Near Dark (1987) – A Gritty, Underrated Vampire Cult Classic

Near Dark (1987)

Near Dark (1987) offers a fresh take on the vampire genre, blending gritty Western elements with horror. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this cult classic delivers intense performances, brutal action, and an unforgettable atmosphere. Join us as we dive into the unique world of Near Dark and its lasting impact on horror cinema.

Transcript Near Dark (1987)

Hey, I’m here tonight with paranormal expert, Catherine Cornelison. She’s from Creepy Americana. We’re going to go over Near Dark, a little-known movie from 1987 directed by the big-time director, Catherine Bigelow. Hello, Catherine. How are you tonight? Hey, not Catherine Bigelow, though. I have talked to some directors. Good. Yes. Yes. I assume you didn’t know this movie before I pointed it out to you. Is that correct? Absolutely not. Yes, definitely not.

What do you think? It’s very schlocky in a way that I like. It’s got that. Yes. Yes. I mean, I am. I don’t want to say connoisseur, but I am a known lover of B, C and D tier horror movies. You know what I mean? I will watch it and I don’t care if I can see the strings that they’re using to hold up their monsters like. It shows me that they put a lot of love and care into it.

I agree with you. This movie could have been pretty big, but they had a distribution snafu and it never really got out. It’s not even available online. I had to buy the DVD to get it. There’s not a lot of big star except who? Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton. he was a big star, you know, and I’ve, I’ve got some notes that I want to get into later. Bill Paxton, just an amazing bad guy, you know, he’s so good in so much stuff, but it’s pretty amazing.

So did you want to kind of just jointly go over what happened in this movie together? I figured you could kind of handle more of the plot stuff and then I can kind of jump in and give you some information about like why the vampires behave in certain ways or why they kind of have certain rules and that kind of stuff and kind of get into the folklore of it. Okay. I got some notes here too. Okay. Basically, I’m

I’m my Southwestern bandana in a tribute to this Southwestern vampire movie. Although I don’t know if you noticed this, they never said the word vampire in this movie. It was never said. Interesting. Yes, it was very interesting. guess you see certain tropes and you see behaviors and the way that they look like that and you just kind of make some assumption. Right. Right. But they just never use that word. All right. So.

Caleb’s kind of a not nice redneck living up there in Oklahoma or somewhere, Kansas. I don’t know. It’s all the same. Some flat. Great place. Yeah. He’s up there and he sees this very attractive girl. And that’s for the first time you notice the director’s work. She’s the way she shoots the girl down the street. She’s the main third out there. She’s eating the ice cream.

And he goes up and says, you know, can I have a bite? Which is a great opening line to a vampire. And then he says, I’m dying for the taste of a cone. So, she takes him away, you know, and he tries to be his regular self. And eventually she bites him, but flees because of the sunset without killing him or turning him. does that mean? Okay. That’s a, that’s a, want to jump in here. Okay. So I want to talk a bit about.

first of all, biting. But I also want to talk about the sun thing. So I kind of have to start a little bit at the beginning and kind of give you some background just about vampires in general. There’s so much going on here. And I will tell you that a lot of my source for this information comes from this book, Vampires, Burial and Death Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber. Very good book. Highly recommend.

Obviously, it’s not all from that some of it’s from up here, some of it’s from other research and I’ll kind of talk about that as I get through it. But let me just start with the vampire of Europe, the European folkloric vampire. Okay, so the vampire of this time is kind of the medieval times, Middle Ages into the late 1800s and

What do we know about Europe at this time? They’re very religious. They are very superstitious. They are very, very concerned about demons. And they also don’t know anything about germs or the decomposition of dead bodies. Right? And the Black Death. Absolutely. I read a whole book about that. I could recommend you as well. But anyway.

so yes, at this time period, they don’t know anything about germs, how things spread, why people get sick. And it basically comes down to, they start blaming people who have died for, you know, especially the ones who kind of died first, as, as the people who are now coming out of their grave and attacking other people. And they’re mostly doing it at night. Now, one of the things I did look up because I was curious,

why vampires attack at night. I knew there had to be some kind of reason for this. And I think this is just speculation in my personal brain. First of all, we don’t see the vampires coming out of their graves during the daytime, right? So when is everybody asleep? They’re asleep at night and they’re saying that these vampires are doing these things that nobody’s seeing. So clearly vampires must be active at night. Additionally, when you are sick,

When do you feel the worst? Daytime. Daytime? Really? I don’t know. guess again, at night. Yes, at night. There is some science about our circadian rhythms kind of going into overdrive at night where our antibodies and stuff are working harder at night. And so you often feel worse at night, especially when you feel like you might be getting better during the daytime.

