot at the same time on the same sets with the same script but with an all Spanish cast and director, is a better overall movie, suffering only from the lack of Lugosi. I’d love to have time time to do a digital mashup of the two. But the various brides and other victims of Dracula remained in the background, and were usually destroyed before they could spread the curse.
When I was in high school I saw a two-reel condensation of Nosferatu that really creeped me out, despite the makeup that bordered on the 
goofy. And about that same time The Night Stalker (1972) hit TV and I loved it, mainly because the vampire was more of an animal than the various movie Counts. I bought Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula religiously (so to speak) from 1972 to 1979, and enjoyed the complex characterizations of the entire cast. But the high drama of the Count’s character was slipping into melodrama even then.
I didn’t see the six Hammer Dracula films until much later, liked a couple, but mostly found them cheesy, and marking a clear path from the novel to Dark Shadows. Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins 
became the best known vampire since the eternal Count, though the soap opera entanglements were too much for me. I found them…silly. (I never saw the Ben Cross remake of the series, and likely will not see the new Johnny Depp theatrical version unless I hear great things about it. But that’s another topic.)
There was always the element of repressed sexuality implicit in the vampire story, but Anne Rice pushed it to the forefront in Interview with a Vampire, and though that was certainly a shot in the arm to the genre, it established a whole raft of new cliches, mostly sexual, that have dragged the once mighty vampire down to the likes of Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. Today’s 
vampires, male or female, are split between either highly seductive, tragically misunderstood figures, or sentient vermin, as in the various Blade films and 30 Days of Night. Either way, they share the notion of an underground culture that thrives in the midst of the normal world. The culture is hierarchical, usually cannibalizing old European notions of nobility and society. or, even more horrifying, Fairyland.
Now anytime a large group of ‘others’ want to take human life, I suppose it can be scary, be they vampires or Nazis, but as I think about it, what appealed to me the most was the mystery behind the vampire, something which is immediately dispelled when the population gets beyond, say, a half-dozen or so. With the numbers that seem to be popular in current vampire fiction, 
the underlying myth has evolved into parables about repressed minorities. Vampires is jes’ folks, who wants to be loved. No curse of God, no damnation — some even like the idea. A reflection of our times, no doubt, and possibly of some value. There are repressed minorities out there, and power-mongers waiting to add new groups to the list when and if they can. But that’s a different kind of scary than what I’m seeking from a vampire storu.
In 30 Days of Night (the movie; I haven’t read the comic sequels) I liked the general notion, but the fact that it was organized as an outing, like a company vacation or the first of an intended Annual Mung Bean & Blood-Sucking Festival kept me giggling throughout. The vampires are also real pigs. No table manners, no napkins. When I’ve cut my finger or my lip, I lke to get the blood off ASAP, not because I’m squeamish, but because it gets sticky. And it’s tough to get out of clothes. These vampires must have access to wardrobes second only to superheroes.
In the Blade films, which I put in the sentient vermin category, it’s not bad enough to be a vampire. You have to be a mutant vampire, with a three-jawed mouth. Well done effect, but it made me laugh the first time I saw it. I enjoyed these movies, I’m not carping about them. But vampires have gone from being weird, otherworldly figures to just more critters in the ever-expanding ravening hordes that dot the earth. From Dracula to roaches. Dangerous roaches, sure.
Obviously, I can’t ramble on about vampires without a mention of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t like camp, not matter how well it is produced, so I never got into the show. I assume the creators of the show would have 
taken a different route if they knew they were heading us down the road to Underworld.
Buffy seems to have firmly established this entire netherworld concept, even though the idea itself is an old one. Robert McCammon did the whole hidden vampire society idea back in his 1981 novel They Thirst, though it was handled in a serious way (or at least as seriously as any vampire-army-attacks-L.A. scenario can be.) It’s a long way from his best book, and may mark the beginning of the end for me and vampires. There are some supremely scary scenes, but the story is just..well, silly.
I haven’t made a study of this, but I can’t recall any vampire group having a plan for what they were going to drink after all the humans were dead. Are they going to breed humans? Will animals survive (and will there be vampire rabbits corgis?) Or is this the vampire version of Global Warming ? Are they having summits, mired in political conflicts, wanting to put limits on blood intake amount (and no 
doubt hammering the third-world country vampires in the process?)
Now you expect your zombie fellers to amble around like a pack of lemmings; they want brains, but they haven’t got any. When everyone is a zombie, then I guess they’ll turn to animals. A final few might survive as vegetarians for awhile, but basically, life on earth will come to an end. But what do you expect? They’re zombies. They don’t do foresight.
