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Super Fan Rachel and First Time Watcher Matt make their way episode by episode through the groundbreaking 1990's Canadian vampire cop television show, Forever Knight.
Crime. I don't like it.
Rachel:What? Being able to hear yourself? Yes. I can turn you up. You wanna hear yourself?
Rachel:No.
Meg:Oh, God.
Rachel:No. Okay.
Meg:Why LaCroix? I
Rachel:find I help. It helps me not yell if I can hear myself in my ears. So I usually keep myself quite loud. Matt likes himself turned down.
Meg:Yeah. That seems ideal. I just I
Rachel:Four fingers. You're like 2 whole hands. Don't be afraid of the microphone. You can pull it. It's not an arm.
Rachel:No. It's gonna bite me. Sit where you wanna sit and then pull the microphone to you. Got this. There you go.
Rachel:So close. Like I can't, I can't. Why did I agree to this?
Meg:I thought we would be doing this into space and not record it, like, in an empty room where no one would ever listen. I thought that's how podcasts work.
Rachel:That's oh, okay.
Meg:Yeah. So speaking, a conversation.
Rachel:The whole microphone thing is scary? It's a
Meg:little bit. Yeah. I thought we would just speaking to nothingness.
Rachel:Well, you know, I'm on IMDB now. I don't know if you know that.
Meg:I mean, it is it is a little bit of pressure being in a room with someone who is Internet famous. Yeah. Like, I don't can I look at you?
Rachel:Somebody had to add me because I went on today to, like, well, can I add myself as the cast? Because clearly I am the cast of my podcast. Can I put myself on there? It was quite the process. Like, I formatted, I put host, and it was like, nope.
Rachel:Unless you are literally a character named host, you can't put host. So I had to put, like, self space dash space host. So weird. And it had to go through all kinds of, like, format checks before I could even submit it.
Meg:So as of right now, do they acknowledge that you are the person whose voice is heard on the podcast that they already have accepted into their website.
Rachel:Right now, they just have the podcast up. There's no cast, and there's no plot.
Meg:Okay. So you're you're asking them to be added into that, but as of right now,
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:They only have the show.
Rachel:They have the show. So I have to create myself. So, like, I had to put my name in, and then it was like, oh, you mean this other person who also has your name? And I had to be like, no. I'm an entirely different person.
Meg:I'm your biggest fan, and I found your shed in the woods where you record. Can you hear me? I'm outside the wall.
Rachel:Like, I just Says the person in the shed.
Meg:Oh, yeah. No. Look, I'm not saying I'm not an Internet creep. I did find you on the Internet and warm my way into your life with ripina and flowers.
Rachel:But yeah.
Meg:It's a 2 step process. It is. Ribena, flowers, spreads forever.
Rachel:And then kidneys. Yeah. That's the 4th step.
Meg:I got 2. I don't need them.
Rachel:Yeah. It's fine. You only need 1. And then put just a little closer. No.
Rachel:It's so close. Otherwise, you'll cut in and out.
Meg:What if the whole podcast is just you talking to an unseen, unheard voice? Alright.
Rachel:Are you ready? Not really. Well, too bad, because we've been recording for, like, 6 minutes. Cool. Actually, 5 minutes and 8 seconds.
Meg:Totally usable. Did you get the part about animorphs? We should have an entire discussion about animorphs.
Rachel:We did not. Although that would be fun. There is somebody else doing an episode by episode, like, recap of the Animorphs books.
Meg:Part of me wants to reread them, and part of me is, like, you don't need that much more trauma in your life to remember how traumatized you were at 8 years old.
Rachel:I bet they're still traumatizing. I don't know. I want I want to reread them. I'm gonna reread them probably all in one go, so I'm, like,
Meg:waiting. You're gonna have to let me know if the trauma hits the same way or if it's one of those things where, like, as a kid, you were, like and then as an adult, you're, like, oh, these they all suck. I don't care
Rachel:if they die. I'm betting it's gonna be worse because now I'm, like, oh, these are children, and these are children having to, like, kill people. And yeah.
