The Lucky 13: Week Six: Vampires!
by Brutal As Hell Staff
Intro by Marc Patterson
The vampire film is one of the most universally loved sub-genres of horror. Its appeal extends well beyond a fan base of gore loving horror hounds into the arena of casual genre fans out for a good Friday night fright. What is it about the vampire film that fascinates so many of us? The vampire is a monster steeped in mythology centuries old and throughout the ages has been explored in a variety of context. Vampires aren’t like other monsters. Vampires have cogniant thought. They might be undead, but they are intelligent and with powers that exceed that of the human, which has always made them something of a superior species to human. They are eternal, yet cursed. They are the most human of the popular monsters, yet they tend to deny any bit of their humanity. That or they hopelessly and futilely cling to it. They can be monsterous, but in most cases aren’t beastly, and more often than not they are highly sexual beings. Whether they are cave dwelling Nosferatu like creatures, or affluent gothic aristocrats one thing is for sure, nothing seems to satiate our love for these blood sucking creatures of the night.
This week in our ongoing summer long collaborative project with The Vault of Horror we take a look at our personal favorites of the genre. Check out this week’s entries and be sure to head over to see what B Sol and the gang at The Vault of Horror have whipped up!
Bryce Holland on From Dusk Till Dawn
Vampire movies are fucking awesome, but you know what might make them better?
How about bikers, criminals, explosions, vampires that turn into giant rats, strippers that turn into vampires, a nearly nude Salma Hayek turning into the queen of the vampires, Danny Trejo, Harvey Keitel, Cheech Marin, Cheech Marin as a cop, Cheech Marin turning into a vampire, special FX from KNB, Quentin Tarantino, and Robert Rodriguez? Would those things make a vampire movie better.
Yeah…’From Dusk Till Dawn’ is so awesome…
The Lucky 13 – From Dusk Till Dawn from Bryce Holland on Vimeo.
Marc Patterson on Let The Right One In
Let the Right One In impacted how I look at the modern horror film in a big way. I wasn’t familiar with the novel that inspired the film at the time of the theatrical release. In fact, outside of a basic synopsis and a trailer I wasn’t familiar with the story much at all. The only thing I knew was that it was a different kind of vampire tale, coming from Sweden. I was lucky enough to get an advance look at the film before it premiered in the theaters and so went into the film with zero expectations as there were no reviews, no blog write-ups, and very little hype built around the film at that time. In my mind this is always the best way to see a film, free of the marketing buzz and hype that permeates every release. Without overstating matters, Let The Right One In blew my mind away.
Let The Right One In remains to be one of the most stark, yet beautiful horror films I’ve seen, and is certainly among the most accomplished vampire films I’ve seen. (And as a former goth punk kid I’ve seen A LOT of vampire films) It is nothing short of pure art. The story of young bullied schoolboy Oskar and his strange new neighbor friend Eli is simply magnificent. The way that their relationship is explored and developed takes an incredibly tender and poignant approach, and when contrasted against the vicious cruelty that Eli exhibits regularly we’re left with a film that is as emotionally compelling as it is horrifying and brutal.
What I found particularly refreshing about Let The Right One is that it breaks all conventions of the vampire film by defying nearly every rule that is expected of the genre. Sure, it maintains the basic mythology in that Eli needs to avoid sunlight and feed on blood, but it goes beyond that to tell a story that transcends vampirism, which is in itself a strong central theme to any vampire film. I know that seems silly to even say, because of course a vampire film is going to be about vampirism. But Let the Right One In is most definitely NOT about vampirism. It’s a dark coming of age film set against a cold, lifeless canvas that just so happens to focus on the relationship between two characters, both of which happen to be children, just one has been a child a lot longer than the other. And to that point, pre-pubecent vampirism has been explored in a variety of films including Interview with A Vampire and Near Dark, but none had taken it to this extreme making child relationships, and child vampirism a central theme to the film.
