Tag: vampires

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Nightmares

Nightmare #328 – Frozen Vampires

(Male, 30’s) This dream was sprawling and pretty epic in scope. It wasn’t so much scary as just menacing, deeply menacing.

I was going about my normal routine, at least this was the normal routine in the dream. And mixed in with all the regular everyday tasks were things done to protect against vampires.

But these were the weirdest vampires. They didn’t have to go back to their coffins during the day and they didn’t seem particularly harmed by sunlight… other than the fact that daylight paralyzed them. Up and down the street, there were these creatures who looked just like humans who were frozen still, presumably vampires who had been caught outside.

They were scary, animalistic in that they would rip you to shreds without a moment’s thought. But on the street, there was just one or two every block, nothing too disturbing.

Then I went into the basement level of this public building. I don’t know what it was, maybe a train station, maybe a movie theatre. And it was crowded with frozen vampires. They were so tightly assembled it was difficult to force my way past them. Their flesh was hard, like stone. It wasn’t clear whether they were conscious or not, that is, whether they were aware of my presence. This crowd of vampires was clearly a threat, not just for me alone. I had to do something… but I also had to get far far away quickly. I had some kind of plan to distract them using an old fashioned baby perambulator. It was black and had lace frills around the basket. It looked like something from the Victorian era, maybe from Mary Poppins. It was as big as I was. I have no idea what I was thinking but somehow the plan involved putting the pram on its side right by the lead vampire so he’d think there was a baby inside. I wrestled the pram on its side and got it into position.

Just then, the lead vampire reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. He’d only been pretending to be frozen. They all had been pretending.

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This Just In

This Just In: Vampire Alert!


If you are scrounging to find reasons to be happy, remember that at least there isn’t a centuries old vampire lurking in yur neighborhood… that is, unless you live in Bajina Bašta, Serbia. A mill that once belonged to a notorious vampire suffered damage due to renovations and now locals fear Sava Savanovic is loosed upon the populace. Sava is the first Serbian vampire, and some experts argue the first vampire. His feeding strategy was to attack those who came to grind grain at the mill, hence the concern that he is homeless now that the mill has collapsed.

Various news outlets tell roughly the same tale:
• The Detroit Free Press (dig the photo of the Vampire Billboard!),
• ABC News,
• The Daily Mail, (great photos, incidentally)
• and the Orange News.

I refrain from commenting about matters with which I have no direct experience, in this case, vampires. We Americans certainly find a fair number of things to be afraid of that folks in other cultures find silly, from serial killers to socialized medicine.

What I learned from this story is that the figure Sava Savanovic is the subject of Leptirica (1973), considered the first Serbian horror movie. A photo of the DVD cover appears above. I have to see if it’s available from Netflix.

In the articles, a rivalry emerges about whose vampire is considered “first” and though I can’t comment on that question, I am struck by the geography of monsters. Island nations seems particularly prone to ghosts (Ireland, England, Japan) while other seem susceptible to demonic possession (Poland, Italy) Certainly different regions of North America seem to favor different malefactors (British Columbia’s Ogopogo, Washington State’s Sasquatch, Texas’ Chupacabra, Pittsburgh’s zombies…) There is a weird cultural alchemy whereby a curse transmutes into a tourist trap. So though you might not have to stock up on garlic and holy crosses like the folks of Bajina Bašta, it’s possible you might want to take other, more regionally appropriate precautions… or explore other folklore to exploit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sava_Savanovi%C4%87

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Movies

Movies: “Stake Land (2010)” – Gorgeous Vampire Apocalypse

“Stake Land” hit me like a hammer of wonderful. I was not expecting to love it. Any hopes I had for the end of the world soured months ago and I officially declared the apocalypse so “yesterday” However, this indie horror flick makes me add an exception. What first struck me were the visuals. The film felt like film both due to image quality and the thoughtful establishing shots that plumped out the locations. The milieu felt really familiar, really rust belt and post industrial. It wasn’t shot in the Midwest technically but except for a few mountains, it felt like home.