Meg:I do feel like I forgot how violent and full of despair those books were. Until, like, we're having this conversation and I'm like, oh, yeah. They're, like, they're don't they aren't they just starting high school?
Rachel:Yeah. Beginning of it? They're, like, 13 or 14 at the very beginning.
Meg:Yeah. And they're going up against an alien space army and
Rachel:Yeah. And they're basically, like, almost the entire planet is already lost. You guys are our last hope. You just have to hold the planet for, like, 2 years until the, like, Andalite fleet gets here.
Meg:Do they ever show up?
Rachel:Actually, hear how you're cutting out? That's because you're too far from the microphone.
Meg:Fucking I hate this. I hate why should anyone hear my voice? My voice is
Rachel:so weird. Giraffe of an asshole.
Meg:I know. I know. I know. I make terrible life decisions.
Rachel:There. That's perfect. Very bad life decisions. Pretend you're the nightcrawler.
Meg:I I can't be that horny. The moon
Rachel:and shit. The level of sexuality that comes from that you know what? My favorite part can I be
Meg:honest? Lacroix about Nigel Bennett is that I feel like you could tell me that the age he was when he started recording that show was, like, 29. You could tell me the age he was was 78, and I would believe you both times.
Rachel:Anyway. Yeah.
Meg:He could he could be any age. When I saw, you know, that other podcast that he he liked was it monsters, magic, and mayhem?
Rachel:Yeah. The one yeah. The interview podcast.
Meg:Yeah. Where they did the interview of him, and I saw they were, like, little video clips of him online, and I was, like, you could have aged the 30 years that have happened since the end of that show. You might have been that age the entire I can't tell. I cannot you're, like, it's you somehow you're like the opposite of those people that, like, have been young forever. Yeah.
Meg:You have been, like, 60 since you have been 20. Like, I can't I can't get any kind of a bead on you
Rachel:at all. He's in Shape of Water, and he looks like exactly the same in Shape of Water. And then he was in b wars, and he was actually quite a bit thinner in V Wars than he normally is, and he looked older. And that was the first time I was like, oh, Nigel, have you gotten older?
Meg:Well, yeah. If he I mean, he's not like a big guy to begin with. So if you lose a lot of weight, like, you're gonna look like like a skinny cat wearing a fur coat. Like Yeah.
Rachel:A little bit. And I was like, oh, he's gone. It was like, oh, but then I saw him in The Shape of Water, and I was like, he's exactly the same. Yeah. Which The Shape of Water was basically a forever night, like, for you.
Rachel:I know. I was like, oh, that guy's in forever night. What's that guy's in forever night?
Meg:I do. I I feel like I don't know if I'm allowed to love John Kapalas doing a thick Greek accent. I feel like I should be allowed to like that. He Doesn't he speak Greek? He might.
Meg:He I think he he is Greek. Yeah. He is Greek. But, like, sometimes when he does the accent, it's so thick that I'm like, can you do a hate crime against your own people? Because the level of thickness of this I don't know whether I'm at, like, whether I I would need to be Greek to be allowed to enjoy this as much as I do because it is it is thick.
Meg:He lays it on
Rachel:thick. He's an actor.
Meg:I he is, but he is like, I just you know, when you're listening to something, they're just, like, oh, I I feel like in the fifties, this would have been offensive and someone would have been. Yeah. Let's say. Speaking of which, I didn't realize one of the movies that I was, like, the list that I was watching last night, I was going through like, I was rewatching it to familiarize myself, and I didn't realize that we still had white people doing Indian accents in the eighties. So that was a fun thing.
Meg:I was watching and I was, like, sir? Sir? Sir? What is that? And what Oh,
Rachel:we had that all the way up to the love guru.
Meg:Yeah.
Rachel:Remember The Love Guru, Mike Myers?
Meg:I so this is
Rachel:Even that was a step that was a step too far. Everyone was like, no.
Meg:This is gonna get me Internet canceled. I I actually sort of enjoyed The Love Girl, and I know that makes me a bad bad person, or a good Canadian, maybe. But, like, it's I'm trying to like, isn't he I don't remember the plot very, very well, but, like, isn't he a a white North American child who ends up being, like, adopted by someone in India and growing up in India? So, like, if that's the case, like, you would you would have the accent of the place that you're living. I mean, I agree that, like, they also kind of gave him, like, a false nose that is maybe a little bit racist.