You combine all of this – a dark and chilling narrative, stunning cinematography, and a touching, emotionally charged coming of age story and its no wonder I’m so smitten with this film. It’s a film I readily recommend to my friends who aren’t particularly fans of the horror genre, and certainly one that I recommend to anyone who is a fan of the genre who’s looking for something a little different from the standard gothic vampire tale.
Ben Bussey on Twins of Evil
Another week of the Lucky 13, another bout of filmic head-scratching. As ever, there are so many movies within this subgenre that I could and should pay tribute to. Given that I have a Santanico Pandemonium tattoo, From Dusk Till Dawn might warrant a mention. Fright Night, Blade/Blade 2 and Razor Blade Smile all rock my socks off, and at the other end of the spectrum Near Dark and Martin (reviewed here this week) offer a more cerebrally engorging experience. But let’s be honest – when we’re talking about vampires, the brain is not the organ seeking engorgement. Yes, vampires and sex go hand in glove, and 1971′s Twins of Evil comes from a time when films were exploring that link explicitly for the first time. And by cementing that link in my fledgling horror geek mind when I first saw it aged 10 or 11, this movie ensured that my own lust for vampires would never go away. What can I say; simple things for simple minds.
Clearly recognising a great sales point, Hammer hired Italian starlets Mary and Madeleine Collinson off the back of them being the first ever twin Playboy centerfold, and plopped their pert bodies in front of the camera (though not the microphone, both having their lines overdubbed by English actresses) for director John Hough, with a script from Tudor Gates. The resulting movie, though often overlooked in retrospectives, is to my mind one of the most entertaining and interesting movies Hammer ever made, its rich subtext touching on class struggles, middle-aged fears of the young people, and the social and sexual movements of the day.
While classed as part of the Karnstein trilogy – essentially a prequel to The Vampire Lovers and Lust For A Vampire – Twins of Evil works fine as a stand-alone movie. Peter Cushing gets one of his best roles outside of Van Helsing and Frankenstein as Gustav Weil, a fanatical puritan who leads a brotherhood who spend their evenings hunting down pretty young women and burning them at the stake under tenuous suspicions of witchcraft. Obviously there are echoes of Witchfinder General, but far from the unrepentant inhumanity of Price’s Matthew Hopkins, Weil is a more complex animal, truly believing he is acting in public interest, unable to see the evil in his actions. It’s a great part, and Cushing’s performance is all the more impressive considering, if I’ve read correctly, he had recently lost his wife and had little or no personal interest in the film. That’s the mark of truly great actors: they give the role their all regardless.
As for the vampires themselves – Damien Thomas proves to be one of the few Hammer vampires to escape the undead shadow of Christopher Lee. He’s great as the decadent, debonair Count Karnstein, and it’s a shame he never did more films of note. And the Collinson twins – well, I won’t beat around the bush, they’re just delectable, constantly spilling out of their matching outfits. And dubbing aside they’re not half bad actresses either, Mary having the most fun as the lustful rebel Frida, whilst Madeleine is equally effective as the coy, virtuous Maria. (Or is it the other way around…?)
Maybe it’s because I’m English, but when I think of vampires, the Hammer films immediately come to mind. By bringing horror into the Technicolor era, they pretty much defined the genre for generations to come. Of course it’s all very dated now, but that’s a huge part of the charm. And to my mind, Twins of Evil is one Hammer movie that has some most ample charms. (Pun intended, naturally.)
Trailer:
Dustin Hall on Fright Night
There is nothing in Fright Night related to the vampires that is not the greatest thing ever made about them. Maybe it doesn’t hit all the right notes for people who want their vampires to be some sort of pale, lovely, vaguely homosexual immortality fantasy. But for me, this movie is what vampires are all about. Charming, powerful, evil, cursed, bat-turning, sun-burning, cross-fearing, coffin-sleeping, hooker-killing bastards trying to drain the blood out of you and all your friends. Also, really big fangs which make it hard to speak correctly.
