Vampires

I'm trying to kickstart this community by posting various vampire movies; some obscure, some classics. This is definitely a classic. To the point that I don't know what else to say about it. It's great, go watch it. It makes being a vampire fun and exciting (not just old aristocrats in castles!) while also having kids going on an adventure (Corey Feldman and Corey Haim at their peak). The effects are perfectly 80s, the dialogue is perfectly 80s, the action is perfectly 80s. I don't know what else to say if you haven't seen it. Here's a trailer.

I've watched a lot of random old/bad horror movies on Prime Video, to the point that Prime now recommends even more old/bad horror movies to me. I guess the algorithm is working. Anyway, Prime suggested Subspecies to me and the cover looked like a perfectly bad horror movie so I gave it a try. And it was a fun vampire movie; I really enjoyed it. Not a "good" movie of course, but a "fun" movie. So then Prime suggested I watch Subspecies 2. So I did. And then Subspecies 3. And then I was hooked. I finally looked online for this series that I had never heard about in any discussion of vampire movies and found there were 6 movies, with the most recent being from 2023!

The series even has a surprisingly cohesive storyline and each movie directly leads into the next. It's primarily about a vampire named Radu who falls in love with a woman and spends 4 movies desperately trying to convince her to join him as a vampire. He doesn't want to kill her; he wants her to join him. He's tired of being alone and wants to share eternity with her. Throughout the entire series Radu is played by the same actor. The woman he falls in love with was recast after the first movie but then is the same actress for the rest of the series. And the same person wrote and directed all 6 movies. So it's surprisingly easy to binge watch. Also, most of the movies end with at least one other character surviving but then I guess those actors didn't want to return so the next movie just starts with "oh them? they died" and we never mention those characters again. For example, there's one movie that ends with some people escaping in a car and the next movie starts with that car flipped over and everyone is dead except the main actress. It's fantastic.

Now, with a title like Subspecies, you may be thinking "is Radu a Subspecies"? Nope! The subspecies are supposedly these little stop-motion guys:

I say "supposedly" because these creatures are never actually called "subspecies" at any point. I don't even think the word "subspecies" is said aloud in any of the 6 movies.

So if the series is called Subspecies, do these little creatures play a prominent role? Nope! If they even show up, it's typically for less than a minute. And most movies don't have them show up.

So if these subspecies aren't prominent in the series or even named, what are they? Well, in the first movie, Radu briefly gets captured. He pulls off some of his irritatingly long fingers, and they magically turn into those creatures.

So even though Radu has these irritatingly long fingers throughout the entire series, he only ever pulls them off to create these little guys early into the first movie... and never again. It's best to just ignore the name of this series and pretend the whole thing is called The Vampire Radu.

Now, if you noticed, I said Radu was trying to turn this woman for 4 movies yet there are 6 movies in the series. Well, one of these movies is just called Vampire Journals and is basically a spin-off. It has some recurring characters from previous movies but is focused more on a single vampire coven. It's pretty fun. And the final movie (Subspecies 5) is a prequel that is about Radu's creation. The actors who've played Radu and the woman he loves are still in the movie but now they play those characters' parents/ancestors. It's crazy to me that these people spent 30 years making these movies and I'd never even heard of them. That's some crazy dedication.

I personally think this series is best consumed in order, but James Wan's Vampire Watchlist only has Subspecies 2 on it. So I guess that's the best movie in the series? I don't know. Also, RiffTrax made a riff of Subspecies 4 if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, here's a trailer for Subspecies 1. I could go track down the trailers for the entire series but I don't want to. You're capable of doing that yourself.

If you're interested, Prime Video still has Subspecies 1, Subspecies 2, Subspecies 3, and Subspecies 4. The same movies are also on Roku if you have that. Unfortunately, Subspecies 5 and Vampire Journals aren't currently streaming anywhere so you'll need to find another way to watch them if you've stuck with the series that long.