So I think these things in conjunction kind of lead us to the nocturnal vampire mythos. So I do then want to talk about germ theory because we didn’t discover germ theory until the late 1800s. Yes, sir. Before you get into that, I’m not sure if we talked about this or not, but this is also a ritual of inversion with Jesus who was hung on a cross. vampire could be healed by a cross, died.

And then rose three days later, you die. become a vampire three days later. So it’s also a mix up on that story. I’m not sure. Basically vampires are super Christian. That’s like the main thing that I’m trying to get out here. They don’t exist without Christianity, right? Because why do they think that these things are happening when they don’t?

have any explanations for them. They don’t understand germs. They don’t know how diseases are spread. They don’t understand dead bodies. So they start digging people up just to find some kind of answers. And they see these decomposition and these things that they don’t understand. So they’re seeing people who are bloated and they see people who have red lips and they see, you know, when they stake them, the blood seems to be liquid instead of in yield like they would expect. And a lot of these things that

we wind up doing in order to dispatch a vampire. These are things called apotropaic. I think I’m saying that right. A P O T R O P A I C S. and they, they’re used to dispatch vampires, but, the main point of them is to turn evil away. The idea is that the vampire has been taken over by a demon. And so who do they look for?

guidance on what to do. Priest, religious leaders, what do we do to get rid of this demon? So this is how we get things like staking, burying them face down, removing their head and placing it somewhere else and placing grave goods, right? Something to either prevent them from becoming a revenant or to stop them from being a revenant.

so it’s, it’s a very Christian thing to do. we didn’t get very far into the summary. No, I, and I wasn’t done either. I’m so sorry. I have more to talk about. I told you, I wrote like three pages. so all this is to say, let’s come, let’s, let’s come back to this a little bit. So again, they don’t understand the decomposition of bodies. They, they, they’d see them in rigor mortis.

They see the liver mortis, which is when the blood is pooling in a particular part of the body, that’s whatever is like gravity, right? And so that can lead to that liquid blood still happening. And they also, one of the stages is bloating. And for some reason, they see this body that’s double in size and they say, yep, that’s definitely a vampire. And a lot of times the bodies smell bad, but

Again, in this time period, they didn’t understand germs. And so what they thought was causing diseases was bad smell. So another thing that they start doing is burning things, tar, wood, tobacco, anything to try to get rid of that smell because they think that that’s the way to, you know, get rid of the disease, the problems, right? So.

Why are we sucking on the neck? We know Dracula, right? Dracula is kind of the most famous contemporary version of the vampire. But there’s actually a story that came before Dracula in 1819. And it’s a story called The Vampire, spelled with a Y, by a man named John Filidori. And this was published in 1819. So this is like 80 years before Dracula.

And they’re both really part of this vampiric canon as it were. And the vampire does influence Dracula. So it is all kind of part of the same thing. And then also what is happening in Europe at this time? Well, we’re industrializing. We are

kind of becoming more nationalistic. We’re more afraid of the other. And so this is all kind of part of it. And what is happening is these vampires are being kind of turned into figures of something to fear, right? So we fear Dracula. He’s this guy who is mysterious and lives up on a hill, you know, in this village. And we fear the main character of the vampire, which is this guy named Lord Ruthven.

because he’s like a murderer and he’s mysterious and he’s kind of a philanderer. But the vampire is inherently a sensual creature. At the risk of being too graphic, I’ll just say this, rigor mortis.

Okay, we’re moving on. So why are we sucking at the neck? It is an inherently sensual act. And the vampire actually was a story written by a guy who knew Lord Byron and heard the story from Lord Byron and Lord Byron is an inherent is a known bisexual figure in the literary space, right? So the book, the vampire is about

a man named Aubrey who falls in with this other guy, Lord Rufved, he becomes scorned and then he goes to Greece, which is kind of the bad part of Europe where there’s like, scary, darker people live, you know? And this is kind of where the whole neck biting thing comes from. It’s, it’s.

