March 13, 2025 • 30 mins
Part 2 of my deep dive on Vampire and I'm looking at Vampires as represented in the media and how it compares to the lore.Are the vampires we see in movies, T.V., Books and Audio Dramas really accurate to what was believed hundreds of years ago?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay. On The Carolina Storyteller, we're gonna be covering part
two of our in Them look at Vampires. This time
we're gonna be looking at vampires in the media, So
stay tuned. This is the Carolina Storyteller.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Dark Ones were shadows, cream stories rise as the
camp rees shot, the voice of Haunting through.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
With every sale, He's fence off echoes.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Whispers to night sauty by the fire, light of the light,
the shot lot of Storyteller joy through the story Campasy,
Fangels of Darkness, a Niety, the Night of the Nights.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Welcome folks to the Carolina Storyteller. I am your storyteller,
Jonathan Boenix. Thanks for being here with me. Remember, if
you want to support this show, you can go to
Carolina too. You can go to Patreon dot com forts Lastly,
the Carolina Storyteller showing up for just a dollar support
the show get lots of cool stuff behind the scenes
information and things like that. Plus you can get heads
(01:25):
up information on our other show down on the Black
Raven Chronicles. The audio drama Episode four being come out
really soon in episode five already in production. But let's
get started last week or last episode, should I say,
because it's not been a week, has it. We were
talking about vampires, you know, those bloodsucking, evil, spiteful creatures
(01:48):
that haunt all of your dreams. I know, I sound
like I'm talking about politicians. I swear I'm not. I'm
talking about vampires, Okay. And we found out that vampires
are actually really from Eastern and in southeastern Europe. Are
from places like Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, Trannsylvania, a lot of
Anias or Austria. Basically, if it ended in Ea, there
(02:11):
was a possibility that there was a vampire that was
born there. They also originated in the fourteen hundred. Well yeah,
in the fourteen hundreds, so back in the thirteenth fourteenth century,
this is where these things came out. There were actually
people that were accused of being vampires before Vlad Tepesh. Yes,
there was somebody before him. We found out that vampires
(02:32):
are considered to be reanimated corpses. Though some say that
vampires can be born, some say that vampires can mate,
and that there is the possibility of a vampire having
a child with a human and that is called a drothmer.
And it doesn't matter if it's a male vampire and
a female human, or a female vampire and a male human.
(02:53):
They can all have babies. So I guess what I'm
saying is is vampires aren't too different from us, but
they are because they try to kill us and hunt us. Right, well,
I don't know. Maybe this time we're gonna be talking
about vampires in the media, how they've been represented to us,
and how we see them today, and what brought on
their rise to popularity. Now, well, there were books about
(03:16):
vampires that came out before the first one we're going
to start off with. And the first place we're going
to go is we're going to talk about this guy
right here. Yeah, you probably know. You've probably seen this.
This is Bram Stoker's Dracula. This is the movie adaptation
(03:40):
starring Gary Oldman Keanu Reeves. It is a great movie,
I think, and the effects on it were wonderful. Ran
a little long, but in this story, blad Tepesh, Count Dracula,
has decided that he wants to leave Transylvania. So he
contacts a agency in London and he wants to move
(04:00):
to London. They send someone out, Jonathan Harker, and when
he sees Jonathan Harker. He sees a picture of Jonathan's
beloved Mina, who Blad believes is the reincarnation of his wife,
which is why he cursed God, which is why God
cursed him back to turn him into a vampire. And
so he immediately wants to go and find Mina, and
(04:22):
of course there's this whole thing where they chase him
back to Transylvania and then Mina cuts his head off.
This led to Mina Harker as a vampire appearing in
another movie that was released at the same time, The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and this is based off of
a comic book movie off of a comic book I'm
Sorry of the same name, in which basically a lot
(04:46):
of our book characters lead characters were put together to
form kind of a superhero team. You had the Invisible Man,
Doctor Jekyline, Mister Hyde, Captain Demo, Alexander Quartermain Tom Sawyer,
and Mina Harker Dracula's bride. So Dragula had a major
(05:11):
influence on media. This was what started romanticizing vampires and
brought vampires out into the life. And while this movie
was not made until the nineties. There had been many
other adaptations of it, including one starring the late Christopher Lee.
If you don't know who Christopher Lee is, I don't
(05:33):
know what to tell you. The man has been in everything.
I'm just saying. He was a Bond villain. He was
saramonbo White and Lord of the Wings. This man had
a heavy metal album. Okay. This man is literally the
cousin of Ian Fleming, the guy that wrote James Bond
(05:56):
and is the basis for James Bond the stories he
used to tell his cousin. That's what Ian Fleming bassed
James Bond off of. But hey, you know, you don't
need to know who Christopher Lee is or know that
he once played Dracula as well. Dracula has appeared in
so many versions that I could do an entire episode
(06:16):
on just Dracula alone, not least of which being the
recent adaptation anime of Castlevania that was seen on Netflix,
where we see a very different Dracula from what we've
seen in most other forms of media. He is very melancholy.
He is kind of believes that he's above humanity. He
(06:39):
doesn't need to worry about them until they piss him. Off,
and honestly, he's more of a relatable character in that
than I think in any other form of media. So
if you haven't seen the Castlevania anime, I highly recommend.
