How Anne Rice Accidentally De-fanged the Vampire

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Written By: Brandon Hale

Let me start by saying I loved Interview with the Vampire (both the book and the movie). I think Anne Rice told a great story and gave us an interesting twist to the vampire mythology. Lestat is a great character. Louis is genuinely interesting as a vampire who hates what he has become, especially considering this was first published back in 1976.

She didn’t invent the idea of a vampire who is regretful and sympathetic, but she almost certainly brought the concept to mainstream audiences. Back when she wrote that book, vampires were generally seen as monsters to be hunted down.

The trouble came when Interview with the Vampire was became a huge hit.
It’s much like Night of the Living Dead. It was a movie that wowed audiences. It was creepy in tone and had a genuinely good story. It was so good, in fact, that it spawned an entire genre of films… and now, several decades later, we have movies about hillbilly zombies on the moon.

That’s the curse of having a successful story. It gets copied, and those copies are rarely as good as the original. As the genre grows, the quality always seems to diminish. And really… that’s perfectly fine. Sometimes the bad rip-offs are incredibly fun. They don’t make the good movies go away… they just accompany them.

With Anne Rice, however, it was a little different. She didn’t spawn a new genre. She redefined a character type to mainstream audiences. While it’s not her fault at all, the result is that we now have a new popular view of what a vampire is supposed to be.

And it’s a view I’m not particularly fond of.

Louis was a great character because he was a freak. He was the only vampire that hated being a vampire. Every other vampire in that first novel loved it, even Claudia. Now, it seems like most modern vampire stories have to have a troubled vampire protagonist that’s a “good guy.” This good vampire has become the norm instead of the exception.

The pinnacle of this progression is Edward Cullen. Let’s think about this… Edward has unlimited strength, he never dies, and he never harms a human being… and yet, he’s always upset about his “horrible” condition. The worst thing Edward has to live with is the fact that he can’t just give in to his every craving. Well, guess what? We all have to deal with that, but we don’t get to be immortal super heroes.

I don’t know about you folks, but I’m ready to see old fashioned monstrous vampires come back to the forefront. There are some great movies – old and new – where vampires are still monsters. You just have to weed through an ocean of “pity me” vamps to find them.

With that in mind, in my next article, I’ll be giving a list of vampire movies that still have some bite. If you have any you’d like to see added to that list, feel free to suggest them in the comment section of this blog.

Author’s note: I don’t think there was actually a movie about hillbilly zombies on the moon, but now I kind of want to see one.

These undead being have been proven to have much bite...

The Cabin In The Woods

“Ok, I'm drawing a line in the fucking sand. DO NOT read the Latin!”

The Cabin In The Woods is next to impossible to review without spoiling EVERYTHING, so what I am going to do is split this review into two sections.

Non-Spoiler Section:

GO WATCH THE CABIN IN THE WOODS. I can’t say much else about it to be honest. I will however offer this warning, DO NOT watch any trailers or read anything about this film online. Simply coming here and reading this before seeing it was, to be blunt, a mistake. You will be doing yourself a service going in blind. Now run along to the theater and make it happen. Be sure to come back and read the rest of my review when you’re done.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

For those of you that have seen it, let’s chat. I for once followed my own advice and didn’t read anything about it or watch any trailers prior to watching this film. I went in just praying it wouldn’t suck…and boy was I pleasantly surprised.

I’m going to talk about just a few key points in this film because I can see myself getting very long winded with this one.

Before we delve into the horror aspects of this film let me take a moment to talk about the characters. One of the big problems horror films deal with is what I like to call Characters vs. Caricatures. Yes, we are given five very stereotypical college students to follow but just five minutes in you can tell this is intentional. For example, Curt is not a guy acting tough, he is a guy who just so happens to be tough. I feel a lot of these directors don’t understand this distinction, Goddard does.

On to the horror! By far the best aspect of this film is the possibilities of the different “hauntings” these characters could potentially face. The scene in the cellar where they unknowingly choose their fate really pulled me in. I wanted to see these people go through every one of those nightmares. Then the movie falls on it’s face.

Redneck zombie family? Really? That was more worthy of an episode of Supernatural than a big name horror film. That would have been my last choice next to Merman. Luckily we don’t spend too much time dealing with that family and their “husband boners.”

It isn’t easy to combine horror and comedy without it coming off as campy, this movie nailed it. I was giggling like a little girl from the first scene on.

From then on I was completely unaware that there was anything else going on in the world other than the beautiful monstrosities slaughtering their way across the screen. The third act of the film was a horror fan’s wet dream, a thank you for sticking around through all the re-makes, sequels and adaptations we’ve had to endure these last few years.

Finally I just want to say thanks for the absurd amount of horror references sprinkled throughout. We really got the gambit here, from Pinhead to The Strangers to the “Old Ones.” The only thing missing was a giant tentacle coming out of the ground at the end instead of a hand. Oh well, close enough.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go try to get my mitts on a coffee mug bong.

