i actually just watched that movie Open Water last night on Showtime... the one about the couple who goes scubadiving..and they get left out in the middle of the ocean....

it wasnt the best made movie... but... but the fear of "if that happened to me" stayed with me....

if the situation is relatable it changes the experience completely... same with Blair Witch...

the fear you get when watching something like Alien for the first time...and a movie like Blair Witch.... is completely different. it stays with you...


that said i have always enjoyed isolation horror flicks... i'd love to write one myself eventually....

I just thought of two really creepy stories yesterday.  One would be called The Body Farm and the second either Fear or The Fear Room.  I can't wait to write them!  They are going into my writing file as I have other already at the front of the line.

I'm so excited!!

Anyway back to the subject.  Thanks for sharing about all three of those movies.  Your assessment George is what I fear in my own scripts, lack of character depth, as you know, so I am going over Last One Standing this weekend and I am going to fix that.

Sara

Can you say a little more about your story ideas?

Sure.  I'll send a PM to anyone who wants to read them.

Okay, since its so quiet I will try to stir the topic with a new genre within horror.

What does everyone think of Vampire fiction?  Do you have a favorite one, or do you hate them all.  What makes them good and bad.

The ones that I hate are the ones where they make the Vampires stupid.  Like they sit there and hiss, ooo so scary....not.  The ones that I love are the ones that you can put yourself in the film.  If you are sitting in a dark room with your back to the emptiness, you can feel like whatever is stalking the character in the movie is stalking you.

I can remember when I was 12 I watched my first vampire movie.  It was shortly after I had read Bram Stroker's Dracula and it was on.  It was the black and white one, but the suspense it carried and such, was rather thrilling.  I have loved vampire fiction ever since I first read Dracula.  

My problem is I am often disappointed in the portrayal of vampires, I have my own idea about them and the films rarely live up to my vision of vampires.  I have my own vampire series planned and it definitely follows my idea about how I think they should be.

The blade series.  I liked the first one, the second one not so much, and the third one was better than the first.  Still I didn't like most of the protrayal of vampires, it wasn't the worst but it could have been a lot better.  Granted they wanted you to absolutely hate vampires.

Interview with a Vampire and Queen of the Damned were pretty good.  (On a side note I was suprised when I discovered Anne Rice wrote The Mummy.  Only found out like 2 months ago.  hmmm)

The vampires in those had personalities they weren't just killing machines out for blood. There was a whole society a code of ethics and different vampires had some different abilities.

I quite like the masquerade book series.   I haven't read many of them, but the ones I did read were well written.

I find I am more disappointed in movies of vampires than I am of books of Vampires.  Probably because the books go through a tighter strainer than the movies as there are so many people wanting to write vampire fiction.

I haven't watched all of Dracula 2000, has anyone?  Was it any good?  Dracula 3000 that was...I didn't much care for it but then again I didn't get to watch all of it.  The robot chick pissed me off.  Her character was so stock...grrr...yeah.

Van Helsing (sp) was okay.  The monster characters were overacted in my opinion which lowered the grade quality.  I didn't like the dracula character he was over the top.  Had they toned it down and made it more natural and him less passionate I guess would be the term, I think it would have greatly improved it.  The graphics are good, I like how they portrayed the werewolves.

Mr. Hyde was done well in my opinion.  So mostly the vampires.

I have heard Carmillia is pretty good from a friend and vampire finatic.  Haven't watched it yet.

I have not watched Dracula vs. Frankenstein, who wins anyway?

Sara

Oh, I forgot about Lost Boys.  That was pretty good.  How  they changed their feet to look like bats was interesting.

I haven't seen either of those.  Could you elaborate a little more on what they are about?

Sara

After watching several vampire movies, I got annoyed because they always did basically the same thing. That's when I rewrite the vampire history and created a new sub-genre with the Fempiror Chronicles which is so far removed in many ways from the vampire myth, it isn't even a horror flick.

Sorry, you got on vampires. Had to say something.

