Vampire films have always been a favourite thrill of mine, to the point where I am weirdly annoyed that every time a vampire gets staked in some new movie or TV show, the undead instantly crumble away into fire, ash and dust.
It's too neat, and too tidy, and too easy. And stories about bloodsucking leeches in human form shouldn't be any of those things.
There is, obviously, a long history of cinematic vampires withering away when they are destroyed - Max Shreck's Nosferatu faded away to nothing in the daylight sun, and Christopher Lee's Count Dracula was always rotting away in gross technicolor when Peter Cushing got the upper hand.
But once the CGI technology came along to make it a whole lot easier, suddenly every vampire in every vampire film - from the lowest budget nonsense to blockbuster idiocy - was suddenly crumbling into instant dust.
It's usually an attempt to add some visual flair, but it also tidies things up too easily. It was even acknowledged that one of the main reason the vamps in Buffy The Vampire Slayer would dissolve into the dust of the grave when staked or decapitated was that they didn't have to worry about why there were a bunch of corpses being found all around the city.
I just always liked our heroes having to explain why all these dead bodies are lying around, instead of literally sweeping the remains away under a carpet and hoping nobody notices that an apparent human being has just completely vanished.
All that said, I will admit a personal fondness for the way the vampires in the True Blood TV show were destroyed, where a quick poke with a pointed stick and they would instantly explode in a shower of blood and gore. It was always shocking and gross as fuck, and left a hell of a mess behind.
But monsters shouldn't be convenient, it's part of what makes them monsters. And there is always more dark comedy in the disposal than in getting out the dustpan.
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