It's a great show and they have a great depiction
of Dracula. Now, moving on from Count Dracula, I want
(07:02):
to go to something a little bit different because this
is another vampire has a similar name. But this is
just to show how vast and wide it is. This
is coming from the nineteen late nineteen eighties early nineteen
nineties allowed me to present you Count Ducula. The Count
(07:24):
Ducula was a TV when I was a TV show
when I was a kid growing up. He was a
vampire who had been resting for a thousand years and
his servant Igor and I can't remember her name, whatever
her name was, went to bring him back, but she
accidentally grabbed kick up instead of blood. So Count Ducula
(07:45):
came back not as a blood sucking vampire, but as
a vegetarian. And so while he was still being hunted
by a van helsing who wanted him dead, all he
wanted was broccoli. The man just wanted broccoli. Why were
you hunting him down? Was a great show as a kid,
and it was it was a way to kind of
make vampires a little make fun of vampires a little bit.
(08:09):
Count Ducula and Count Dracula had a lot of things
in common. First of all, their version of sunlight, a
version of holy items, the whole thing that a stake
through the heart would kill them. They also had the
ability to turn into mist, turn into a bat, you know,
shape change. So they really matched each other. And that's
why I brought Count Dukula up as the second form
(08:31):
of vampires in media, because it really did show that
there was kind of a pattern, was what they were
saying about vampires. Now, remember last week we talked about
the legend of vampires is that vampires did have an
aversion of sunlight. They had to sleep during the day
because they could not be out during the light. They
(08:54):
also had an aversion to religious Econofy. Now that transformed
to an aversion to Christian I confee, which, of course,
because glad Tepis was a Christian believing person when he
became Dracula, the cross is what held power against him.
It was the vampire's beliefs in the Iconofy that made
(09:16):
it so powerful, which makes me wonder if there was
a Jewish vampire, would it cross not work on them?
I know, we'll have to research that later. It's coming
next week. We're not doing that now. But of course
Count Tukula had the same issues. So we're getting a
pattern here, but that pattern kind of goes off the
(09:37):
rails a little bit when we go to our next
one up on the presentation list, And this one is
one of my favorite vampire movies of all times. If
you haven't seen it, I don't know what the hell
you were doing with your life. Boo boo I'm talking about.
And let me get this up right here, this right here,
(10:03):
so that you all can see what I'm talking about,
ladies and gentlemen. I mean, the strait is so hard
sometimes we're gonna be looking at nineteen eighty seven's The
Lost Voice. Love this movie and love the way that
it paints off of these vampires, not only how it
paints the vampires, but how the vampires are created, because
(10:26):
this is kind of the first one. Granted, in Dracula's version,
if you're bitten by a vampire, you become a vampire.
But that kind of would be ridiculous because all a
vampire would have to do is go and bite everybody
in the town, and then they'd all be vampires. We'd
have an army of freaking vampires. It didn't make any
sense in Dracula and this one, it's the first time
(10:48):
that we see that you have to drink of the
vampire's blood or whatever it is. It's I'm assuming it's
the vampire's blood. It never really says what's in the bottle,
but that's what we get. And the Lost Boys two
brothers moved to Santa Clara, California, which is the myrtal
capital of the world at the time, where they're forced
(11:09):
to kind of relocate into this place that just isn't
like what they're used to. And while they're there, the
older brother, Eric meets up with David and his gang
of motorcycle ride bad boys, and David takes a liking
to him, or so it seems. When Eric realizes what's
(11:30):
happening to him, he tries to fight back against David
and protect the beautiful love young woman whose name I
can't remember, and the younger one who hasn't fully turned
into a vampire yet from David and the other Lost Boys.
There is a entire battle that takes place, and during
this Corey Feldman and Corey Haynes play vampire hunters and
(11:53):
they are hunting for these vampires, and they're telling everybody
how to fight the vampires. You got to have crosses,
you've got to have holy water, you gotta have garlic,
you gotta have wooden steaks. Well, this movie kind of
throws that on its head because in the culinative scene,
the one who they think is the head vampire comes
in and they present all these things to him, they
(12:17):
invite him in, and none of it works. The holy
water in his drink doesn't affect him, the garlic on
his pasta doesn't affect him. The mirror he's got a reflection,
the cross doesn't hurt him. None of it affects him.
(12:39):
We find out later in the movie that's because he
was invited into the home. And those things only work
in your home. If the vampire comes in uninvited, you
can't use them against them once you invite the vampire.
In so very interesting twist the lore, because that's not
what's in the lore. Supposedly, if you believe in religious iconopy,
(13:01):
that belief is what gives it power, not inviting them
in or anything like that. And as far as reflections,
there was never anything about reflections with a vampire. That
was all having to do with sober being considered holy
and being something that they were allergic to. So remember
that's not in the lore. So the Lost Boys. While
(13:23):
it is a great in classic movie, it also does
a great job of turning the lore a little bit
on its head. Now, moving from the silber screen, we
are going to visit the anime world just a little
bit with this next piece. It's one of my favorite
movies of all time. And while it doesn't focus on
(13:46):
a vampire as the main character, it goes involve vampires
in specific a vampire hunter, and I'm talking about Vampire
Hunter d This anime came out in the early nine
eighteen eighties. I saw it as a child and I
just fell in love with it. D Rome's a post
(14:08):
apocalyptic world, riding a metal horse hunting down vampires who
have basically taken over the world. We screwed up and
the vampires ended up taking over after we screwed up,
and now they kind of run everything and humans are
basically enslaved to them. And d is kind of putting
a stop to that. He ends up being found out
(14:32):
to be a draftmere and we talked about that last week.
