Vampires

i09 has an interview up about Amy Heckerling's new horror vampire film Vamps, which they're calling 'Clueless for vampires' (Heckerling is famous for directing teen comedies like Fast Times at Ridegmont High and Clueless. They interviewed actress Krysten Ritter about her role in the film, which also costars Alicia Silvertsone, and she says,

"It's about two girls who are vampires, living in New York. And then life happens and they have to question their immortality."

We hope it is funny-funny and not just romantic comedy-funny. We should expect to see it in 2011!

Lips of Blood: Female sexuality and desire in the modern vampire film By Brigid Cherry

The vampire in film has always been associated with elements of sexuality and morality. This association between vampirism and sexuality is related to the violation of taboos, but more importantly allows the identification of the other which is then repressed. Erotic and sexual characteristics are equated with vampirism, which for the female character - who is herself other and therefore subject to repression - means that to embrace the vampire is to embrace sexuality. For that, a forbidden act for the woman who is constrained by patriarchy to suppress her sexuality, she is punished - she is or becomes the vampire and dies, frequently staked through the heart. She is contrasted strongly and starkly with the heroine, the victim who remains coded as virginal, who is therefore pure and can be returned to normality at the climax of the film...

Written and directed by Faye Jackson
Featuring Constantin Barbulescu, Roxana Guttmann, Vlad Jipa, Catalin Paraschiv
www.strigoimovie.com
Review by rochefort

In the opening scene of Strigoi, directed by Faye Jackson (Lump), ex-Communists Constantin and Ileana Tirescu (Constantin Barbulescu and Roxana Guttmann), cold-hearted landowners whom the townspeople suspect of murder, are themselves murdered and buried angry-mob-style. Soon after, Vlad (Catalin Paraschiv) returns to his Romanian hometown after an extended vacation in Italy, and finds that the townspeople are dropping like flies. Almost everyone but him is convinced that an undead Constantin and his wife are responsible, but Vlad and local policeman Octav (Vlad Jipa) decide to conduct their own amateur investigation into the steadily-rising death toll, uncovering a long-buried local history of corruption, racism, and supernatural dirty tricks...

Annalee Autumn's short vampire movie Blood Bound can now be watched in its entirety right here!

The Gothic vampire story, accompanied by velvet capes and prerequisite female-empowerment blood-sucking, recently played at the 2009 Vampire Film Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana USA.

Watch the trailer, and the whole film...

Director Faye Jackson (Lump) is headlining the Vampire Film Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana with her new feature vampire movie Strigoi!

Brand new horror shorts directed by women will be playing at the festival as well; Annalee Autumn's Blood Bound, Maria Hinterkörner's Blood Sisters, and Lori Bowen's A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem. Watch trailers for the films...

Wouldn't you like to win season 2 of Lifetime’s Scintillating Vampire Series Blood Ties on a 3DVD set? (an indescribably awesome and unbelievable $26.99 value!!!) Of Course you would! We're running a contest and 3 lucky winners will get Season 2 sent to them in the comfort of their own home.

Based on the book series written by Tanya Huff, which is in its 17th printing, Blood Ties is a captivating crime drama dripping with mystery, suspense, horror, and romance. To enter, simply answer the following question in the form of a comment below...

Lisa Starry’s horror ballet A Vampire Tale, tersely touted as “the Nutcracker of Halloween”, will play October 21 through November 7 2009, at Phoenix Theatre's Little Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona USA, as well as at the Vampire Film Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 25 & 26.

Also at the Vampire Film Fest is The Vampire Novelist Panel – moderated by Sue Dent and featuring best-selling author Erin McCarthy and Louisiana’s own, Nicole Peeler. These established and debut novelists will be happy to detail what it's like to be a part of the astoundingly popular world of vampire and shape-shifter fiction.

Danielle Harris recently shot some behind-the-scene footage for us of her scenes in the new horror film Stakeland, which involves vampires and crap, and posted the videos on her Myspace page (I know, like, 'people still go on Myspace?') The actress is also a director, having already shot a short horror film Madison for an anthology, and she seems to be honing her skills doing special features for Stakeland. We love Danielle Harris. Watch the clips...

Dark Sky Films and Glass Eye Pix announced today that once in-demand actress Kelly McGillis (Top Gun, Witness, The Accused) has joined the cast of the incredibly trite and pretentious-sounding vampire road film Stake Land, currently filming in New York and Pennsylvania.

The film, written by Jim Mickle and Nick Damici and directed by Jim Mickle (Mulberry Street), takes place following a global spread of vampirism. McGillis plays a nun who joins a small team of survivors (including Damici, Danielle Harris and Conor Paol (Gossip Girl) as they make a treacherous journey north to safety through the war-torn U.S. McGillis' character, "Sister," faces a crisis of faith during the vampire bloodshed, ultimately taking up arms to do battle with her newly formed family unit...

No other monster’s reputation has suffered the battering of bad films more thoroughly than that of the notorious vampire. The great and bloody stature of this renowned villain has been tainted and drained over the decades with a deluge of uninspired films filled with empty characters and cookie cutter plot lines. The paper thin stereotype of a sexy and romantic vampire was lifted up as a burning sun to eclipse the dark moon of its truer nature, until its bright and corny light was nearly all that could be seen for decades. 30 Days of Night was one of the more recent to break this trend and made vampires ugly and mean again; Let the Right One In continued the divergence with its poetic story of children, vampiric and otherwise, and their all-too-human inclinations for violence; and Park Chan-wook brings us a new wonderful film, Thirst, in which a well meaning young priest bleeds himself and others to suffer the degradation of immorality.