Radio Drama Review: Salem's Lot (1995)

Well, here is a radio drama review finally. I say finally because I've been reviewing things for almost four years and have never actually reviewed an audio drama. Shame on me. They're actually worth a lot if done correctly, and this is one of the best I've heard. Anyway, before getting into this, I should welcome you all to yet another horror-filled month of reviews and enjoyment! October Nights are here, and these reviews are for you, dear reader, so much more than they are for me. I say that because every year I literally kill myself to get these reviews done for the amusement of the masses. I enjoy the hell out of writing them, but reviewing 31 horror-related things in 31 nights is often a little insane, even for me.

This is my forth annual October Nights, and as I mentioned in the post leading up to this first post, I think it will be a fascinating month of reviews. The last several years I've started the October month out with a Salem's Lot review, and I'm doing the exact same thing every year until I run out of adaptations to review. Anyway, this year is the radio drama adaptation by the BBC, and, honestly, it is by far the best adaptation I've had the pleasure of enjoying.

It literally hits most of the major points in the novel without missing a beat. And it's incredibly enjoyable to hear those scenes from the novel done incredibly effectively in an audio format. While both miniseries are enjoyable and fun in their own right, both make some pretty huge mistakes in the end. I spoke of both of the miniseries before here and here. (I also reviewed a sequel and the book itself if you want the story of what's happening, which I'm not going to get into here.) The miniseries alter and change characters and the ultimate fate of characters so much that it does affect some of my enjoyment of them. While both adaptation are actually quite good in their own right as adaptations or simply as standalone stories, both do suffer a little from their departure from certain parts of the novel's narrative.

This is one of the few books that I think is seriously near-perfect, which is why the changes of the adaptations actually bother me at all. Changing Callahan's character in the most recent miniseries was a grievous mistake on the creators' part, especially when Father Callahan would have such a pivotal part to play in The Dark Tower series after the events of 'Salem's Lot. And in the first television movie, the fact that characters are omitted (especially Dr. Cody) has always bothered me.

Now, speaking of this radio drama, most of the book is there. Yes, some parts (like the side-stories of characters who are not main characters) are either completely omitted or mentioned in an off-handed way by more main characters. The plot mostly focuses on just the core five or six characters of the narrative, barely mentioning the side-characters at all unless they become important to the main plot. While the purist in me loves the entire novel, filler and all, the writer in me loves how the audio drama accomplishes what it does. Of course some things need to be taken out of the narrative. I'm mostly glad that the characters and their stories aren't changed at all really. And I'm glad that the story unfolds basically how it does in the novel. While there are some big changes, like the bookends of the episodes of the radio drama involving Ben and Mark telling their story to a Mexican priest, most are cosmetic changes and omissions, something I cannot see a problem with.

Honestly, the focus on the main characters works incredibly well, especially backed up by fantastic vocal work by the voice actors all around. Mark is the only character who even sounds a little off, but most of the characters sound exactly like they should with Straker and Barlow (played by Doug Bradley of Hellraiser fame) being literally incredible voices in their own rights.

The production is creepy, especially as a vampire story. It works every bit as well as Dracula or some of the other more macabre vampire stories out there (of which there are far too few for my liking). Some of the scenes work very well, especially any scene involving Barlow, who has singularly jumped up my list of terrifying villains in fiction to basically take the top spot. Of special note is Matt Burke (played by Gavin Muir), whose voice is a pleasure to listen to. The acting is especially good all around, and you'll find yourself literally having goosebumps if you listen to this late at night.

I had the special circumstance to not only be in a small New England town on the day I listened to this, but also to be out and about on an overcast fall day as I listened. My job gives me the ability to listen to many audiobooks and audio dramas and such, and I took advantage of it on the perfect day to do so. I know that not everybody out there lives or works in a small New England town much like the titular 'Salem's Lot, but if that chance comes up, this is perfect listening in situations like that.

I wholly throw my support behind this adaptation of one of my favorite books. I recommend this completely, unlike last years debacle with the terrible A Return to Salem's Lot. Check it out if you get the chance. I doubt you'll be disappointed. Also, here's a website and podcast that you can download it from, just because I'm a great guy.