Draftmir are the half breed children of vampires and humans,
and his father is none other than Vlad Dracula, and
that is who he's hunting throughout the entire movie. And
if you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It's a
great movie. But in this one, the draft mir gets
(14:55):
a lot of exposure the idea that he is stronger
in humans, faster than humans, more powerful than humans, but
at the same time, is just a step away from
being consumed by that same hunger that creates vampires. And
it starts to introduce the idea that vampires have this
(15:18):
insatiable hunger, which wasn't really introduced. Yes, it was introduced
that vampires fed and that they drank blood, but it
was never this insatiable hunger. It was never something that
they couldn't control. But now that's starting to be introduced
into the media. It's not in Dracula. You know, Count
Dukia isn't insatiably hungry for veggies, but he likes veggies,
(15:41):
I mean, but there's no problem with it. We don't
see that in the Lost Boys. They're not insatiably hungry.
They're just killing for fun. They're just having fun. But
Vampire Hunter D is dealing with vampires insatiable hungers and
having to fight his own, not unlike another vampire hunter
that appears in comic books that we may have known of,
(16:02):
which is Blade, the vampire Hunter from anime and movies.
I want to take a trip over to TV. Now,
there are a lot of options for TV. You have Supernatural,
you have this show that came out not too long
ago called oh what was it? True Blood? Yeah, you
(16:25):
know which one I'm talking about. Honestly, if you've read
the books, those weren't about vampires. Okay, I'm just saying
there's a reason he said, oh sook it? Yeah, I
read the book. Okay, so true Blood we kind of
(16:46):
left off of this list. But I did need something
from TV, and I actually picked something that might be
a hot take as representing vampires because again, it doesn't
show them in the typical light. And that's gonna be
American Horror Story Hotel. So if you haven't seen the
(17:08):
fifth season of American Horror Story, it's about vampires running
a hotel that's basically what it is. Granted, there's a
lot of other things going on, just like any other
but we're gonna focus on the vampire aspect. These creatures,
one of them has been alive for centuries and they're
(17:28):
almost impossible to kill. They can kind of walk out
in the sun. It doesn't hurt them per se, it's
uncomfortable for them. There's no aversion to garlic, no religious econofy,
no mirrors or anything like. Basically, if you're gonna kill them,
you're gonna need just be really strong and really fast
(17:49):
and have a really good weapon and bleed them out. Honestly,
other than that, they're just eternal beans that like to
drink blood and make me believe that all of my
thoughts about sex with Lady Gaga are absolutely true. Sorry,
this isn't my stand up segment, so I'm not going
to tell you what that was, but just yeah, yeah, Honestly,
(18:14):
I believe Lady Gaga was actually a vampire in this
and that ever since they've been trying to cover it
up because too much was rebuild. This was supposed to
be vampires actually rebuilding themself. I'm sorry, this is real life.
There really are vampires in a hotel in Los Angeles,
and occasionally they kill people. It's really happening. I can't.
You can't tell me otherwise it's true. If you haven't
(18:35):
seen the fifth season, I really recommend watching it because
what we find out about vampires is is that a
lot of the legends in the myths and the lore
are kind of bs. The Countess has been around for years.
He was turned by somebody who was turned by somebody. Again,
this isn't a human waking up all of a suddenly
(18:56):
and being a vampire. This is someone who was given
a choice, was made for them to be an undead
and it has continued on for years and years and
years and years. Now, moving on from the small screen,
we're gonna go back to the silver screen and we're
(19:17):
going to talk about another version of Vampires that has
presented from another author. And we're gonna go to my
favorite movie in this series. I don't care what you say,
it's the best movie of the series. Interview of Vampire
was a joke. Just get over it, okay, Because Queen
(19:38):
of the Dam was the ship's net, all right, Aliyah
Stewart Townsend. It was just awesome. I love this, but
it gave us an entirely new legend of vampires. First
of all, there is the chance that vampires could have
human family. Not only that, but that vampires the whole
(19:58):
religious economy thing not going to think. The only way
to kill a vampire is to cut its head off,
and even then you have to practically drain the blood
of the vampire before you can do it up. The
more blood the vampire has, the more powerful the vampire is.
This presents that there is actually a source of the vampires,
(20:18):
a queen and a king where it all started, and
they've spread it out throughout everything. And Lestat, who was
a character an interview with a vampire who was painted
as a bad guy, now becomes the anti hero sort of.
Who is Hunt, who is first enamored with this queen
but then realizes that she's too powerful and too dangerous
(20:39):
to turn loose on the world. The story telling in
this is amazing, But what it does for the war
of vampires Now we've taken away all of their mysterious weaknesses.
Do they like son? Do they like Son? No, they
don't like the sun at all. In fact, being in
the sun will burn them to death. And whereas the
(21:04):
the allergy the sun. Things like that have have always
been considered in these books. I mean considered that the
sun was dangerous to them in these books. Specifically, if
they are left out in the sun, they will burn
to death. They catch fire and burn. It kills them,
(21:27):
except for the Queen because she is so pure, her
blood is so powerful and anyone who drinks her blood
receives that power which makes them able to walk in
the daylight. And this, of course does just all kinds
of numbers on what we know about vampires. Their cross
isn't going to stop them. Stake to the heart, not
(21:50):
going to do anything. They're just going to come right
back at you. You got to take their head off
and basically burn them. We're going back to old school.
You got to get torches and pitchforks, ladies and gentlemen.
You're not going to get it done with just thoughts
and prayers here, Okay. Now, I think this is important
because silver is mentioned as being the primary weapon for
(22:14):
doing this head cutting off. And when we look at
shows like Supernatural which have a take on vampires as well,
and their take for killing the vampires doesn't really involve
a lot of religious econofy. Yes, the sun weakens them,
but it also is it nearly as important as using
(22:35):
something silver to loop off that freaking head and then
burn the stuff away. The other thing that comes from
Anne Riis's series is the idea of bad blood and
drinking the last drop. So how you become a vampire
is you were given the gift of vampirism by another vampire.