I expected more from vampires. I realize they couldn’t stay in decaying castles in remote mountainous regions of the world forever. But the world forgot that the great monsters are the iconic ones, and the iconic ones are usually individuals, not mass hordes. Dracula has been replaced by the likes of Freddy Kreuger and Jason and so on. Not a bad thing; I guess I’m just nostalgic.
Or fearful. Twenty years from now, will there be underground societies of serial killers who were burned alive and kill people through their dreams. Imagine Underworld: Rise of the Jasons.
You’ll be nostalgic, too.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Have you checked out the short-run British show “Ultraviolet”? It’s about a modern government agency hunting down vampires, but it’s very subtle, somewhat scientific, and never uses the “V-word” once. Fantastic if you can get it.
November 16th, 2009 at 3:06 am
I really liked Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain,” which mixed vampire and zombie tropes into one horrible monster (“Now take away the cape and fangs. The funny accent. Take away anything funny about it.”) and stuck it in an action-horror framework, but it seemed to have that “hey, we’ve depopulated Earth of our own food; what now?” problem with rampant vampirism. The elder vampire causing the plague decided to drop it in the middle of New York City and let it run rampant… but to what end? He doesn’t seem like he wants to end his immortal existence, no…
I really hope the later books clear it up better, but at the moment it just seems like a glaring plot hole. Or maybe I missed something important.
November 16th, 2009 at 3:38 am
I totally agree with you about this the vampire has rapidly become an overused poorly done horror cliche however i recently found a book that used that cliche to make a very good if not totally low-brow story. It’s called 13 Bullets i’ve forgotten the author though i guess it would fall under the mindless killing machine vampire section, for the gore and chill factor at the sheer violence of the vampires it’s a good read, plus it has zombies, yes, vampires apparently have zombie henchmen…
November 16th, 2009 at 3:40 am
I recommend the film “Let The Right One In”. It has good, understated effects, tension, and a focus on some of the mundane aspects of being a vampire. I reckon it’s the best movie I’ve seen since “No Country For Old Men”. I usually dislike movies that star children, too.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Not a disagreement, as much as an addition: one of the newish tropes in vampire fiction is the idea of “human farming” where vampires keep humans as cattle in order to maintain a steady blood supply. The TV version of Buffy played with the idea a couple of times, Blade 3 did it as a subplot, and there’s an entire movie (“Daybreakers”) that seems to be based around the idea of a world where vampires rule and a dwindling supply of sedated humans aren’t going to be enough to feed the increasing vampire population. An early (and pretty dang good) draft of the new “I Am Legend” movie also had a human farm as a major plot point.
There’s also the “Vampire Kingdoms” RPG supplement for the Rifts RPG. Basically, vampires openly rule and protect people, forming the basis of a mighty military state. In return they expect people to make frequent and regular blood donations, kind of like a twisted Red Cross or something.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I enjoyed Interview with a Vampire, and thought it was very well done. It explained things from a vampire point of view, showed humans as little more than fodder, and showed how vampires were brought low by time, boredom, and squabbles between themselves, not from any doings of mortal man. Humans remained just fodder. Vampires were shown to be smart, yet open to failings, and most of all they were believable.
It’s pretty much the only vampire movie I’ve truly enjoyed.
The one thing that sets vampires aside from other undead (ghosts and zombies etc), apart from their long life and super powers, is their intelligence. That’s the thing that sets them apart, not the super speed or the seductiveness, but the intelligence. That’s what makes them dangerous. That’s what makes them hard to find, let alone kill. Or at least it SHOULD be. I just haven’t seen it in any other movie apart from IWAV.
There are movies waiting to be made from the White Wolf RPG series. Ones where there are puppet masters behind the scenes, who have insinuated them in big business, politics, law firms and the black market trade in weapons and drugs. Ones where vampires survive by employing thugs, lawyers and blood-bound zombies to protect themselves and keep themselves hidden and out of the news. Ones where someone like Blade find themselves locked up for discharging weapons in a public place and done away in jail. Ones where vampires struggle to keep their humanity by studying the arts or becoming patrons, benefactors and philanthropists, even as they leech from society.
