Thursday, June 25, 2009

My Favorite Transformations - Part II


Jill Wagner is a vampire.
Jill Wagner - Blade: The Series (2006)
Losing Jill still pangs me even to this day, 3 years after the series was cancelled. She was a paragon of the pretty vampire ideal; a nice, wholesome looking girl with fangs. She could appear smokin' hot when she wanted, but for the most part she was the kind of girl that effortlessly, casually exuded sexyness, all served with an easy smile and great hair. I've got at least a dozen ad agency executives, stylists, directors and other media types who thought so too because she's the spokesmodel for Mercury cars and trucks. For as long as Mercury may be around, that is. She's the type of woman who's aspirational (as they say in the marketing biz,) pretty, yet non-threatening enough to keep the women buyers interested, but can also stop the men in their channel-surfing frenzy with her immediately impressive looks.

Jill has an athletic body (not the Madonna overly-yoga'd, sinewy kind) with those womanly curves in all the right places (read: great tits and nice ass.) She also has nice teeth and lips, the kind that when enhanced with a great set of fangs makes me swoon. Add to all that she graduated with a BS in Management (i.e., she's practical too) from NC State (...not too shabby) and I think I could love her. I can see it now...she would wear a simple black dress to the restaurant, her white pearls offset by the glint of her fangs behind a subtle shade of red liptick. The candles softly illuminating her face as she sips a glass of sparkling wine gently meeting those full lips. Just then the waiter brings over a plate of extra-rare, bleeding steak. Her eyes light up, she delicately touches both sides of the plate as if it were a present from Tiffany's and her broad smile fully reveals what I swear are even longer and sharper fangs than before. I didn't even know she could do that. But I digress.

Jill's transformation on Blade: The Series was paradoxically both brutal and pretty hot. After the usual vampire seduction-resistance cycle we've all seen, Jill is FINALLY bitten, but before she turns into a vampire she has to be killed before she dies from the bite. So the vampire takes her to a rooftop and simply drops her. She plunges the several stories and smashes through the roof of a car breaking glass and setting off alarms. Now that's a unique transformation technique!

Except when she wakes up fully vampirized she's encouraged to dress like a cheap French whore by the other vampires. Which is a fine thing if I was in love with a cheap French whore, but this is Pretty Vampire Jill Wagner and I liked her in her casual wear. It also smacked too closely of the faux-Goth conceit that for some inexplicable reason tends to associate itself with vampires when instead of Goth they should be all pretty and they instead look like fourth-rate extras from an Anne Rice movie, which in itself defines what fourth-rate actually is. I know I just alienated a whole bunch of people with that statement so let me reiterate it for those of you whom might of missed it: Anne Rice is crap. It's droll and plodding and boring and not a pretty vampire to be seen in any of her movies unless you count the very cute auburn-haired chick Marguerite Moreau in "Queen of the Damned". But she played such an idiot (which is ironic considering in real life she graduated from Vassar College...again, not too shabby) that when she was vampirized it was for way too short a time, her fangs were too small, she had crappy makeup on, and worst of all she was supposedly hot for Stuart Townsend who just creeps me the fuck out anyway, so I could barely care. But getting back to Jill Wagner, the cheap French whore look didn't work for her.

But like the Hollywood hooker with a conscience, Jill became a vampiress with one too. That meant she had the standard modern vampire conflicts we've all come to know and cherish like killing to eat, loving or hating her vampire sire, etc. So she hooked up with the eponymous Blade (wretchedly portrayed by the artist known as Sticky Fingaz -real name?, who must surely have been a primary cause for the shows' cancellation) who supplied her with a synthetic blood substitute to quell the cravings. The net effect was that every time Jill got hungry, whether it be in the shower or in front of her mom, out popped her beautiful fangs and she would moan and writhe or otherwise become so emotional it sounded like a cross between a woman in the throes of ecstacy and childbirth. In any case, it was totally hot. Especially when she was naked in the shower. Or when she vampirized her mom. With her hair pulled back. Wearing sweatpants and a strap t-shirt. With huge fangs. You don't see that too often. Incredible.

This show had huge potential, there was room for character growth and the writers could have had a great time with it. Especially interesting to me was Jill's frenemy relationship with fellow vampiress Chase (Jessica Gower, a beautifully translucent actress/model.) Early on their relationship was rife with behavior that could only have resulted in hot, sucky-sucky lesbian vampire action had the series gone on. But thanks to a worse-than-shit choice with that crap lead Sticky (ugh!), high expenses (read: good acting and writing), and low ratings (i.e., Spike TV) the show was sadly....sadly cancelled.