Meg:So, like, maybe they could have maybe they could have not done that. That would have been, you know, better stylistically. But I remember I like, is that is that weird? Do you ever have that where you're like, I remember enjoying this movie and I remember nothing about it.
Rachel:I think that's the entirety of Ace Ventura.
Meg:Yes.
Rachel:Yeah. You're like, wow. I remember thinking that movie was the funniest thing ever and quoting it with my friends.
Meg:Yeah. But I could not tell you the plot. I remember
Rachel:The first one is a giant, like, trans joke. That's what it is. Yeah. But,
Meg:like, I don't remember. I remember that the villain is a trans woman only because there were, like, videos on YouTube talking about it and, like, showing clips and things. But, like, I don't remember what the trans woman did that was her crime that caused Ace Ventura to be involved to investigate. Like, I don't remember. I know the Miami Dolphins are involved.
Meg:I know that in in one of in the sequel, are there is there are there only 2 movies? There might be
Rachel:there might be 10. Ace Ventura and there's Ace Ventura when nature calls, which somehow when nature calls is worse. I Because that's the one where he goes to Africa. Yeah. Yeah.
Meg:I remember he he is he becomes birthed from the backside of a of a rhinoceros. Yeah. That's all I I don't why is he in Africa? What crimes he's a detective. Right?
Meg:So he's, like, solving crimes, maybe? I don't know anything about these movies, but I can close my eyes and visually see Jim Carrey pulling open the rectum of a false rhinoceros Yeah. And, like, birthing his face through.
Rachel:That was the nineties. That's because the rest of it was just a coke dream. Like, everyone was on cocaine. They did some stuff, and there were some funny moments. And you remember the funny moments.
Meg:I do feel like all of nineties culture is just a weird fever dream in my head where I'm like, did I did I imagine that? And then you come back later and you're like, nope. That was a real series of television programs.
Rachel:Yeah. You yeah. Or you don't remember it being that bad, and then you go to watch it and you're like, oh, this is Yes.
Meg:This is terrible. I feel like yeah. I although, I feel like for nineties programs, I don't remember them being such low quality. For eighties programs, I forgot all of the racism and sexism. But, like, the quality is better somehow.
Meg:Like, the production quality was, like, great, but then there's, like, slapping women's asses and raping them, but we're not gonna call it rape and, like, why won't my girlfriend have sex with me? And I'm, like, oh, okay.
Rachel:What show is that?
Meg:I will okay. First off I need context. The fact that I said the eighties, it just all all the eighties movies, obviously. But the things that I'm thinking of specifically are, I used to really enjoy the Revenge of the Nerds movies. I like them so much as a kid.
Meg:And then at some point someone was, like, you know he rapes that woman. And I was, like, oh, yeah. No. He has sex with the girlfriend of one of the jocks while he's wearing I think a Darth Vader helmet and she thinks that he is her boyfriend and I'm like, oh, that is a legitimate crime.
Rachel:Yeah. That's sexual assault. Cool.
Meg:Great. That's like it's it's not even I'm not even being hyperbolic when I say it is textbook assault because, in fact, in a textbook for my criminal law class, there was a very similar case where, like, someone crawls in a woman's window. I don't remember how he gets there, but he, like like, crawls in the window. And she's, like, oh, hey. It's my boyfriend Billy.
Meg:And he's, like, uh-huh. And he's not Billy. And they and he has sex with her, and she wakes up, and she's, like, like or not wakes up, but, you know, opens her eyes and goes, like, you're not Billy. And he's, like, and rolls off and runs away. So that was rape.
Meg:That was cause the defense was, like, well, should I let me have sex with her? And it's, like, yes, because, oh, I'm sorry, because she thought you were Billy. You're not Billy, asshole. Right. You were you climbed in some random woman's window and raped her, and, like, that's what happens in the movie.
Meg:But he's so good at sex that she's, like, it's fine. It's fine. I guess I date you now. And, like, as an adult, I'm just like
Rachel:That's terrible.