This is kind of the origin of it. It’s from this story. And, we see then at the beginning, a lot of contemporary movies and books and stuff that people become vampires because they bit by a beautiful stranger or they get lured in by a beautiful stranger. We see this in The Lost Boys. see this in this movie. is this beautiful girl who

brings him into the vampire world, right? And so, yeah, beautiful strangers. Thanks, Lord Byron. OK, so with all that very long winded stuff out of the way, let’s continue with the plot of near dark. OK, all right. So Caleb and May are out together on the first night, but she the horse reacts badly to her. Did you notice that the horse started pulling away?

Frau Blucher, yes. I am Frau Blucher.

Animals reacting badly, that shows up in a lot of vampire films. I didn’t do notes on that. Sorry. No, no, I’m just asking your opinion. Yeah. On that. I do think that is interesting, obviously, because when you see in Dracula, he can transform into multiple different animals. And I’m not totally sure where that comes from, but I would assume that it has a lot to do with the folklore as well, because.

What are these people who live in Europe afraid of? The forest, the woods, anything. You just need to stay in your little village. You need to stay safe. You need to pray to God. You need to make sure you don’t get attacked by any demons. And wolves and wolves and bats and bats. Same thing we’re afraid of now, right? I hope those bats don’t bite me. So when.

She bites him in and eventually she has to run home before the light comes out. And that’s where we were. But he’s had to talk about that too. The sun. Wait, no, we already talked about it. We’re good. Okay. We’re good on the sunlight thing. All right. So he, doesn’t kill him. She doesn’t finish him off and he’s heading home across the field. The sun comes up and that’s the first time you noticed those John Ford vistas with the Mesa’s in the background and the sun. This movie is beautiful. Yeah.

He makes it. He’s about to make it home. His father and sister see him coming across the field, smoking and this RV comes charging across the field with the windows all blacked out and smoked up and they grab him up. And you know what RV stands for, right? I know the V stands for vehicle recreational vehicle, recreational vampires. So they get him and then.

They’re about to kill him off. They’re about to finish him off and then, thinks he’s so cute. Yes. Don’t kill my boyfriend. I want a boyfriend too. I love you. I got a kiss on your face. Yeah. So, they don’t, the guy gives him a week, the main guy, is a hooker and it was played by Lance Hendrickson. And you know, he is later on in the movie, you find out he’s from the civil war and they stole that for vampire bill and the Sookie stack house ones. You know, you’re

Wait, was when was the Sukey Stackhouse books first written? I didn’t realize they were that. I don’t care. They stole it. Somebody stole it. OK. So I mean, and I think that that actually shows up in Twilight as well. One of the vampire coven dudes was also I think he was a Confederate soldier. I thought they were all 16 in that movie. I’m 17. How long have you been 17?

Yeah. So anyway, I was going to say here at this point, and this is play right back into you. They throw all the lore out. Like I said, they never say vampire. They throw all the lore out and then get vampires right in the darkened van after sun up. Can you accidentally turn somebody or do you have to intentionally do it? Don’t they need to die to be reborn?

Yeah. So in folklore, people typically do die first and then they’re resurrected as revenants. I mean, the word vampire isn’t immediately used. You know what I mean? But what happens is kind of later on, we start to see these same kinds of stories, these same kinds of accounts from these barbaric Eastern European countries.

with Western people coming in and starting to like observe them and kind of get the information. And sometimes these people were not even seeing these accounts directly. They were just getting it from the villagers and stuff. So the word vampire wasn’t necessarily being used immediately. So I think I do think it is interesting that they never actually chose to use the word in this movie. Yeah. Well, so do you think they could ride around

Like that? Well, that is an interesting question, because if we look at Dracula, Dracula shows up during the daytime. In fact, it’s kind of surprising. I remember when I first read it and there’s a character that shows up and is during the daytime and you’re kind of like, I would think that’s Dracula, but it’s daytime. That doesn’t sound right. He’s able to be up and around during the daytime. He’s just.

a little bit weaker, but he’s a big old hibernating bear. So sure, you could see him like that. Right. But his his powers, they’re stronger at night for, you know, whatever reason. And I mean, obviously, again, I think there’s something to that, you know, we don’t see the vampires come out of their graves because everybody’s asleep. They only do it when everyone’s asleep. And the funny thing, too, is that a lot of.

the people who get blamed for being vampires when after they die are people who are a little bit ornery, people who others don’t really like as much. You know, they were a problem in life. And so now it becomes very easy to scapegoat them in death. A little Salem witch trials. A little bit. I think there’s a strain of that, too, because you see we actually had a vampire scare here in the United States.