Fright Night was the gateway between the old gothic vampire movies and the new classics like Lost Boys, Innocent Blood, even From Dusk Till Dawn. Sure, there had been some other modern Vampire movies, but ones like Dracula: 1978 still had the old Hammer trappings, and George Romero’s Martin was as much about sexual and psychological deviancy as anything else, it missed that mystical occult quality. Just as 1938′s Dracula was the first horror film to not add a ‘reasonable explanation’ to sweep away its ghoulish events, Fright Night was the first film to fully embrace the powers and magic of the Vampire in the modern setting; at the same time it ditched the capes and pipe organs in favor of pop music and neon lights, making it all seem as cool as it was believable.
Fright Night brings us into the modern, by having our hero, Charlie, be a fan of all of the old Hammer vampire flicks. Roddy McDowell is in the shoes of Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing, his relevance having been used up, relegating him to a spot as a late-night TV host. Together, they have to stop the rampage of Charlie’s neighbor, a vampire, by using all of their knowledge of obscure vampire lore. Of course, no one believes them, when they try to tell the cops, its just one old man and a teenage boy against hell’s fury. Its like the boy who cried wolf… with vampires.
This was just one of many horror films that I discovered with my sweet old granny, who loved to bake cookies, sing along with the chirping birds, and watch horror and sci-fi movies with her impressionable grandson. As a five-year old, this movie scared the piss out of me. I mean, it was cool and fun, but scary as all get out. As the movie has aged it gains a campy quality that adds a few laughs to its scares. And as I aged, I came to appreciate some of the details the directors threw into the movie to give its characters more depth. A personal favorite of mine is the vampire’s obsession with clocks. His walls are adorned with hundreds of valuable old time-pieces, all ticking away in unison. And for someone who could be destroyed by sunlight, what could be of more importance than the coming of the morning hours? Its a nice touch.
Time may have made the hair and clothes stick out like a sore thumb, but Fright Night proves, to me at least, to be indelible and, just as its villainous vamp, eternal.
Annie On Valerie and Her Week of Wonders:
Back in my day, vampires weren’t pretty and didn’t sparkle. They were ugly, parasitic creatures with hideous teeth and skin the color of bad cheese. They had sinister names that no one dared speak aloud: Nosferatu. Lord Ruthven. Radu Vladislas. Richard the Weasel. Wait, what?
Yeah, that’s right. Also known as The Polecat and The Constable, Richard the Weasel is the creation of Czech writer and founding surrealist Vítězslav Nezval, who penned the novel Valerie a týden divů in 1935. In 1970, his obscure quasi-gothic tale was made into a film: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which does for the menstrual vampire horror genre what The Company of Wolves would later do for menstrual werewolf horror genre.
Despite the high Tumblarity of still shots from this recently rediscovered gem of the Czech New Wave, not many people have actually seen Valerie in its entirety. And if you haven’t seen Valerie, you are seriously denying your eyes an orgy they’ll not soon forget. Valerie is a decadent feast, offering the many abundant joys of sex alongside the wages of sin and the horrors of death. Set against a summery backdrop of flowers, doves and Catholic idolatry, it doesn’t take long for Valerie to literally descend into an underworld (aka Wonderland) of cobwebs, bones, incest and animal lust. Vamprirism has always been a very clear metaphor for sex, and never more strongly here. Valerie, though tempted by both, doesn’t understand what either really has to offer her in the long run. Blood, pain, humiliation, damnation…it’s one and the same for the 13 year old virgin, who spends the majority of the film trying not to get raped by virtually everyone who crosses her path, including the aforementioned Weasel, a blue-tinged, rat-eared, centuries old pervert who may also be Valerie’s own father and who is further burdened by the most awful set of yellowed Austin Powers dentures ever seen outside of Britain.
There are blood, breasts and fangs aplenty on display here in this oddest of vampire films which has gone too long overlooked and unappreciated. It’s certainly laughable in places (dig the hairy monk with the love beads, baby) and may not make a whole lot of sense to those who don’t care for surrealism, but it has aged incredibly well, boasting an incredibly talented cast, an unforgettable score and a gorgeous explosion of primal beauty in its every frame. Valerie is a timeless fairy tale for grownups with an insatiable vampire fetish. Do yourself a favor and partake of it.