The only negatives that I can think of are Mark (who sounds funny to my ears) and some of the acting which can be slightly overdone. Also, at times, the action moments can sound very confusing. But as an audio adaptation, I would put this up there with some of the greats. Give it a listen if you want a spooky time, just make sure you have three-and-a-half hours to spare to listen to it.

Movie Appraisal: A Return to Salem's Lot (1987)

This may in fact be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It certainly is an insult to 'Salem's Lot and every adaptation of that wonderful Stephen King book. I could say a ton about how much this movie gets wrong. I could say just how much this insults me as a fan of the original story and the original miniseries, both of which I really enjoyed. I could say a lot of things, and I will, don't you worry, but I'll also say that as bad as this movie is, it does have some decent parts... but none of them have anything to do with the original story or characters. Hell, this movie doesn't even deserve to have "Salem's Lot" in it's title. Besides this movie taking place in the town, it has very little (read: nothing) to do with "Salem's Lot" to the point where I have no idea how this movie even comes to pass as a sequel to the events from the 1979 miniseries.

For a year or more now I've been waiting to watch and review this movie. I knew it would probably be bad, but what I didn't expect was just how bad it would be. It's not that I personally dislike it because it's not the perfect sequel to Salem's Lot that I wanted. It's terrible because almost every aspect of this film is a total and complete failure. The editing is terrible and choppy. The film somehow looks worse than its black-and-white predecessor from eight years prior. The acting is at times astoundingly bad. The direction is awful, just awful. The scenery is cheap and looks terrible. And the plot makes no sense and doesn't work in any sense of that word. And that's not even scratching the surface as to how wholly abominable this movie actually is.

For one, that tagline up on that poster: "Based on characters created by Stephen King." makes absolutely no sense. There are no characters based on Stephen King's stories. There is a town that is wholly different than what King wrote. There are vampires that are totally different than what King wrote. There is a non-burned down 'Salem's Lot, which makes no sense since 'Salem's Lot always burns down when Ben and Mark light the town on fire at the end of any version of 'Salem's Lot. So, why is this town intact? Why no burn marks? Why is it burnt down all over again at this end of this film?

See, the problem here is that this movie is no sequel to 'Salem's Lot or Salem's Lot. It is instead a completely different canon. It simultaneously a remake of the miniseries with different characters and its own story entirely. And that's where I found myself confused. Why didn't they just call this movie something completely different? It has nothing to do with Salem's Lot as a town or a book or a movie. The vampires are wholly different, no longer the shambling zombies they are in the book- they instead are humans with fangs and a hatred of light. The only vampire in 'Salem's Lot who was intelligent and coherent was Barlow, but here that whole aspect is thrown away in favor of talking vampires for some reason. This cuts away all of the horror while also taking away the point of 'Salem's Lot, the message of a charismatic and powerful person taking away the will to think of an entire populace.

I can keep going on about how the plot is ridiculous and the acting is pretty awful. I can keep saying how this movie seems pointless and kind of insulting. I can keep ripping apart every aspect of the film, from the pointless and antipathetic characters to TWO ridiculous "romance" plots... and all the way to some terrible fight sequences... terrible cinematography... terrible editing... terrible direction of almost every sequence. I just found this entire movie disheartening and incredibly insulting. I didn't like it and would never recommend it... but... but there were some okay things in the movie, and although I find the flick wholly reprehensible, I'd like to focus on the more positive aspects of the movie (the few that there are) because I find that there is no point in tearing the terrible and forgotten movie apart. It's already out of the public's memory. I think that speaks volumes about how terrible this movie actually is.

The opening of the movie is actually kind of fun, with a kicking opening tune and a psychedelic LSD vision. I enjoy a good strange opening and this one worked for me, getting me pumped up for a much better film than this one turned out to be. The music in general for this movie is pretty good actually, being one of the few redeeming features to an otherwise completely unremarkable film. The scene with the natives and Michael Moriarty's character, Joe, filming a ritual of one of the native's getting his heart pulled out is pretty good. I had no idea what was going on, but the effects were pretty decent. It had me believing this movie might actually look kind of interesting. In my mind, Cannibal Holocaust kept running through my head... and I guess I must have thought maybe I would get a movie more in line with that kind of film. It would have been a whole hell of a lot better than what there is.