(22:57):
You basically have to drink their blood. But if a
vampire is drinking someone's blood and they drink the last
drop intoim, they take on their own death. Like, killing
somebody through vampirism is dangerous as hell, you know, now,
getting the way with drinking somebody's blood is dangerous, So
I mean, you've got to kill them, But you can't
(23:17):
kill them by drinking them. You've got to let the
last drop be spilled in some other way, shape or form.
And this I think kind of gives rise to the
idea of a romanticism which is seen in True Blood
of vampires having humans that they feed off of regularly.
Because again, these queen of the dam, the an Rice vampires,
(23:40):
they don't transfer their transfer vampism through the bite. Vampirism
is transferred to the blood, and the idea is is
that they could technically feed off of a human for
evert just by a human giving them just enough blood
(24:03):
to survive every day and then spending a day recouping
that blood, which we know a vampire can survival supposedly
a pint of blood a day, and humans can donate
about a pine of blood a day without really having
any problems. I mean, I think I might be wrong
either way. You know, maybe maybe you need seven get
seven humans. That way, you got a pint every day
and the humans are getting refreshed. Whatever vampires could be living.
(24:25):
Vampires could be living right now in conclaves with six
or seven donors and we wouldn't know it. Wait, I
do know a vampire who's doing that right now. Holy crap. Anyway,
don't worry about it. We're going to be moving on
from this because I want to end this episode by
giving a hot take, well not so much a hot take,
(24:48):
but give me my take on the most recent verse,
the most recent stages to vampire War, and that means
that we've got to go completely in a different direction.
We're going to look at and talk about Yeah, I
can't believe I'm going to do this, guys. Twilight, Yes,
(25:17):
the Twilight series a series of books that came out
in the early two thousands where vampires were a little
bit different. First of all, they had much harder skin.
There was no allergies to religious economy or anything like that.
Killing a vampire was ten times harder. They could go
out in the daylight. But the only problem is is
(25:38):
that because of how they were and their beauty, going
out in the daylight made them sparkle. Yeah, it made
them sparkle. Now, this was because their skin was hard
like diamonds. They were also called to the touch. Of course,
(25:59):
vampires were deceased humans. All vampires were deceased humans who
were somehow given the gift of vampiresm to one way
or another, some because it was a mercy, because they
were dying of some kind of illness, like Edward. Others
it was kind of forced on them, or it was
given to them just to see what the hell they
(26:20):
would do, like Alice. And while a lot of people
really love this take on vampires and this love story
between Edward and Bella, you know, Edward is two hundred
years old and Bella, who's sixteen. Yeah, we're not going
to talk about that or the love story between Jacob
and Bella, because Jacob is really in love with Bella's
(26:43):
unborn child. Yeah, I don't worry. We're not going to
talk about how weird I find the story, because honestly,
I read all four books and I did enjoy them
until I looked at them too hard. And then I
saw the movies and I had to ask myself, what
the hell was these people thinking. Not to diss Robert Pattinson,
(27:07):
because I think he's been great and every other thing
he's been in, but the Twilight movies they did a
really bad job. I'm sorry, guys, but we're not here
to talk about the movies. We're here to talk about
the vampires. This is a completely new take on the creatures.
They're faster, they're stronger, they're smarter, they're more durable, but
(27:28):
they also know that they can't fit in with humans,
so they have to hide amongst us. They live in
groups and conclaves, and they've even discovered that they can
get away with feeding on ANPs. They don't need humans
to survive. Now, this is something that we found in
the original lore, that vampires didn't need humans to survive.
(27:52):
Just some of them preferred it. So here we have
an interesting and new take that still ties back into
the lore, but it changes it a bit because while
they are paler, they're also beautiful, which is something that
the lore said they have, that they have the look
of death and yet it is beautiful. They are stronger,
(28:12):
they are faster, but it completely removes the weaknesses of
religious iconofy. Certain objects would things like that these guys,
you're only getting rid of them with a to the head.
You know, you're not getting rid of them with a
stake to the heart. And in fact, the reason there
are were wolves in these books is because there are
(28:33):
vampires in these books, and it's whenever vampires come around,
the were wolves come around to stop them. I love
that thing. You don't see that a lot in other media,
except for instance, in the movie Van Helsing, where you
find out that vampires and over wolves are like arch
(28:54):
enemies and one can kill the other and blah blah
blah blah blah, and of course the Underworld movies where
you find out that vampires and werewolves are descended from
brothers and there's a third brother who is like all
kinds of crazy stuff. We're not even going to talk
about folks. That has been today's episode. I hope you
like my little quick deep dive through vampires in the
(29:16):
media and the lore that attaches to them. Next week,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the
different types of empiric creatures that are being lumped in
with vampires that aren't actually vampires, and see if these
differences in the media can actually be traced back to
the lore of different creatures. You know, they might be
(29:40):
saying their vampires, but are these vampires we're seeing on
our screens and our books, TVs and video games. Tune
in for the next episode or we'll be covering that
in part three. I am Jonathan Phoenix, Carolina Storyteller. I
want to thank you guys for being here with me today.
Thank you for listening to the show. Remember you can
support this show by going to pay than on dot
(30:00):
com forward slash the Carolina Storyteller. If you're on YouTube
and you've watched this far and you liked this video,
remember to hit the like, share, and subscribe buttons. And
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(30:22):
Store Carolina Storyteller's Prini Fi pop up store. That's it
for today's show, and as always, stay spooking my friends.
