Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Barbara Shelley


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I found an excellent blog entry on Barbara Shelley, an actress whom for me was a primary inspiration and maybe my earliest introduction to this strange attraction for female vampires. The author of the Cinebeats blog does a fantastic job of writing about one of the best female vamps ever portrayed on film and captures my sentiments about her precisely. Visit Barbara here:

cinebeats.blogsome.com/2007/07/07/barbara-shelley

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The V Word

There was a bit of vampire convergence going on over at Showtime's lesbian showcase The L Word a few seasons ago. Three former vampiresses were on the show at once; two series regulars (Jennifer Beals, Mia Kirschner) and one guest actress (Erica Cerra).

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usJennifer Beals starred in the black comedy Vampire's Kiss (1989) where she showed some excellent fangage, a bit of her hot body, and lots of 80's-style hair.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usJennifer Beals in Flashdance (1983). Sure, it seems cheesy now...

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usMia Krschner in the excellent show Dracula: The Series (1990)

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I think Mia Kirschner misses her fangs.


Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usPreppy girls with fangs are my favorite (Erica Cerra).

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Underworld: An Underachiever

Some things go together well: peanut butter and chocolate, for example, or pizza and beer. Action vampire movies are a genre to which I never quite cottoned because I don't think they were meant for each other. Vampire movies are ultimately about (un-?) human contact, passion and sexuality, and action movies are their antithesis. Shoot-em-up, blow-em-up action flicks are often difficult to reconcile with good storytelling.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usAn unpolished Kate Beckinsale in 1990.

Underworld was a decent enough movie and Kate Beckinsale is a pretty enough A-list actress, so I shouldn't complain too much when big-time Hollywood royalty play one of the un-dead. Maybe it will encourage any number of other starlets to follow her example. But therein lies some of the movies' problems; she barely had fangs, she barely used them, she never turned anyone into a vampire or bit a neck. For me it's barely a vampire movie. She didn't set a good example for Anne Hathaway as Dracula's Daughter in my fantasy movie, at all.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFangs good enough for apples and carrots.

Undoubtedly, Kate's body is smokin' hot and that leather outfit was great. For a while. Until she wore the same thing through rain, mud, gunfights, fire, explosions and never a wardrobe change.

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She wore the same outfit the entire movie.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usBy the end of the movie she looked as if she could use a nice warm shower.


As happens so many times, leave it to the yeoman actress who gets second billing to take up the star's slack and deliver the goods.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usSophia Myles shows some decent fangage.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

I See Vampiresses


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Who knew the mom (Kadee Strickland) from The Sixth Sense was so cute and pretty?

Friday, January 4, 2008

What Not to Wear

Just because a woman turns into a vampire doesn't mean she has to dress like a trollop. I'm sure there are some changes to her personality once she becomes undead; unresponsive, a cold heart, parasitic, manipulative, conniving and a detached demeanor to name but a few, but that's not all that different from some living women I know anyway. Even so, I just don't see them wholly changing their wardrobe into something resembling a dominatrix stripper. So why do the wardrobe directors in movies do it so frequently?


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Here's the actress Jill Wagner in a recent and egregious example of what I mean. It's from the wonderful, but short-lived TV show Blade: The Series. On the left we see Jill as the beautiful, wholesome woman that she is, while on the right she's in all her vampiric glory from the series. Those are some awesome fangs and I'm very grateful they picked such a pretty woman to be a vampire, but seriously, what the hell is she wearing? What's with the dead animal and those clunky-ass shoes?

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Now, I'm not one to disrespect any pretty woman with fangs and ta-tas like these who posts a picture of herself, but I have to question her choice of spidery unitard as the best fashion choice.


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There's nothing so droll and uninviting as chains, leather and cheesy leftover faux goth-crap from the prop department.


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So as to end on a positive note, here's actress Valerie Gaunt from 1958's Horror of Dracula wearing a classical Greek-inspired gown. Now that's the kind of thing for a proper vampiress to wear.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Pretty. Short hair.

There are probably practical reasons beyond fashion why actresses choose a certain hairstyle. The wrong length and it might preclude them from getting a given part. Younger actresses seem to tend toward long, while older seem to favor shorter but still aim to look classically feminine. It's perhaps for that reason there are few actresses with very short hair. Or vampiresses, for that matter.

I know of only one, and I actually forgot the name of both the movie and the actress! It was something like Vampire's Embrace, but definitely not the Alyssa Milano lesbian-kiss movie, which incidentally was barely a vampire movie at all. This one starred a little known actress whom I believe was featured in several soft-porn movies, of which this was one. I think women have to be very pretty to pull off short hair, and that she was.


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This is our unnamed heroine.


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I was never crazy about her albino-blue eyes, though.

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Two of my all-time favorite pics.


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The story involved a dancer whom was the object of the vampiresses' boyfriend. The vampiress seduced her, vampirized her, and tricked her into feeding on a friend.


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She has longer hair. She was none too happy when she found out about the ruse.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Fang Favorite - Rebecca Staab

I have only a few pictures to go with this one, and even less information about her, but Rebecca Staab first blew me away in the 1990 remake of Dark Shadows. From what I remember, she was only in about 3 episodes and a protracted story arc in which she finally became beautifully vampirized, but only for a short while before getting staked. She was done up right, too; big hair, glowing eyes, flowing dress...the whole works. And she was one wholesome, corn-fed all-American vampiress; she was a Miss USA Beauty Pageant finalist from Nebraska in 1980 when she was 18. At 27 she first sprouted fangs in Dark Shadows.

About seven years later she was again getting seduced and vampirized, this time in the soap opera Port Charles. I never saw the show but from the few pics of her I was able to find, she looked pretty sexy and glamorous, like a daytime starlet should.

In 2007 she played the ultimate MILF in a TAG body spray commercial in which she aggressively tried to seduce her daughter's gentleman caller. This woman has some awesome genetics. Now if she had only tried to bite that dude....


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Rebecca looking good as an early 90's vampiress. Note the big hair, it's great.


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Rebecca succumbs. Nice, sexy mouth.


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Why does it always have to end with a stake in the heart?


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Incredulously, this woman is close to 45 years old.


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A few small caps from her time on Port Charles.



This is Rebecca in all her VHS glory as the 1980 Miss Nebraska. She's the first contestant Bob Barker interviews.



Rebecca as the ultimate MILF in a TAG Body Spray commercial. So sexy, even without fangs and glowing eyes.