The main characters were all strongly conceived and portrayed. Obviously the heroic “Mister” is the defining core — yeah, yeah, structurally speaking the kid he saves is the protagonist– and yeah, the overall thrust of the movie is a bildungsroman for this youngun, complete with separation from natal household, learned independence, sexual awakening and (spoiler) re-establishment of a new household. The kid character is good, central even but damn, Mister is da MAN. Supporting characters are excellent. There’s a rescued nun, a pregnant singer, an ex-marine… and what compelling narrative would be complete without an ape-shit bad guy?

Religion and its bizarre perversions formed an essential thematic strata of Stake Land a detail that made it particularly vivid. America is daft already when it comes to the variety and ingenuity of our faith-based practices. The end of normal society could only make those oddities accelerate outward. I particularly enjoyed the suggestion of a suicide cult during one scene since it was nicely understated, not to mention that it goes in a completely different direction than I’d expected.

“Stake Land” compares favorably to the film version of “The Road.” Both are beautiful to look at. Both chronicle the decay of American civilisation and the desperate attempts to retain a sense of family in the face of such devastation. Both films end on at least a whisper of optimism. But I’ll take “Stake Land” over “The Road.” It comes down to something that I believe Nick Mamatas noted when explaining the difference between genre and literary fiction: in genre stories, something happens. Too often “literary” writing and “auteurist” cinema specifically repress story and plot as they focus on the elements of mood, character, theme. A film like “Stake Land,” modest though it may be, is a strong reminder that movies can be both poetic AND entertaining.

And if all that weren’t enough already, there were no zombies. Aren’t we over zombies yet? The vampires in “Stake Land” provided different levels of threat. They weren’t quite the über-beasts of “30 Days of Night” but they were happily far from the urbane and decadent artistocrats of “Interview with a Vampire.” I loved the sense that there was a taxonomy of vampire types known to the hunters; “scamps” were young ones, “berserkers” were older, more dangerous. Perhaps my favorite touch was how Mister collected the fangs from his kills and better, how those fangs functioned as currency.

I have no idea what angel of dark cinema spirited “Stake Land” to me but I am deeply grateful. I had been wallowing in a morass of joke-ridden, childish home movies masquerading as horror. “Stake Land” reminded me that mature and reflective grown ups make scary movies too.

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This Just In

Your First Vampire, The Count, Dead at 78

If ever there was a vampire whose death we should mourn, it is The Count from Sesame Street. Jerry Nelson, the talented muppeteer who portrayed numerous characters over the years, including the Count, is dead at age 78. For many, this character was the introduction to numeracy as well as to word play (The Count, get it? Get it?) I can’t help but think that this link between vampires and a near obsession with numeration is the subtext for the vampire on that episode of the X-Files that Mulder distracts by spilling a box of matches which the OCD blood-sucker must stop to count before attacking. A stretch? Perhaps. But ponder for a moment the poetic fittingness of numbers which go ever on and on with the notion of immortal life represented by the undead. The Count was a cuddly monster, a near contradiction in terms. Though Jerry Nelson be dead, let the Count live on.

One. One heart-felt tribute. Two…

http://www.sesameworkshop.org/our-blog/2012/08/24/in-memoriam-jerry-nelson/

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This Just In

This Just In — (Dead) Vampires on Display

Remains — apparently human — were recently discovered with a metal stake through the chest suggesting a burial ritual to prevent vampires. Evidently, the practice wasn’t uncommon in Bulgaria some 700 years ago.

What makes this news? Soon these remains will be on display in a Bulgarian museum.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-bulgaria-odd-vampires-idUSBRE85A12Y20120611

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Nightmares

Nightmare #287 – Vampire Orgy

“…Something wasn’t right…”

Continue reading “Nightmare #287 – Vampire Orgy”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #268 – Toil, a Demon, Vampires and Wizards

“…I resumed my dream job which was taking apart greasy filthy machinery in order to salvage their screws, which is only slightly more demeaning than the job I do during my waking life…”

Continue reading “Nightmare #268 – Toil, a Demon, Vampires and Wizards”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #265 – Vampire Aliens

“…They were wiggling their long alien fingers at me like they were trying to be spooky or something..”