The special effects sure are "special," especially when none of them seem to look good until the very end of the movie. Even then- they don't look good... it's probably more that I actually saw something that didn't make my eyes bleed which was better than this movie had been doing to me. And even though there are scary monster faces sometimes, the movie is mostly boring. There is no horror here, no tension. The vampires show up quickly and do nothing else. Yes, people are bitten with some terrible blood effects, but mostly the vampires stand and talk... and then stand and talk some more. Every once in a while they- wait for it- SIT and talk. WOW. Wow. Oscar calibre performances, people. There is overacting galore, although the kid, Ricky Addison Reed, and Michael Moriarity to a pretty good job at keeping cool. If "keeping cool" is swearing constantly and at the weirdest and most inappropriate times. I can't blame the actors for the odd lines though. The script seemed to be the real culprit here.

So, this is Tara Reid'd first role... if that interests you at all. Doesn't really mean much to me, I have to say. Knowing what movies that girl would be in- well, I'm not surprised this is where she started. Kind of fitting in a way. And kind of sad too. She is easily the worst actor here... and that's saying a ton. I seriously wanted her to stop talking every time she opened here mouth. Her "death?" scene was also painful to watch. I can't believe that that was the take they decided to go with. Did they even know what a good performance was? The sad thing is, they really must have because one actor really shines and rises this movie above absolute garbage. Oh, he's not really even introduced until two-thirds of the way through the movie or so... after you go catatonic because it's that bad... but once Samuel Fuller enters the flick as Van Meer, the Nazi Killer, the movie takes a turn to getting a lot more interesting. Samuel Fuller is wonderful here and seems to be having a great time. The man takes the performance and sells it for all its worth. He easily outshines everybody else. He is the only likable character as well as the only one worth cheering for. He chews the scenery up at times, but he is such a joy to watch that he alone makes the movie a little bearable. For the twenty or thirty minutes he decides to grace the screen with his kooky hair and bad dude stance, he is the greatest thing around. Hell, I would love more stories based on his character alone. Again, he's the only good character here in this movie.

So, the biggest thing that bothers me is the departure from the established lore of the freaking franchise that this movie is a sequel to. How do these vampires know their own history with both Straker and Barlow dead? Didn't Straker and Barlow come from Austria and England (basically Europe) too? Why are these vampires American and like 300 years old? Why are they here when all the vampires here were supposedly made by Barlow? Did they take over the town after Mark Petrie and Ben Mears from 'Salem's Lot burned the whole town down? Did they rebuild it? Or were they always there, these vampires, as Barlow made the whole town under his thrall? Because that would have been stupid. This is one of the big reasons this movie has to be its ow separate canon. It would make no sense otherwise. Why does Axel say that he's 300 years old? What is the point of that? Is it supposed to make him scarier? Or is it some kind of convenient way of saying, "Dude, this vampire's hardcore!" Well, it doesn't work. The line is awful; it doesn't make him more intimidating, it makes him seem like a petty bastard. Barlow was the first vampire there, but he's totally forgotten... well, except for the art of him on the box and poster. Yeah, that's definitely Barlow from the Salem's Lot miniseries. So, these seem to be in canon with one another... which would only really be possible if nothing made any sense any more. They would have to be implying that this town already had vampires in it. Or that they came later? I mean, is this movie saying that it takes place in the far-flung future of 2287? What? What? WHAT? What? I keep saying "what" so often it doesn't even sound like a word anymore...