Still to come:

Jeri Ryan (Dracula 2000)

Rebecca Gayheart (Dusk Till Dawn)

Monday, June 8, 2009

My Favorite Transformations

The true payoff in any vampire movie for me is when the previously chaste heroine is transformed into a lusty vampiress. This usually necessitates a developed backstory highlighting her virtuous upbringing, high status or the other positive qualities important to our society for a young woman. Sometimes there may be the hint of inferred carnality to her persona, but it's mild, controlled and used merely as a means to explain her later seduction and descent into full-blown vampirism. The point is we get to see a hot chick transform from the girl-next-door into an even hotter chick with fangs who's completely lost any inhibition and ready to have sex suck blood.

The impact of the transformation can sometimes be magnified by the actresses' real-life persona or career; the more wholesome, the better. I have less desire to see a latter-day Britney or Lindsay Lohan sporting fangs than I would, for example Vanessa Hudgins from High School Musical. I take that back, I'd like to see Lindsay with fangs. And Britney for that matter, even if I needed to close my eyes and imagine the old Britney again. Neverthless, I think you get my point.



Maryam d'Abo (not a vampire).
Maryam d'Abo - Nightlife (1989)
There was a simpler, pre-Internet time where the availability of erotica was severely limited. There was no way to Google "High School Musical" +tits, for example and get what you were after. Actually, it would have been more like "The Partridge Family" +tits...but again, I think you get the point. In between fapping it to the Sears catalog or your sister's copy of Seventeen there wasn't much available except for that which could be glimpsed on one of the few TV channels available. Or sneaking into the local movie theater to see what you could see which was in this case, a James Bond movie. Bond movies were the slightly kinky source of what could pass for erotica starting back in the 1960's: there was Pussy Galore and dancing gold-painted girls to titillate the mind and every introduction to a new Bond Girl was a mini-event unto itself. So it was with Maryam D'Abo in 1987's Bond movie "The Living Daylights," where she played an incredibly cute and sweet but vulnerable cellist/sniper. Yes, you read that right, cellist-slash-sniper.

So when Maryam, a Bond girl no-less, appeared in the vampire comedy (always a risky proposition) Nightlife in 1989, needless to say I was very excited. And she didn't disappoint. Cute as ever, she was unwillingly bitten and transformed. In a key scene we get to see her massive fangs (huge fangs on a chick give me the same thrill as huge tits for some guys,) so incongruous against her diminutive frame, so large and unwieldy as to impede her speech and make her lisp, it's a fabulous sight to behold.

YouTube video of Maryam d'Abo from Nightlife (1989): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0dHbInHz_M


Amanda Bearse is a vampire with 8 fangs!.
Amanda Bearse - Fright Night (1985)
Quite simply, this may be the sexiest, hottest, sweatiest transformation ever captured on film. Believably portrayed by 27-year old actress Amanda Peterson, a girl-next-door gets seduced by the suburban-vampire-next-door and transformed into a ravaging golden-eyed, flaming red-haired seductress sporting what may be the most unique and beautiful perky tits/fangs combination ever. The 1980's thumping synth-disco-seduction-techno-beat dance-of-death scene captures a zeitgeist moment in time like very few films have ever done in the history of all film making. Amy goes into the disco a cowering, fearful girl and exits a pouty, glammed-up, dead-eyed, coiffed Studio 54 Supermodel who came this close to giving the vampire a blow job on the dance floor. I'm certain piles of cocaine were billowing into clouds of dust somewhere just off-camera.

Once back at the vampire's lair, Amy wakes up from her disco-induced stupor clothed in the white silken gown included in every medieval beer-soaked Burgmeister's fantasy wet dream. While layers of synth-music (more gentle this time) play in the background, the allegory of Amy reluctantly, then with trepidation losing her virginity plays across the screen culminating in the piercing of her neck as blood streams down her back. Metaphor, be my muse!