Continue reading “Nightmare #265 – Vampire Aliens”
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Nightmares

Nightmare #236 – The Accidental Vampire

(Female, 30’s) The other night, I had a very short dream that left quite an impression on me.

“…and there was a spurt of blood that shot out and hit the wall…”

My husband was sitting in chair, like in a dining room, and he didn’t have a shirt on. I walked over to hug him, and when I bent down to put my cheek on his shoulder, I noticed this scab on the back of his shoulder. It was about the size of the eraser on a pencil. I reached over and picked the scab off— and there was a spurt of blood that shot out and hit the wall, leaving a big red streak! Quickly, I bent down and put my mouth over the wound and started drinking his blood. There were like 8 or 9 spurts before he stopped bleeding.

I don’t know if I did picked the scab off on purpose or by accident. Did I want to drink his blood, or it was just an impulse to keep the wall from getting bloody. What a strange dream, huh?

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Movies Other Haunts

Movie – Buffy and Edward

As a footnote to the post from yesterday about how vampires suck, er, that is, how they don’t seem to suck anymore, here’s the obvious video clip. I know you’ve already seen this clip but I still crack up when I watch it.

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"What We Fear" Fears & Phobias Other Haunts This Just In

Other Haunts – “Vampires Suck” @ Slate

Fun little article at Slate.com about how contemporary vampires suck, or more precisely, that they don’t. The once terrifying Other is now just a cuddly idealized boyfriend – who no longer sucks blood. The article nicely traces a line from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Anne Rice’s tortured immortals to Buffy’s beau Angel to the monster’s nadir in the paranormal romance genre a la the Twilight series.

( http://www.slate.com/id/2223486/ )

Makes me wonder if all objects of terror undergo a certain domestication, a processes of Disneyfication where anything that is truly terrifying is sanded flat, made safe and consumable. Happens with all attempts to depict the wholly Other, I suspect, making that “make no graven images” commandment a bit more sensible. After an experience of awe / wonder / terror / amazement it’s understandable to make some record of that encounter. But then there will be folks whose only experience of that Other is via the representation, through the vicarious thrill. At the risk of sounding like a neo-Platonist here, the continued repetition of representation pushes the Other farther and farther away from our actual experience. It’s how that piss-your-pants / fall-on-the-ground-numb / struck-blind-with-scales-on-your-eyes experience of true religion becomes gradually codified into something boring and mundane like ethics and orthodoxy.

Damn. Did I slip from talking about the Monstrous to talking about the Holy again?

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #176 – The Stone Vampires

(Male, 40’s) Despite the fact that this nightmare was about vampires, the overall feel I had was frustration more than fear. I was a member of a team of about 5 professionals who were looking over a building with the perspective of renting it or buying it. It was a standard building by which I mean a generic office space without cubicles. And it was completely windowless. Sound like the office where you work?

The weird thing was that the place had about a half dozen life-sized marble statues. As we sort of wandered the space, these statues would quickly turn into flesh and blood, living (or I guess non-living) vampires, attack one of our group, then change back to a statue. We’d rush over and would notice the mutilated corpse and not realize that the statue had anything to do with it. This happened over and over but no one listened when I suggested “Hey, maybe we should get out of here.” Then I actually *saw* one of the attacks but again, no one was much concerned. It was down to me and the Boss, who incidentally looked like Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. One of the statues changed and tried to attack him but he was able to hold it at an arm’s distance and do something to it to kill it. Now the trick became trying to kill the vampires when they changed but obviously before they changed back to stone which was much harder.

At one point there were two vampires attacking me — it probably doesn’t matter but they were female vampires with flowing glittery skirts, like they were nightclub vampires — and the only thing they could grab onto was one of my fingers which I kept them from biting, though I must confess I was getting pretty tired of being human at that point with all the drudgery of office work, the stupidity of my co-workers and the arrogance of my boss. But we defeated the vampires that were in the main room of the office.