I’m sick of the “smart” vampires who become mindless zombies with fangs the moment the conflict is underway, the vampires who are just “monsters”, only there to be killed. It’s boring, disingenuous, crude, belittling, and most unfortunately, done to death.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:48 am
So I’m thinking my zombie vs. vampires idea has some merit. All the people are gone, the zombies want brains, which the vampires have, but the vampires want blood, which the zombies lack. Look out world! Another cliche waiting to be born!:-D
November 16th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I think vampires should be the kind from folklore, not the pieces of crap from Twilight (which ruined vampires forever). But i have to say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Gary Oldman was THE best vampire movie ever. And furthermore…
Omg is that Johnny Depp?! Win!
November 16th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
At last someone has said it!
And I agree, there are just too many vampires out there and it makes me more than a little annoyed. I love a good horror story every now and then (who doesn’t?) but vampires have always been associated with camp in my mind and therefore not very scary at all. I’ve given up on basically all vampire stories, except of course for the original book: Brahm Stoker’s Dracula. It still sends shivers up my spine when I read it, and before diving into the pages I find myself turning on every light in the house, but I think the idea of vampires has been done to death.
Oh god. Please excuse that horrible pun.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Honestly, I think this is all you can get once you take from them their demonic traits and start treating them as merely humans-with-issues or animals/predators. The lore holds a lot more than that, and part of the mystery is the entirely different realm they inhabit while being among us, where supernatural rules and powers interfere with their schemes, mostly unseen by us. Without that, sure, I guess they’re just folk wot like blood some or bad guys who, incidentally, are into vampirism.
Relatedly, though on Twilight: http://www.chainsawsuit.com/20091113.shtml
November 17th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Ooh ooh! Great write up, hope you don’t mind my two cents.
I can’t recall any vampire group having a plan for what they were going to drink after all the humans were dead.
Please read Matheson’s I am Legend, for which the movie is no substitute. I think you’ll enjoy it and this is a key theme.
I feel for your complaint that vampires have generally lost their luster as a threat, but I think perhaps you overlook what makes them attractive to writer has little to do with their folkloric origins. Rather, as metaphors they are incredibly flexible, adapting to whatever fear pop culture needs them to be at that time. For example, Lost Boys, if you’re willing to look beyond the 80s cinema cheeze, also comments on stepfamilies and youth as a consumer culture. Blade, despite its origins as a forgettable Marvel comic, was a terrific discussion of racial relations. (only talking about the first one. the second two were, by turns forgettable and embarrassing) Even Twilight, which I am loath to defend, has a small vestige of quality in using vampires/human dynamic as a metaphor for teenage relations – and as a one-trick pony it did this pretty well.
Metaphors are hardly monstrous, though. If you are after horror, please consider reading Let the Right One In, recommended in movie form by Mr. Hartwick. I have not seen the movie but the book illustrates what I think is the saving grace of the contemporary trend of reducing vampires from myth to “jes’ folks” : that the most interesting monster in a vampire tale is not the beast itself, but the Renfeld. I think it can be argued that LtROI makes a monster of every character and keeps the horror of the idea alive by denying the reader the assumption that the monster is an external threat.
November 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Thoughtful post, thanks. I have read I am Legend, and in fact discussed a week or so ago in my Zombie blog. I also revealed the ending in a comment reply, though it is marked by a spoiler alert. We seem to have similar opinions of the book.
But your defense of vampires as metaphor is kinda exactly my point. They’ve lost any uniqueness they once had, and are now just a metaphor for whatever minority group you choose to comment on (and I don’t limit that to racial or gender minorities, but any small part of the population that feels shunned, like people who dress up in Star Trek costumes after the age of 50.) You can tell the same story with werewolves or zombies –Shawn of the Dead was about friendship, specifically with people your wife doesn’t care for — or you can use pedophiles or serial murderers or the long-term unemployed or people who live deep in the rural areas of pick-your-state. Despite also having been reduced to a cartoon icon, Frankenstein fares better, at least until someone develops an underground society of stitched together corpses. Cthulhu still has some sting left in him, which makes my case: when you think about the fact that you never really see him in any of Lovecraft’s tales, and that none of the five million other Ancient Ones/Elder Gods created over the years, by Lovecraft or anyone else, has even come close to parity with ‘him,’ the idea of an individual monster is what works best for me. A whole bunch of little Cthluhus running around, or a whole society of big green squid-like beings examining the human condition from the perspective of an indifferent and alien culture….well, yawn.
I understand that we can’t just keep retelling Stoker’s story over and over again; times change, and myths and folklore evolve. Maybe I’m just one of those people who hasn’t changed with the times. It’s possible. I still think that Christmas advertising should not start until after Thanksgiving.