Then the shit goes down. Amy is left alone to writhe on the silk-strewn floor of the bedroom. She sweats and moans like in the throes of a feverish orgasm. Her hair grows longer, then red, and when her boyfriend discovers then tries to wake her we see her languid, gold-shimmering eyes. And when her mouth drops open, there's a set of nascent fangs sprouting from those pouty blow job lips. It's unbelievably beautiful. Later the buffoonish vampire hunter inadvertently opens her door and Amy springs up like a startled and fierce animal. Her hair is sweaty and stringy and she's gleefully, sinisterly smiling and unabashedly showing us her 8 (yes!) fangs. She's growling and snarling like a lioness until the vampire hunter flashes his crucifix and she recoils in pain and horror, then starts whimpering, whining...covering her face in shame. You can almost hear that little voice inside her head, "Shit! I let that old man vampire fuck me and now I'm really screwed! I'll be the only cheerleader at school with fangs and I'll have to wear sunglasses all the time." It's then you begin to feel sorry for her except for the fact she looks so hot as a vampiress.

It's in the last scene where Amy desprately tries to kill her boyfriend as he searches for the vampire knowing that if she doesn't, her vampire master will surely do some really nasty things to her (which we'll unfortunately never get to see.) Gliding down the basement stairs, her perfect perky breasts expertly lighted from behind through her transluscent white gown, Amy surely and suddenly knows how to woo her formerly disinterested boyfriend. Looking marvelously otherworldly, she flips her hair, acts demurely and again with that adorable pouty act...she's not even trying to hide her fangs...she snaps at him with those marvelous fangs but misses. But we know what invariably happens and it's so distressing I'll spare you the details on how the boyfriend kills the vampire and the girl reverts back to normal. But there's a sequel in my mind and it has to do with where she goes to college and becomes the President of a sorority of lesbian vampires.

YouTube Club Scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B5HzueNeOE


Kristen Kreuk with Fangs
Kristen Kreuk - Smallville "Thirst" Season 5 Episode 5 (2005)
Bitten by the President of a sorority of lesbian vampires, Kristen Kreuk is transformed into a bloodsucking lesbian vampiress dressed in a sexy cat costume. This episode of the recent Superman television series incongruously mixes Superman with vampires and sororities into an awesome melange of collegiate sexiness.

Suspending our disbelief, we're supposed to accept that exotic and beautiful Kristen Kreuk is the plain-Jane last-minute sorority pledge looking for a place to live whom lackadaisically applies and gets accepted to the "hottest sororoty on campus". OK, if she ends up a lesbian vampiress with fangs I'm all for it. So she does. The President makes a decision on the spot, kicks out the other pledges, tongue kisses Kristen and exchanges some blood with her and voila, Kristen has fangs. I almost passed out.

Kristen gets wild, starts partying with the girls and gets pushed down a huge flight of stairs and breaks her neck. That's when the fun begins. Her fangs pop out, her nails are like claws and her eyes are devilish. She re-adjusts herself and realizes she's going to live forever. Now it's getting even better.

At the Halloween party, Kristen is dressed in her black leather Underworld-like catsuit with furry ears, sexily dancing with a cowboy when out pop her fangs! She's ready to bite him when her best friend shows up dressed in a Catholic school girl uniform and whisks her away to a private room to admonish her for cheating on her boyfriend. Feeling a bit remorseful for what she's about to do, she apologizes to her friend, then mocks her for whipping out a crucifix, then bites her. But wait...the modus operandi for this show is you get bit, you immediately grow fangs. But her friend doesn't. She's dressed as a Catholic school girl for chissakes! WTF...this is a missed opportunity of massive proportions! This may not be getting better.

But it does. Later on she drops through a plate glass skylight, bites Superman and sucks his blood (he's doesn't become her vampire slave?) develops hybrid Supergirl/vampiress powers, fights and kills the sorority President with her heat ray eyes, then totally sends the lesbian vampiresses away. Huh? This is her opportunity to be the vampire supervampiress lesbian vampire queen! I'm not getting it...she goes back to Superman, he cures her at the last minute and all the lesbian vampires get cured except for the President who's dead and gone. Then I'm starting to think this sucks.

Except for the fact Kristen Kreuk is so goddam hot even without fangs. And with fangs she truly does have Supergirl Super Lesbian Vampire Sorority President powers and in my mind, she always will.

YouTube Clip - Drunken Lana Gets Pushed Down the Stairs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mcoJJRnwAQ&feature=related

Next Update:
Jill Wagner (Blade: The Series)
Jeri Ryan (Dracula 2000)
Rebecca Gayheart (Dusk Till Dawn)