Heh, but it was a fun god-awful film!

The Auld Grump

The action and excitement made it a mindlessly entertaining film, but I'm a big horror loyalist, especially to the classic Universal Films. The man that played Dracula was the worst Dracula I have ever seen. Its like he took lessons from Count Chocula. Then the monster was nothing like Karloff's amazing portrayal either.
I really liked the werewolf's look though, but the skin ripping(although neat looking) is somewhat ludicrous, especially when he has to change every time the moon falls behind clouds(which is also lame).

Oh well, I'm just ranting, but yes, cool dark gothic castles would be amazing. Especially in likeness to Castlevania, etc.


-Jesse

I will agree that the Dracula used in the film was the worst part - but not the worst Dracula ever! For that the prize goes to Jack Pallance, the guy who used to narrate Ripley's Believe it or Not. (And was in a ton of actually very good Westerns.)

The Auld Grump

Heh, perhaps 'haemosexual' would be a more accurate description. As long as it has something they need they feel 'attracted', and being human those attractive urges get all tied up in knots... Sorry, a few credit hours' worth of psycholgy striking at the wrong time...

Though lacking in Dracula there are indeed sexual overtones in several of the stories contemporary with Bram Stoker's Count, Anne Rice just chose a different model than Stoker. John Polidori's was itself based on Lord Byron, and Camilla does have a homosexual undertone, in this case Saphic...

And as a point - the Theater of the Vampires described by Rice was in fact an actual institution in Paris, and had a sideline of 'procurement' that ranged rather widely. Actual in the sense of there being such a theater, not that there were really vampires therein of course. In fact Vampire Theater was so widespread in Paris that some complained that you couldn't avoid it, nearly every theater had vampires, up to and including Vaudeville and Burlesque.

Vampires in folklore on the other hand were just plain monsters, generally feeding off of family first, the sexual connotations were borrowed from succubi and incubi, as well as the Gaelic Leahnan Sidhe, which fed off of the blood and poetry of those they thought gifted, stealing away their poetry and life both. There is also a touch of the Lamia in there, she who feeds on babes in the night. (Possibly an early 'explanation' of SIDS.) There may be other sources, but they are not coming to my mind at the moment.

All that said, I prefer Lugosi and Oldman as well... But I know where Rice got her themes. Though I got so sick of the incest in every single book that I don't read her anymore, the last one I enjoyed was Ramses the Damned.

The Auld Grump, as a note - incubi were actually more common in folklore than succubi, and one is sometimes described as the father of Merlin of King Arthur fame...

There are so many different ways to interpret vampirism that you can describe it and its foibles ad infinitum. Vampire as addict, vampire as representative of the upper class, vampire as metaphor for syphilis, this particular beast will remain in storytelling until we no longer want or need a flexible symbol of the cruel, abusive natures found in man (and woman).

Of course, that's just my opinion as a frequent reader and outlayer of vampire stories. I say outlayer because I don't think I'm much of a writer; I won't put up the pretense.

And now that I've gone over all that...the vampires in Underworld are completely weaksauce. Their only eerie supernatural power is jumping off of high places and not being broken by the landing. Less supernatural powers include good funding and bad fashion sense.

Weak. Sauce.

Give me the Christopher Lee Dracula, or Bram Stoker's Dracula.

They say there is something sexual about the vampire as a monster - the dominating hypnotic power... But I think when you mix sex and horror, if you don't do it JUST EXACTLY RIGHT, you end up with a B-movie.

Really horrible vampires are alien elder beings, having nothing in common with the living, save their shape. They are a older than you, more clever than you, and specifically, they view you in the same way you view a fish.

They want to eat you, and chuck away the bones.

Anne Rice wrote about vampires, and used homosexuality as a metaphor for the difference between them and you. It makes them sorta accessible as characters... I don't care for that in a game sense, although it's hard to play a character that doesn't have human sympathies... So a lot of players make their vampiric characters perverse. And it's easy to make a vampire an Incubus.

I guess it's hard to play a monster when you aren't one yourself. Anyway, in response to Nomadik's statement: the Anne Rice style of femme-vampires just ruined the whole genre for me. It lost its masculinity.

I feel sortof the same - it was cool initially, but the metaphor is tired, and their is little mystery left to the vampires. Good horror contains some element of the unexpected. We all know what to expect from Rices Vampires... What can you do?

DUDE! You just have to redefine what a vampire is in your games. Anne Rice is a VERY SPECIFIC subgenre. You do have to give the vampire some sort of human sympathies in order to make it playable - but sexuality is just the path of least resistance.

How about starvation instead? Or a vampire that sees the fate of the victim - angels or devils drag the screaming soul into the afterlife?. Or a demonic voice you on the grisly murder you just commited, and reminds you of your fate when you fall (and reminds you that eventually, everyone falls - you are past redemption)... Each subsequent kill makes the demonic manifestation more threatening and real, and gives the player less control over himself (think sanity points...)

There are literally hundreds of ways to make a vampiric character compelling to play without resorting to their dating strategies...

Hey, ever see "An American Werewolf in London?" That's a great example of mixing humanity and monstrosity. Another good source is "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis.

Just finished reading a wicked modern vampire novel, "Midnight Mass," by F. Paul Wilson. Author said he was tired of all these namby-pamby "I-don't-like-being-a-vampire-but-what-choice-do-I-have" vampires in recent novels, so he set out to write -- and succeeded *shudder* -- a vampire's vampire book. It was awesome.