Vampires were scary at one point in time. I remember watching the 1931 version of Dracula starring Bela Legosi and feeling shiver go down my spine from time to time based on nothing more than solid acting. But let’s face it the vampire scene has changed and not in a good way.

Vampires have left the realm of horror and entered the slagheap of popular culture. Decent vampire flicks, like John Carpenter’s Vampires, have given way to incoherent spin-offs like Twilight.

What bothers me isn’t how awful Twilight is, and it is AWFUL, I mean MST3 level of shittiness. But it’s their treatment of the vampire myth. Vampires don’t sparkle in the sun; they burst into flames. Even True Blood, which drops certain myths (for instance vampires can set foot on hollow ground) to simplify their crap-tacular premise, however they maintain most of the unnatural and supernatural qualities. When those qualities are removed, like they were in Twilight, the horror element is lost.

Vampires aren’t terrifying creatures of the night anymore. They’re normal high school students who drink blood and turn into a disco ball in sunlight.

What’s worse is how fully pop culture has embraced the bastardized vampires. Take for instance The Vampire Daries, which I can’t bring myself to even watch. When I point out to people, and by people I mean people who like Twilight, that what they’re watching isn’t really a vampire they point to their bookshelf and say (more or less), ‘That’s how it was in the book.’ As if a handful of YA, teen oriented fiction, can override over centuries of tradition.

So the only thing I can do is accept this loathsome end to a once proud villain. I’m working on my own vampire “book” where they can go out in the sun, but only if they’re on hollow ground or eating garlic or have been first staked through the heart. They sparkle in moon light, but can’t drink blood unless their underground seducing a werewolf or, sometimes, a mummy.  

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