Why Have They Made Vampires Too Sloppy?
 

As an ardent fan of the traditionally nasty vampires as depicted in the Universal and Hammer films, I hate the current trend by filmakers and novelists to portray vampires as nothing more than pin-up style lover boys. These vampires, unlike Dracula, are just not scary, and rather than providing us with PROPER horror stories, they are just giving a rather pathetic Romeo and Juliet kind of aspect to today's vampire yarns.

Are there any other people on here who despise these superfluous vampire romance stories?

But of course!!

Yeh, I know what you mean, I prefer The Lost Boy type vampire and why dont vampires turn into bats anymore, John Cardine was the best for that. That daft hair style for Francis Ford coppala's Dracula was just the pits.

Vampires have been wholly tainted by the emo culture, so don't look for a return to horror goodness by vampires until the self-absorbed, woe-is-me camp is on the decline, which doesn't appear to be happening any time soon.

Unfortunately, most of the offerings in the zombie genre have been treading water in the cliche pool as well. I'm bullish on werewolves; they haven't been popular enough to be watered down and defanged. :p

I love my vampire men sexy and dangerous!

Bela Lugosi's Dracula
Christopher Lee's Dracula
Angelus
Spike (Oh My God!!)
even Barlow

Probably worth defining what we're talking about specifically here. If we're just talking about movies like the Twilight series, then what do you expect? They are basically kids movies that happen to have vampires in, aren't they? I don't think, say, 30 Days of Night is overly sentimental compared to some of the older stuff being mentioned here.

They did it for the fucking money.



I'll take a Nosferatu over a pretty boy any day

I thought The Hamiltons was a step in the right direction (but yeh you could just go watch Martin instead). Daywalkers and 30 Days Of Night were all good too.

Not to big on the gothed out vampire. I like style of vamps in Near Dark, Fright Night and The Lost Boys a lot more.

It's just a different style of vampire story. I don't begrudge them their existance, but I don't like them either.

I agree with all of this - Reading this thread I thought of 30 Days of Night immediately. Sure, you'll have your humanized monsters, but there will always be storytellers that will turn them into demons again. Just give it time.

And good call with The Hamiltons - I thought that movie was subtle and great.

Exactly. Honestly, I don't think that Twilight is killing the genre or anything, it's just a new branch in the vampire tree of evolution, if you will. It'll dip back to straight-out monsters... And if you want it to so badly, go write a script.

On the topic of modern vampires, I actually enjoy True Blood quite a bit. The vampires are definitely humanized, but at least they have fangs AND they have sex... Not exactly Nosferatu, but it's refreshing to see a Goth vampire be brooding, blood-thirsty, AND horny.