The vampires were mindless like zombies in the movie, the book, and the canon, not like this... except for Barlow. It was scarier that way and so much more effective. This is just stupid. And then somehow the town name keeps changing between Jerusalem's Lot and 'Salem's Lot... when it's been established that the town name was officially changed to 'Salem's Lot. It's in the book. What am I even saying? They didn't read the book. Why would I give them the credit of reading the book? I must be insane. EVEN THINKING that these numbskulls would have considered reading the book... or (HA HA) watching the movie that this movie was a sequel too. Because they didn't watch that movie either. They didn't care about stupid things like consistency... or canon... or anything established. Hell, how is this even based off of anything Stephen King did? I mean, sure some of the plot is ripped off wholesome from the book... but calling this a sequel is like calling me a sane and smiling person. It's just not true and nobody should ever say things that they can't take back like that.

Oh, at least we get to see breasts... said Saquarry dryly. His face was likened to a rock. Breasts were not going to help this movie. They were just going to tell how bad a movie this was. Trying to distract with breasts was never going to work. There is so little of substance here and... this movie is entirely classless. And clueless. Why even include a scene like this? Are you establishing a romance? No, not really. Are you establishing how it might be difficult for Joe to hurt his beloved? No, not really. Oh, it's mentioned once, but never amounts to anything. The romance and the sex scenes are pointless. These are pointless breasts that make the entire movie worse because they have no point. I'm not saying that naked women are wonderful in movies, but they are usually meant to establish something (or for pure fanservice), and this movie doesn't seem to be doing either. These are breasts for the sake of breasts and there's just no point beyond that... and the shots aren't even good. They don't try to make the act of sex look vicious or terrible or sweet or sexy... the directing does NOTHING AT ALL. This is a terrible movie. This is such a terrible film. 

Wow, it turned daylight very very quickly towards the end of the movie. BAM. Night to day. There we go. That's how the sun comes up. No gradual rise. No tension. Nope. One second as dark as the dead of night and the next it is noontime. Wonderful. I get the feeling nobody associated with this movie has ever seen a sunrise...

Look, let me reason with you, the reader, here. Do not watch this movie. Do not seek it out. Do not think that you should watch this movie in any way. Despite a good performance by Samuel Fuller and a pretty good film score, this movie is a waste of time to watch. It has nothing to do with 'Salem's Lot as the town, the book, or the movie except in name. It has nothing to do with Stephen King either except for stealing some of his plot-points much worse than he ever wrote them. Some of the effects towards the end of the film also look okay, but no better than any other movie out there. Avoid this movie at all costs. This is The Reaping level of bad, and I'm not taking that back. So, I guess this October starts off wonderful... hopefully the next thirty nights go better than this one did or else I'm going to be a very unhappy fella.

Movie Appraisal: Salem's Lot (2004)

'Salem's Lot, as I've mentioned before, is my favorite Stephen King novel. It has a fantastic story, kind of obviously taken from Dracula, one of my favorite books ever, and it really works in my opinion, not only as a vampire story, but also as a good horror story in general.

That being said, this television miniseries movie is not the best Stephen King movie that there ever was. It has a great cast and decent writing, but there are downsides and I will get to them, don't you worry your little anonymous reader head. Trust me on this, I am going to rip this movie apart by the freaking seams. The cast those, like I mentioned, is very good, with Rob Lowe starring. Now, Rob Lowe had also been in the miniseries adaptation of The Stand as well, and honestly... well, although he has a good name, the character of Ben Mears is a fairly bland and uninteresting character. Donald Sutherland also stars as Richard Straker, a new man who comes to the town of 'Salem's Lot to open an antique store with his business partner, Kurt Barlow, who is played by Rutger Hauer.

Let me say that those two actors, although in my opinion very fine actors, seem to have such odd performances in this. Donald Sutherland plays a character who in the novel is mentioned many times as being "hairless" and "smooth" as evil snarky Santa Claus, which is such a strange way to play that role. James Mason, in the previous version of the movie, did such a better job as Straker. Rutger Hauer, on the other hand, plays Barlow, the sadistic vampire, as an incredibly suave gentleman vampire. Now, in the novel he is a monster and in the previous movie he was a Nosferatu type of vampire, but here he is simply Rutger Hauer... and he isn't bad, but it is a little inexplicable the way he plays the evil vampire.