We'll see you next time.
Okay. On The Carolina Storyteller, we're gonna be covering part
two of our in Them look at Vampires. This time
we're gonna be looking at vampires in the media, So
stay tuned. This is the Carolina Storyteller.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Dark Ones were shadows, cream stories rise as the
camp rees shot, the voice of Haunting through.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
With every sale, He's fence off echoes.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Whispers to night sauty by the fire, light of the light,
the shot lot of Storyteller joy through the story Campasy,
Fangels of Darkness, a Niety, the Night of the Nights.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Welcome folks to the Carolina Storyteller. I am your storyteller,
Jonathan Boenix. Thanks for being here with me. Remember, if
you want to support this show, you can go to
Carolina too. You can go to Patreon dot com forts Lastly,
the Carolina Storyteller showing up for just a dollar support
the show get lots of cool stuff behind the scenes
information and things like that. Plus you can get heads
(01:25):
up information on our other show down on the Black
Raven Chronicles. The audio drama Episode four being come out
really soon in episode five already in production. But let's
get started last week or last episode, should I say,
because it's not been a week, has it. We were
talking about vampires, you know, those bloodsucking, evil, spiteful creatures
(01:48):
that haunt all of your dreams. I know, I sound
like I'm talking about politicians. I swear I'm not. I'm
talking about vampires, Okay. And we found out that vampires
are actually really from Eastern and in southeastern Europe. Are
from places like Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, Trannsylvania, a lot of
Anias or Austria. Basically, if it ended in Ea, there
(02:11):
was a possibility that there was a vampire that was
born there. They also originated in the fourteen hundred. Well yeah,
in the fourteen hundreds, so back in the thirteenth fourteenth century,
this is where these things came out. There were actually
people that were accused of being vampires before Vlad Tepesh. Yes,
there was somebody before him. We found out that vampires
(02:32):
are considered to be reanimated corpses. Though some say that
vampires can be born, some say that vampires can mate,
and that there is the possibility of a vampire having
a child with a human and that is called a drothmer.
And it doesn't matter if it's a male vampire and
a female human, or a female vampire and a male human.
(02:53):
They can all have babies. So I guess what I'm
saying is is vampires aren't too different from us, but
they are because they try to kill us and hunt us. Right, well,
I don't know. Maybe this time we're gonna be talking
about vampires in the media, how they've been represented to us,
and how we see them today, and what brought on
their rise to popularity. Now, well, there were books about
(03:16):
vampires that came out before the first one we're going
to start off with. And the first place we're going
to go is we're going to talk about this guy
right here. Yeah, you probably know. You've probably seen this.
This is Bram Stoker's Dracula. This is the movie adaptation
(03:40):
starring Gary Oldman Keanu Reeves. It is a great movie,
I think, and the effects on it were wonderful. Ran
a little long, but in this story, blad Tepesh, Count Dracula,
has decided that he wants to leave Transylvania. So he
contacts a agency in London and he wants to move
(04:00):
to London. They send someone out, Jonathan Harker, and when
he sees Jonathan Harker. He sees a picture of Jonathan's
beloved Mina, who Blad believes is the reincarnation of his wife,
which is why he cursed God, which is why God
cursed him back to turn him into a vampire. And
so he immediately wants to go and find Mina, and
(04:22):
of course there's this whole thing where they chase him
back to Transylvania and then Mina cuts his head off.
This led to Mina Harker as a vampire appearing in
another movie that was released at the same time, The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and this is based off of
a comic book movie off of a comic book I'm
Sorry of the same name, in which basically a lot
(04:46):
of our book characters lead characters were put together to
form kind of a superhero team. You had the Invisible Man,
Doctor Jekyline, Mister Hyde, Captain Demo, Alexander Quartermain Tom Sawyer,
and Mina Harker Dracula's bride. So Dragula had a major
(05:11):
influence on media. This was what started romanticizing vampires and
brought vampires out into the life. And while this movie
was not made until the nineties. There had been many
other adaptations of it, including one starring the late Christopher Lee.
If you don't know who Christopher Lee is, I don't
(05:33):
know what to tell you. The man has been in everything.
I'm just saying. He was a Bond villain. He was
saramonbo White and Lord of the Wings. This man had
a heavy metal album. Okay. This man is literally the
cousin of Ian Fleming, the guy that wrote James Bond
(05:56):
and is the basis for James Bond the stories he
used to tell his cousin. That's what Ian Fleming bassed
James Bond off of. But hey, you know, you don't
need to know who Christopher Lee is or know that
he once played Dracula as well. Dracula has appeared in
so many versions that I could do an entire episode
(06:16):
on just Dracula alone, not least of which being the
recent adaptation anime of Castlevania that was seen on Netflix,
where we see a very different Dracula from what we've
seen in most other forms of media. He is very melancholy.
He is kind of believes that he's above humanity. He
(06:39):
doesn't need to worry about them until they piss him. Off,
and honestly, he's more of a relatable character in that
than I think in any other form of media. So
if you haven't seen the Castlevania anime, I highly recommend.
It's a great show and they have a great depiction
of Dracula. Now, moving on from Count Dracula, I want
(07:02):
to go to something a little bit different because this
is another vampire has a similar name. But this is
just to show how vast and wide it is. This
is coming from the nineteen late nineteen eighties early nineteen
nineties allowed me to present you Count Ducula. The Count
(07:24):
Ducula was a TV when I was a TV show
when I was a kid growing up. He was a
vampire who had been resting for a thousand years and
his servant Igor and I can't remember her name, whatever
her name was, went to bring him back, but she
accidentally grabbed kick up instead of blood. So Count Ducula
(07:45):
came back not as a blood sucking vampire, but as
a vegetarian. And so while he was still being hunted
by a van helsing who wanted him dead, all he
wanted was broccoli. The man just wanted broccoli. Why were
you hunting him down? Was a great show as a kid,
and it was it was a way to kind of
make vampires a little make fun of vampires a little bit.