My dream ended when I opened the double doors of a closet and there were two more, female vampires.

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Art papercraft

Papercraft – Slick Vampires and Monster Portraits

\"Medusa\" by Etsy artist Goobeetsa

I thought my eyes were wrung out and weary of smooth, digital illustration but perhaps I was only irritated that so much of it fixates on happy-puppy subject matter. Check out these pieces by Etsy.com artist Goobeetsa. The Medusa is my favorite of the “Spooky” portraits but my heart truly belongs to the Dracula paper puppets. Hours of fun on a rainy afternoon, I tell ya. And reasonably priced.

Dracula puppets by Etsy.com artist Goobeetsa
Dracula puppets by Etsy.com artist Goobeetsa
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Book Comics Movies

The “30 Days of Night” Franchise

(The Grim Gnome) I don’t like vampires, generally speaking. The whole rule-bound / old-world / invitation-only aspects make them about as scary as a supernatural Certified Public Accountant. Except for the ones in “30 Days of Night.” If you haven’t heard of this series you either have been moldering away in a casket or you’re metaphysically immune to the effects of horror-culture. A few years back, writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith wove together a freshly twisted premise with spattery exuberant artwork and pumped life back into the genre of the horror comic. The fresh twist on the vampire rules that gets “30 Days of Night” rolling is obvious from the title; if vampires hate sunlight, then what if they attacked a place that didn’t have much of it, say, a city located near the Arctic circle? What if a whole ragtag clan of vampires threw a party of sorts during the month of darkness and attacked the whole town. Add human hero. Stir well. Garnish with a nasty skewer at the end and, heck that’s what started the juggernaut. I really have to recommend it. Quite highly.




A sequel picked up the storyline and propelled it forward, again ending with a sickening little twist. And a third, completing a classical trilogy, right? If I understand the chronology correctly, the movie started development around this time and the comics kept coming. A collection of tales appeared, including a rather dumb one about vampires in space. Some of these feature artists other than Templesmith and honestly, I feel cheated with those issues, especially cheated when the artist is attempting to make work that sort of / kind of / almost resembles Templesmith’s art. So though I can’t highly recommend them all — one reason I can’t is because they’re STILL making new ones — I still have to confess I’ve bought and savored every one of them.

Niles’s other comics are nothing to ignore… but for the moment I WILL ignore them, or to be more exact I’ll postpone looking at them until another post. Who knew that comics would work so well for horror? I sure didn’t. I thought the EC’s Crypt Keeper was just weird and, OK, so I was afraid of “The Tomb of Dracula” but I was kid back then. I even thought “Dark Shadows” was scary.

And then there’s the “30 Days of Night” movie. I admit that I felt an actual quiver of excitement when I first heard Sam (“Army of Darkness”) Raimi’s name connected with the project. Alas, it was only as a producer. There are parts of the movie that are very good. For instance, some of the shots are very haunting, like an aerial tracking shot that shows the carnage of the initial attack. And throughout the movies human faces seem to have unusually de-saturated color which makes everyone look cold .. and then also makes the blood really pop out. And I really appreciated that at least a couple times when humans were standing outside in sub-zero temperatures that there were clouds of condensation when they breathed or spoke. As curmudgeonly northerner, I can’t STAND fake winters on screen. My comments don’t sound like a love-fest, though do they? Perhaps I’m grumpy for paying good money to see the movie in the theatre. I’m a stingy curmudgeon. But furthermore, I can’t help but thinking that the comic book was scarier. There was a LOT of back story in the comic book that was simply removed for the movie, so much that there doesn’t seem to be much possibility for a sequel. I was honestly pretty shocked that so much editing was required because I don’t usually consider comics to be that dense when it comes to story line.

