Original subtitles

Vampires are about sex and death.

When the vampire bites...

Women swoon...

They're dangerous because they're seductive.

What is seductive

is often bad for us,

is often dangerous.

It's not brutality for the sake

of being brutal.

It's survival.

They are a drug addict,

a historian,

a serial killer,

a hopeless romantic

all at the same time.

It deals with the exchange of fluids.

It deals with blood.

It's too late.

My blood is in your veins.

Vampires are supposed to be awful...

the stink of the grave, his fetid breath.

It was supposed to be ugly and nasty.

And then there was "Twilight."

What's good about a "Twilight" movie is,

it makes everybody who watches it

feel like a 13-year-old girl.

Vampires are the only ones

that you can really make sexy and beautiful.

We are immortal.

They've always been... since Anne Rice, anyway...

allowed to be gay or bisexual.

- This idea of... - Do you wanna do me now?

The taboo...

Darkness.

And, you know, if you're gonna tangle

with the darkness... with the sexuality

and all of that...

Well, death is all around you.

Naughty little girl.

Over the last 25 years,

we've seen an explosion of vampire stories.

- You're wrong. - "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

gave us bloodsucking bad boys

the heroine both detested and desired.

"Underworld" and "Blade"

recast vampires as action heroes.

Art-horror films like

"A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night"

and "The Addiction" used vampires to tell

allegorical tales about drug abuse.

The "Twilight" books and films doubled down

on vampire romance...

While sex and splatter

dominated the teen drama "The Vampire Diaries"

and the very adult series "True Blood."

Modern vampires come in many guises,

but they all address a singular hunger.

It's bringing together the two things

that media culture seems to love the most:

sex and violence.

You know, it allows them to coexist

in one figure.

Vampires have been violent avatars of the erotic

going all the way back to the king daddy

of bloodsuckers.

I am Dracula.

- I am Dracula. - I...

am Dracula.

Created in 1897 by novelist Bram Stoker,

Dracula is a true icon of horror.

But Stoker's Dracula was far more monstrous

than the polished aristocrats we think of today.

I grew up reading "Dracula"

and reading about the stink of the grave,

the graveyard earth that the vampire was in

with the worms crawling in it,

about his fetid breath.

It was supposed to be ugly and nasty.

Yeah, he's the original stalker,

the original scary stranger, you know,

the original serial killer.

One of the reasons

that Dracula has persisted for so long...

as opposed to the Frankenstein monster,

as opposed to the Wolfman or the Mummy...

was, he was a character.

He was a genuine...

character.

The first unauthorized adaptation of "Dracula"

was the German silent film "Nosferatu."

It was released in 1922,

four years after the end of the First World War.

The makers of "Nosferatu"

intended that vampire

to represent war itself...

War as a cosmic vampire

that had drained the blood out of Europe.

And you watch the original "Nosferatu"...

- Yeah. - It was terrifying.

And I thought it was so cool that Tobe Hooper went

to that kind of vampire in "Salem's Lot."

The bald vampire

with the teeth like that always freaked me out.

The first official adaptation of "Dracula"

starred the incomparable Bela Lugosi.

Listen to them.

The children of the night...

what music they make.

We all know the story:

looking for new blood,

the undead Count Dracula

relocates from Transylvania to England.

Once in London, the vampire begins to feed.

He takes a special interest

in corrupting a young woman whom he wants

to turn into his vampire bride.

In 1931,

which was the worst year of the Great Depression,

Universal took a chance

on "Dracula" and "Frankenstein."

We have this American public that has just endured

the beginning of the Great Depression.

They wanted to have some sort

of foreign presence to go and blame

for everything that was happening around them:

for losing their jobs, for not being able

to feed their family.

People were on edge,

and "Dracula" was the mysterious draining force

that was at everybody's door.

My blood now flows through her veins.

I find it fascinating that anybody

for years, decades to come

who wanted to imitate Count Dracula

did it with a Hungarian accent.

- I am Dracula. - Greetings.

It is I, the Count.

Welcome to Hotel Transylvania!

I didn't know Bela Lugosi

was the name of a man.

I thought all the horror film monsters

and all the actors

worked as a team...

And the name of the team

was Bela Lugosi.

Lugosi was a hard act to follow.

It took nearly three decades for another Dracula

to make his mark.

But Christopher Lee made the role his own.

Mr. Harker.

I'm glad that you've arrived safely.

Count Dracula?

I am Dracula, and I welcome you to my house.