The good news is that there is enough material out there these days to suit any taste. And I look forward to reading Let the Right One In. You’re not the first person to recommend that to me. I always did think the Renfield character was the creepiest of the cast after Dracula – Dwight Frye in the Lugosi version, Tom Waits in the Oldman version, and the actor whose name I don’t know who played the character in the original Nosferatu.
November 18th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Hm. Interesting food for thought. Have you read ‘Salem’s Lot? King wrote it specifically to counter what he felt was a washing out of the vampire as a threat, to return them to the terror of the EC comics he read as a child. (wish I could cite my source on that, think maybe it was in the intro to the reprint I have)
Incidentally, I’m with you on the Christmas advertising. Thanks for the great chat and great comic.
November 18th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I did read Salem’s Lot and if I’d had more time to prepare the post I probably would have remembered to mention it. I never heard that quote you mentioned, but it’s pretty obvious he is thinking of vampires in the same way we’re discussing. We are not alone!
November 21st, 2009 at 3:36 am
Although this is my first time posting, I’ve read LiM for some time, and find your opinions on the genre and these discussions very interesting. I find myself in an interesting position for this discussion (and in general as things stand at the moment) in that I love vampires as a concept, but I have found few, if any, vampire movies I actually enjoyed. Like yourself(…ves… as this seems to be the general agreement?) I find that vampires have been greatly diluted by popular attention (I liked vampires before they were cool darnit!) and wish that the image of a vampire as a creature terrifying for its inhumanity and intelligence as opposed to its brute strength and seductive quality were not lost. (In some ways I see similarities between the best portrayals of Vampire ‘Lords’ and Lovecraft’s cosmic entities – scary because not simply because they are malicious, but because *we are nothing to them*)
I would agree greatly with Dave above, as a player of White Wolf’s tabletop vampire games. In WW’s creation, vamps are admittedly populous (although not greatly – two dozen in a large city is a lot in that setting) and are dangerous due to their machinations. The other thing that sets them aside from many portrayals, is that they aren’t really “out to get” humans. Humans are called ‘Kine’ (a medieval word for cattle) and aren’t considered important enough to be concerned about. In the game, vamps rarely kill their prey, since doing so attracts attention and reduces the food supply. In fact, unnecessary killing can be heavily punished. Also the game tries to stress the idea that being turned is not a good thing. It is a curse – you as a character, are faced with the inevitability that eventually you will lose the last vestige of what made you human and you will be truly monstrous, even if it takes centuries to happen.
Anyway, I don’t mean to spew on about the game. I simply wanted to point out a venue in which many of the concerns raised about vampires have in fact been considered and addressed in some way. That’s not to say the game or setting is perfect – just better than most.
All that said, I certainly see where you’re coming from as far as the loss of uniqueness. One thing that occurs to me however – and I’m not sure how much merit this thought has, is that Cthulhu works as an individual because he is nigh-omnipotent in his own way – the only reason we’re still around is because he doesn’t have any interest in us. A character like Dracula on the other hand, while wildly powerful compared to mere mortals, is entirely killable and is overcome by the end of the book. As individuals, vampires have never (to my knowledge) had the kind of power that an Elder God has. In that case, is not more terrifying to think of the fact that, yes, we went through all this trouble to kill one of them, but he’s not unique, so there will always be more, living and preying on the fringes of society. A vampire alone is not invincible. The concept that humanity has met its match in intelligence and personal power at the top of the food chain is scary. I still agree that *too* many vampires and too…humanized vampires does nothing for the genre. But leaving it at one, *relatively* easily dispatched count is hardly frightening.
I hope this is at least mostly intelligible, as I’m writing at 12:35am, so my thought process may not be entirely lucid at this point.
Cheers!
November 21st, 2009 at 10:24 am
Thanks much, I like discussions, whether anyone agrees with me or not. I will take issue with a couple of your points, though. It’s not that Cthulhu doesn’t take any interest in us that we are still around, but because he is sleeping beneath the waves, waiting for the stars to come ’round again. Lovecraft doesn’t give a lot of specifics as to what might happen when Cthulhu finally wakes, but none of it sounds good for mankind as a whole.
And second, responding to the notion that if there’s only one vampire and you kill, it’s all over with. As evidence I offer the five million resurrections of Dracula:-D
November 21st, 2009 at 11:05 am
Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian” is a great novel, too, for a more traditional take on a vampire.
