Vampires: Creepy to Pathetic

Interview with the vampire is an interesting approach. Having someone actually interviewing a vampire about his life and the experiences he’s been through. I’ve always known vampires as being bloodsucking creatures that would burn in the sunlight and feed off of humans. They were bad creatures with no emotions just the vengeance to kill and died when a stake was driven threw their heart.

            At a certain point of the book the main vampire Louis feeds off a five-year-old little girl and the other vampire Lestat turns her into a vampire. Naming her Claudia, Louis is horrified that Lestat turned a five year old into a vampire because she will look five for eternity but Louis starts to care for her like a “daughter.” Like I said before I never had known of vampires actually having emotions. The movie From Dusk til Dawn is one of my favorite vampire movies but the vampires in that movie from what I could remember were all about sex, tearing apart humans and causing chaos. Did I mention terrifying?

            Then you have the films and books that ruin the image of vampires, like Twilight. Vampires’ falling in love with humans totally takes away from the scare factor and they do not sparkle in the sunlight! Twilight was okay but vampires should not be mushy gushy, lovey dovey. They are supposed to be horrid and terrifying.

            The one movie I did enjoy though that was not horror was the Little Vampire. It was cute and adventurous yet it still had that creepy factor to it. Do vampires really live under graveyards in coffins? Suck the blood of people’s livestock and turning them into animal vampires?

            I have never seen Nosferatu but he is a vampire that I would consider is accurate. He’s hideous, creepy and haunts within the shadows. Another really good movie is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The movie not the show. The vampires in that movie are portrayed very well and give the viewer a sense of fear while watching it. Maybe not for all but that was one movie that always creeped me out when I was younger but I always loved it. Amilyn was my favorite character.

            Interview with the vampire was interesting because it described a life of a vampire. How he turned from human to vampire, his killing sprees with feeding off of humans to killing other vampires for killing his friends and burning down his own plantation and eating his slaves he once owned so they don’t speak about vampires.

** Another vampire favorite was Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

What's Gothic?

1. skulls
2. Addam's family
3. candles
4. laboratory
5. thunder and lightning
6. torture devices
7. scientist equipment
8. blood
9. dead bodies
10. chains
11. magic
12. gargoyles
13. demons
14. spells
15. seance
16. ritual
17. wicken
18. Bride of Chucky
19. spikes
20. tombstones
21. spiders
22. rats
23. bookcase
24. black
25. black makeup
26. crows
27. mace
28. noose
29. moon
30. witches
31. corset
32. crosses
33. medieval
34. grim reaper
35. electricity
36. vultures

Butcher Boys

For an example of gothic in contemporary culture, I chose the film Butcher Boys. The movie is mysterious, gruesome, dark and just all around creepy. It leaves you never wanting to be alone in a quiet city at nighttime. The entire film has a dark setting based in a deserted ghetto type area. The inside walls of the buildings look as if they are rotten and abandoned. The lighting in the scenes, the buildings, the overall setting was just uncomfortable. 

A group of dark haired, husky men dressed in all black hunt down four teenagers through the small deserted city area. What’s unsettling is watching them run through the area not knowing if the next corner they take could be one of these crazy guys ready to kill them. What’s gothic about this part of the movie is the mysteriousness of the men and why they are chasing four teenagers through the darkness of the night. As the movie goes on there is only one teenager left and we find out that the men are cannibals. The weird thing is though, they don’t want to harm the last remaining girl and wind up impregnating her through surgery. This movie is so subtle with the horror that I would categorize it as gothic. Horror to me is more blood and guts being thrown everywhere and monsters scattering from the depths of hell, where this movie is more realistically scary. In another scene of the movie, they are all trying to sit around a table but they are all arguing and fighting. Meanwhile there is a girl set up with only her head on the table with her head half grated with a metal utensil separating pieces of her brain like chunks of sushi and she’s still alive as each one of the guys keeps snacking her.This part is grotesque and disturbing yet well thought out. While watching the movie it was like I was feeling her pain.

This movie to me is definitely gothic in contemporary culture because it’s like Frankenstein, lurking in the darkness and attacking when least expected on the innocent, killing them. Frankenstein is grotesque because the monster is made from dead human parts and Butcher Boys is grotesque because they are cannibals eating humans alive. Both movies have something to do with deranging the human body.