Lee was both dapper, aristocratic,

and terrifying.

Very different than Lugosi's count.

Bela Lugosi's Dracula never had fangs.

They felt that fangs would have been

too suggestive of penetration.

Well, Christopher Lee... not only did he have fangs,

but as he's approaching these women,

who at first are intimidated, they...

start undoing their blouse, and they're like,

you know, "Come at me.

This is awesome."

It's so interesting, the fear of female sexuality

that is so powerful in "Dracula,"

the idea of a woman after having had sex,

basically, after having been bitten

and then transforming into this ravenous

sexual creature.

It's... it's, like, so...

it's great, 'cause horror allows you

to really express your fears in a very obvious way.

You know, go to town on them.

Come.

Let me kiss you.

There have been many Draculas since Lugosi

and Lee, but one truly stands out...

Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola's

epic 1992 adaptation.

Gary Oldman, who plays Dracula,

we have him being suave and sophisticated and sexy,

and then the next minute, he's transforming into a wolf...

a large wolf.

And he is just maiming people.

He's vicious. He's terrible.

And somehow, it works.

I loved Coppola's "Dracula,"

just the level of art direction,

just how creative that was as a film...

And what a mood it set.

When he was doing Dracula point-of-view stuff,

the way that he shot that was so exhilarating.

I think that helps paint a pretty picture...

Over the brutality of it all,

and I think that is specific

to the vampire genre.

We're strong in the Lord and the power of his might.

I bring you from shadow into light!

I cast you out, the Prince of Darkness!

We see this extremely sympathetic Dracula

because he misses his...

his wife, who was killed, and then sees

sort of her reincarnation in this modern-day gal.

That completely revolutionized

Dracula performances.

It changed the... the filmic Dracula mythos.

And, in fact, you could argue

that we're still riding the wave from that film

even today.

Mina.

What Coppola did was, he portrayed

a very tragic figure.

The guy just wants to be loved.

I mean, that's what all of the Universal monster movies

have in common is that they're all just

male archetypes who want

the love and affection of a woman

but because they're monsters,

they're sort of scorned and rejected.

The story of Dracula continues to resonate today.

But its fear

of female sexuality is firmly rooted

in 19th-century England.

In the late 20th century,

novelist Anne Rice created a new breed of vampire

suited for the modern world,

vampires as tortured heroes,

amoral villains, and avatars

of alternative sexuality.

Pretend to drink, at least.

Such fine crystal shouldn't go to waste.

Anne Rice dominates modern vampire fiction.

Her books turned the genre inside out.

Rice's vampires were beautiful monsters

with tortured souls.

As soon as I started to write what's called fantasy,

I was able to touch reality.

I was able to talk about my world.

I was able to talk about good and evil

and guilt and pain and suffering,

but I had to do it in that context,

with that frame of fantasy around it.

Rice's first novel, "Interview with the Vampire,"

was made into a film in 1994.

The story follows

the centuries-long relationship

between the vampire Lestat

and Louis, a troubled New Orleans aristocrat.

Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt...

two of the biggest stars of modern times...

played the leads.

The Paris opera is in town.

We can try some French cui... cuisine.

Forgive me if I have a lingering respect for life.

The Louis character didn't want to be a vampire,

and he didn't like the brutal killing aspect.

And then you have Lestat,

who just enjoys and revels in all of it.

- Why do you do this? - I like to do it.

I enjoy it.

There was a lot of controversy

about casting Tom Cruise,

but between Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt,

and Kirsten Dunst, I thought they really nailed it.

I was surprised.

I went in skeptical but came out a fan.

You see the old woman?

That will never happen to you.

You will never grow old, and you will never die.

That goes down as one of the great

child's performances.

Once in a while, it happens

that a kid can kick so much ass in a movie.

You give her to me, Louis!

Do this before you leave me!

Oh, God.

I love you still.

My dark angel, when you are gone.

What do you think she is, Madeleine?

A doll?

A child who cannot die.

And the child who did die?

Claudia's probably the best part of the movie.

You know, the idea of a vampire

being forced to age in the body

of, what, a ten-year-old girl?

To see a character that is granted immortality,

but the downside being she never gets to grow up

to become a woman, like, that's heartbreaking.

Anne Rice lost a daughter

at a very young age,

and Claudia in the novel was an homage to that.

- Mama. - Oh, shh.

Hush, now. Don't cry.

- We'll find her. - Mama.

Oh.

The vampires Lestat, Louis, and Claudia

form a family of outsiders

headed by two fathers.