You know what I mean? And very fun fact. Well, not so fun, but in the 1800s in North Carolina, they actually depicted black people as vampires because again, it’s this making the vampire into a villain that we don’t like. okay. Gotcha. Very much. So he meets everybody in the in the van, the whole crew and

Bill Paxton, I just have to say how great he is. He’s such a he was such a great actor and he really is missed. You know, he uses that line finger licking good when he licks the blood off his fingers. And then you then you got Homer, the old man in the little boy’s body. Yeah. And that’s kind of echoes of Kirsten Dunst in the interview with the vampire. Absolutely. I was thinking that too. What is that character’s Claudia Claudia? And then the line.

Holy Eddie Monkster from The Lost Boys when the little boy attacks the Frog Brothers. The Frog Brothers. I don’t remember what that Lattie, think his name is. Lattie. Yes. Lattie. Yeah, with Star. Yeah. Okay. And he just mentioned. That’s interesting too. And I know we’ll get into the like plot a little bit more, but I did, I couldn’t help making connections to The Lost Boys, this movie, just because it feels like

It feels very pop culture. I don’t know. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So I did find it very interesting and I’ll talk about this a little bit right now. But one of the things that happens is that they test him by wanting him to go kill somebody and, you know, drink their blood and stuff. And it’s interesting because I did look up some scientific journals.

about blood drinking. And basically there’s nothing in human blood that a person couldn’t get from any other source, any other blood. So I find it really interesting that that’s kind of like the test is, you have to do this. And it reminds me of in The Lost Boys how Star and Laddie weren’t full vampires because they hadn’t drinking human blood.

at least beyond the first time that makes him the vampire in first place, but you know what I mean. So it just seems interesting. And when I was looking that up, this is totally unrelated, but in 2015, group of scientific students, science students from the University of Leicester did a study to try to figure out how long it would take a vampire to fully drain a human body of blood.

What they came up with was about six minutes to drain 15 percent. that’s a lot of that’s a lot slower than it’s been portrayed. Exactly. I just thought that was an interesting little tidbit. And we talk about this last time, the vampires just ripped the vein open and start lapping it up. Or do they have straws in their fangs? I’m a very strong believer in straws in fang.

straws in the fang. You take the two fangs in there and just suck it out through the straws. That’s really funny. That reminds me this is also totally unrelated, but it reminds me of a cartoon I used to watch as a kid called The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. And it’s like these two kids who for some reason become friends with the Grim Reaper. And he’s like a Jamaican guy for some reason. But he he has a friend who is Dracula.

And there’s this part where Dracula goes, Dracula doesn’t suck. Dracula scrape and lick. So, yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s a very funny idea to have straws in your teeth. But here’s the thing, right? Even if you just make those two punctures, because you’re in the carotid artery right here, I mean, your heart is pumping that blood really quickly.

So you really wouldn’t have to do much other than just cut and let it happen. I guess. But you know, like in all the all the old classics that I like, they have two perfectly neat holes in there, you know. There’s there’s something so Victorian about it. Well, know, so Caleb leaves, he’s trying to make his way home and he goes to the town and you know what’s playing on the movie theater?

explain it to me. That’s it. Aliens. because. So does that set this in a particular time period? Then it sets it that Catherine Bigelow and James Cameron were dating. So they took this. So they took it. took Bill Paxton. They took what’s his name? The. Hooker. That Hendrickson and one other one from that movie.

That’s interesting, because Alien, the first one is a Ridley Scott movie, and it’s very much like a horror movie. But then James Cameron gets his bits all over it and turns it into an action movie. OK, look at it again. I’m having bad deja vu. I look at it as one smart. They don’t listen to one smart lady and everybody dies except the smart lady and the cat. Mm hmm. That’s the movie I see. OK.

True. Press on here. So anyway, he is on that bus and he’s very sick and puking and which is I looked at that. That’s about normal for a bus ride. Have you ever been on one of those? It’s like, yeah, a lot of half dead people coughing and spewing blood and stuff like that. I wrote a lot of buses in Europe that travel to different places. I haven’t done a whole lot of bus scene in the US. I’ll say that.

