Q&A: Sexy Vampires & Dolled-Up Monsters
Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 1:00PM 
For this week's Q&A we asked for questions that would get us in the Halloween spirit. So let's talk sexual vampires, scary monsters, queer horror, and unsettling auteurs.
Let's jump right in to nine creepy spooky occasionally queer questions, shall we?
Ryan T: What are your favorite vampire performances onscreen, film and TV?
The glut of bad vampire movies over the past couple of decades may have killed my former passion for bloodsuckers but nothing can kill the love of great acting so this must be answered. With due respect to the Lugosis, Schrecks and Lees who pioneered, let's fast forward to contemporary-ish cinema and television after the jump...
It's always a relief to see actors embrace the erotic charisma of the undead so Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger and Alexander Skarsgård on True Blood are frankly where that's at. All of that. They're everything. Lady Gaga and Matt Bomer's amped-up lewd fashionista swingers were delicious in the first episode of American Horror Story: Hotel... up until the slaughter then ewww. (Are we tired of them already? maybe a little. Also Ryan Murphy keeps asking people not to call them "vampires" but that's ludicrous: they drink blood, they never age, they "turn" others, sunlight disagrees with them).
When actors aren't focused on the supernatural seduction the other most admirable vampiric performances come from those who really embrace the insanity that would come from mass murder, living forever, and drinking other people's blood for fun, pleasure, sadism, and sustenance.
So on TV we bow down to Juliet Landau as Drusilla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (just...singular) and on the big screen that's Kim Ok-bin in Thirst who impressed yours truly so much she ended up in the Best Actress race. The latter terrifies and sells every single moment of her journey from inexplicably macabre human horniness through the turning and on to her supernatural viciousness. Park Chan-wook made the English language Stoker (2013) a few years later sans actual vampirism but in many ways it plays like a weaker variation on similar themes, character arcs, and story beats.
Performances that don't fit this proposed seductive/insane binaries but are beautiful in their own way: definitely Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire and Tilda Swinton in the lushly realized Only Lovers Left Alive
STiNG: What movie monster do you think could actually get a date if he actually started dolling him/herself up and going out?
LOL.
It's the very drama that tore the Dr. Frankenstein creations apart in the 1930s and still does today in new iterations (Penny Dreadful). The Bride wows with her trendy hairdos and elegantly placed scars and can even make hospital gowns beautiful with her model-like carriage but you can't take the lumbering awkward stitched together monster out of Frankenstein's Monster!
Except for Nosferatu's unfortunate buck-fanged progeny, most lines of vampires can pull off the dolled up and dating look and there's more than enough people into fur for werewolves to regularly get some.
MARSHA: Do you think Lynch films (esp. Inland Empire, Fire Walk With Me, Blue Velvet) work well as horror movies? Do their surreality and confusing narrative make things more frightening or do you find it all too abstract to be really scary? They scare the hell out of me tbh.
I do think you can argue that David Lynch's creepier efforts are horror films but in the specialized and totally superior subgenre of Horror of the Soul. Twin Peaks -- and particularly Laura Palmer in Fire Walk With Me -- scared the hell out of me regularly and 'The Face' in INLAND EMPIRE along with a few other sequences can haunt for weeks afterwards. I saw INLAND EMPIRE at the IFC center when it was new and I haven't been there in a while but at the time they had this elaborate setup where you had to walk down dark red curtained hallways to enter the theaters and let's just say that there's never been a more ideal way to enter a David Lynch movie; we were already there before there even unspooled.
TOM: What director/actor who isn't known for making horror films would you like to see attempt to make one?
I think most cinephiles with eclectic tastes (I know I have some very obvious Favorite Things but I like a little of every genre and brow altitude in my movie diet) fantasize about their favorite directors trying different genres. Pedro Almodóvar sort of did one... or got close to it with The Skin I Live In to pleasing shake-him-up results. I would absolutely love for Kathryn Bigelow to make another one because Near Dark is very good and she's grown a lot as an auteur since. Your suggestion of the Coen Bros is amazing because they have such patience with their editing and camera and such command of sound design (all of which are crucial for great horror). No Country For Old Men plays quite a lot like a masterpiece of horror in Anton Chigurh's scenes. I wonder a little - don't judge me - what a Lee Daniels horror picture would look like but then I shudder because it would probably be as sloppy and messy with personal issues as Ryan Murphy's idea of horror is.
This is actually a hard question. NEXT.
JAMES: Favorite queer-themed horror films? The topic's on my mind since I just discovered that Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is sometimes considered a gay classic.
I've never seen that. Nor have I seen much Queer Horror (that I know of? I think I need a list to work from) though I consider Silence of the Lambs to be a very good one. There were gay protests at the time which was understandable. If you view only Buffalo Bill as a tranvestite serial killer it's easy to balk at the depiction. And to be fair the movie is grotesque and uncomfortable even if you view all three principals -- Clarice, Hannibal, Bill -- as queer characters (which I actually do... and was very easy to do in context before other interpretations of the characters arrived) but horror movies if they're any good are always going to be uncomfortable. So...
What was the question again?
Derreck: If trapped in a slasher film, would you be one of the lucky ones to make it out alive?