I've never read any Anne Rice novels and don't really have any nostolgia for the Interview With The Vampire movie. I'll absolutely admit it's a good movie, it's just not the type of vampire story I typically enjoy. I guess I'm too low-brow and prefer vampire action/horror over the more introspective stuff. And I guess that's why I probably won't be posting anything here about Only Lovers Left Alive or Let The Right One In. I understand these are good (great?) movies, but they're not for me.

Anyway, I've heard good things about the new Interview With The Vampire TV show. I'm curious if any of you have seen it and how you'd compare it to the movie. Is it any good? What'd they do differently from the movie? Does it follow the books more closely? If you haven't seen it, here's a trailer. You can currently watch it on Netflix or, if you have a US library card, on Hoopla. Or I guess on AMC+ if anyone has that.

First of all, let's get this out of the way. There's a lot of 70s nudity in this movie. It's also billed as an "Adult Vampire Sex Comedy" so they really lean into it. Also, it's a low-budget movie from the 70s so expectations are a bit different. I can't quantify this as a "good" or "bad" movie, it's just an oddity in my opinion.

The movie is about an American actress who inherits a castle in Transylvania (pretty standard so far). She moves into the castle and learns she looks just like her ancestor, who was supposedly a vampire. The caretaker shows the actress the tomb where her ancestor was buried. She opens the tomb and finds her ancestor still looks exactly like her (hasn't decomposed) and runs away, leaving the tomb open. The vampire ancestor (played by the same person, of course) wakes up and climbs out of her tomb. Then we have a lot of wacky misdirection where the human actress and vampire ancestor constantly swap places to seduce/bite men in the village.

Anyway, the part of the movie that's really weird to me is in the later half of the movie where the vampire is invited to a party at the neighboring castle. The party is just.... so very very 70s.

Everyone at this party is a vampire and every actor/extra they hired are all just so goofy. And I wonder if this is just how people partied in the 70s. No one is trying to be cool or suave, they're all just silly. And I don't think they were leaning into the comedy aspect of the movie for this scene; I get the impression this is actually how people in the 70s had a good time. It's one of those things where at the time it was being filmed they wouldn't think anything of it; but me watching it so many decades removed is just fascinated by their actions. And it makes me think about these vampires being centuries old, living through various changes in fashion and behaviors, and living to see this as how people partied.

Anyway, the party is in honor of Dracula, who keeps making the devil horns gesture as if that's something he's famous for doing.

So yeah, this is just an odd movie in my opinion and I wanted to share. Come for the 70s nudity, stay for the odd window into how people partied in the 70s.

Here's a (nsfw) trailer on amazon. You can watch it on Prime, Roku, and Plex if you're curious.

Fright Night (1985) and Fright Night (2011) have the same basic plot and are both products of their time. Fright Night (1985) is just a fun 80s vampire movie that wants to tell a fun story. It's got that over-the-top acting and line delivery that makes 80s movies so fun and quotable. They weren't trying to setup a franchise or a sequel, they just did whatever they wanted. Meanwhile, Fright Night (2011) looked at Fright Night (1985) and said "how can we modernize/update every single aspect of this movie and make a quick buck?" I don't think Fright Night (2011) is a bad movie, but I wouldn't argue with anyone who said it was. It definitely doesn't have the same charm or "fun" as the original, but that's true of every movie that has tried remaking an 80s classic.

Both movies involve a teenager who thinks his new next-door neighbor is a vampire. Honestly, for both movies, I was expecting there to be a lot more doubt/suspicion/paranoia involved. But both movies answer the question pretty definitively early on that yes, he's a vampire. So then the teenager has to decide what to do about it. Obviously no one in their school or the police will believe them.

For Fright Night (1985), the teen stays up late watching too many horror movie marathons (which is how he noticed the neighbor acting suspiciously in the first place). These horror movie marathons are hosted by a local washed-up actor who used to play a vampire hunter. So he decides to track down that actor to get some help. A totally logical decision for a teenager in 1985. Plus, the washed-up actor is named Peter Vincent, a combination of Peter Cushing and Vincent Price (two famous actors from old horror movies).

