The Pros and Cons of Vampires

I’m fascinated by vampires and have been ever since I was a child. The whole concept of vampirism is terrifying and I have seen and read many examples from the laughable glowing human friendly plastic joke vampires of Twilight to the horrific parasitic shapeshifters of Brian Lumley's Necroscope books; they are not nice creatures at all.

I was recently watching Blade, a movie about a half-man half-vampire whose purpose in life is to turn all vampires to ash and wipe them all out. And I started thinking.

What would I do if I woke up in the middle of the night and found myself in the grip of a ravenous vampire about to turn me into one of his blood-sucking kind?

Would I welcome it with open teeth?

I thought I would try to list the pros and cons of being a vampire – for a bit of fun – and check at the end whether I would try to stake the thing or accept the mutation into a child of the night.

By the way – I am omitting the Twilight vampires from everything I discuss about them because in my opinion they are not vampires – they are imposters.

Let’s start with the cons:

(1) Vampires cannot go out in daylight.

I love the sun and I would really struggle if I had to wake up at dusk and get to bed as the sun rose. I love taking photos of sunrises and sunsets and because vampires burn and fry in the sun, I would probably not live to enjoy the fruits of my vision.

Actually, when I think of it, so do already burn now as a human, so much so that I avoid extreme sun and bask in the shade. My eldest lad’s girlfriend already calls me “The Vampire” because I am “scared” of the sun, which is also highlighted by my extremely pale skin.

Oh and the less said about the twinkling vampires in Twilight, the better.

(2) Vampires live on blood.

I am totally squeamish and hate the sight of blood. I look away in movies when blood appears in the scene, whether it is because somebody has been shot or a poor unfortunate has had his throat ripped out by an over-zealous vampire. The thought of having to drink blood fills me with dread. I would probably faint and starve.

(3) Vampires are evil.

Traditional vampires are considered evil because they either turn people into vampires or murder them to feed. Worse, they are considered to be satanic and can be burned by a cross or holy water. I think I’m a nice guy so I wouldn’t like to be hunted for being a godless creature.

(4) Vampires sleep in coffins.

I don’t like coffins at all and the thought of having to sleep in one fills me with claustrophobic dread. I like my comfortable bed too much. Moreover, you have to sleep with the coffin lid down for safety and I tend to wake up periodically so I would repeatedly end up bashing my brains in during the day.

(5) Vampires are allergic to silver and garlic.

I love garlic. I think it adds that certain something to a meal.  Having said that, as a vampire, I wouldn’t be able to eat food anyway so perhaps that is not such a bad thing. I do wonder whether a vampire could be injured if he inadvertently nibbled on the blood of a person who had just eaten a garlic infused meal. I don’t really care about silver to be honest.

And now the pros (yes there are pros).

(1) Vampires go out at night.

I love going out at night but usually for a meal and a beer or two and, of course, vampires cannot consume either of these two things. Still, there would be nothing stopping me from going into a night club or something like that as long as I could get an invitation. Apparently vampires can’t enter a building unless somebody invites them in; I guess you could use hypnosis though (see later).

(2) Vampires are immortal.

This is the most appealing feature of vampires. Once converted, you end up looking as you do at the moment for the rest of eternity and as long as there are no Van Helsings or Blades around trying to stab you with a stake then you can enjoy an amazing life. Knowing my luck, a vampire would attack me on the eve of my 80th birthday so I end up looking like a grizzled old man for the rest of time.

(3) Vampires are sexy.

There is something deeply sexual about vampires, which is a little bit of a paradox, considering that humans are the source of their food. Vampires have a kind of hypnotic power over humans, enthralling them as a lover might enthral their partner. I would definitely love to be hypnotist.

(4) Vampires are powerful.

In all of the movies and books I have seen, vampires are incredibly powerful creatures, much more so than your average person. They are stronger, faster and have more natural weaponry. If I were a vampire, Piers Morgan might be one of the first people I visited for this reason although the thought of a blood-drinking immortal Piers Morgan rampaging about the country is something I wouldn’t want.

(5) Vampires are shapeshifters.

Vampires can turn themselves into other creatures such as bats and wolves in order to escape or to travel quickly. I would love to be able to shape shift into another creature or, even better, another person. Sadly,I don’t think that’s possible.

The Verdict

All in all, I think I I’m quite happy not being a vampire so I would probably try to use a stake or garlic when confronted by a blood-sucker. I would be tempted by immortality and hypnosis but that would be too big a price to pay if I had to drink blood.

Dracula – please don’t pay me a visit.

Vampires

It’s confession time again; I am going to reveal another weird thing about myself:

I am absolutely fascinated by vampires.

I’ve tried to trace the roots of their appeal and I think I’ve pinpointed to the time when my dad allowed me to watch a vampire film at the age of eleven. Here is an excerpt from a post I wrote in October last year about the experience:

I remember as an eleven year old kid pestering my dad to allow me to watch a horror film. I must have been a real pain in arse because he finally gave in and allowed me to watch “Dracula” starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I was so excited I almost peed my pyjamas. I watched the film and then actually peed my pyjamas. I have never been so scared in my entire life. I spoke with a stammer for ten weeks. I didn’t get a wink of sleep for an entire month. I quite literally avoided cemeteries for ten years. My dad certainly taught me a lesson. He asked me about a month later if I wanted to watch “Dracula Has Risen From The Grave”.“Has he risen from the grave?” I stammered. “Yes,” he replied. I spent the next fortnight under the duvet with a crucifix, a torch and a telephone directory trying to find the number for Professor Van Helsing.

