30 Days of Night

[Grislygus]

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

Where are you getting your version of Dracula? Bram Stroker's and Rice were closer to the gay Vlad Tepes twist around you dislike.

Dracula isn't the beginning of the vampire mythos, it's when our idea of it was popularized. The first vampires weren't even bloodsuckers, they were haints. They made their way from Eastern Europe-Baba Yaga territory and evolved into blood or flesh eating ghouls. (Note: This is how I understand it, but I can't pretend to have done any seriously involved research. Shutting up now, Tithonus is far more well versed than I am).

The one thing that I can definitively tell you is that Bram Stoker's Dracula had a hell of a lot more to do with Lord Byron than Vlad the Impaler.

[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

You are pretty close on your observations there Grislygus.

The mythology of vampires is ancient and a total amalgamation of folklores that date to before written record. But the evolution of the mythology is actually quite easy to trace from its origins.

Every culture has some sort of blood-sucking monster in their tales of terror. It is important to note that these ancient creatures were savage and often demonic in appearance. The Ancient Greeks had Liama, Africa had the Asanbosam , Japan had the Kyūketsuki (which literally means blood sucking demon) to just name a few.

These myths mingled with the European myths of the undead wraiths and revenants in the 12th century when English historian William of Newburgh wrote of several frenzied accounts of the dead reanimating and attacking the living – specifically drinking their blood. He called these creatures sanguisuga (Latin: bloodsuckers) and recommended burning the corpses of these assailants. No one knows exactly what he saw, it was most likely complete bullshit, and England pretty much ignored his stories. But the Slavic regions took the stories to heart and in the subsequent 400 years or so became responsible for much of the early mythos. Including detection and destruction of vampires as well as garlic as a deterrent. They are also responsible for the gaunt, fanged and generally twisted appearance of – say – Nosferatu.

From there, the path leads to actually intellectual debate in Western Europe. An official statement was signed by Austrian government official, surgeon Johannes Fluckinger, on January 7, 1732. That paper documented vampire hunting, the burning of corpses in Serbia and the murders committed by a man named Arnold Paul who raved that he was bitten by one of these creatures. The statement was published in several periodicals, as an observation only - not a serious study or statement, and it eventually reached England were it was published in Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731.

English scholars attempted to explain these accounts scientifically – but that only served to give the general public further credence into the wild stories. The church chimed in when an Abbot named Calmet wrote a treatise recounting the Arnold Paul story. That made the stories of vampires very well known. Then Polidori wrote the short story The Vampire, which in often inaccurately attributed to Byron, based on the Calmet report and Arnold Paul. Polidori created the character Lord Ruthven and Stoker used that and Vlad as inspiration for Dracula.

That's pretty much the origin of the modern literature version of the vampire.

[noob3]

this thread? it got gay. really gay

to tell you guys the truth i thought this movie was going to be about zombies

[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

Ya reading, history and education are really gay.

[Emu]

It's gay when it's about vampires, yeah. It's in the same realm as, say, going out into the internet and finding an extremely scholarly discussion about the origin of dragons and their evolution from Launcelot du Lake to Spyro, but you're still talking about dragons.

[Grislygus]

As if I can help it, I love this shit. Fortunately, nobody ever goes to our local theater unless it's a movie like 300 or Harry Potter, so I was the only person at the 10:20 showing.

Critics bitching about this movie being nothing more than people trying to escape vampires reminds me of people bitching about 1941 being nothing more than a slapstick comedy. It was a cool, no-frills little horror, and I'm glad I'm not the only person that was reminded of Near Dark.

This is my favorite critic complaint, though.

Somewhere in the gloom are two sheriffs (Josh Hartnett and Melissa George), who - in the laborious "let's do a back story" bit are said to be feuding lovers whose. . .

How the fuck is ten minutes of backstory before an hour and fifty minutes of paranoid bloodletting laborious?

[noob3]

education? vampires are not educational man - i don't know when some sort of blood sucking monster turned the tides of history

[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

What? Jesus, I guess ignorance is bliss.
Understanding where something comes from is at the root of appreciation.

This thread is a direct result of a movie that in itself is the direct result of an Irish author's novel. It's a staple! In fact, the entire genre of horror owes a lot to Stoker and the vampire.

So ya, the tides of history have been turned by bloodsucking monsters.

[noob3]

so you're telling me this awful movie only exsists because of some awful book? man somone should have turned the tides of history & killed that irish guy and then maybe we wouldnt have vampires faggin everything up

[Ant10708]

noob please shutup.