They’re rolling tuberculosis wards. You know, they’re bad. So anyway, gets may comes and finds him and she lets him drink her blood. Now, I don’t know when that came became a thing. Right. How that’s how you turn into a vampire drinking the blood of the vampire. Yeah. Yeah. was an interview with a vampire. I was kind of thinking that, too. And then him getting sick, too, reminds me of interview with a vampire to be.

or winter view with the vampire. Right. I think it’s the vampire. Is it OK? think the vampire is Louie and he’s telling this whole story about Lestat. Anyway. Where is it going? yeah. But Louie gets really sick during that time. Yeah, he’s.

transforming. Right. Cause all your organs are dying and everything. Okay. So again, body decomposition. Right. So a little bit later he’s, he’s given his week trial, you know, and him and may go out to kill somebody and they meet a truck driver who’s described as the Cajun truck driver, which is okay. But it’s real convenient that the guy gives him a lesson on how to jackknife a truck.

Yes, that definitely won’t come back. No, they’ll never see that again. So random. Yeah. So he can’t he can’t kill, but may let him drink from her and he almost kills her by accident. So they go on to get back with the gang and they bust into this bar and are just as mean as can be. But the song Naughty Naughty is playing. That song was first played in a movie St. Elmo’s Fire.

or the young lady who plays May was also for the ex-wife of Rob Lowe. Rob Lowe, I was going to say Pony Boy. Yeah, it’s kind of like that. But she was the ex-wife of Rob Lowe’s character and she was just a nasty, horrible person. So when I saw her in this movie, I’m like, it’s a nasty, horrible person, which usually means they’re doing a good job acting. Yes, absolutely. I remember when…

you and mom would have like particular character, particular actors, you just wouldn’t like because you saw them in one movie and you just couldn’t stand them anymore. Like that just means they did a good job. It does. It’s like they’re convincing. I couldn’t stand Meryl Meryl Streep for years after she did Kramer versus Kramer. And then she’s just amazing now, you know, it’s a can’t watch enough. He’s great. So anyway, they have they managed to leave one guy alive and Caleb supposed to go kill him.

Caleb chickens out. Of course. The whole thing has to say pure at heart. But he was a bad guy. You know, he was like, he was really kind of with him. He wasn’t really pure. He just draw the line at murder. I’ll do everything else. I’ll shoot except murder. Well, that’s not a bad thing. So the whole gang retreats back to a hotel room and sure enough, the cops show up and want to start blazing away now.

Every time these shootouts happen, they’re shooting holes in the top of the wall, middle of the wall, bottom of the wall. They’re doing stormtrooper aiming. You should just focus all your fire right at the bottom of the wall because they’re either standing there and you can shoot them in the leg or they’re laying down and you can shoot them. But anyway, they’re shooting all these holes and it was really well done because like the holes would open up and the vampire would get burned. So when they’re just looking really bad, Caleb breaks out of the building, runs, catches on fire, jumps in the van and

rescues the whole crew until they’re like, okay, you can have some more time before we kill you off. One thing I thought about in the bar scene, you know, and I’ve talked about this somewhere before. I don’t think it was, I was in the daughter of Dracula and there’s a link. There’ll be a link below that as well as a link for the books we’ve talked about, but until daughter of Dracula, men bit women, bit men. There was no like men biting men, men and Severin kills off some men.

And so it’s just like dogs sleeping with cats. It’s chaos. You know, when they start cross biting like that.

You think so? I do. To me, it’s chaos. All right. So anyway, go on. It’s a whole bunch of stuff. The father and the sister of Caleb were out looking for him the whole time. You know, it’s just like Stella Luna trying to find her little lost bat cub. Yeah. Eventually the vampires capture them. And Caleb gets away, but then they recapture his sister.

And they want to turn her. They want to turn her little boy Homer. Yeah. He wants a little friend. And then May. Comes running out and smoking and burning and she releases his sister. They get away. He fights with Severin on the truck and thank God he knows how to jackknife a semi truck. Yeah. So he kills Severin off. Homer gets so excited he’s chasing May through the sun and he just

blows up and it just leaves, you know, leaves hooker and rattlesnake, the mama of the group. They’re in the car Thelma and Louise are going to just go for it and carb. They blow up and die before they get away. And the next thing may wakes back up and she’s all well and he’s like, it’s the sun. Just don’t be, don’t worry about it. It’s just the sun. And so their transfusions have worked fine. And so that being said,

I have reached deep into my memory banks. and then House of Dracula (1945). try it. They’re trying to cure the vampires by giving them transfusions. But I believe there’s a little backtracing going back. You get a little backflow on the blood. So, I don’t know about how how well this transfusing people out of vampirism works. Yeah, that’s a little bit of a.