Meg:What the fuck did I just watch? Like, he's the hero of this. I liked this movie. I don't feel like I can like this actor anymore. This is ruined for me forever.
Meg:But, like, in the eighties, everything was fine and then I was watching I I was watching Fright Night because that was on my list of things where I was like, I remember liking this movie. Let me, like, watch it again and see if I'm gonna enjoy if I'm gonna put it on my list of vampire properties that I think people should watch because they're great and I like them. And I the very beginning of it is the girlfriend played by the woman who played Marcy on, Married With Children and I can never remember her name. But she's got she's got that kind of, like, eighties girl mushroom cut. But in my head, I'm, like, well, that just seems like a haircut that was common for girls in the eighties.
Meg:So, like, I I didn't recognize it at first as, like, being coded for anything. And she shows up, and she's wearing, like, overalls, and, like, a little sassy, like, button down shirt. And I'm just, like, okay. Well, that to me, that just reads eighties. That doesn't read, like, frigid or masculine or whatever.
Meg:It just reads eighties. Her boyfriend, the main fucking character who we're supposed to like, I guess, starts off the movies, right, starts off the movie trying to have sex with her, and she's like, no. And he's like, come on. He's like yelling at her. Like, it's been it's, I don't know why I keep thinking he said it's been 6 years.
Meg:Maybe that's a different movie I was watching. But he, like, yelled at her, like, it's been a long time we've been dating. Like, you've been giving me blue balls our entire relationship. Like, just fucking blow me, like, he's, like, really, like, angry at her. And then she, like, gives in.
Meg:She's not, like, I want to do this. She's, like, well, you're yelling at me. I'm, like, okay. So then she, like, gives in and then he gets distracted by the neighbor bringing his coffin in and starting the whole vampire movie, whatever. And so she's like, well, fuck you.
Meg:You're getting distracted. And then when she gets bitten by a vampire, all of a sudden she has long hair, which I she had a fucking mushroom cut 12 seconds ago. I don't know how like, is that what happens when you get bitten by a vampire? You get long flowing Yes.
Rachel:Herbal essence is lost. That's in the that's in the textbook.
Meg:Because, I mean, if if so, bite me right now because my hair is getting thinner the older I get. So, like, if you will give me herbal essences, let me have to buy herbal essences, like, just do it. So she also has, like, the herbal essences, like, eighties shower I don't know why I keep shaking my head like I'm in a shower commercial, like, porn hammer.
Rachel:Because nobody can see you.
Meg:I I want them to see me in my heart. I want them to all close their eyes and know that I'm doing the eighties commercial porn head shake. And then she has this long flowing white gown, which obviously all female vampires have to have naturally. And it's like, okay. So before, you were sort of reading as, like, little kid, sort of reading as, like, a little bit frigid from the point of view of the movies, like, main character, and then, all of a sudden, when you're a vampire, you're like super sexed up, and then, he's like afraid of you now that you're like super sexed up, And at the end, she's not a vampire anymore, but she's not who she was at the beginning.
Meg:She's, her hair goes back to normal. I guess, she gets a fucking I'm not a vampire anymore haircut. I don't know. But her her outfit is, like, in between the 2 sexed up and the I'm not gonna have sex with you outfit. It's like a new sexual freedom outfit and they end the movie in the same location, like, almost doing the same scene as the beginning where they're watching fright night on television, they're in the bed, they're upstairs, but they're just making out hardcore and I think they do in fact have sex.
Meg:And I'm just, like, this whole movie feels like him pressuring you into having sex, being frightened of you when you wanted sex, and then going back to, like, a happy place where, like, you don't want it too much, but you're gonna give it to him and so we're all cool with it. And I was like, I feel gross about this. And and, like, even the vampire I would like, in my head, I don't know why I thought the vampire character in the movie I don't remember his character name, but, like, Chris Sarandon.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:I remember him being much more compelling. And, also, like, separately, this is not as important. I remember him being much more handsome when I rewatched it. I was like, oh. So, like I'm sorry.
Meg:Chris Sorenson.