The arrangement suggested gay marriage

years before that was accepted by mainstream society.

One happy family.

The novel was intentionally homoerotic.

Even though I think they downplayed

a little bit of the homoeroticism

that was in novel, it was still there.

I've drained you to the point of death.

Using it as a cultural link

with homosexuality...

- Yes. - Has been part

of the vampire mystique, but I mean,

when you couldn't deal with homo... homosexuality,

you could deal with it to some degree or another

in vampire movies,

even going back as far as the '30s.

- Really? - Yeah, "Dracula's Daughter."

I suppose you'll want these pulled down, won't you?

Yes.

Probably the most famous

lesbian sequence...

- Mm-hmm. - In an American movie

made in the '30s.

Why are you looking at me that way?

Won't I do?

Yes, you'll do very well indeed.

The suggestion of a female seduction

is just right there.

That's just... it's just there.

It's not even subtext.

You are out of your mind.

It was commonplace, particularly in the '70s...

lesbians would, like, say, "Oh, wow, I-I just saw

"this magnificent movie

"about these two women that were in love, and it...

"and it really played the relationship

"for all it's worth.

I mean, they're vampires, all right, but..."

"But..." That's... yeah.

Well, this is one

of the cool things about horror

is that historically, it's always been able

to deal with taboo subjects.

In recent times, the challenging of taboos

was taken to new levels

by the television series "True Blood."

It cut open the veins of vampirism

and let the pansexual eroticism gush out.

The many sides of vampires...

the danger and the romance,

the threat and the fun...

were all on full display in the long-running

HBO series "True Blood,"

which debuted in 2008.

I...

never thought I would be having sex with you.

Who said anything about sex?

"True Blood" was based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries

by Charlaine Harris.

Over seven seasons, the series followed

its heroine, Sookie Stackhouse,

as she made her way through a world

where vampires emerged from the shadows

and entered mainstream society.

The epicenter of "True Blood"

is in Louisiana,

and, basically, vampires have been around forever,

but they kind of come out of the closet...

or the coffin, I should say...

and they decide to live amongst the living.

As you can see, I did not burst into flames.

It becomes a metaphor for so many

different rights movements

and how they're both ostracized.

When I started on "True Blood,"

all we knew about Pam at the beginning

was that she was the lieutenant

to this vampire, her maker,

and that she cared about nothing else.

I find myself doubting whether you were ever

truly human.

Thank you.

Pam...

objectifying,

murdering,

literally eating men

was one of my favorite parts.

I don't know a lot of men

who are aware of where to park

in a parking lot... not next to a minivan,

to carry your keys between your fingers;

when you're parking at the airport,

to look for where it's most lit.

It's just part of a woman's life.

To be the top of the food chain

was so refreshing.

I'll give you 24 hours to deliver that witch to me.

And if you don't, I will personally eat,

, and kill all three of you.

I was never good at the vampire teeth,

and I never got better.

Huh? What... what's that?

I-I can't understand you.

The thing I struggled with the most was the teeth...

talking with the teeth.

What do you expect when you come into my house

and with me?

It's hard trying to act

with a piece of your body that you don't normally have.

It's been a long time since I've done this.

- A man? - No.

A vampire.

"True Blood's" often comic tone

masked its serious intent:

trying to make sense of sexual identity

in the 21st century.

My character was mainly gay...

There's vampire in your cleavage.

Okay, ew.

She just had it with men.

She came from a time... in early 1900...

where women had a very hard time.

That's right, whore.

Vampires just in general kind of go both ways.

They're kind of bisexual.

They kind of... whatever, and so I love

that writers explored sexuality

in relationships with characters that wouldn't

normally, I think, maybe have a relationship like that.

It's appealing because we live in the United States

and a culture that is very sexual

and yet very sexually repressive.

The idea of the vampire as a kind of sexy monster

fits very well with the United States' kind of

complicated relationship to sexuality.

"True Blood" reflected America's gradual acceptance

of gay rights, but it made a point

of showing those rights could be taken away

at any time.

Got to season six, and it was about

the vamp camp and how the vampires

were sort, of like, being herded into these camps

because of who they were and they were a threat.

And that directly correlates just to social issues in life,

of just being minorities in life that sort of

aren't feeling equal.

So you're not gonna read me my rights?

You don't have any rights, vampire.

I am sure that there's a lot of people

in the "True Blood" audience

who would not vote for equal rights

in a lot of arenas...

But because they were just being entertained...

