Week 2, Vampires

Remy Tost, August 22

Vampires were my thing in Middle School. I wasn’t really aware of YouTube at the time so I never watched documentaries on them or anything like that. But I sure read a lot of books about them. Even played one in this video game I was in to at the time. I read Dracula (more like tried, it was a bit of a tough read for me at the time) and was intrigued by the fact that the Count was so un-romantic. Not at all like the movie adaptations I’ve seen before, such as Van Hellsing or Dracula (1992). And because I was a middle schooler I wanted more of that romantic vampire stuff so I read what ever I could get my hands on at my school library. I read The Silver Kiss, Vampire Kiss (see a pattern?) and lastly, Twilight. Oh I dug that book. Yet the moment I found out it was gonna be a movie when I reached high school I didn’t like it anymore. Maybe because it was too mainstream and I was too cool for that or the actors didn’t fit the characters. Either way I definitely preferred the books.

I went to my parent’s house this past weekend and rummaged through my bookshelf and found my copy of Twilight and read as much as I could stand. Which was more than I thought if you could believe it. I felt so nostalgic as I read Bella’s thoughts throughout the book. I remember really connecting to Bella in a way I couldn’t connect to other fiction characters I’ve read. She was a teen like me. I also remember how she described Edward and his family. How the looked, acted, even how they “hunted”. It was so different compared to the average joe vampire with the garlic and crosses. Not to mention the other romantic vampire novels didn’t act like these vampires. They were more traditional. I remember this was another reason why I appreciated the twilight series. It was more than I had expected with twists on the vampire we all know. And made it sparkly, among many other things of course. But I could tell she wanted her take on vampires to break the stereotype. And as an avid reader of vampires at the time I liked the change in ideas. Even today while reading I laughed at some of the quotes and situations I remember laughing at about 8 or 9 years ago. Like the random baseball game the Cullen had or the way Bella described Edward as she ate her mushroom raviolis. It still had that quirky and dorky teen charm. And I was glad it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Obviously not the best romance I have ever read, nor the best book for that matter. But not the worst. That would be Breaking Dawn.

As for the movie of the week, I re-watched another classic that my mom and I watched a while ago. It’s funny though because I knew about it before she told me. During high school around freshman year I still couldn’t quite let go of vampires just yet and was recently introduced to YouTube by a student friend of mine. I was looking up Phantom of the Opera videos that had the original cast and lo and behold I found Michael Crawford, the original phantom starring in another musical called “Dance of the Vampires”. This musical I later found out was based off of Roman Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers” movie from 1967. I remember watching Michael sing in the American version, then the German version with Steve Barton and honestly I liked both a lot. The set design was very impressive and the songs were nice and dramatic. Also like the comedy bits. So when I saw the original version of this story I was excited to see if it was at all like the funny, campy yet dark musical version. The movie was a bit slow, but then again I feel the pacing on a lot of films made during the late 1960s are a bit slow. But the acting was good and funny, really enjoyed Roman Polanski‘s role as Alfred and his teacher Professor Abronsius.

Also found it impressive that Polanski starred and directed the movie. Overall it was not as enjoyable as the musical in my opinion because it didn’t have as much emotion but good nonetheless.