Also, James Cromwell plays Father Callahan and I'll have a lot to say about his performance and the writing surrounding it later on in the review.

Now, I have reviewed the 1979 movie and the novel, so you can tell that this story is close to my heart. I love vampires, I love what vampires used to be. I Am Legend, the novel, not the 2007 movie starring Will Smith, is a fantastic novel which makes me so happy. Dracula by Bram Stoker is my second favorite book of all time. Amazingly well written and full of a whole bunch of great scenes and characters, but I digress... this is not a review of vampires or of Dracula. I guess what I'm saying is that old-style vampires are close to my heart, so this movie becomes both incredibly awesome and incredibly disappointing.

So, besides the actors I mentioned, most of the characters and actors are incredibly tough to watch. The acting is certainly not amazing. There may be a gem of a performance here and there, but for the most part the movie is fairly rough around the edges. It really tries very hard to show the scope of the novel and succeeds in the first half of the miniseries. It has a great build-up to everything in much the same way that the novel has. There is a lot thrown in about the movie being set up to be a haunted house story, just like the novel, and then throwing that aside and becoming crazy vampiric midway through. And this is all good. There are a lot of good things to this movie too. It does have some legitimately frightening parts (as frightening as a television miniseries can get), and really gets the setting right, which I applaud.

The problems arise because of miscasting and strange performances. This can mostly be seen through Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer, and James Cromwell. I love these actors, but for one, in the original novel Father Callahan is not a bad guy... ever. This even creates a problem when 'Salem's Lot connects to The Dark Tower series in which Father Callahan, the alcoholic Catholic priest, is one of the biggest heroes of the series. As for Hauer and Sutherland, why weren't their roles just swapped? The ancient vampire of Barlow was much more suited for someone of Sutherland's talents and experiences, while Hauer playing Straker would have been amazing... because simply looking at Rutger Hauer, you can easily become a little unnerved.

Now, some of the scenes are fairly well done and compare favorably to the 1979 version and fit well with the novel as well. Danny Glick coming to Mark Petrie's window comes to mind as well as some of the later vampires. Now, one character I haven't mentioned is Doctor James Cody who is my favorite character in the novel and is... well, partially amazing here and partially a terrible human being. His character is also changed from the novel and it is for the worst unsurprisingly. I think the actor who plays him, Robert Mammone, is absolutely fantastic in the role, but had to deal with a less than stellar script. I was so excited to see Jimmy Cody's name attached to a Salem's Lot movie, but in the end it was more disappointing than surprising.

The plot follows the same one I've written twice over in two other reviews, with the only difference coming in actual characters that appear (This miniseries has a lot more characters than the 1979 movie, and much better acting besides as well.), and the framing device used in the miniseries, that was also used in the novel, but in a very different way. In the novel it was used as, I think, an homage to Dracula. Here it is used to showcase the villainy of Father Callahan and the characters of Mark Petrie and Ben Mears.

The main two characters, and the main female too, are still as bland as they have always been, and out of the main cast of characters only Andre Braugher's performance of Matt Burke had any real impact on me. I thought casting him to play a character that in the last adaptation and in the novel was white, was a great move. I thought he added real acting talent and a surprising addition to a story with, and I hate to say it like this, very little diversity. Now, I could care less about diversity. Whatever floats people's boats, but I think it was a ballsy move that a ton of people probably didn't like, but I thought it was excellent casting. It really seemed to me that they were casting out of the character himself rather than out of preconceptions... and I really like that. I'll be talking about Andre Braugher again in an upcoming review, again praising his performance. He is an incredibly underrated actor.

Anyway, I like this movie because of the source material... I mean, hey, I own it and everything. But on it's own merits, it really isn't very good. Some of the acting and scares are decently well done, but in the second half the acting starts falling very flat and the choices of how the plots moves just seem confusing and nonsensical to me, a fan of the original work. I wouldn't recommend it over the 1979 version unless you are looking for better acting or cinematography, which you very well might, and you'll find those things here. But besides that, you should probably avoid this less than stellar television miniseries.

