Shocktoberfest #1 - Vampires (Brooklyn-Free)
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Oct 1 2010, 12:10 AM
Vampires have been played out in Hollywood— from the horny bloodsuckers of HBO’s True Blood to the shimmering sexless Abercrombie & Fitch kids of the Twilight series, the red well seems to have been run dry. Vampires are more metaphors than monsters anymore— does anyone remember when we were supposed to be scared by them? Youhave to reach all the way back to 1922 to find the freakiest and most unsettling vampire, German actor Max Schreck’s portrayal of Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu; no one has even come close. Everyone from Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee to Leslie Nielsen and even Jack Palance have taken a shot at playing the best-known vampire ever, Count Dracula, but even he's worn out his welcome with the likes of cut-rate exploitation movies like Dracula 2000 and its even more absurd sequel, Dracula 3000.
The scariest and most brutal vampire movie ever features no garlic, no Holy Water, and not a pointy tooth in the house. It’s 1987’s Near Dark, directed by Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow. A tough road movie about a highly dysfunctional “family” of vampires played by the likes of the Aliens triumvirate of Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein and a never-better Bill Paxton, Near Dark delivers gore and fright in equal amounts, with Paxton’s shit-kicking Severin a wise-cracking but terrifying amoral monster out to terrorize recently-bitten hero Adrian Pasdar. The roadhouse massacre sequence set to the tune of The Cramps’ cover of Patsy Cline’s “Fever” is on the short list of most intense movie moments ever. Bigleow combines stylish visuals — bullet-holes emitting beams of daylight that burn vampires like laser beams — with the raw ferocity of the vampires’ need to feed.
Good companions to Near Dark include 2007’s visceral 30 Days Of Night, the adaptation of the Steve Niles’ horror comic that showcases a truly frightening performance by Danny (Children Of Men) Huston as a black-eyed, shark-toothed vampire leading a pack of bloodsuckers into an Alaskan town where the sun doesn’t rise for a month. Ignore bland lead Josh Hartnett and focus on the great setting and the truly bestial vampires, which capture the comic’s iconic artwork by Ben Templesmith perfectly. Let The Right One In (2008) and its largely effective American remake, Let Me In (opening today), offer a tender coming-of-age story paralleled with a deeply unsettling take on the vampire legend focusing on a young, put-upon boy whose new best friend, a little girl, is more than she appears to be. Let Me In hews a little too close to the original (some of the shots are practically identical), but the performances are all universally strong and the amped-up horror element is genuinely shocking at times. The original is a classic, but the quietly chilling remake works better than you might expect.
Vampires have been played out in Hollywood— from the horny bloodsuckers of HBO’s True Blood to the shimmering sexless Abercrombie & Fitch kids of the Twilight series, the red well seems to have been run dry. Vampires are more metaphors than monsters anymore— does anyone remember when we were supposed to be scared by them? Youhave to reach all the way back to 1922 to find the freakiest and most unsettling vampire, German actor Max Schreck’s portrayal of Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu; no one has even come close. Everyone from Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee to Leslie Nielsen and even Jack Palance have taken a shot at playing the best-known vampire ever, Count Dracula, but even he's worn out his welcome with the likes of cut-rate exploitation movies like Dracula 2000 and its even more absurd sequel, Dracula 3000.
The scariest and most brutal vampire movie ever features no garlic, no Holy Water, and not a pointy tooth in the house. It’s 1987’s Near Dark, directed by Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow. A tough road movie about a highly dysfunctional “family” of vampires played by the likes of the Aliens triumvirate of Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein and a never-better Bill Paxton, Near Dark delivers gore and fright in equal amounts, with Paxton’s shit-kicking Severin a wise-cracking but terrifying amoral monster out to terrorize recently-bitten hero Adrian Pasdar. The roadhouse massacre sequence set to the tune of The Cramps’ cover of Patsy Cline’s “Fever” is on the short list of most intense movie moments ever. Bigleow combines stylish visuals — bullet-holes emitting beams of daylight that burn vampires like laser beams — with the raw ferocity of the vampires’ need to feed.
Good companions to Near Dark include 2007’s visceral 30 Days Of Night, the adaptation of the Steve Niles’ horror comic that showcases a truly frightening performance by Danny (Children Of Men) Huston as a black-eyed, shark-toothed vampire leading a pack of bloodsuckers into an Alaskan town where the sun doesn’t rise for a month. Ignore bland lead Josh Hartnett and focus on the great setting and the truly bestial vampires, which capture the comic’s iconic artwork by Ben Templesmith perfectly. Let The Right One In (2008) and its largely effective American remake, Let Me In (opening today), offer a tender coming-of-age story paralleled with a deeply unsettling take on the vampire legend focusing on a young, put-upon boy whose new best friend, a little girl, is more than she appears to be. Let Me In hews a little too close to the original (some of the shots are practically identical), but the performances are all universally strong and the amped-up horror element is genuinely shocking at times. The original is a classic, but the quietly chilling remake works better than you might expect.
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