h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Like that?

I just picked your name out of the who's on line list because of the thing about Vampires. They can be kinda cool. Have you read nancy Collins' Sonja Blue trilogy? Or George Martins Fevre Dream (my personal favourite vampire novel ever), or any of Tom Holland's excellent novels about Lord Byron?

hello there and thanks for the msg.

well to be honest hun i can'nt say i have read any of those but will be on the look out for them now as still trying to find the ann rice vampire chronicles books as got the film interview with the vampire which is a film but there's always more in the book

take it easy

The Sonja Blue stuff may be out of print at the moment, though it *may* be available in the states.

Fevre Dream is the most wonderful book, set aboard a Mississippi riverboat at the time that Mark Twain was a river pilot. I really can't reccomend it highly enough.

hello and hey for the book recommendations as i'll look out for them.

so apart from the books what else about the vampire culture do you like and how long have you been into them?

i love the old hammer dracula films with christopher lee as in my opinion he was one of the better people to have played the count.

anyway take care

I don't know that I would consider myself a vampire fan per se, though as a cultural phenomenon they do interest me. I love horror films of all sorts, and there are probably more better vampire movies than there are good werewolf movies, for example. Lee does make a good Dracula, if only because he has aristocratic bearing. Mt personal favourite renditions of the count, though, remain Max Shreck's Orlok from the 1922 Nosferatu and Louis Jourdan in the little seen but excellent BBC production from the early 80's.

Some vampire stuff I find quite tedious. I'm not (and I know this is heretical) a great fan of Anne Rice or Poppy Brite. I think though, at it's best, Vampiric mythology is a fascinating example of a folklore that has remeained relevant, in a way that much of it has not. There is something powerful in the image of a creature that hunts humans (after all, we have no natural predators) that does disturb us.

I've also done a fair bit of White Wolf gaming in my time, though I preferred Changeling and Werewolf to Vampire...

hmmmm some interesting comment you made there and your absolutely right there about there being more good vampire than werewolf movies but an american werwolf in london was a rather good one i thought.

to be honest the very old vampire movies such as the one you mentioned and also the bela lugosi one's don't really appeal to me that much as i found them tedious and unwatchable.

when you say you have done some white wolf gaming do you mean you have actually hunted them down?

Oh heavens no - in fact a few years back I was involved (through a friend through White Wolf) in an internet campaign to stop the illegal hunting of Wlves in Canada.

White Wolf are a role playing company, whose most famous product is Vampire the Masquerade, in which the players play vampires. Very gothic and quite dark...

I adore American Werewolf (Though it has just occurred to me that I need to replace it as my ex has our copy...). The first Howling movie is a lot of fun, and Dog Soldiers is a little gem. Brotherhood of the Wolf isn't strictly speaking a werewolf movie but it is great fun and well worth watching...

One vampire movie that I always recommend to people is the strange but very likeable 'Sundown : The Vampire in Retreat' a sort of vampire comedy romance western. It's wonderful.

opppps ...when you said white wolf gaming i pressumed you mean'nt the hunting of them as i was gonna say that's abit mean aint it as the wolf is such a beautiful majestic creature and one of the most misunderstood at times.

well i must say i've never heared of that company but their gaming concept sounds very fun indeed.

yeah the first howling was quite good as the other just got kinda stupid after that but hey that can happen with most sequals and i think i vaguely remmember that sundown vampire in retreat.

I don't think I can think of any franchise where the quality of the movie has gone up after the first movie (Though X2 is actually a better movie than the original, imho.)

hello again bud.

erm i'm not sure what movie x2 is so forgive me my ignorence if i don't comment on that

well i thought blade 2 was just as good as the first and also the second movie in the alien trilogy was quite good aswell but yes your right as seldom is there a sequal that's just as good or on par with the first.

Sorry - X2 seems to be the title under which they are marketing X-Men 2...I guess they think it sounds flashy or summat.

Blade II is an odd movie, but I like Guillermo Del Toro's films (Kronos (a very nice Mexican Vampire story, as it happens), Mimic, Blade II, Devil's Backbone.) next year he brings us Hellboy, which ought to be a scream.

Aliens 2 is a film I have a love hate relationship - I actually prefer the original cinema cinema version to the alleged 'Special edition', so haven't be able to watch it in years...

ahhhhh now i know which movie you mean and i could'nt comment hun as i've never seen the first

mimic was an excellent film as was final destination even though that's not a horror horror per se and i actually don't mind the second alien as it's on tonight on channel four so i shall be watching that and enjoying the chest ripping action

now as for kronos that was a weird movie as it was'nt really a vampire movie as such even though it has some of the vampre themes in it.