Book Evaluation: 'Salem's Lot (1975) by Stephen King

I may have spoken of this in my first October Nights review of the television movie Salem's Lot, but since I don't remember, I'll reiterate myself for the masses, yes, the absolute masses of people reading my reviews. 'Salem's Lot is my absolute favorite Stephen King novel. To me, this novel is better than anything else he has ever written. Now, also keep in mind that this was the second novel he ever wrote. Yeah... yeah... I hope you understand where I'm going with this.

Now, it's not that I don't like a lot of his other books because that is grossly untrue and I'd probably go berserk for even trying to think it. Some of his other novels are fantastic. Duma Key and The Dark Tower series come especially to mind, but I also love many of his other works. Some of his short stories and novellas are absolutely brilliant as well, but I'll get into more detail about them when I review some of them whenever I do that. I will say that some of his legitimate novels are absolute rubbish and that I'm not afraid to say that. Actually many of his better known works tend to really rub me the wrong way.

Getting back to 'Salem's Lot though, this novel is his best to me for many reasons. It may not be as perfectly written as many of his later novels, it may not be as subtle nor as creepy as his other novels, and it deals with vampires, something that Stephen King has had almost nothing to do with before or since except in a few Dark Tower novels for brief periods. So, what makes this novel my favorite? What makes me love this novel more than the rest? What draws me back for more?

Well, one of my favorite novels has always been Bram Stoker's Dracula. I love that novel. I'm pretty certain it is the perfect vampire novel. I happen to like vampires. I think I mentioned that in my freaking review of vampires. They are my favorite presumably not real creature/horror monster. I think the idea of them is fantastic and works so well as something both exciting and creepy. That isn't to say that vampire fiction is all good. It mostly sucks. (Ha ha ha...) I make a stupid pun, but I mean it. Vampire fiction is mostly terrible, but the few shining gems really did make an impression on me.

'Salem's Lot is, at a basic level, a retelling of Dracula with a modern day small town instead of some British gentlemen and a castle. It also doesn't set itself up to be a vampire story. In fact, the whole story is set up to be a haunted house story. It seems like everything is leading up to the Marsten house and finding out that the place is haunted and everything, but no, Stephen King does something nobody reading that book would have ever expected: He brings a random vampire named Barlow into the mix along with his creepy hairless familiar-thing, Straker. Now, that actually sounds awful, but it works in the book. It really does.

The characters are absolutely fantastic as long as the character isn't one of the three leads. Ben Mears, Mark Petrie, and Susan Norton (the three leads) are the worst characters in this novel. They really come off as very one-dimensional characters, but that's okay, since some of the best Stephen King characters ever come out of this novel: Father Callahan, Doctor Jimmy Cody, Matt Burke... these characters are the reasons that the novel holds up so well. They work so beautifully in the world this novel takes place in.

This novel also happens to be Stephen King's first novel to focus on an entire town rather than a few individual characters... It is, in style, a lot like Needful Things, The Tommyknockers, and, seen in a grander scale, The Stand. It was the first time Stephen King used this style and it works here better than the rest of his novels in my opinion. It works really well, I think, because the main character here is the town itself. Yeah, that sounds a little crazy coming from me, but that's exactly how it feels. 'Salem's Lot is its own entity, a town already cursed by many things, becoming gradually less human because of a vampire outbreak and possibly its own disease. The town is diseased, you see. It's cursed and everything. That's why Barlow comes to the town. That's why he picks that town to feed. Or at least that's what we can assume. It sounds good though, doesn't it? It gives the vampire some motivation, some characteristics. He's drawn to a place of evil. So, in many ways the novel is a haunted house story... or rather a haunted town story.

I'm sure a more astute person could write essays on how 'Salem's Lot is a metaphor for the degradation and falling apart of small town America, or that it says things about AIDS, or some similar kind of STD that vampirism usually suggests. These are apt metaphors, and work really well, but I'm not really into examining something with that much academic acumen. I think a vampire is a vampire and the town is a town. You see bad towns from time to time. Who's to say some vampire won't try to make it his own village of the damned?