Rachel:Isn't he in the princess bride?
Meg:He yes. I think he is the bad guy. Yeah. I
Rachel:think he's prince comforting. Yeah. Yeah.
Meg:So I was watching it, and I was like, oh, yeah. Let's hand something that I remember, but whatever. I I have moved on. I have moved on to other sexier vampires, which I assume we will discuss at some point. But I'm, like, watching it with him, and, like, he doesn't seem to have any character development at all.
Meg:He's just kind of
Rachel:because he's just a horror vampire.
Meg:He he is except there's this one moment where he, like, almost has character development, and I'm like, this makes me angrier than if you had no character development, because he's okay. So he has I just wanna talk about movies that I hate. I don't
Rachel:know if that's why I'm here. That's fine.
Meg:So Sure
Rachel:this is on your list. Go.
Meg:I it's on my list of, like, things that I fucking am mad about. I'm mad about bad quality vampire stuff and all of the stuff that we have is bad quality, and it makes me angry. So
Rachel:Good. I think we can all agree.
Meg:Right? Right? I just I am a discerning consumer of vampire properties.
Rachel:I want something you don't want fuck vampires and you don't want horror vampires and you're stranded in this middle zone, it's all shit.
Meg:Yeah. Well, to be fair, even the fuck vampires and the horror vampires are all it's just it's a bummer. So but there's this one like little glimmer of like, fucking squandered greatness in this movie, where Chris Sarandon and his mullet takes the takes Marcy to his fuck pad whatever. And they're sitting on, like, a pile of, like, furs and things in front of a fireplace as you do.
Rachel:Yeah. As you do. As you do.
Meg:Also, PS, I found out that the actress who plays Marcy is, like, 27 and is playing a high schooler, which makes me feel better for all the weird stuff that happens in the movie, but, like, watching it, I was, like, gosh, you seem awfully big for, like, 17. And then when I, like, looked at it, I was, like, okay, like, you are in fact an almost 30 year old woman. That makes a little more sense for everything. So, anyway, so they're standing there and they're, he sort of has her under a spell, sort of. It's, like, not you know sometimes when you have someone hypnotized by a vampire and they're, like, mentally, they're fine, and they're, like, oh, I wanna escape, but their bodies are, like, yes.
Meg:Blow me. Like, I'll just sit here. So it, like, sort of is that. She's sitting there. They're making it a little bit.
Meg:He pulls back. He has vampire fangs, but not his full mutant awful, why did they do this vampire makeup that the movie has, which I also forgot till I put it on, and then he has, like, £30 of just raw clay just mashed onto his face.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:It's horrible. He's like the kid from mask. I was like, what what is this? It's so bad. I'm sorry.
Meg:I sniped directly into the microphone. So, they're there, and he's, like, just like sexy vampire. He's got, like, a little butt tooth. He's, like, what up? And he, like, goes to bite her, and she, all of a sudden, is, like, not into it, but not in the, like, oh my god.
Meg:You're a monster and you're gonna bite me and I'm scared, but she's not into it in the, like, I'm I'm, like, a little nervous about this. It's my first time. Like, she's, like she just, like, pulls back from him, and it feels like a very natural, real, I'm afraid about sex, I don't know, kind of vibe. Mhmm. And then when she does that, he pulls back, like, he feels bad about it.
Meg:If you look at his face, he looks like he's having, like, actual an actual emotional reaction. Yeah. Yeah. Actual thoughts, which he does not have the rest of the movie. No thoughts in that head.
Meg:Just just mullet going straight down to his teeth. So, like, he, like, he has this this moment where, like, these thoughts clearly, like, pass through his face, like, I feel bad about scaring you and I don't want to hurt you and I like you and I I don't know. There's like a whole, like, thing going on there, which maybe they they had been sort of thinking of because if you if you rewatch the movie, when they're unpacking all of his stuff into his new house, there's a bunch of paintings that look like her, and he makes a comment, like, oh, yes. I knew this woman a long time ago. So there's, like, a there's a couple of shades of, like, you know, that that vampire, like, oh, you're the reincarnation of my dead lover, blah blah blah story.