Dusk Til Dawn is just another vampire movie where a group of people get themselves stuck in a vampire place and have to survive until morning while all the while being bombarded by the vampires who live there. That's how most vmapirs movies go. Bram Stoker's Dracula is, of course, an excepion being that it is more dramatic than scary, though the 1992 coppola film took a huge number of liberties with the original material.

[quote=dogglebe]

First of all, you need characters that the viewers care about, which mean character development.  Too many times, I've seen a horror movie where the killer kills a two dimensional character and I sit there and ask, "So?"

This is why I love Hitchcock movies.  Specifically Psycho.  He set up the Janet Leigh character beautifully before disposing of her.  Who'd have thunk that she was gonna get wasted.  I like my flesh and blood victims to first be flesh and blood characters.

What horror films in the last decade or two have succeeded in great character development before they go bye-bye?

My favorite vampire movies are, in order:

Interview with a vampire

Bram Stoker's Dracula (F.F. Coppola)

Shadow of the vampire (John Malkovich)

I think all three, espesially Shadow presented a new take on the genre.

Well, that quote from Dogglebe didn't turn out like I wanted.  How do I get quotes in the box?

I saw both versions of the Fog and prefer Carpenter's version.  Had high hopes for the '05 remake but was disappointed.  They improved some of the story line, but where were the chills?  The trailer was better than the movie.

I have mixed feelings about the Mothman Prophecies.  A lot of potential and sone eeries scenes, but something was missing.  

On the topic of vampire films,  I have to say something about Grave of the Vampire and the Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck.  

Grave is cheezy in production values and slows in the story's middle, but I love to hate Michael Pataki as the vampire.  He is what I think vampires would be if they existed:  ugly, smelly, humorless and like a shark in a feeding frenzy.  He rapes, he kills and is just a nasty piece of work.

Vampire Killers is a horridy, with the filmmaker Roman Polanski starring, along with then wife, Sharon Tate.  It's not a favorite, but it's worth seeing.  Gothic and great camp horror scenes.

Near Dark I love for its characters.  Such a motley crew of blood suckers.  And written and director by Kathryn Bigelow, whom I love.

The movie was called  "The Hunger" it came out in the 80's

George, its no problem really, if something you wrote applies to the topic, talk away, besides I wasn't thinking about that, I was going to ask you if I could read them lol.

My vampire series are from the vampire point of view not the victims, well part of the human's perspective as well but only because they are intertwined with the plot and aren't going to die.

Tomson, that's how I feel about a lot of the vampire fiction out there.  The vampires end up detracting instead of adding that much more to the story.  And they usually dispatch of the vampires so easily in the end.  What a shame.

Abe, you are right, not many develop their characters, I am striving to change that.  There are a few though.  I can think of The Haunting, killed off two fairly well developed characters as well as developed the ones already dead.   The Ring, I thought the guy was pretty good before he died.  I'm trying to think of some others, I know they are out there, just not very common.

I haven't seen the Shadow one.  I will have to watch it.

Abe you have to close the quote tags [/QUOTE]  You deleted it by accident, you can go back and fix it though.

I had high hopes for The Fog as well.  You aren't the only one to think that of The Mothman Prophecies, I have been eharing that a lot.  I haven't watched the last three on your list either.

Yeah, in Shadow of the Vampire, John Malkovich plays Nosferatu.He is plucked to play the original Dracula, the one that Bella Lugosi made famous.Except the spin is, is that he is a real vampire!

It was great, and I think that John Malkovich was nominated for an Oscar but I'm not sure.

Check it out.

Oh and what about "Once Bitten" anyone remember that one?

Quoted from IceRose George, its no problem really, if something you wrote applies to the topic, talk away, besides I wasn't thinking about that, I was going to ask you if I could read them lol.

Feel free to read away. They're under the series heading. When I was working on it, I saw several vampire movies and started noticing the trends that most tended to have and it just got old. As a result, I'm currently not much of a fan of vampire movies.