I did not see that coming.

That opens the opportunity

through entertainment to go, "Well,

"you like this character,

"you're rooting for him,

and he sleeps with men and women."

"True Blood" used the vampire metaphor

to explore the shifting sands of adult sexuality,

but vampire stories have also perfectly captured

the joys and agonies of being a teenager.

What's happening to me, Star?

The teenage years are filled

with big emotions and raging hormones.

It's a time when everything seems

like a matter of life and death.

So when Joel Schumacher's 1987 film

"The Lost Boys" put vampires and teenagers together,

a new kind of horror film was born.

"Lost Boys" was great, 'cause who would imagine

of taking the legend of Peter Pan,

of the boys who never grow up,

who are just kind of rowdy rock-and-roll vampires?

The whole thing is set to this kind of, like,

'80s rock-and-roll thing:

big hair; oiled-up, shirtless saxophone players.

That's "The Lost Boys."

You've got a family that moves to this town.

The older son, A, falls for a girl

and, B, discovers that the town is overrun

with some very dark things that are happening.

You had this incredibly dark, sexy component

of, like, Kiefer Sutherland and Jami Gertz.

Like, that was... they were beautiful.

I'm over here, Michael.

So it was sort of, like, dark, glamorous, sexy...

Be one of us.

And it was about kids saving the day.

Hey, man.

Read this.

I told you, I don't like horror comics.

Think of it more as a survival manual.

We identified with it because the two kids,

you know, hung out at a comic book shop,

and they knew every rule

about how to kill monsters.

So that's what we were all about.

Awesome monster bashers.

- The meanest. - The baddest.

Well, I-I based them on Rambo.

I told them, "I want you to be like little Rambos."

Okay, where's Nosferatu?

- Who? - Prince of Darkness.

The night crawler. The bloodsucker.

El vampiro.

For 13-year-old boys,

I mean, they were obsessed with it.

"The Lost Boys" was vampire and horror

for the MTV generation,

so the way it was edited, the way it was scored,

and the whole look of the vampires.

I told you to stay off the boardwalk.

Even when I was auditioning, it was like,

"You guys are gonna be riding Triumphs.

You're gonna have leather jackets on."

Like, I thought I was gonna die

when I saw what he wanted me to look like.

Marko.

Good night, Michael.

Bombs away.

I was, like, you know,

this scrappy NYU film student

from, like, the Lower East Side.

I mean, who the hell else was gonna get me

in 14-inch hair extensions?

But I did... and I wore chaps, you know?

So that tells you a lot about wanting to keep Joel happy.

Come on, Michael!

I said to everybody at Warner Brothers,

"Let's not make excuses for this movie.

It's a teenage vampire film."

Come on!

Can we make the best one

that's ever been made?

We can die trying.

I think Joel may or may not kill me for saying this,

but I mean, the movie... it's "Rebel Without a Cause."

It's really a Nick Ray movie.

It's a straight-up

teen-sploitation,

burgeoning sexuality.

It's death, fear of mortality.

I mean, it gets into all the things

that great vampire stories get into.

They must have hidden their coffins

around here someplace.

There's nothing here. Let's go, guys.

Jesus!

I end up getting staked in the chest

by the two Coreys...

Good night, bloodsucker.

No!

And then die in a bath of glittery glue blood.

So that's... to not spoil all of it for you,

that's basically my demise.

All right, not to get too heavy, but obviously,

there's no way it was lost on Joel

that the movie was made in the... in the era of AIDS,

when that was really exploding.

To date, the AIDS virus has claimed

over 24,000 lives,

the majority homosexual men.

The stigmatizing of the gay population for,

"Well, if you're gonna have that kind of sex,

then you're gonna die"...

That was very much in the news and in writing

at the time in the '80s.

It's too late.

My blood is in your veins.

When the AIDS crisis hit,

there was suddenly this renaissance

of vampire movies.

Vampires are metaphors, clearly, for sex and death.

I think it's a good example of how a real-life trauma,

especially one that seems uncontrollable,

is responded to by the creation of horror entertainment.

If people just want to see it

as an entertainment, that's fine.

If they want to read other things in it,

that's fine.

And if they don't enjoy it,

well, that's a reaction too.

Vampires remind us that looks can be deceiving.

We never really know what lies beneath

the surface of a stranger.

I love you too, Seth.

Back, spawn of Satan!

My favorite thing, I think,

about horror and fantasy and science fiction

is, you can make it up.

It's... there are no rules.