(08:09):
Count Ducula and Count Dracula had a lot of things
in common. First of all, their version of sunlight, a
version of holy items, the whole thing that a stake
through the heart would kill them. They also had the
ability to turn into mist, turn into a bat, you know,
shape change. So they really matched each other. And that's
why I brought Count Dukula up as the second form
(08:31):
of vampires in media, because it really did show that
there was kind of a pattern, was what they were
saying about vampires. Now, remember last week we talked about
the legend of vampires is that vampires did have an
aversion of sunlight. They had to sleep during the day
because they could not be out during the light. They
(08:54):
also had an aversion to religious Econofy. Now that transformed
to an aversion to Christian I confee, which, of course,
because glad Tepis was a Christian believing person when he
became Dracula, the cross is what held power against him.
It was the vampire's beliefs in the Iconofy that made
(09:16):
it so powerful, which makes me wonder if there was
a Jewish vampire, would it cross not work on them?
I know, we'll have to research that later. It's coming
next week. We're not doing that now. But of course
Count Tukula had the same issues. So we're getting a
pattern here, but that pattern kind of goes off the
(09:37):
rails a little bit when we go to our next
one up on the presentation list, And this one is
one of my favorite vampire movies of all times. If
you haven't seen it, I don't know what the hell
you were doing with your life. Boo boo I'm talking about.
And let me get this up right here, this right here,
(10:03):
so that you all can see what I'm talking about,
ladies and gentlemen. I mean, the strait is so hard
sometimes we're gonna be looking at nineteen eighty seven's The
Lost Voice. Love this movie and love the way that
it paints off of these vampires, not only how it
paints the vampires, but how the vampires are created, because
(10:26):
this is kind of the first one. Granted, in Dracula's version,
if you're bitten by a vampire, you become a vampire.
But that kind of would be ridiculous because all a
vampire would have to do is go and bite everybody
in the town, and then they'd all be vampires. We'd
have an army of freaking vampires. It didn't make any
sense in Dracula and this one, it's the first time
(10:48):
that we see that you have to drink of the
vampire's blood or whatever it is. It's I'm assuming it's
the vampire's blood. It never really says what's in the bottle,
but that's what we get. And the Lost Boys two
brothers moved to Santa Clara, California, which is the myrtal
capital of the world at the time, where they're forced
(11:09):
to kind of relocate into this place that just isn't
like what they're used to. And while they're there, the
older brother, Eric meets up with David and his gang
of motorcycle ride bad boys, and David takes a liking
to him, or so it seems. When Eric realizes what's
(11:30):
happening to him, he tries to fight back against David
and protect the beautiful love young woman whose name I
can't remember, and the younger one who hasn't fully turned
into a vampire yet from David and the other Lost Boys.
There is a entire battle that takes place, and during
this Corey Feldman and Corey Haynes play vampire hunters and
(11:53):
they are hunting for these vampires, and they're telling everybody
how to fight the vampires. You got to have crosses,
you've got to have holy water, you gotta have garlic,
you gotta have wooden steaks. Well, this movie kind of
throws that on its head because in the culinative scene,
the one who they think is the head vampire comes
in and they present all these things to him, they
(12:17):
invite him in, and none of it works. The holy
water in his drink doesn't affect him, the garlic on
his pasta doesn't affect him. The mirror he's got a reflection,
the cross doesn't hurt him. None of it affects him.
(12:39):
We find out later in the movie that's because he
was invited into the home. And those things only work
in your home. If the vampire comes in uninvited, you
can't use them against them once you invite the vampire.
In so very interesting twist the lore, because that's not
what's in the lore. Supposedly, if you believe in religious iconopy,
(13:01):
that belief is what gives it power, not inviting them
in or anything like that. And as far as reflections,
there was never anything about reflections with a vampire. That
was all having to do with sober being considered holy
and being something that they were allergic to. So remember
that's not in the lore. So the Lost Boys. While
(13:23):
it is a great in classic movie, it also does
a great job of turning the lore a little bit
on its head. Now, moving from the silber screen, we
are going to visit the anime world just a little
bit with this next piece. It's one of my favorite
movies of all time. And while it doesn't focus on
(13:46):
a vampire as the main character, it goes involve vampires
in specific a vampire hunter, and I'm talking about Vampire
Hunter d This anime came out in the early nine
eighteen eighties. I saw it as a child and I
just fell in love with it. D Rome's a post
(14:08):
apocalyptic world, riding a metal horse hunting down vampires who
have basically taken over the world. We screwed up and
the vampires ended up taking over after we screwed up,
and now they kind of run everything and humans are
basically enslaved to them. And d is kind of putting
a stop to that. He ends up being found out
(14:32):
to be a draftmere and we talked about that last week.
Draftmir are the half breed children of vampires and humans,
and his father is none other than Vlad Dracula, and
that is who he's hunting throughout the entire movie. And
if you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It's a
great movie. But in this one, the draft mir gets
(14:55):
a lot of exposure the idea that he is stronger
in humans, faster than humans, more powerful than humans, but
at the same time, is just a step away from
being consumed by that same hunger that creates vampires. And
it starts to introduce the idea that vampires have this
(15:18):
insatiable hunger, which wasn't really introduced. Yes, it was introduced
that vampires fed and that they drank blood, but it
was never this insatiable hunger. It was never something that
they couldn't control. But now that's starting to be introduced
into the media. It's not in Dracula. You know, Count
Dukia isn't insatiably hungry for veggies, but he likes veggies,
(15:41):
I mean, but there's no problem with it. We don't
see that in the Lost Boys. They're not insatiably hungry.