Doubtful as I am neither a virgin nor a girl. I think that's how it works? I don't watch slasher movies. I think I've seen a total of three in my life: Halloween, Scream and the original (if you count it) Psycho. I've warmed up to Horror in general but not this particular wing except for Psycho which is one of my favorite films of all time because it's genius from first frame to last. But what it spawned? No thanks.
MARK: Recast The Witches of Eastwick.
NEVER. IT'S PERFECT AS IS. Well, not the movie exactly but the actresses. Ohmygodthoseactresses. I mean...
SANTY C: What horror movie does your cat simply refuses to watch?
All of them. He only likes three movies: Dancer in the Dark, Microcosmos and just this year he added a third favorite film much to my surprise when he was glued to Paddington. None of those are horror films to my knowledge though Björk's fate and Paddington's bodily function CGI are both horrifying.
JAKEY: Have you ever done a film-inspired Halloween costume, and if so, which was your favorite?
This.
Reader Comments (21)
That picture is everything,if i could I would put Lawrence if Pfeiffer's role,Julia/Sandra/Demi in Cher's old role and Adams or Theron in Sarandon's role.
Seeing you in drag is startling. Can I just refer to you as Doris for now on?
Uma who?
Laura finding Bob in her room in Fire Walk With Me probably the most terrifying thing I've experienced on the small screen (give or take a George W Bush warmongering speech, which is also terror of the soul).
Two words for you: Sadie Frost.
You used my question! I kind of like your Lee Daniels suggestion. Maybe he can reunite with Nicole Kidman and do a horror version of To Die For? .
you've done the world a great service by posting that poison ivy picture. It's almost redeemed memories of that movie. I also love Tilda in Only Lovers Left Alive. Just rewatched Interview with the Vampire and was shocked by how much I loved Cruise's performance. It's just so good and different from my image of him. And I'm also shocked that there are rumors that they CUT the homo-eroticism from the movie...because it's so clear to me that Lestat LOVES AND DESPERATELY WANTS TO BANG Louie. ALL. THE. TIME. And so does Antonio Banderas, for that matter.
FYI: Lee Daniels is actually signed on to do a haunted house film. I would love to see Paul Thomas Anderson do a horror film since he's a fan of the genre and i have no idea what he would come up with.
Josh: Friday the 13th prequel? PT Anderson does seem more interested in exploring as many flaws in America he can and his filmography adding "ableism" to the list would make quite a bit more sense. Just imagine: A Friday the 13th related movie with a 70+% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Damn, dat Ivy be poison tho.
Bride of Frankenstein was totally the monster on my mind when I asked that question, I think Elsa Lanchester is hotter in those scenes than the Mary Shelley ones. I also was leaning on hoping Godzilla could get some tips on how he plays his game.
I actually have been to the IFC Center a couple of times recently (I make a point of seeing a movie there every time I'm in New York) and they still have that hallway of red curtains.
Since we're on vampires, I gotta say my favorite has still always been Count Orlock just because he IS always off-putting to look at and creepy to boot, even if SpongeBob made him less scary than he once was. I'm also fond of Lugosi's Drac, even if I don't like the movie. Although, if we lean into the modern age... all hail Catherine Deneuve in Hunger, the absolutely fantastic looking Hiddleston/Swinton couple in Only Lovers Left Alive, Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric in The Lost Boys, Spike in the Buffy franchise, and Sheila Vand in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
And speaking of vampires, Frankensteins, and queer cinema, I think both Bride of Frankenstein AND The Lost Boys could easily fall into queer horror cinema - there's especially a huge sexual charge between Sutherland/Patric that takes the movie over most while Jami Gertz is just like "... oh yeah, I like Michael too."
P.S. the only horror movie my youngest cat Chaney (named after Lon) would not sit through is Evil Dead II. I don't know why, but every other, no matter how bloody or gory, she'll sit and watch with me.
It also helps that, unlike A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, which makes me want to run into a wall, The Bride of Frankenstein and The Lost Boys are both really fun movies, in my opinion.
Have you guys tried Cat People (1942 or 1982) on your kitties?
You guys need to read "Monster in the Closet'...
Jaragon -- why? what's that.
STiNG -- ack. i shoulda mentioned A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT but Anne Marie is covering it on Thursday in her series.
catbaskets -- that surprises me because i remember INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE being really tame in that way with the exception of the scene where Lestat drinks from Louis as they're flying in the air and Brad Pitt looks like he's having a mind-blowing orgasm.
Eerie coincidence, "The Hunger" just happened to be my Netflix pick the week AHS "Hotel" premiered. I enjoyed the former as much as the first time, in all its flashy, trashy glory. Hit a wall with AHS last season and feel no need to see Ryan's latest homage-by-numbers.
LOL that picture of you as poison ivy is hands down the best thing I've seen on the internet today, and it's still early here.
No love for Dunst in "Interview with the Vampire"? I think Pitt and Cruise are woeful in it, but Dunst absolutely nails the tone. I'd love to see some proper adaptations of Anne Rice novels.
Thanks for answering my vampire question. Dru! Nice pick. I haven't seen The Hunger so maybe I'll rent it this year for Halloween!
for what it's worth everyone i made that entire costume myself. it was HOURS AND HOURS of work. The shoes are even painted green and be-leafed.
YAAAAAAASSSS for Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger. Yesterday, today, tomorrow and always! That's all!
That pic. OMG. And I was so worried my question was stupid and you wouldn't answer it.