deus machina kind of yeah like we can’t have our character actually stay a vampire so how do we get out of this right but it’s like i was waiting for whoever turned may and who was was that homer no it was a rattlesnake so mom so when mom died i thought may should be freed

That’s generally how it works. You know, the head vampire or whoever turned you. That’s kind of how that’s how it works. And, you know, the vampire Chronicles, rice books. Yeah. That’s a very common thing. Let me see what else I got here in my notes. OK, this was called this movie was called a vampire Western. And I was watching that. I think that’s very cool. mean, this is not a setting that you find a lot of vampires. And I mean, and not

Not to make everything about Twilight or anything, but like generally, you know, if you’re trying to stay out of the sun, do you think you’re going to choose the southwest? There’s not even trees. You know what I mean? That’s just that seems like such an interesting. Setting to be like, yeah, we’re just going to hang out in one of the sunniest places possible, but we’re just going to black out our RV and it’ll be fine. I guess it’s so they can have those Western Vistas.

But I did some research on that because I was aware of one movie and the one they said that this mostly resembled is Curse of the Undead from 1959, I believe. Curse of the Undead. And it’s a really bad vampire Western, but it’s got some really big stars in it. So was watching a little bit of it today. it an Italian movie? No, it’s got John Hoyt and some other people in it. And then going deeper back, I remembered one of my childhood favorites.

Billy the Kid versus Dracula (1966). Yes. A real Western movie where Harry Carrey Jr.’s mother, Harry Carrey’s wife, real life wife, utters the famous line, if I didn’t know better, I would say this was a vampire bite. But so there has been a few Westerns. But it’s very uncommon. Very few. In that movie, Billy the Kid.

is shooting it out with John Carradine, who is a vampire, and he gives him all six shots with his pistol to no effect. So he throws a pistol at him and hits a vampire in the head and just knocks him. Yeah, it funny. It does remind me in this movie where the one guy got hit with the bullet and then it like ejects out of him. He coughed it up, right? Yeah. Put it back in. Give it back to the guy. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of a power move. I kind of respect it.

You have to. So we did we talk about all the Lost Boy connections because this movie has been some of the reviews were saying this is better than the Lost Boys, but I don’t see that. That’s really interesting. I think the Lost Boys has such a special place in my heart that I could never say that. Like even if objectively, this is a better movie. I still couldn’t say that. You know what I mean? I think it was a better movie.

Obviously, this was directed by a director who has some chops, obviously, maybe not at this point. I know, obviously, she was the Zero Dark Thirty person, right? Right. And Herd Locker. This was her like second film that she did. OK. Like I said, the distribution deal fell apart and then just really doomed this movie.

But she she went on to like win an Oscar, right? Like director for which one? Heart Locker. Heart Locker. Yeah. So she’s got some chops for sure. I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t even remember the name of the director of the Lost Boys. So like. know, Joel Schumacher, he was a pretty good director himself, but yeah, I just think, you know, that they copied a lot of tropes. They both came out in the same year.

I you said this came out in 96. This came out 86. Yeah, 87, I believe. OK, that makes a little more sense. I corrected. I went back and corrected it. I. OK. OK. See, that’s why I was like, really? This was the 90s. I’m so shocked. It just didn’t feel like it. I love the schlocky 80s or and stuff like that. So and I think that was even as I was watching it, I was making some.

connections to the Lost Boys. Not necessarily like direct links, but you know, I mean, it just there’s certain things that even though they’re not taking place in the same time period, they don’t have a whole lot of like lot similarities. There’s still some like tropes that I think exist in both like Star and May, Laddie and Homer.

You know, there’s just like certain things like that. And again, the pop culture feel to it. I don’t know how to describe that exactly, but that’s the feeling. The Lost Boys, of course, was, you know, they’re trying to build a family they needed a mother and near dark, they already built a family. They had a father, a mother, rebellious teen, a little kid, a daughter, you know, they had, and so they both movies had the same goal and they fell right. Westerns had kind of fallen out of popularity.

And it said Bigelow wanted to make the make a Western vampire movie. And it fell right in that gap between, you know, before Clint Eastwood started doing unforgiven and stuff like that. And put the cowboy movies back Silverado and all that put the movies back on track. The Westerns. Right. You had to kind of ease it in there. It wasn’t a full Western. It was out West. Yes. It takes place in the West. Yes. It’s my fancy Southwestern. Yeah.

