Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A Fresh Start

For all it did to popularize vampires, Dracula (1931) also embedded the idea into popular culture that female vampires are dark, scary and brooding misanthropes worthy of a horror movie. That's understandable, given the unsavory vampire legends of eastern Europe upon which this and many subsequent movies were based.

For a long time thereafter, female vampires held the same special place for all women unfortunate enough to become victims of their own moral turpitude. If they brought it on themselves through sexual adventure they had to pay the consequences, or so the thinking goes. For lady vampires the price to pay was usually a sharp stick inserted between her heaving breasts while she screamed. There's a metaphor in there somewhere just in case some of you weren't paying attention.

By the 1980's some unrelated trends were developing that unfortunately merged with the vampire zetigest. Goth sensibilities, extreme piercings and tattoos, and other unsavory practices began to effect the vampire look. By the 1990's way too many people who looked depressed, mentally unbalanced and frankly not that pretty, were dressing like vampires and Tom Cruise became the idyll gay male vampire poster child. Fooey on Anne Rice and her crappy books and movies.

By the time Underworld (2003) came out I knew things had gone too far. The classy and beautiful Kate Beckinsale was made to look as if her thang smelled like old tuna. It rained a lot in the movie and she looked like she could have used a nice warm shower and some scented soaps. The black latex unitard she wore was quite awesome but that's all she wore. In every scene. Personally, I would have preferred a skirt and sweater combination with a nice white pearl necklace to really complement some fangs, but I understand that may be going a bit too far given the subject matter. Worst of all, Kate's fangs were almost non-existent. This is wholly unacceptable in a vampire movie and occurring way to frequently lately. Vampire chicks should have big fangs. End of story.

Some vampires are pretty, however. And if they don't exist, I sometimes make them up. That's why I write this blog; there should be more pretty vampires.

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A pretty vampire in a field of lilacs. I can almost see the unicorns and rainbows. (Keri Russell)


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This is top model Christy Turlington. She's not a vampire, but I wish she was.


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Angie Everhart was also a top model, and played a vampire in Bordello of Blood (1996).


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I never understood why those other trollops in Sex and the City got all the media attention while classy Kristin Davis took the back seat.


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Actress Jennifer Esposito and singer Colleen Fitzpatrick frame actress Jeri Ryan in Dracula 2000. Interesting note: Jeri is probably the vampiress closest to becoming the wife of a US Senator that we know of.


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I know...Katie Holmes broke my heart too.


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If you don't remember the 80's, then you probably don't know Jennifer Beals was once America's sweetheart. That made it even more exceedingly gratifying to me when she grew fangs in Vampire's Kiss (1983).


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Listen, I have really good radar about this kind of thing. Kate Bosworth is totally a heterochromiac. There, the truth is out. She was also 19-years old when she appeared in Blue Crush (2002). Enough said.


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"It was a Brazillian supermodel vampiress. A Brazillian supermodel vampiress to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window." (Adrianna Lima).

1 comment:

GRV said...

From Chile
Excelent Work

I like to HIlary Duff and Rachel Bilson