Meanwhile, in Fright Night (2011), the teen decides to get the help of a Criss Angel lookalike played by David Tennant. The character's name is still Peter Vincent, except now that name doesn't mean anything (other than nostalgia reasons). There's not much reason why the teenager would go to this celebrity magician as a first choice. Also this magician seems to be at the peak of his career yet some random teenager is able to talk to him backstage pretty easily. By random coincidence, the celebrity magician happens to have an obsession with the occult and vampires and has an entire collection. So that's helpful.

Since Fright Night (2011) is following the same formula as Fright Night (1985), the plot points are mostly the same. The major differences are in hiring many more (relatively) big-name actors for the 2011 version, even if their casting doesn't really make sense. In Fright Night (1985), the main character has a punk friend named Ed, who they call "Evil Ed". The guy is a bit of an ass so it makes sense. In Fright Night (2011), this role is played by... McLovin. Calling him "Evil Ed" doesn't really work.

I know I seem to be complaining a lot about the 2011 version, but it's really just inferior to the 1985 version. As a standalone movie, I don't think it's bad. It has some odd casting choices, but it's still a fun vampire movie. I think both movies are worth watching, but the 2011 version is a very 2011 movie and there's something about that 80s charm that just makes the original more enjoyable.

Here's a trailer for the 1985 version and the 2011 version.

I'll be honest, I had never heard of Near Dark prior to seeing James Wan's Vampire Watchlist. But then I looked up other lists of classic vampire movies and Near Dark always seemed to be there. So clearly I must've missed out.

The movie was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed the forgotten cyberpunk classic Strange Days. So even when her movies aren't popular, they still seem to find their audience. For Near Dark specifically, its popularity was hurt by being released a couple months after The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys was a more "fun" movie that made vampires at least a little appealing (in an escapist fantasy sort of way), whereas Near Dark shows how being a vampire... kinda sucks. I guess I'd say it's a more realistic take on vampires, rather than being romanticized like in The Lost Boys. I personally wouldn't call it a Neo-Western like Wikipedia does though. I think it just takes place in a rural town, and that doesn't make it a Western to me.

While trying to figure out how I missed this movie, I learned that Kathryn wanted actors for the main vampire group who could act like they were family around each other, since the script had these vampires living together for centuries. So she asked her friend (and later, husband) James Cameron for some ideas. He had just finished filming Aliens so he suggested some of the cast from his movie. And that's how we end up with a crew of vampires with Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein. So that's neat.

Overall, I think it's a fun 80s vampire movie but I'm not sure what makes it a classic. That is, I'm not sure what it did so differently and uniquely that it deserved a spot on classic movie lists. It definitely isn't bad (and there are a lot of bad vampire movies out there) but being so many decades removed, I can't tell what it did so uniquely well. Maybe someone here can educate me. Also, I will say that I didn't like the ending. I've discovered that I don't like vampire movies which end with

Anyway, here's a trailer. I wonder if there's some weird rights dispute with this movie because it never seems to be on any streaming services. Even for rent or purchase, it's just not there. I ended up watching it on the internet archive.

I know most people probably don't care about this game, but I'm not aware of any other big budget vampire games coming out soon and I like posting vampire news when I can. Otherwise, this community will just end up being nothing but nostalgia-bait. I don't want it to be an endless stream of " 'member this movie?" even though that's primarily what it is now.

Anyway, the "something that nobody yet has done" mentioned in the title is this part:

I designed a protagonist who, in the day, is a human, with all the weaknesses of a human being. [However], at night, you are a vampire, which is stronger and faster, and you have better abilities and supernatural skills. It’s somehow interesting, this duality of the hero, which we know from Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, for example. It’s something in pop culture that is well known and wasn’t yet explored in games.

These two sides of Coen, human during the day and vampire at night, play directly into The Blood of Dawnwalker's novel 'time as a resource' mechanic, which sees the game's in-game clock advance every time Coen completes a quest or task. This passage of time means that gamers controlling Coen will have to choose what they are going to do in a given period of time and, as a result, what they're not going to do.