I just went kind of dark, spooky. I even dyed my hair for this. that’s above and beyond the call of duty. All right. So you got any more connections or lore you want to talk about in this one? Three pages of notes. I know. I can send it to you. can, you feel free to browse it and just read how witty I am, but

You can sit down and you could just sit down and record. You know, yeah, on OBS or whatever. Recording, send it over. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I could. I really don’t think we need him. I don’t think so. The other stuff that I was the only stuff I really had was that Dracula is a Jewish caricature. I’m not even totally sure why I started talking about that. Well, you know, you went back to the medieval.

And I was talking about the bad part of Europe and yeah, you know all that sort of stuff How Jews get to be blamed for just about anything all the poisoning of the well The Nosferatu vampire and we talked about that before and as we talked about Nosferatu and that link will be in the description There was something that I had written about Nosferatu. There was something that That’s what it was

The sunlight actually killing the vampires comes from Nosferatu (1922). it wasn’t in it wasn’t in the Bram Stoker. because what they what they do to him is they stake him. Which is that folkloric. Right. That’s your apotropaic. Easy for you to say. No, it’s not. All right. So let’s get down to brass tacks. OK. What’s the best vampire movie you’ve ever seen?

my gosh. You asked me this last time and I still didn’t have an answer for it. Well, you’ve seen more now. Well, it’s not this one. Let me tell you a story that I told on another podcast. OK. OK. You know, I went to London. You did what? I didn’t know that. Yeah, you did. I went that person I was with. We were your wife. Yeah, that one. We went down to pick it. I said, it’s Piccadilly Circus. I need to.

find the way to next Wednesday, porn theater. she got all mad, you know, like, you know, can’t it. And I was like, it’s the American werewolf in London. Yeah, I don’t know. I just messed up. It wasn’t a vampire. It was a vampire story at all. I’m going to cut it all out. OK, that’s OK. You could still tell me the story. Yeah. But that’s OK. So I was like, no, it’s not a porn theater. It’s a place where they had a movie set and the werewolf came out. So.

I was going to say that my favorite vampire movie. That’s a tough one. What did I say last time? It’s going to have to be Dracula, probably. It’s Dracula, probably. Dracula (1932). do think that that is such an interesting movie, too, because like Dracula is really where the sensual, sexy vampire comes from. are Dracula wasn’t.

Dracula was never described as a handsome man. He’s described as a Jewish caricature. He’s described as Aquiline, you know, Eagle Dose and skinny and long white. Why? He’s he’s not an attractive man, you know, conventionally. Not Franklin Jela or any of those guys. he’s not Bela Lugosi. It’s like. Yeah, but it is a great movie. Yeah. So did you answer my question?

I did not answer your question. OK, it’s the Lost Boys. See, here’s the thing. There is a difference between what’s the best movie and what’s my favorite movie, right? I don’t agree with that. Whatever you like, best is whatever you like. The favorite is your best is the best movie. Well, see, here’s the thing to me. I can recognize that I like something and that doesn’t make it good.

like I love the slakie bad 80s horror movies. I love movies that nobody’s ever heard of. I love movies with Todd Howard instead of Ron Howard. You know what I mean? Yeah. Todd Howard. Isn’t that his name? No, Todd Howard. No, no. Todd Howard’s the video game guy. Clint, Clint Howard. Yes. The ice cream man or what? You know what I mean? Like I love stuff like that. I like movies with

with Rance Howard in them. Is that the dad? That’s the dad. You know, that little. So, yeah, OK, so I think we covered everything. is my favorite. That it is. It is. And it’s pretty it’s pretty good. Fright Night (1985). The Lost Boys (1987), I’m kind of torn, you know. Yeah, right. is very good. But it also has the sexy vampire in it. Yeah.

And also that way for that reason, I’ll go with the original Dracula in English, not the Spanish one. Okay. All right. Well, look, I really appreciate you taking the time. It was very important and it means a lot to me when you come, come out here and come prepared. And I appreciate you coming on the show. You got anything going on? You want to tell anybody about anything coming up? No, not really. I’ve recorded a podcast with Savannah a while ago and I just haven’t edited it.

So maybe that’ll come out this month since it’s spooky month. Spooky month. That’s right. It’s October. We’re getting ready for it. Yes. That’s why it was very important. All right, Catherine, thanks again. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you for having me. All right. Bye bye. Bye.