I recovered from that trauma eventually and as I grew older I began to watch more films about vampires. They scared the hell out of me but, I was drawn to them, like a moth to a flame. I was enthralled by them; their evil, their thirst for blood; their strengths and apparent weaknesses; the intrigue of their existence.

I watched all of the Hammer vampire films and many others but had to do so clutching a cushion in a room full of people. In particular, “Salem’s Lot”, based on a book by Stephen King, and starring David Soul, scared me half to death. I thought I was overcoming my fear and I watched this two part drama at the tender age of 16, with no idea at all that vampires were involved. I can still picture the young boy, converted to a vampire, hovering outside the bedroom window of another boy, scratching the glass and begging to be let in. Why did it scare me? Because it made vampires seem to be more invincible and also showed that the victims of vampires weren’t just adults. The scene where the “Master” vampire confronts the priest who is defending himself with a cross struck a particular chord. Vampires were supposed to be terrified of holy symbols; this one wasn’t – he simply tore the cross from the priest’s hands.

I would go to bed engulfed by anxiety and quake as my eyes searched the darkness for signs of vampiric movement. As intriguing as they were, vampires were pure evil and, being a Roman Catholic, anything that was ungodly in anyway pressed a deep button that injected pure terror into my psyche. My fear of all things diabolical was all-consuming.

I had a huge brass cross on my window sill that I could use for self defence should the need arise, though I prayed that the “Master” vampire from “Salem’s Lot” wouldn’t be the one who called. If a vampire actually had materialised at my bedside I would have screamed and been desperately terrified. Yet, I would have been pleased at a deep primeval level.

Is that a paradox? At the time I thought it was and I didn’t understand it at all. How could I be so scared of such a tainted, evil, godless creature yet actually want to meet one?

Now, however, I think I understand.

As terrifying as they are, the appeal of the vampire is the romance and sexuality that accompanies them. Dracula appeared at the window of a beautiful woman, entranced her and then sucked her blood, ultimately converting her to one of the legions of the undead. And amidst all that evil, there was love. The film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” starring Gary Oldman as the evil count illustrates this perfectly. In a similar way, I found the portrayal of female vampires beguiling. The very lifestyle of a vampire had a menacing attraction. These creatures could come and go as they pleased; they could hold their victims in thrall and feast off them; they were creatures of the night. However vulnerable they were during the day, they had guardians who would protect them with their lives. They were hunters, like cats, who stalked their prey, except instead of killing them (which they sometimes did unfortunately) they would captivate them, entrance them and bond with them. It was this lifestyle that was appealing.

I enjoyed the film “Interview With The Vampire” for this reason. I would love to watch an interview with a real vampire. I’m unsure that I would want to do the interview myself (especially given what happened to the interviewer in that film). I would certainly have taken more precautions, like having crosses and Holy Water present and I would have almost certainly have done the interview remotely, that is, at 8am in the morning in Manchester where it is bright and sunny, via satellite to Los Angeles where the vampire could relax in his night time environment.

While I am merely fascinated by these remarkable fictional beings, there are others who have taken their interest much further - into the realms of dangerous obsession. A whole subculture exists with people who are infatuated by vampires. It makes scary reading.

These days, I can watch vampire films with no qualms and no feelings of primordial dread and I do so with pure enjoyment. I can retire to my bed after a vampire film with no fear.

Sadly, in recent times, vampires on film have become nothing more than just an average bad guy and, apart from a few exceptions, they are not really scary at all. I blame “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer” for this – though there are other culprits. I watched a couple of episodes of that particular series and then refused to watch it further since, to me, it was contributing to the demise of the true genre. While some may argue that it was broadening their appeal, I would regard it as dumbing down for the masses.

Similarly, I love the “Blade” films but the mysticism surrounding vampires is sacrificed in favour of using them as bad guys for Wesley Snipes to turn to ash with maximum prejudice. I regard these films simply as action films rather than horror films, though most of the elements of traditional vampirism are used.

Maybe the vampire needs to evolve. I know one author has taken the vampire myth and used it to create a race of creatures that really are terrifying, even more so that Dracula. Brian Lumley’s “Necroscope” series of novels have introduced the concept that a vampire is in fact a symbiotic parasite, a creature that invades a human host and mutates that person into a monster that is far more fearsome than anything Bram Stoker could have dreamed up. He has even given them a more romantic name; “Wamphyri”. For me that conjures up an image of pure ancient evil. These creatures are almost invincible and it requires a supremely powerful super-hero to be able to combat them. I would recommend reading them; I won’t spoil it for you but there are thirteen novels in the series and each one of them is superb.

If they ever make a film based on “Necroscope” you can guarantee that it will be genuinely frightening. I will march into the cinema, popcorn in hand and watch it, knowing that I will once more be scared out of my wits exactly as I was when I was a naïve little eleven year old.

Now, where’s that big brass cross?