Dark (2013) was released on the Xbox 360. At the time, it got terrible reviews. But the game is now available on steam, where it... also has terrible reviews. And I don't get it, I think the game is a lot of fun. It's definitely a game from 2013, with clunky character models and dialog that doesn't match the lip syncing, but I don't think that puts it outside of the norm for other games at the time. Maybe the plot was too dumb for most people. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for video games with a vampire protagonist.

Anyway, the game is about some random dude (you) who wakes up to discover he was bitten by a vampire and has no memory prior to waking up. In this world, if you kill the vampire who turned you, you'll turn back into a human. So your goal is to find the vampire who turned you, kill him, and become a human once again. But since you have no memory, you have no idea who to hunt down. Some helpful vampire (and owner of a vampire night club) says "you know... it was probably ______, go kill him." So you do, but you're still a vampire. So you go back to the night club and she says "huh, well... maybe it was _______." So you go kill that vampire. Nope. that wasn't it. So then you go back to the night club and she goes "well, you could try killing the head vampire, since most of the vampires around here were turned by him." And you can see where this is going. It's a level-based game with a boss fight at the end of each level.

But since this game came out in 2013, it's heavily inspired by what was considered "cool" at the time. Or maybe what was considered "cool" 10 years prior... Because this is what the main character (and the night club) look like:

Awesome, right? Baggy jeans, a hoodie, it's almost like you can hear KoRn being played at the club (or whatever songs were on the Underworld soundtrack).

As for gameplay, it's actually a stealth game. Think the stealth in the Dishonored series where the main character is able to "blink" (teleport) to a nearby spot. This game allows you to transform into a cloud of bats to teleport to a nearby spot. You can also unlock other abilities to help you sneak past guards or silently kill them. As with most stealth games, if you get spotted it doesn't take many bullets to take you down. But I'm the type of person who reloads a save if I get spotted in a stealth game so that didn't bother me (you can save anytime). There were a lot of complaints online about how you can't really fight your way out once spotted though.

Part of my enjoyment of the game could've come from the fact that I played on Easy mode. I don't have the time to waste getting frustrated with video games anymore; I want to enjoy myself. And it's a single player game from 10 years ago, who am I trying to impress? I still got spotted plenty of times though, so I don't think Easy mode was too easy. Also, there's a guide on steam that tells you how to spend your upgrade points so you don't waste your time. That helped a lot too.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It's available on Steam and regularly goes on sale for $3 and I think it's easily worth that price. I actually enjoyed it so much I bought the DLC when it went on sale for $2, even though that was just a single extra level (that takes place after the ending). The main game has about 7 hours of gameplay and the DLC adds another hour. It isn't a major commitment.

Daybreakers is an interesting movie. There are a lot of vampire stories where some powerful vampire wants to enslave the human race and keep them as cattle. But in those stories, the vampire is always stopped before they can actually enact their plan. Daybreakers imagines the logistics involved with 95% of humanity being vampires.

You can tell the filmmakers spent a lot of time thinking about how life would be different if everyone was a vampire. If everyone on the planet would die if they saw sunlight, how would cars change? How would houses change? How would cities change? Suddenly subways become the dominant form of travel. Also, there wouldn't be enough blood to go around and now you have a food shortage.

The movie has a great cast with Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Sam Neill. While the setting and world-building is fantastic, I think the story's plot gets a little 'deus ex machina' where the solution was a little too easy just as a way to end the movie.

Anyway, here's a trailer. You can watch it on Roku, Pluto, and Plex. I recommend it.

Bloodrayne was originally a series of video games about a half-human half-vampire dhampir named Rayne. She works for the Brimstone Society and fights against evil vampires. I'll make a post later about the Bloodrayne series of video games though since that's a different discussion. For now, let's talk about the movies.

