Columns: The Video Dead: "Seven Vampire Films that Don't Suck" I am often (unfairly, I feel) saddled with the label “negative”. I am just a man with strong opinions. I try my very best to like every movie I watch, but sometimes the movie doesn’t show me the same courtesy. So it was with a heavy heart that Angela laid out her Fortnight of Fangs agenda to me. Mainly the part about me writing a column on vampire movies. You see, vampires are my least favorite cinematic monsters. They have been co-opted by the corseted goth girl set, the Anne Rice-reading, rave-going, pleather-wearing banes of my existence. Bram Stoker would roll over in his grave if he could see how his hell spawn stregoica blood-sucker has been dressed up in ruffles and made into a ladies’ man. I mean, in his novel Dracula, the Count feeds his three wives babies. And when one mother claws at the castle door, bewailing the fate of her progeny, what does the glammer-man do? With a wave of his hand, he calls forth his wolf children to tear her into pieces before Jonathan Harker’s horrified eyes. And so I am incapable of stomaching tripe like Interview with the Vampire. Just. In. Cape. Ah. Bull. Read More s. And so I am incapable of stomaching tripe like Interview with the Vampire. Just. In. Cape. Ah. Bull. Margiana's Tattoo: "Fangs are Sexy on Girls" When I was oh, like sixteen I had a dream about a girl. She was someone I knew, her name was Jo, her locker was next to mine. I thought she was cute but I didn’t really know her. She was new, I remember, a native of San Francisco, quiet, mysterious, mature -- all the things I felt like I wasn’t. She intimidated me in a way that other girls didn’t. Of course, I had a monster crush on her. When she came to me in a dream one night we were in a bedroom, not my own, and there were other women there who I didn’t know. All of them fluttered around me like dark butterflies. Jo, landed at my feet. I don’t remember much but I remember her pulling out my, um, member, looking me in the eye…and baring her fangs. I was terrified certainly but there was also – I shudder to admit this (no, really!) – a warm pulse of …anticipation. I woke up pretty soon after that to the kind of sordid, sticky mess that boys wake up to when they’re sixteen. Now, I wish I could say that this dream and the fact that I still remember it after all these years is a sign of my general perversion and depravity as a human being but the sad fact of the matter is that all the ridiculously obvious interpretations of the “meaning” of this dream simply underscore a much more mundane and depressing truth: that I am hopelessly conventional. In other words this dream was an extension of an aesthetic truism that pulsates throughout the dark side of American popular culture: Read More Celluloid Catharsis: Fang Love Some children wish for ponies or princess dresses, but I wanted fangs. The world was just beginning to rouse from beneath its blanket of white when the math clicked to life in my head. If I were to forgo allowance from Spring through Christmas, I could, feasibly, cover well over half the cost of the permanent dental artistry. “No,” my father said, with some measure of authority, “you can’t just get permanent fangs, Angela.” Oh, but he was mistaken! Why, there was a dentist right in Detroit who would perform the procedure! “—it’s acrylic, I think. AND it’s a lot cheaper than you might think. You see, as I was saying about the allowance – if you add that, to anything you might do for my birthday, and lump it all with Christmas –“ “NO.” No fangs beneath the Christmas tree for me. I was fine with that, though – because someday I would get them. And on that fine day, when I returned from the dentist (on my own!) he would see the fangs, and gush, “Oh! I guess I was wrong! When you asked for them, I envisioned huge, carnivore incisors.” He’d take a closer look then, clearly wishing he’d had fangs, “Those don’t protrude at all – your dainty fangs. Why, no one would even know you had them, until they really looked. Hmm. They really suit you!” Of course, this was all well before I realized a coke habit might be cheaper than dental care for the teeth I already have. Incidentally, I do not currently bear a set of sculpted, permanent fangs. Read More |
