I have not read the books and have not watched the movies. Any rational person would withhold opinion, but hey—I go where angels fear to tread. Besides, I did see the previews of all the movies and it scarred me for life. Stephanie Meyer has killed vampires more effectively than Buffy could ever have dreamed of doing.
She combined the angst-ridden teen drama of 90210 with vampires. Take that, Lugosi and Lee et al. She made the vampires sparkly, the way Tim Allen’s character suggested Santa’s elves should be in “The Santa Clause.” That’s just wrong.
To be fair, Ann Rice got a lot of stink on vampires too, but she didn’t quite drive a stake through the whole genre the way Meyer did.
I liked vampires. Vampires were sexy and evil. That’s just the way I like it. They were really the only sexy monsters, if you think about it. No one wanted to get down with the Mummy or the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Let’s face it, zombies aren’t going to do it for anybody.
No, she took the one really good monster and just turned it into a joke. How can vampires ever hold their heads up in the monster community again? How do they recover from this? Can Craven or Tarantino do something about this? If King re-released Salem’s lot, would it matter anymore?
I suppose time will tell. I think I’ll go watch Van Helsing again and try to forget.
Amen! Well said.
Freddie Kruger gets a manicure, Frankenstein gets an NBA deal, The Swamp Thing has a show on the Discovery Channel, Bigfoot is still shy. People run screaming from Chuckie even though he is only 2 feet tall. The last movie Tarantino made had a female character with a gun where her right leg should be. I think if the twilight vampires were any scarier than sparkly, make-up wearing, dope and grope – Six Flags attending punks, teenagers everywhere would crap their pants. Nobody is afraid of appropriate monsters anymore. You want a horror movie.. . Here's two… 'Jaws' and that movie about the gay cowboys!