They're just killing for fun. They're just having fun. But
Vampire Hunter D is dealing with vampires insatiable hungers and
having to fight his own, not unlike another vampire hunter
that appears in comic books that we may have known of,
(16:02):
which is Blade, the vampire Hunter from anime and movies.
I want to take a trip over to TV. Now,
there are a lot of options for TV. You have Supernatural,
you have this show that came out not too long
ago called oh what was it? True Blood? Yeah, you
(16:25):
know which one I'm talking about. Honestly, if you've read
the books, those weren't about vampires. Okay, I'm just saying
there's a reason he said, oh sook it? Yeah, I
read the book. Okay, so true Blood we kind of
(16:46):
left off of this list. But I did need something
from TV, and I actually picked something that might be
a hot take as representing vampires because again, it doesn't
show them in the typical light. And that's gonna be
American Horror Story Hotel. So if you haven't seen the
(17:08):
fifth season of American Horror Story, it's about vampires running
a hotel that's basically what it is. Granted, there's a
lot of other things going on, just like any other
but we're gonna focus on the vampire aspect. These creatures,
one of them has been alive for centuries and they're
(17:28):
almost impossible to kill. They can kind of walk out
in the sun. It doesn't hurt them per se, it's
uncomfortable for them. There's no aversion to garlic, no religious econofy,
no mirrors or anything like. Basically, if you're gonna kill them,
you're gonna need just be really strong and really fast
(17:49):
and have a really good weapon and bleed them out. Honestly,
other than that, they're just eternal beans that like to
drink blood and make me believe that all of my
thoughts about sex with Lady Gaga are absolutely true. Sorry,
this isn't my stand up segment, so I'm not going
to tell you what that was, but just yeah, yeah, Honestly,
(18:14):
I believe Lady Gaga was actually a vampire in this
and that ever since they've been trying to cover it
up because too much was rebuild. This was supposed to
be vampires actually rebuilding themself. I'm sorry, this is real life.
There really are vampires in a hotel in Los Angeles,
and occasionally they kill people. It's really happening. I can't.
You can't tell me otherwise it's true. If you haven't
(18:35):
seen the fifth season, I really recommend watching it because
what we find out about vampires is is that a
lot of the legends in the myths and the lore
are kind of bs. The Countess has been around for years.
He was turned by somebody who was turned by somebody. Again,
this isn't a human waking up all of a suddenly
(18:56):
and being a vampire. This is someone who was given
a choice, was made for them to be an undead
and it has continued on for years and years and
years and years. Now, moving on from the small screen,
we're gonna go back to the silver screen and we're
(19:17):
going to talk about another version of Vampires that has
presented from another author. And we're gonna go to my
favorite movie in this series. I don't care what you say,
it's the best movie of the series. Interview of Vampire
was a joke. Just get over it, okay, Because Queen
(19:38):
of the Dam was the ship's net, all right, Aliyah
Stewart Townsend. It was just awesome. I love this, but
it gave us an entirely new legend of vampires. First
of all, there is the chance that vampires could have
human family. Not only that, but that vampires the whole
(19:58):
religious economy thing not going to think. The only way
to kill a vampire is to cut its head off,
and even then you have to practically drain the blood
of the vampire before you can do it up. The
more blood the vampire has, the more powerful the vampire is.
This presents that there is actually a source of the vampires,
(20:18):
a queen and a king where it all started, and
they've spread it out throughout everything. And Lestat, who was
a character an interview with a vampire who was painted
as a bad guy, now becomes the anti hero sort of.
Who is Hunt, who is first enamored with this queen
but then realizes that she's too powerful and too dangerous
(20:39):
to turn loose on the world. The story telling in
this is amazing, But what it does for the war
of vampires Now we've taken away all of their mysterious weaknesses.
Do they like son? Do they like Son? No, they
don't like the sun at all. In fact, being in
the sun will burn them to death. And whereas the
(21:04):
the allergy the sun. Things like that have have always
been considered in these books. I mean considered that the
sun was dangerous to them in these books. Specifically, if
they are left out in the sun, they will burn
to death. They catch fire and burn. It kills them,
(21:27):
except for the Queen because she is so pure, her
blood is so powerful and anyone who drinks her blood
receives that power which makes them able to walk in
the daylight. And this, of course does just all kinds
of numbers on what we know about vampires. Their cross
isn't going to stop them. Stake to the heart, not
(21:50):
going to do anything. They're just going to come right
back at you. You got to take their head off
and basically burn them. We're going back to old school.
You got to get torches and pitchforks, ladies and gentlemen.
You're not going to get it done with just thoughts
and prayers here, Okay. Now, I think this is important
because silver is mentioned as being the primary weapon for
(22:14):
doing this head cutting off. And when we look at
shows like Supernatural which have a take on vampires as well,
and their take for killing the vampires doesn't really involve
a lot of religious econofy. Yes, the sun weakens them,
but it also is it nearly as important as using
(22:35):
something silver to loop off that freaking head and then
burn the stuff away. The other thing that comes from
Anne Riis's series is the idea of bad blood and
drinking the last drop. So how you become a vampire
is you were given the gift of vampirism by another vampire.