November 21st, 2009 at 7:35 pm
To each their own. I couldn’t even finish the book. I would have gotten more out of the money I spent on it by lighting it on fire and watching it burn.
November 30th, 2009 at 3:21 am
If you are still reading old threads…
The zombies vs. vampires concept was played with in a recent webcomic “Last Blood” where – wait for it – vampires have to protect the last humans when zombies destroy most of the world’s population.
Yeah, so…
I have to agree with your original post, which is an unfortunate state of affairs mostly because the mythological roots of blood-drinking monsters is fascinating. Didn’t “Hellboy” deal with that at some point in the Hecate arc?
More concretely for investigation but still before my time are the myths of Eastern Europe, which include the possibility of any object becoming vampiric, particularly tools that are not used for a year and a day. But the people I have in mind were not concerned with aristocratic vampires.
The threat of the ва̀мпӣр revolved around proper burial practices (would be a great plot twist for “Antigone”), so a vampire would be a family member, perhaps even a beloved family member or a child who had died unexpectedly. And the monster would not be in human form but would take the shape of a bloated flesh sac or intestines (the sentient vermin category?) which could regain its human shape by feeding on those it knew in life.
Somehow this threat of the once-familiar-now-strange became hilariously stupid. The traditional vampire wasn’t part of an underground society, it was just Uncle Stevan Who Needs To Stay Dead™.
Anyway, had to sit through some lectures about this during an anth class years ago and those’re the bits I remember.
The two bits of media which spring to mind as enjoyable when vampires are mentioned are (1) the novel “Sabriel” by Garth Nix which has nothing to do with vampires but has a robust undead mythology, and (2) the “Harry Dresden” series by Jim Butcher.
Butcher posits three types of vampires; the Black Court (undead) were mostly wiped out after the publication of “Dracula”. The White Court (succubae) feed on human emotions (lust, anger, fear) rather than blood. The Red Court (gross bat things) fall into your secret society of vermin category and are handled better than expected while firmly villainous.
But then again, I didn’t start reading that series for the vampires. That’s just one of a few plot arcs I ran into when starting with the fifth book, “Death Masks”, in which the Shroud of Turin is stolen and Harry has to help three paladins find it (except one is Catholic, one is Buddhist, and one is an atheist) while dealing with the Chicago mafia, vampires trying to kill him, contracts for the local police, and so on. Then jumped around in the series order from there. Butcher has a very interesting sense of humor and a remarkable grasp of human motivation, but his earlier books are poorly written.
I suppose the conclusion of this comment is that I have no good advice for rejuvenating vampires as horror, but Kris Straub made mummies scary again here:
http://www.ichorfalls.com/2008/10/30/lemon-blossom-girl/
Maybe he’ll write on vampires someday.
December 4th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I notice that even when I don’t agree with your reviews and commentary, I always find your honest opinion refreshing. I know that when you write for a wide audience there is may come an urge to try and widen the appeal of what you are saying by pulling some metaphorical teeth (yeah vampire related pun, sorry). Your willingness to discuss, and elaborate is also cool. Thanks for doing these.
I don’t have much to say about vampires, except that I don’t really think that “Buffy” was really about vampires in the end. It seemed to me to be more about that whole young-person crossing into adulthood thing. That’s not really a defense though. Its my least favorite Joss Wheedon television creation. I am more of a Firefly person…
You didn’t mention “True Blood” either…have you read/seen any of that stuff? I would be interested in where you think it falls in the current pack of Vampire fiction.
>Bryan
December 4th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Really appreciate the comment. Somewhere the world at large decided that agreement was the only viable way for people to relate, an opinion with which I (ahem!) disagree. I don’t want something watered down, I want to know what someone else thinks. I don’t want a rant, I don’t want to listen to sound bites or pre-cooked opinions and I don’t care for people who won’t allow me the same freedom, but honestly, I get a lot out of disagreements if they’re civil. I like to think about things, and I develop certain ideas about them, and suddenly I’ll meet someone with a well thought out different point of view, and one of two things happens: I modify my opinion, or I fortify the one I already have. Either way, I’m the winner, because I’ve learned something else about the world.
Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote something once about each person represents a unique perspective on the world, and the sum of all those perspectives is God’s point of view. I’m not straining for godhood, but I love the thought that in the end, all points of view are somehow linked into a whole that we can’t see from here.
Ooooooh! Deep. But feel free to disagree:-)
Oh, and I haven’t seen True Blood yet, but the idea doesn’t interest me. There was a Canadian vampire cop TV show some years back that, as I recall, had a similar notion.