Vampires

January 19, 2000

I hate John Carpenter, but I love vampires, so I rent the damn thing.

My hatred of John Carpenter stems from Prince of Darkness, the 2nd most rancid piece of celluoid I have ever seen. (The first is The Flintstones, the only film I have ever walked out of.) Prince of Darkness sucks on so many different levels. Satan in a jar? Puh-leeze! I have coughed up phlegm scarier than that. Even though Halloween is a classic and I liked Big Trouble in Little China, the festering mass that is Prince of Darkness made me hate John Carpenter. Add in the Mouth of Madness to the equation, and I am even more bitter.

I liked this film okay though. I think it was because the vampire was so damn sexy. I met a vampire once. My freshman year in college, I went to Denton with my dumb sorority girl roommates. They were picking up guys somewhere and I snuck off to hang out in front of The Tomato. I was sitting in on the steps out front and this vampire sits down next to me. Dyed black hair, lacy shirt, leather jacket, skin even whiter than mine. Love at first sight. This vampire was drinking a warm bottle of Guiness – not blood, as I would have hoped. And this is how I first tasted Guiness. We talked for awhile of things undead. Of course, as soon as the sorority girls saw me talking to what they thought was a freak, they pulled me away and demanded that we go back home. To this day, I hate them still for that. I later found out through another friend that his name was Vlad (what a cliche!) and that if I hung around him too much longer, he would probably lock me in a coffin and do weird things to me, because that what he did to his last girlfriend. That made me even more bitter towards the sorority bitches…

Even with all the vampires and shit, this was really a western. Notwithstanding the New Mexico desert setting, it was all a series of high noon (irony intended) showdowns. The very last scene was a direct tribute to the Wild Bunch. (“I’ll give you two days…”) They even had the hooker with heart of gold thing going, like most westerns – fun fun fun! Actually, Sheryl Lee was the primary reason I gave it a chance – I will give Laura Palmer a chance any day…

I also liked the notion that Vampires were created by the Catholic Church – that was just too damn funny. Oops! Our exorcism went bad and we accidentally created this blood drinking night creature – let’s blame it on Satan! Catholics have been getting a lot of shit lately and now they are getting blamed for vampires, too. Hehehe…

Did I mention that the fat, ugly Baldwin was in it? He played a Mexican. Strange.

Guiltily, I admit that I watched it twice yesterday. So, John Carpenter has kind of been redeemed in my eyes, I got to see a vampire go down and see a Catholic priest say he got a chubby from killing a vampire. It was a good Saturday.