Image Source: http://playmoviez.net/cabin-woods-2012/

Worse horror movies ever part 1

Here's my list:

1. The Exorcist Part 2
2. Motel Hell
3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
4. Halloween 3: Season of the witch
5. HellRaiser
6. I Eat Your Skin
7. Screaming Skull
8. Fright Night (Although entertaining it was very bad)
9. Evil Dead: Army of Darkness
10. It’s Alive
11. The Boogie Man (The Original)
12. Pet Cemetery

Worse horror movies ever part 2

Halloween Movie Review

Written By: "MonsterMan"

We’ve all seen certain movies that we don't mind watching over again, and each time we see them they remind us exactly why we liked them in the first place. Well, for me Halloween is that kind of movie.

Halloween is a story about a murderous-escaped mental patient, named Michael Myers, who returns to his fictitious home town of Haddonfield, Ill. on Halloween in order to continue his homicidal predilection discovered by his parents when he was six years old, after killing his older sister.

Halloween was made in 1978, but still remains one of the best horror movies ever made. Here are just a few reasons I believe why.


Halloween: The night he came home.

The first thing I must say was John Carpenter's and Debra Hill's decision to write a horror movie using Halloween as the backdrop. They figured out that if done right they could maximize the latent potential for terror, suspense and horror that creating a movie surrounding the holiday could present. And baby, was it done right. The result, 29 years later, the movie has become a cult classic and is considered by many to be the forerunner to most of the horror movies of the 80's and beyond.


A Star is born.

Jamie Lee Curtis played Laurie Strode, the wide-eyed innocent and awkward teen who took on Michael Myers, and although she along with movie-goers was absolutely scared out of our minds, she gave Michael Myers as much as he could handle. For someone who hadn’t had one single role on film to that point, and although Ms. Curtis was very critical of her performance, I can’t image this movie being as good as it was with out the young actress in the role.

Mr. Myers the Doctor will see you now.

It’s been said that, no matter the type of movie, you really don’t have a story without a well written antagonist. And as for Halloween, the role of the antagonist was played exceptionally well by late actor Donald Pleasance. Donald played Dr. Sam Loomis, the doctor who had the daunting task of treating Michael Myers when he was a kid. And because of his knowledge of his patient, he knew if he ever was set free from the hospital, he would without question return to his home town, and the end result, would be as predictable, people would surely die. You get the sense from watching the Dr. Loomis’ character on screen that he was very much obsessed with ridding the world of the “evil” that was Michael Myers. Christopher Lee, a very good character actor in his own right, if I’m not mistaken was originally offered the role but it obviously went to the man who with out a doubt did it justice.

The Man under the Mask

There have been many others to play the role of Michael Myers in the sequels that followed but none did it like Nick Castle. He was the perfect embodiment of John Carpenter’s vision for what he saw as “pure evil”. In order to really appreciate this man’s stellar performance one must only see him in all of his gory. Sorry, in all of his glory.

What’s the Boogey Man?

The main thing that made this movie so good was John Carpenter’s ability to capitalize on our “child-like” fear of the “Boogey Man”. The Boogey Man is every kid’s worse nightmare. Nothing scares children like the boogey man. Kids always believe that despite what their parents tell them, the boogey man does in fact hang out under their beds and in their closets, waiting and lurking in the shadows to snuff out their little lives. Kids revere their parents, at least most do, and may even be afraid of them from time to time but, as for the Boogie Man, they are truly afraid. And for this reason the Michael Myers character is in a sense an archetype, in that he is the fullness of the only individual who scares us like no other. This is how John Carpenter envisioned him. He did, however, refer to him differently when he was writing the part. The website, pitofhorror.com says of Michael Myers, The Shape is what John Carpenter referred to Michael Myers as in the script. Throughout the movie you only see the outline of Michael lurking in the shadows, non-descript and very much a "shape". Now you tell me, who does that sound like to you?

Ok, die already will you!

What I remember most about this movie, when I saw it for the first time, was that it was truly frightening, of course any 14 year old kid would think so. I guess it was something about the large imposing masked man wielding an equally large kitchen knife, looking to take any and everyone’s life, and do it with relative ease. A man, I might add, who refuses to die on more than one occasion. Clearly Lauie Strode was unaware of one simple fact about the boogie man and it was this, no matter how hard you try you absolutely cannot kill him. Okay Michael Myers may not have been the actual boogie man, the infamous purveyor of terror, but he was however, one scary ass dude. One I don’t mind watching over and over again in this terrific movie.

Halloween Movie Review

What's the Scariest movie you've ever seen?

Here's the "Monster Man's" scariest movies of all time.

Poltergeist

Amityville Horror

The Sixth Sense

Carrie

Halloween

Aliens

The Exorcist

The Beast Within

The Devil's Rain

Tell me what you think of my list.

The "Monster Man"