10 Stupid Vampires
by Will Erixon (with Greg Eatroff)
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They're the children of the night, and the fathers of nightmares. They
replace us at the top of the food chain. They have the strength of twenty
men, vision in the dark, command over vermin, and while vulnerable to
daylight and despair, they can shrug off assaults from an AK-47 and break
out from under a ton of cement. How could you go wrong with this much
inherent advantage?
Observe.
10. The Count. By definition all Muppets are cool, so our friend
the Count is much lower on this list than he otherwise would be. However,
the facts remain. He's sublimated his predatory urges and replaced them
with a neurotic compulsion to number things. Like Dracula, he appears to
have some control over the storm, but he only uses it for dramatic
entrances (not a good policy if it puts your only food source on guard).
He at least gets some points for actually REALIZING that he's
incompetent... that's why he hangs out with a bunch of innocent pieces of
sentient felt who don't know enough to ask about all those visits to the
local hospital.
9. Vampire from Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. Actually, this
was a much older Bugs Bunny short, but I mention Quackbusters here
so all of you can find it easier. Now just about anyone who goes up
against Bugs Bunny-- Superman, Galactus, the Borg, Darth Vader, Jesus
Christ-- is going to lose. But *YOU* could take this vampire out. *LISA
KUDROW* could take this vampire out. His transformational abilities hinged
on two keywords: "hocuspocus" and "abracadabra." Once Bugs realized this,
he quickly took control of the vampire's body (no, not quite like that) by
shouting the keywords in rapid succession. Then he put the vampire through
horrible mutations with the variations "abracapocus" and "hocuscadabra."
Then he made him sing opera and brought the auditorium down on top of him.
Well, he might as well have.
8. Duckula. He occasionally managed to fluster Danger Mouse, but
that task is so easy that it doesn't really count. In their first meeting,
Duckula gets completely sidetracked by an insane desire to perform on
television. He eventually got his wish with a cartoon show so lame that it
needed its own wheelchair access. The show was also the end of his limited
effectiveness: as a straight man, he was obliged to be a patsy for
villains and monsters that even Xander (from Buffy the Vampire
Slayer) could handle.
7. Max (from The Lost Boys). He gets points for subtlety
and style: it isn't until the end of the movie that we can even be sure he
IS a vampire. However, this doesn't change the fact that his basic plan
makes no sense. Apparently, all he wants is to take over the Emerson
family and settle down as the head of a "vampire Brady Bunch." So he tells
his Hitler youth to get the oldest son of the family (Michael) involved
with their curse and completely ignores the fact that Michael might get
killed by his brother or reject his family or just... you know... want to
kill him. Most of the movie holds together really well, but Max's final
scene is not a triumph of Boolean logic.
6. Asian geek loser (from Vamp). Sometimes a vampire bite
makes no real difference. Before, he was a dork. Afterwards, he was a
dying dork whining the words "You GUYYYYS--!"
5. That Malkavian character (Vampire: the Masquerade)who
thinks that because he's insane, he's obligated to counter or sabotage
every last move the rest of the party tries to make, completely ruining
the atmosphere of the game and the Storyteller's efforts to move things
forward. You know the guy. He's in like one-third of ALL
Vampire games.
4. The entire cast of Sorority House Vampires. Just trust
us on this.
3. The Anointed One. Granted, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a
show I love) necessarily includes its share of intelligence-impaired
vampires, as well as smarter ones. But "The Anointed One" here was so all
buildup and no payoff, he deserves a round of backhanded applause. He
deserves it, but since backhanded applause is really bad for your wrists,
I won't give it to him anyway. Which is oddly appropriate.
2. James Woods on Saturday Night Live. This was in the
Eighties, when SNL was still funny and the AIDS scare was getting
started. Woods quizzed women on their sexual history before he decided
whether or not to bite them. As anybody knows, finding a woman who's
walking around after dark and also happens to be a virgin is no easy task,
and he's about to give up when he finds one who looks safe. He pricks her
finger on a rose, takes it to a med lab, gets it tested, finds out it's
good, goes back to suck the woman dry, but he's taken so long with all of
this that the sun comes up and he disintegrates.
1. Bram Stoker's Dracula. As the years have gone on since the
original novel, writers and moviemakers have beefed up Drac's personality
until it's commensurate with his abilities and with the badass reputation
he's gained. So it's kind of a sugar shock to go back to the original book
and discover Bram Stoker wrote him as kind of a moron. He never confronts
his attackers unless forced to (and could easily destroy them if he really
put his mind to it), he spends far too much time with pretty little pieces
of flesh to follow his (stated) goal of becoming one with British society,
and he can't even manage to convince ONE member of that society (Jonathan
Harker) that he's a nice guy. The normally supercompetent Mina Harker
guesses that Dracula makes these dumb mistakes because deep in his heart
of heart of hearts, he HATES being a vampire. Quick show of hands here:
does that sound scary? Or pathetic? Read The Dracula Tape by Fred
Saberhagen for a brilliant take on the story that clears up virtually
every flaw in the original and has a nice role for Mina, to boot. In the
meantime, carry away this lesson: sometimes Hollywood actually IMPROVES
the original.