All three movies were directed by Uwe Boll, which gives you an idea of the quality (he's never made a good movie). And the first movie was the only one to actually be released in theaters. It was also the only one to have a relatively recognizable cast. Both Bloodrayne 2 and Bloodrayne 3 had different actresses play Rayne. It's always a good sign when you have to recast the main character in each movie...

Anyway, the first movie takes place in the 18th century with Rayne trying to track down the vampire ruler who is her father. This is by far the most watchable movie in the trilogy. The second movie takes place in the Wild West where Rayne fights against Billy the Kid, who is a vampire, because... why not. The third movie takes place during WWII where Rayne is fighting against nazis who are trying to create a vampire army, which is very close to the plot of the first Bloodrayne video game. And it's terrible.

If my glowing recommendations here have made you curious, here are the trailers for Bloodrayne 1, Bloodrayne 2, and Bloodrayne 3.

Also, since Plex has a free streaming service now, it looks like you can watch all three movies for free. Lucky you! Bloodrayne 1, Bloodrayne 2, Bloodrayne 3.

I've never played any of the Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain games so I don't have any nostalgia for them. But I have a co-worker who absolutely loves the series and will regularly re-watch all the cutscenes on youtube. His description of the games make them sound amazing so I'm tempted to try them, but I worry they'll have janky controls and awkward early-2000s puzzles that will just annoy me since I don't already have a soft spot for these games.

So I'm looking for an outside opinion. What do you think? Are the games fun to play if you've never played the originals?

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000) and Hellsing Ultimate (2005) are both amazing vampire animes and I highly recommend either one. The animation style in both is incredible. But be aware that they each have earlier animes (Vampire Hunter D in 1985 and Hellsing in 2001) which aren't as good. I'd watch Bloodlust and Ultimate first and only watch the originals if you want more.

Also, I really just wanted to see if there were any Vampire Knight or Trinity Blood fans out there that I could annoy with this question.

I thought this was a really fun movie and a great premise. The entire movie is taken from one chapter of Bram Stoker's novel. And this was the perfect chapter to adapt because it didn't have much detail and none of the other characters from the book appear in it (and none of the characters in the chapter appear elsewhere in the book). In the chapter, Dracula's coffin travels by boat to London. When it arrives, everyone on the boat is dead. That's the entire chapter. So it gave the filmmakers a lot of room to work with.

I remember seeing an interview with the director where he compared it to the movie Alien, which had a crew trapped aboard a spaceship being slowly hunted by the alien. He wanted to make a similar movie but with the crew trapped aboard a ship being slowly hunted by Dracula. And I think it worked beautifully.

I have one nit-pick about the movie and it's in the final scene. I'm going to try using spoiler tags, although I don't think it really "spoils" the movie. It is the final scene though so I'll play it safe.

Anyway, here's a trailer. I think you should definitely watch it if you get a chance.

List of movies (from the article)

• "Svengali,” Archie Mayo, 1931
• "Beauty and the Beast,” Jean Cocteau, 1946
• “Great Expectations,” David Lean, 1946
• “The Queen of Spades,” Thorold Dickinson, 1949
• “Andriesh,” Yakov Bazelyan, Sergei Parajanov, 1954
• "The Innocents,” Jack Clayton, 1961
• "The Eve of Ivan Kupalo,” Yuri Ilyenko, 1968
• "The She-Butterfly / Leptirica,” Đordje Kadijević, 1973

Please watch it this week if you can!

First of all, when I decided I wanted to kickstart this community by running through a bunch of classic vampire movies I didn't realize they'd all be Dracula movies. That wasn't my intent. This is supposed to be a community for general vampire content, not the All-Dracula-All-The-Time community.

Anyway, you can argue about Keanu Reeves' accent or Winona Ryder's acting but I think this is the best film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. It captures a lot of the novel while also adding some backstory to Dracula's character, which fits really well into the narrative in my opinion. 1922's Nosferatu is a creepy silent film, 1931's Dracula is iconic, but I think this movie has the most cohesive story. Here's a trailer.