Hallowe'en Vampire Cinema Special
A few years ago, my partner Ruth let me run a Hallowe’en special at Cinema Club. Cinema Club was a weekly event Ruth used to host where they’d invite friends round to watch a film they would vote for from a shortlist. Ruth had a massive list of films they were interested to watch, and would make 5-film lists each week for their friends to vote on. These films included everything from The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) to Bladerunner (1982) to My Neighbour Totoro (1988) to Inside Out (2015).
I felt very honoured. I didn’t think Ruth had let anyone choose films before - never mind essentially random films, some of which were not on Ruth’s massive film list. I could ask Ruth if that’s true, but I don’t want to disabuse myself.
Not only did I want it to be a Hallowe’en special, I wanted it to be a vampire film special. I’ve been “accused” (if that’s the word - it has certainly felt like it at times) of being obsessed with vampires at different points in my life, but I personally feel the opposite is true.
High School, vampires, pop stars & goth metal
My first introduction to vampires, so to speak, was in 2002/2003 when a school friend of mine started telling me about this goth metal film she’d watched about these vampires, and a famous pop star playing one of the leads. It was based on a book, she said, by this author, Anne Rice, who was apparently a big deal but she’d never read anything by her. It was around the same time that said friend tried to get me into Shaun of the Dead, and that failed spectacularly so I honestly don’t know why I was so intrigued by this recommendation from her. I didn’t seek out the film, though - I sought out the book. It was the third in an on-going series of which I could buy the first 4. I fell instantly and completely in love with them. I went on to read everything written by Anne Rice that I could get my hands on.
And snobbishly, I find it’s hard to like other vampire fiction after reading Anne Rice. Her writing is so well planned and plotted out, so well researched and thus grounded. There are no glaring gaps in her mythology, no contradictory information, nothing that is skirted over or explained only vaguely. Her vampires are so enmeshed into the world we actually do live in as to seem entirely natural - entirely obvious, even.
So to me, it seems wild to say I’m obsessed with this genre (if it can be called that) (let’s say that it can) when I turn up my nose at so much of it.
The Films
I chose these films:
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Let the Right One In (2008)
Underworld (2003)
Queen of the Damned (2002)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
And here is why:
Only Lovers Left Alive is beautiful and terrifying and heartbreaking in equal turns. I would say it’s not a film about vampires so much as it’s a film where the characters happen to be vampires. It isn’t about vampirism. It’s about life, love, making art, and how and why you endure when the world seems hopeless. And it’s funny. It is genuinely one of my all time favourite films, and it makes me miserable, and Ruth and I are considering one of the songs from the soundtrack as the first dance at our wedding party (not the one in the video below).
There’s a sci fi novel by the same name, but it’s not an adaptation - director Jim Jarmush just liked the title. I’ve never read the novel because it appears to be out of print.
Let the Right One In is also beautiful and terrifying and heartbreaking. The real horror in this film, in my opinion, are the choices the young boy protagonist Oskar makes and what they mean for his future and the perpetuation of a cycle, the previous turn of which we’ve been watching play out during the film. There is some actual horror violence and gore in this one, but it isn’t the point, really, and serves as much to ground the monstrous/fantastical in human physicality as to scare. Human physicality can be pretty scary, mind.
Underworld. OK, so for all I’ve said about being a snob about vampires, am I NOT supposed to love a film in which Kate Beckinsale skulks around in a catsuit it looks like she must have been poured into? But seriously, this film is kinda fun. It dresses old world lore in modern aesthetic, everyone is hyper serious, and Bill Nighy says “come closer my child” with an entirely straight face. It almost certainly draws inspiration from The Matrix and came out the same year as The Matrix Reloaded, and I’m confident they’re aimed at the same audience.
If you hadn’t guessed already, Queen of the Damned is the film my school friend was telling me about. I didn’t watch the film until a few years later and because I’d read the novel by that time, I was faintly horrified by how unfaithful an adaptation it is. These are really two completely separate entities. It’s a stupid film that doesn’t even begin to touch on the big themes of the novel such as, oh, you know, the destructive forces of patriarchy and capitalism, imperialism, community, religious oppression, scapegoating and persecution, construction of morality, social responsibility, etc. But it’s paced well, and it’s fun, and Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend have great chemistry.
At the time of putting together the list, I hadn’t seen the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film. Its inclusion was based entirely on the fact that I love the TV series. Buffy the TV series deals with so many difficult, real-world-applicable issues so well and with so much nuance, I genuinely believe it’s one of the best shows to ever air. It has its problems, but they’re few. I have now seen the film and I really enjoyed it, but if I was re-writing this list now, I probably wouldn’t include it because Joss Whedon appears to be a problematic individual and I don’t wish to support his work.
There were films I considered that didn’t make the cut.
The first was What We Do In The Shadows (2005). I adore this film. I didn’t include it because we’d watched it just a few weeks before at Cinema Club anyway.
Another that didn’t make the cut was Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). I’m not a fan of the novel, but the film has such an epic feel and some great performances by the star-strewn cast. But Gary Oldman plays the eponymous vampire and it seemed at the time (and still, I think) that Oldman was problematic and I didn’t wish to support his work.
Your Own Hallowe’en Vampire Special
So, if you use my listings to run your whole Hallowe’en vampire special film screenings, let me know what you think!