Monday, November 3, 2014

Vampires are Monsters!

This has been a longtime complaint of mine (see here and here and a bunch more). At some point in fiction vampires stopped being considered monsters. There was a tortured romantic that replaced the idea of the murderous bloodsucker that pop culture just didn’t want to let go. And then I saw the TV show The Strain on FX and I had hope once again. These vampires didn’t sparkle, didn’t lament their existence, and they certainly didn’t date. They were straight up murderous blood drinkers. Once again the vampire was being portrayed as a monster.

If you’re not familiar with The Strain, it is an adaptation of a book series by Guillermo Del Toro. Yes, he of Hellboy, Pacific Rim, and Pan’s Labyrinth fame. And he also directed the movie Blade II, the sequel to the popular Wesley Snipes film. Blade II shows the seeds of what will eventually become the Strain vampires. Pale skin, gaping mouths and long blood sucking tongues, all aspects that were enhanced even further for The Strain. There is no way a teen girl could fall in love with these creatures. Nor could these creatures fall in love either. Their only concern in life is to feed and kill.

Though I can’t really be too angry at all the interpretations of vampires as tortured loners. The most popular piece of vampire literature, Dracula, certainly has many of those elements in its pages. Dracula is a sadly lonely loser just trying to mend his broken heart with a woman who resembles his long dead wife. Granted there is a lot of murder and blood drinking along with his quest for romance, but still at the heart of the story Dracula is a romantic tale. So I can’t really get mad at a Stephanie Meyer when she has a young Bella fall in love with hundred year old Edward. Though I will never forgive her for the sparking (VAMPIRES DON’T SPARKLE!)

And it seems the idea of returning the vampire to monster status is becoming a more common occurrence in Hollywood. The marketing for the new Universal picture Dracula Untold is filled with references to him being a monster. Dracula became a vampire because as he says “Men do not fear swords, they fear monsters.” So even though Dracula is the hero of the tale, the scarier aspects of Dracula will be emphasized. The blood drinking, the turning into a bat, the scarier aspect of the Dracula story. (I am writing this before I have seen the movie so don’t be surprised if after I post this I post another article screaming and bitching like a maniac because Dracula starts to sparkle).

The desire to make monsters likeable has always eluded me. The purposed of monsters is to show creatures that ARE NOT LIKEABLE. When a movie comes out in which a zombie falls in love (see my review of Warm Bodies here) there truly has been a jumping of the shark for monsters. Being a werewolf is a curse. Being a vampire is a curse. Being a zombie is a… viral outbreak that will end mankind. Nothing romantic about any of them. I picture the Creature from the Black Lagoon and instead of thinking this is a terrifying creature I’m wondering how someone could make out with that (by the way if Universal wanted to make a romantic Black Lagoon movie I would happily pitch them my take on it).

When you read the paper and watch the news you can almost argue “why do we need fictitious monsters?” There is certainly no end to the atrocities committed by normal real life humans. The problem is, the only way humanity can join together is if it is attacked by an external force. It has been written in plenty of stories, the only time humans get together is when something threatens them. We need monsters to give something to focus on. The “enemy” needs to be some inhuman other that we can look towards. When all we see are other humans then we have to make the humans the committers of atrocities and that just causes us to be more and more suspicious of our fellow man.


As a horror fan, I have great respect for the movie monster. The classic creatures of film are a part of cinematic history. And the vampire is a prominent figure in that group. But every time a movie or TV show comes out with a vampire romance story, the idea of the iconic bloodsucker gets a little more watered down. It seemed fitting that the Twilight vampires didn’t have fangs since that series has done the most to completely take out the teeth of the vampire genre. Ironically it is The Strain vampires, who have no teeth at all, that will give the vampire back its fangs.

1 comment:

  1. Uh, I don't think you've ever read Bram Stoker's "Dracula", have you? No, Dracula is NOT a "sad, lonely loser"; he's a soul-less THING who kidnaps a toddler and throws him to his 3 blood-lusting vampiresses for a meal. The only time Dracula speaks is to Jonathan Harker when Dracula's trying to establish himself in England. Throughout the rest of the book he is nothing more than an animated corpse. The whole long-lost love sub-plot was injected into the story by Hollywood, borrowed from another Bram Stoker novel that was made into the original "The Mummy", and, is not at all a thing in "Dracula".

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