Two Vampires
Not long ago, measured by the time scale defined by appearances of this column, I reviewed the vampire novel Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste, which positioned Dracula as the old, toxic boyfriend who years later still won’t leave the female protagonist alone.
And why not? You can reduce the vampire to a snarling beast who slits throats, but—the energy invested in any fresh iteration aside—the trope is much more interesting in terms of control; sometimes driven by outright mind control, and sometimes in more subtle terms, such as the seductive voice whispering blandishments that the given victim cannot resist.
This time out we have two vampire stories about co-dependent, toxic relationships, as poisoned by love as they are by supernatural power.
Night’s Edge
Liz Kerin
Hardback / Ebook
ISBN: 978-1250835673
Tor Nightfire, June 20, 2023
The novel Night’s Edge by Liz Kerin presents us with Mia, a young woman who has been forced into social isolation by her mother, who years ago contracted the vampire curse. In this book, vampires are called Saras, for reasons that the book eventually gets around to explaining; it’s a popular term derived by the scientific name of the infection, and it’s not much of a secret. What does fuel the novel is that Mia must sublimate her entire life to keeping her mother fed, and keeping her mother’s condition secret, and looking the other way whenever Mom commits one of the atrocities that she must; she lives in fear, being cosseted by her mom’s excuses, and by her mom’s false promises, and sometimes by the brutalities that her mom regularly inflicts on her, before the inevitable false apologies. It is a cage built by love that Mia must exist within, in between nightly bloodlettings and longing for friends of her own, and here it happens to take place while Mia is also experiencing the overdue, confusing touches of first love. Talk about co-dependency!
Because Mia is reduced to weak-kneed tingles by a spectacular young woman she meets, the first stirring of her long-repressed sexuality, we must pass a few words about the paths not taken. For instance, when this part of the story takes flower, there exists a strong possibility that somebody’s gonna get fridged. There exists an equal possibility of the tale ending in hopelessness, or in imprisonment within the status quo; or of true love conquering all. I present the data that Kerin ends the story in none of the obvious ways. The novel is about Mia’s growth, and exactly what she needs to summon from herself, in order to live as something other than her mother’s cooperative vassal; indeed, whether she succeeds in taking that step at all. Author Kerin does not permit the obvious horror tropes to eclipse the themes of the novel she’s writing. It’s a terrific work.
Renfield
Directed by Chris McKay
Produced by Skybound Entertainment and Giant Wildcat
Theatrical release March 30, 2023
Arriving in theatres at about the same time I read the above is Renfield, the movie where the character in question is played by Nicholas Hoult and the character of Renfield’s master Dracula is played by Nicolas Cage. (And from that we have the observation that a movie with many gallons of spilled blood is appropriately provided by two Nicks.) The movie departs from Bram Stoker by giving us a largely sane Renfield who, after a century or so of providing victims for his master, just wants to escape the co-dependent relationship equally driven by threats and false affections; a Renfield who realizes, at long last, that his master is not his friend. It all eventually comes down to mounds of exploded bodies and super-powered battles that are just as frenetic as, if way bloodier than, those to be found in the MCU, and though all of that is staged well enough, and certain to obtain its place on your humble chronicler’s shelf once the hard media comes out, what resonated was the inhuman Dracula doling out expressions of affection, protestations of need, and vicious threats, in turn. It is precisely the control of a human being by rendering compliance the easiest option, and it is well modulated, with subtleties that the movie finally ejects in order for us to have a big battle. Which is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. These elements are nevertheless present, and worth noting.
Also worth noting are the two kickass ladies who really own the movie: Awkwafina, who plays a tough young cop, and the divine Shohreh Aghdashloo, an Oscar-winner who has since become a science fiction staple, here playing the mob boss whose relationship with her own son is largely driven by the same forms of manipulation that Dracula uses on Renfield and that Mia’s mom uses on her. This is honestly so much richer, dramatically, than a vampire who controls you by making eye contact.
And yes, Cage is terrific as Dracula: not just sinister and monstrous, but actively funny. It remains a shame that his time catching up on his taxes has fed the canard that he cannot act. He made great movies, Cage, and from time to time, still does.
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Also remarkable this time out is The Exorcist Legacy: Fifty Years of Fear by Nat Segaloff (Citadel Press), a bit of crackerjack reporting detailing the conception and production of the original novel and film, as well as all the sequels, special editions and reboots that have taken place since then. Segaloff details the creative conflicts between author William Peter Blatty, director William Friedkin, and the performers, including Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, and the accidental-actor playwright Jason Miller, with a substantial degree of personal humor, and I will among other things point you to two unexpected cameos by Groucho Marx, and the audition interview where the makers of the original film, despairing of finding a child actor who could take the source material without trauma, asked walk-in Linda Blair what she knew of the book and she calmly replied, “I’ve read it.” Blatty, the text makes clear, never thought he was making a horror movie; the scripter of among other things the second Pink Panther movie always believed, always, that he was making a movie about faith. Segaloff follows the timeline past the original blockbuster to the productions of the various other iterations of the franchise, and it is fascinating, not in the least for the wrangling between Blatty and Friedkin on every detail of the classic as it took form.