Any genre, every individual project,

you have to invent your own rules,

so in some movies, vampires can't be seen in a mirror.

In other movies, they have to be killed with silver.

What about crucifixes?

Actually, I'm quite fond of looking at crucifixes.

How about the old stake-through-the-heart thing?

The vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman.

You can follow the rules of the genre

that have been placed down by other movies

or other stories, or you can kind of come up with your own.

This is my kind of place.

In "From Dusk Till Dawn,"

two violent criminals take refuge

in a Mexican strip club.

The main attraction turns out to be the queen

of the vampires.

Dinner...

Is served.

I love the vampire makeup in "Dusk Till Dawn."

That, for me, was one of the coolest reinventions.

Robert Kurtzman came up with the original treatment of it.

His vampires did kind of point

in this weird direction

that I had never quite seen before

for vampires.

They could take on the shapes of humans,

like they do in the Danny Trejo character,

but their true selves

were these bat-like creatures.

I-I came up with

a few mythology things that would be specific

to these creatures.

One was, okay, yeah, they could definitely be killed

by a wooden stake to the heart.

That still worked.

Their blood was green...

And the reason I made their blood green

is because I knew there would be vampire blood

all over the place, and it would be

the color red, in particular, that would get you an X.

- NC-17. - Yeah, an NC-17.

So if we made the vampire blood green...

You could spray it all over the place.

We could spray it all over the place,

and then the MPAA wouldn't be so freaked out by that.

And that ended up actually working.

"From Dusk Till Dawn" reinvented vampires

as nightmarish creatures that used sex

to lure in their victims.

The horror masterpiece "Let the Right One In"

is another brilliant reinvention.

The vampire here lives within

the classic boundaries of only going out at night

and viciously feeding on humans.

But this is not a story about sex.

It's about love and how much

we are willing to accept in the name of love.

"Let the Right One In" is about a boy called Oskar

who is getting bullied in school

and is a bit lonely.

And one day, he meets a girl called Eli,

and then they became friends.

What's special about my character, Eli,

first of all is that she's a vampire.

She has lived for a very long time.

They cut off my lashes and my eyebrows

to not make me so female,

and it's also not my voice in the film.

They wanted a voice that wasn't so feminine.

Vampires could be, like...

they're, like, sexy or dangerous

or something like that, and she's, like,

the opposite, I think.

Once you realize who this girl is

and how long she's been around and...

then it's very haunting in the sense that, you know,

she's taken on this kid as her companion.

And we already know what's gonna happen to him.

Probably the scariest and most powerful sequence

in modern horror

is the final sequence in "Let the Right One In."

A gang of bullies sees

a very vulnerable child

and shove him underwater.

And there is a 2½ minute shot

of the boy's head being held underwater,

and you're seeing him desperately trying

to get back to the surface and breathe.

But meanwhile, above the water...

This pipsqueak vampire,

who loves the little boy, has turned up...

And is beginning to butcher the bullies.

What was beautiful about that story

is that a monster comes to the rescue

when humanity fails this young man,

and who could blame him for choosing the monster

when humanity was so horrible?

The title has a double meaning.

It could mean that you should let

the right person get into your life,

or, as it is for Eli,

someone has to tell her that she can come in.

For me, the part of the vampire legend

that has always remained really powerful

is this idea that they have to be invited in.

Open the window, Mark.

"Let me in.

Let me in."

Let me in.

It's okay, Mark. I'm your friend.

So many times in people's lives,

you know, whatever that thing is

that's draining them of their life and vitality,

so often, they invited it in...

If it's drugs, if it's alcohol,

if it's someone who's just abusive,

you know, who's cruel to you.

A lot of vampire stories

are about inviting in something

that you think will bring you bliss...

What's wrong, baby?

And that destroys you instead.

Do you think, with your crosses

and your wafers, you can destroy me?

Me?

Traditionally, vampires have split personalities.

They're both charming and terrifying,

passionate and deadly.

But in the 21st century,

we've seen the two halves separate

into the vampire as monstrous killer...

And the vampire as dreamboat boyfriend.

Vampires, ever flexible,

are being reshaped to suit audiences

whose needs are often overlooked,

like the millions of women and teenage girls

who made "Twilight" the most commercially successful

vampire film of all time.

Based on the best-selling books

by Stephenie Meyer, "Twilight" reimagines

the vampire story as a teen romance

told from a young woman's point of view.

The thing that's kind of cool about "Twilight"

is, you have an ordinary girl that moves

to this small town in Washington.

