No Edward Cullen: Vampire Tales For The Non-Twilight Fan

If you're like me, you a) really don't get the whole Transylvania 90210 phenomenon that is Twilight and b) you have to ask your wife who this Edward dude is and why so many people are willing to break several states' statutory rape laws just to have him not have sex with them (he's quite chaste, apparently, which means Advantage: Bill Compton). Her answer: "Honestly, I'm not exacty sure I'm on Team Edward. I don't like Romantic Mushy Undead Men. But there are lot of women who love that he's a real gentleman, plus he sparkles!" My thought: "Sparkles? She must be speaking metaphorically." Nope. He sparkles. Now, I haven't read any of Stephanie Meyer's books, nor have I seen the movie yet - I think we're going this Friday, and I'm sooooo very tempted to subvert the Twilight Nerds who will be wearing their Edward costumes and scratching themselves to prove their love for EDWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD  by wearing my Nosferatu costume and carrying a boombox blaring the soundtrack to The Lost Boys. I'm not prepared to condemn the movie without having seen it - I'm no Roger Ebert! - and I will say that the trailer I saw featured Vampire Karate, which is axiomatically cool. And that got me a-thinking about some AWESOME vampire films and books that don't involve kissy huggy lovey mopey teenaged bloodsuckers. Who also happen to be vampires.

VAMPIRE MOVIES: There are a lot of bad vampire movies. In fact, most of them suck. (Yeah, I went to the Suck puns early.) But there are a few that any self-respecting vampire fan has in his/her collection.

• Cronos. Way before Guillermo del Toro did Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy flicks, he made this weird and, well, del Toro-y vampire-ish movie. It features great cinematography, it's creepy and gory, and it stars Ron Perlman, who immediately comes to mind when one thinks of Actors Who Would Not Make a Good Movie Edward. It's safe to say that Ron Perlman is not sparkly.

• Near Dark. Kathryn Bigelow's tale of white-trash vampires is awesome for two reasons. First, the vampires are pretty much the entire cast of Aliens including Bill Paxton - Vampire Chet! Second, the Near Dark vampires are evil bastards/bitches who don't use fangs, and if you've seen the movie, the roadhouse scene is one for the cringe-inducing record books.

• The Original TV Mini-Series Version of Salem's Lot Which Scared the Beejeezus Outta Me When I Was Ten. In spite of - or perhaps due to - David Soul's mutton chops and butterfly collars (70's vampires had an aversion to Rayon, it seems), it's still pretty damn creepy. (That guy's name is not Edward, by the way; it's Kurt.) The graveyard scene with Geoffrey Lewis still holds up.

• The Omega Man/I Am Legend. It's basically the same movie. Charleton Heston/Will Smith are survivors of a biological attack/some sort of plague that has wiped out Los Angeles/New York City. They both spend their days going batshit crazy/batshit crazy and their nights fighting vampires (guys in cheesy pancake makeup and Wal-Mart shades/Gollum-lookin' CGI dudes). Yeah, the bad guys are not really vampires, but they are in the book, which I'll get to in a sec.

• The First Two Blade Movies Plus Parts of The Third. Blade II might actually be better than the first one, if only because it was directed by Guillermo del Toro, who also gave the Not-Edward Ron Perlman a big role ( Del Toro is directing the Peter Jackson-produced big screen version of The Hobbit. Ron Perlman IS Bilbo Baggins! No?) I don't really remember much of Blade III, except for the parts with Jessica Biel. Anyway, the Blade movies are goofy fun, and remain the high-water mark of the oft-maligned and widely misunderstood Vampire Karate genre.

VAMPIRE BOOKS: There are lots and lots and lots of vampire novels, many of them parts of series that take up entire floors (Jesus, Anita Blake - you have like 500 books written about you! Shouldn't you have killed all the vampires by now? Anita Blake: you, madam, are no Edgar Frog.) Here are three good ones.

• I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson. Matheson's novel was written in 1957, and is different in many ways from the three (Vincent Price starred in one called The Last Man on Earth) film versions that sprang from it. One major difference between the book and the movie is that the book didn't suck. (Yeah, I liked those two flicks, but objectively speaking, they suck. I like Armageddon; it also sucks. The moth is drawn to the flame, though it brings naught but fiery death. Or something.) In the book, the vampires are actually vampires, and the meaning of that title? Well, it's a wee bit different than Will Smith's.

• Interview With The Vampire, by Anne Rice. Before the Vampire Chronicles went off the rails, when Anne Rice started bringing in witches and mummies and demons and Satan and God and Bigfoot and the chupacabra and Santa Claus, her vampire books were pretty good, and her first remains the best. And casting Tom Cruise as Lestat, the twisted yet charismatic leader of the vampires, in the movie version? Eerily prophetic! (Don't look into his eyes! He'll Glamour ya!)

• Dracula, by Bram Stoker. That Stoker guy, he knew what he was doing. Francis Ford Coppola - not so much.