“30 Days of Night” – the movie – comes out on video this week. Though I don’t feel unusually COMPELLED to see the movie again when it comes out on video, if I’m honest with myself, I’m pretty sure I will. If for no other reason than it will remind me of how much I loved the original comic.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #111 – Morning Vampires

(Male) In the dream it was morning. My mother and I had taken refuge for the night in the basement of a house. We were now waking up and then securing the house room by room in case something had gotten in during the night. By “something,” I of course mean vampires which seem to have over-run our small town. There was nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the living room or dining room. It was an old but not particularly spectacular farmhouse, high ceilings, painted wood work, drab flower wallpaper. Mom started making breakfast.

…I opened a small bedroom there were three vampires in there: a mom, a daughter and a son….

I continued searching the first floor and when I opened a small bedroom there were three vampires in there: a mom, a daughter and a son. I knew I couldn’t kill them all at once so I tried to let only one of them out. I succeeded in keeping the son-vampire locked in the room. I should note that the son-vampire looked like that kid from The Munsters only that he was a bit older, maybe high school aged. He looked VERY angry and vicious, with deep black rings around his eyes, but then again he was wearing the shorts and Little Lord Fauntleroy shirt of the Munster kid’s costume, so he was both ludicrous and terrifying. The mom-vampire looked about 50 and had wispy blond hair. The daughter was a little girl, maybe 6 or so. So they are flying around the room in a semi-human/semi-bat state. Yup, blond bats. Weird. I yell to my Mom for a little help but she says she’s in the middle of cooking the eggs or something and they’ll be ruined if she leaves them right then. So I’m trying not to get bit and in fact, I’m doing well enough fighting these things that I try to find something to stab them. All I can find is a foot long ruler. Like the kind you’d used to use in school. I snapped it in half to try to make it sharp on one end but it splintered, if anything making it even less sharp. All the while I’m fighting the two blond vampires. There’s sunlight streaming in the windows but it doesn’t seem to faze them. I give up on trying to kill them and resort to just swatting them away but I even get tired by doing this. The mom-vampire swoops in for the kill and I try to make a stand with that splintered ruler and just then, I wake up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #46 – Vampire Dolls

(Male) I was supposed to water a plant a church that was closed for vacation but I didn’t have anything to carry the water in and also the door to the area where the water was seemed to be locked. I poured out my pop and filled it with water from a fish pond and started carrying it toward the church door. I’d made sure to leave the church door open so I could get back in. Just then this extremely small woman came out of the church – I mean she was probably 18″ tall. (Now I think about it, she resembled my grandmother a little bit. Then again she also resembled that psychic woman from the movie Poltergeist the one who says “this house is clean.” Only smaller. Maybe a third that actress’ height.) She deliberately lets the church door slam closed even though it’s obvious that I’m rushing to get in. Though I know that she’s a church lady, we still have some pretty harsh words. At the end of our argument, though she says “Well, come along now” then she starts to walk away. Then she turns and says “You’re supposed to follow me.” So I followed her. The woman is a little bit lame so she holds onto me a bit to walk. As we’re walking, she indicates when we should walk a little faster or when we should slow down or stop. We are able to cross at all the green lights and we avoid getting hit when someone bursts through a door. It’s like she can very precisely see into the future which was really rather creepy. We get to this hotel, climb up to the second floor and pause in front of a particular room. There are lights shining from underneath the door. She indicates that we should wait. When the lights turn off, the woman says “Now.” I didn’t know what she meant. She said “You’ll know what to do.”

I entered the hotel room which was extremely plain, more like a movie set from the 40’s than a contemporary hotel. There were a couple twin sized beds with metal frames and on the beds there were what appeared to be lifeless human forms. When I looked closer, I realized they were made of wood. They were like those featureless wooden models that artists use – only 5′ tall! And they were vampires. Wooden vampires. There was blood smeared on their faces. The old lady said I’d know what to do. I figured I was supposed to kill them while they weren’t moving. Beside the vampires, there were wooden knitting needles like they had been knitting just before bed. I tried stabbing one of the needles into their wooden chests but the tip of the needle just shattered away.

I awoke surrounded by sleeping monsters wondering how exactly I was supposed to kill wooden vampires.