She has to live with her dad for a while.

She feels like a misfit, awkward.

And first day of school,

she is kind of attracted to this amazing

and strange kid, Edward.

Stephenie Meyer, she had a dream

about this vampire.

When the vampire was out in the sunlight,

instead of withering, it did the opposite.

It glowed and glittered and sparkled.

This is what I am.

Well, my vampires break a lot of the rules...

if there can really be rules about fictional characters.

Really, you can do what you want.

Obviously it's a fantasy...

That you're gonna have the most handsome,

beautiful, amazing guy in the world

that's madly in love with you and will take care of you

and protect you.

I mean, it's a great fantasy.

It's not, "We shouldn't kiss

"because maybe won't like each other

or maybe we're gonna make someone else upset."

You're adding this element of,

"If I lose control, I might kill you,"

which is so dark and so dramatic,

but at the same time, that's what it feels like

when you're young.

It feels like life and death.

Just stay very still.

I really thought it was a fantastic challenge

to create that emotional intoxication

- of first love. - Don't move.

I thought, "Can I show that on-screen?

"Can I make people as crazy

"about a cinematic version

as the book made people crazy?"

And yeah, I think we did

make them pretty crazy.

You can't dismiss something that had such a giant hold on...

on fandom.

I remember going to Comic-Con a few years back

when the second "Twilight" movie

was coming out, and kids were camped out

on the lawn for 24 hours.

So obviously, it had something to say.

You don't know how long I've waited for you.

I honestly find its gender and sexual politics

pretty problematic, but that being said,

I think it takes

women's desires seriously

in a way that most Hollywood cinema does not,

most popular culture in general does not.

The focus is more on her desire for Edward,

on her attraction to Edward

and at some points Jacob.

It's not about them lusting after her.

There was a photo of one kid at Comic-Con

when "Twilight" came out... there was, like,

some angry kid with a huge placard that said,

- "Nosferatu didn't sparkle." - Yeah.

And I was like, "That's me. I'm that kid."

The whole vampire idea,

the romantic vampire, has always been popular

with teens,

early 20s and things... particularly women...

because it's seen as almost, like,

no-fault sex.

And after all, what's he really gonna do?

He's gonna give you a great big hickey,

like on Lover's Lane.

But that's not the way it's supposed to... to be.

To my mind, I'm a classicist, man.

Hey! Stop!

Who are you people?

"30 Days of Night" took vampires back

to their dark and vicious roots.

There are no sparkling, romantic demigods here...

Just ancient

evil predators.

Well, in "30 Days of Night," my character is...

is a sheriff up in Barrow, Alaska.

And in Barrow, Alaska,

apparently, the sun is down

for almost a month in the middle of winter.

Hence the "30 Days of Night" title.

Vampires have figured out that this is

a really good place to go and have a low-effort meal.

We have to cut off, or they'll hear you.

The vampires close in on the town...

I'll call you back when it's safe.

And then the rest of us who are there

try to survive for a month.

Jesus!

Christ!

We spend a lot of time running away.

David Slade's "30 Days of Night"...

which was written by Steve Niles

and based on the graphic novel...

that was the complete antithesis

of what "Twilight" represented.

With "Twilight,"

there was always this friendly side.

They always managed to find, like, a friendly human side

to the vampires.

When I was doing the scripts for "30 Days of Night,"

I really tried to go against what everybody else was doing.

You had vampires returning to their feral form,

almost Nosferatu-like

but something completely different.

These are land sharks

that will kill you, you know, just as soon as look at you.

By stripping the sexuality

out of the myth, "30 Days of Night"

drilled deep into the primal fear

at the heart of every vampire story:

the fear of death.

One of the most beautiful things about

the horror genre is that the stakes

are implicitly high,

because you're dealing with life and death.

And that gives horror

a certain operatic quality to it,

where there is no choice

but to survive and thrive

or be one of the body count.

Ultimately, the story of the vampire

is the story of our tenuous grip on life.

I don't want to die.

The bite of the vampire symbolizes

the hundreds of things that could kill us

at any time, no matter how healthy or safe

we think we are.

Your life force will never be

steadily drained by an implacable

supernatural foe.

But some people

will face cancer

in their life.

Fiction gives us

a safe playground to consider

what it would be like to be in

a life-or-death battle with something draining us.

Vampire stories will remain powerful

as long as we are organic

and full of blood.

And the blood can be corrupted.

So I think the fanged ones

will be around for a while longer.