(22:57):
You basically have to drink their blood. But if a
vampire is drinking someone's blood and they drink the last
drop intoim, they take on their own death. Like, killing
somebody through vampirism is dangerous as hell, you know, now,
getting the way with drinking somebody's blood is dangerous, So
I mean, you've got to kill them, But you can't
(23:17):
kill them by drinking them. You've got to let the
last drop be spilled in some other way, shape or form.
And this I think kind of gives rise to the
idea of a romanticism which is seen in True Blood
of vampires having humans that they feed off of regularly.
Because again, these queen of the dam, the an Rice vampires,
(23:40):
they don't transfer their transfer vampism through the bite. Vampirism
is transferred to the blood, and the idea is is
that they could technically feed off of a human for
evert just by a human giving them just enough blood
(24:03):
to survive every day and then spending a day recouping
that blood, which we know a vampire can survival supposedly
a pint of blood a day, and humans can donate
about a pine of blood a day without really having
any problems. I mean, I think I might be wrong
either way. You know, maybe maybe you need seven get
seven humans. That way, you got a pint every day
and the humans are getting refreshed. Whatever vampires could be living.
(24:25):
Vampires could be living right now in conclaves with six
or seven donors and we wouldn't know it. Wait, I
do know a vampire who's doing that right now. Holy crap. Anyway,
don't worry about it. We're going to be moving on
from this because I want to end this episode by
giving a hot take, well not so much a hot take,
(24:48):
but give me my take on the most recent verse,
the most recent stages to vampire War, and that means
that we've got to go completely in a different direction.
We're going to look at and talk about Yeah, I
can't believe I'm going to do this, guys. Twilight, Yes,
(25:17):
the Twilight series a series of books that came out
in the early two thousands where vampires were a little
bit different. First of all, they had much harder skin.
There was no allergies to religious economy or anything like that.
Killing a vampire was ten times harder. They could go
out in the daylight. But the only problem is is
(25:38):
that because of how they were and their beauty, going
out in the daylight made them sparkle. Yeah, it made
them sparkle. Now, this was because their skin was hard
like diamonds. They were also called to the touch. Of course,
(25:59):
vampires were deceased humans. All vampires were deceased humans who
were somehow given the gift of vampiresm to one way
or another, some because it was a mercy, because they
were dying of some kind of illness, like Edward. Others
it was kind of forced on them, or it was
given to them just to see what the hell they
(26:20):
would do, like Alice. And while a lot of people
really love this take on vampires and this love story
between Edward and Bella, you know, Edward is two hundred
years old and Bella, who's sixteen. Yeah, we're not going
to talk about that or the love story between Jacob
and Bella, because Jacob is really in love with Bella's
(26:43):
unborn child. Yeah, I don't worry. We're not going to
talk about how weird I find the story, because honestly,
I read all four books and I did enjoy them
until I looked at them too hard. And then I
saw the movies and I had to ask myself, what
the hell was these people thinking. Not to diss Robert Pattinson,
(27:07):
because I think he's been great and every other thing
he's been in, but the Twilight movies they did a
really bad job. I'm sorry, guys, but we're not here
to talk about the movies. We're here to talk about
the vampires. This is a completely new take on the creatures.
They're faster, they're stronger, they're smarter, they're more durable, but
(27:28):
they also know that they can't fit in with humans,
so they have to hide amongst us. They live in
groups and conclaves, and they've even discovered that they can
get away with feeding on ANPs. They don't need humans
to survive. Now, this is something that we found in
the original lore, that vampires didn't need humans to survive.
(27:52):
Just some of them preferred it. So here we have
an interesting and new take that still ties back into
the lore, but it changes it a bit because while
they are paler, they're also beautiful, which is something that
the lore said they have, that they have the look
of death and yet it is beautiful. They are stronger,
(28:12):
they are faster, but it completely removes the weaknesses of
religious iconofy. Certain objects would things like that these guys,
you're only getting rid of them with a to the head.
You know, you're not getting rid of them with a
stake to the heart. And in fact, the reason there
are were wolves in these books is because there are
(28:33):
vampires in these books, and it's whenever vampires come around,
the were wolves come around to stop them. I love
that thing. You don't see that a lot in other media,
except for instance, in the movie Van Helsing, where you
find out that vampires and over wolves are like arch
(28:54):
enemies and one can kill the other and blah blah
blah blah blah, and of course the Underworld movies where
you find out that vampires and werewolves are descended from
brothers and there's a third brother who is like all
kinds of crazy stuff. We're not even going to talk
about folks. That has been today's episode. I hope you
like my little quick deep dive through vampires in the
(29:16):
media and the lore that attaches to them. Next week,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the
different types of empiric creatures that are being lumped in
with vampires that aren't actually vampires, and see if these
differences in the media can actually be traced back to
the lore of different creatures. You know, they might be
(29:40):
saying their vampires, but are these vampires we're seeing on
our screens and our books, TVs and video games. Tune
in for the next episode or we'll be covering that
in part three. I am Jonathan Phoenix, Carolina Storyteller. I
want to thank you guys for being here with me today.
Thank you for listening to the show. Remember you can
support this show by going to pay than on dot
(30:00):
com forward slash the Carolina Storyteller. If you're on YouTube
and you've watched this far and you liked this video,
remember to hit the like, share, and subscribe buttons. And
of course, if you want to get some of the
Carolina Storyteller merchandise or the Bealmont or the not just
paranormal merchandise. Follow the link down there that'll tell you
where to go to get our merchandise at the Carolina
(30:22):
Store Carolina Storyteller's Prini Fi pop up store. That's it
for today's show, and as always, stay spooking my friends.
We'll see you next time.
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