Why would Barlow do it anyway? I mean, what's his motivation here? Is he trying to create an army? His own town? A vampire refuge? It doesn't make a lot of sense. I guess he could have been really inept and couldn't control the very vampires he made, and they in turn started turning everybody else into vampires. That explanation works, but really takes away from Barlow as a character. I guess the more apt thing to say is that Barlow just wanted to screw up things in the town of 'Salem's Lot. He wanted to go and mess everything up and destroy the town. I guess that makes sense. But what would have happened once he finished with the town? Would he have moved on? Huh... that actually sounds really cool...

I guess my point is that this is a novel that should be read by pretty much anybody who likes old-fashioned vampire stories. I think this is one of the legitimate best novels I have ever read and really does work quite well. I love this novel. I love so much about it. Sure, it has its flaws, but it does work very well, and holds up very well despite being written thirty-six years ago. Hell, the idea of small-town America and its portrayal sounds exactly like it does today.

I love this novel and I have to add that again. Go ahead and check it out. I'd rather not tell the story again or spoil this novel for you. Check it out for yourself if it sounds interesting. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Creature Deliberation: Vampires

Vampires, creatures of the night, monsters beyond all horror of imagination who... until recently... had represented terrible ideas of sexuality and life beyond death, and nowadays seem to represent terrible books and movies that should be stricken from all records.

Look, I love vampires. I feel ashamed in saying that, but I find that vampires are among my favorite horror movie monsters. Although... I don't know how many vampire movies are actually "horror" movies especially in the last thirty years or so. Some books and movies that have vampires in them still stand up quite well in the horror genre, such as Dracula (1931), as well as the original novel which is still fantastic. 'Salem's Lot , the book by Stephen King, is also quite good even though the movies made of it are nowhere near as good. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is also fantastic as a very recent vampire novel. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is one of the first novels to really explore vampires as almost zombies and takes multiple forms of vampires. Then there is a movie like Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), which is fantastic both as an early film and a starter to the genre.

There are a few other decent vampire stories, but most of them have not been recent. Vampires as monsters are barely recognized anymore. Now vampires seem to all be about lust and sexuality rather than a monstrous force. Anne Rice is the one to blame here. Sure, Bram Stoker kind of started it off with a sexy Dracula back in the Victorian Age, where sexy was not vogue, but try comparing that sexuality to the present-day. It's gone a little crazy. Vampires seem almost to be a fetish nowadays and not one of those cool fetishes like I have, but a disturbing one that makes me shudder every single time I hear a fangirl squee about Twilight. I have really no opinion about Twilight, only because I feel it's unfair to judge something I've never had any part of. I know about it, kind of, but at the same time, I couldn't care less about some teen girl novel, or series of novels, or movie about shirtless men that kind of make me feel very uncomfortable and inadequate... I mean... yeah... if that's what all girls want... You know something? I'm not getting into this.

My point is that vampires are first and foremost, in my mind, monstrous and horrible. That's where the horror of most of these novels and movies come from. The vampire talks like a gentleman (of gentlelady in some cases), and one can never tell what kind of monster lurks beneath the surface until it is too late and the vampire gets to have a late night snack of person neck.

The vampire myths are fascinating, stemming from old time illnesses that were diagnosed as death, and people being buried before death. Hell, maybe the myths even have some bases in reality. I'm not going to rule it out. It would be hella cool if that were the case. It probably isn't... but still, you know?

I guess my problem with modern vampires is that they aren't scary. There is no obvious horror anymore and that makes me very sad. Vampires are such an interesting monster, much more refined than werewolves or zombies or Frankenstein monsters or swamp things or whatever... and it makes them fascinating. They retain so much of their humanity while also losing so much of it as well.

Then there are things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and those kinds of television shows, which are infinitely better than Twilight, but simply awful in comparison to earlier and better works in pretty much any kind of media.

I like the idea of vampires. I really do, but there are so few good forms of vampires (and there really have never been many good ideas out there anyway) that it is very disappointing to see how many failures that there really are.

I wish there could be better vampires, but nowadays vampires, true horror vampires, are fast on the decline, and it shows just how far those monsters have fallen.