Ah, there's no bad time for a "Love at First Bite" reference.
Anyway, it seems that Anne Rice is calling it quits on the Vampire Chronicles.
Good riddance. I was sorry to read of the hardships Rice has gone through recently, but the time has come to - and I beg your forgiveness - put a stake in Lestat, Mona, Zeppo, Wez, Trogdor, and all the rest. The Vampire Chronicles (the four books I read anyway) are largely to blame for the concept of vampire as dandy fop bloodsucker, and it's high time we got back to literature that depicts them being killed mercilessly instead of asking us to feel sorry for them.
Time for another screening of "Near Dark," I think.
Feh, I say. Bram Stoker evinced little sympathy for the Count, but there was plenty of backspatter from the lovefest going on between Mina, Jonathan, Van Helsing, and the rest. In between "Nosferatu" and "Interview with the Vampire" there was a lot more Christopher Lee than Antonio Banderas to cinematic vammpires. And not just because Lee made 4000 Hammer films.
Angel and Spike are exceptions to the overall malevolence of the vampires in "Buffy." Many may be smart-assed, but at least most of them avoid bitching all the time. Lestat and company, on the other hand, are the standard for Rice's books.
I may not be caught up on all the doings in the Whedon-verse, but do Angel and Spike even count as vampires anymore? Angel has a soul and Spike had (or had) some kind of implant designed to hinder his bloodsucking urges.
I can't let this pass without discussing the Wajnberg brothers epic "Mamma Dracula" (the movie described in the IMDB as "sucking the life out of [Louise "Nurse Ratched" Fletcher's] career") and "Andy Worhol's Dracula" (the movie described by me as "the worst soft-core movie about sex and death prior to 'Eyes Wide Shut'".
Given the cinematic options for Vampires in the late 1970s, both Whedon and Rice should be given some credit for sucking less (or perhaps "sucking better").
Gotta agree with Pete. Rice first published "Interview" in 1976, proving we had whiny vamps loooooooooong before the Buffy phenomenon.
And 1979 sealed the deal, courtesy of this man...
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1198/Mptv/1198/9103-5.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0079073
But, c'mon, the woe-is-me vampire easily predates 1976. Dark Shadows, anyone?
I'm not saying Anne Rice didn't advance the swishification of the undead. But, dammit, she didn't start the fire.
Ya know, Underworld may not get an Oscar nomination, but you have to give the picture credit for exploring the idea of vampirized-werewolfs. I eagerly await the sequel.
Bah.
Do not blame TVL for the cementing of the vampire-as-tragically-hip-waif meme, which existed long before those books and will survive after they are forgotten. Even Bram Stoker's original has all sorts of sympathy going on for our narsty bloodsucking friend.
For the spread-like-wildfire of the subgenre of Beau Brummel vampoofters, look no further than that preciously clever and popular television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Together with its Angel spinoff, that show has irrevocably doomed an entire generation of Western Civilization youth to think it normal for vampires to 1) have feelings, 2) not terrorize the proles, and 3) put highlights in their hair.
No, sir. What we need is more pure, inscrutable evil around these parts. We need babelicious lifeforce-sucking aliens drifting through quarantine labs. We need D squaring off with Marcus Lee again. I don't think we *need* John Byner and Carol Kane staffing the castle again, precisely, but it could be amusing.