Meg:And then, like, I'm Oh, yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. That one.
Meg:Yeah. That'll that'll just not that'll well, like
Rachel:We all know it.
Meg:That vampire trope. Yeah. So, like, they have those pictures, but they never, like, address it. And then they have him, like, gonna going to bite her, and she's, like, oh, and he's, like, oh, I don't wanna hurt you. And then fucking nothing.
Meg:They just throw that aside, and he's just a dickhole the rest of the time and the makeup was so bad and then the, like, the what are you trying to say about sex vibes and then their friend their friend, evil Ed, I, like, I just remember him being, like like, annoying, but then I'm watching this and I'm like, is is something medically wrong with him? Because he's like he's not so much he's he's like that that friend you have that's so weird where you're just like, do you need a a medication to help you be less weird? Mhmm. Are you just are you struggling can you not get through this because
Rachel:Are you okay?
Meg:Are you okay? Yeah. Are you, like, and then because it it the movie seems to not be sure whether he's just, like, that friend who's kind of a jackass, who just gonna is just gonna say jackass things to be a jackass, or that friend who's like the little twitchy, I I should have been medicated, but no one has helped me get medicated, so I'm just gonna be a little bit twitchy and I'm gonna struggle. And and I'm a little bit weird, and I can't help being weird. I'm just naturally weird, and people are mean and pick on me, and that's why they call me evil Ed.
Meg:I didn't choose that nickname. Kids are just assholes because it's the eighties and that's just how everyone is. Like, it's it's just really hard to be like, what did you what did you want from this? Because the main character doesn't seem to like him. The girlfriend doesn't seem to like him.
Meg:Like, are you just, like, that weird guy that, like, hangs around long enough that he calls himself your friend, but, like, he's not your friend? And then, I don't know, he, like, comes to your podcast studio
Rachel:and makes your podcast really fun. Oh, you brought it right back around. I did. I was thinking in the newer Fright Night, I feel like his character is clearer.
Meg:I I remember so I was trying to find the newer Fright Night online, and I could not find it anywhere, which is frustrating. I know I've seen it. I remember liking it more than the first one, but I It's a sequel. Well, there's Kind of. Friend.
Meg:Friend. I know that there's both the original Fright Night. Yeah. There's the sequel to Fright Night where, like, it's a different actor playing the same kid and he's in college and his teacher is a vampire, which I have not seen because I've heard somehow worse than the original Fright Night. And then there's this one, which is supposed to be a remake of the original one.
Meg:So it's the oh, Jerry Dandridge is the vampire's name. Oh my god. I remembered it. I'm not gonna be able to drive home. That just, like, took away the map in my head.
Meg:Jerry. Right? Vampire Jerry?
Rachel:Yeah. Fucking no. You know, it's fine. I prefer the stupid names to the, like, my name is Maximilian.
Meg:Maximilian is also a stupid name. There
Rachel:are The the overdone ones, I'm Damon. I am whatever.
Meg:I I hate I'm sorry. I went on a whole I went on a whole journey there.
Rachel:I just That's fine. No. Whatever number that is on your we've covered it.
Meg:It's not a number even. It's just it's one that I refuse to put on my list.
Rachel:Before we go any further, hi. I'm Rachel.
Meg:You're not gonna keep this in.
Rachel:Go.
Meg:Hi. I'm Meg.
Rachel:And welcome to the strange and beautiful book club. Okay. Now we've done the, now we've done the intro. Meg got so overcome. She gagged a little bit and I think so what we're going to do, as you got to preface to, we're going to go through our top 10 vampire properties because Meg is our highest tier Patreon for the longest time.
Meg:Don't make it sound like I won a sweepstakes to be here. This makes me feel bad.
Rachel:You didn't win a sweepstakes.
Meg:I wormed my way into your heart naturally through the Internet like every creep does.
Rachel:She's a weird Internet friend that I invited to my home, and now we're gonna record a podcast like you do. Meg is a fellow vampire, aficionado of a similar vampire school, which I'm not a big fan of horror vampires. I'm not a big fan of pure romance vampires. I like The Middle Road, which is why we have an entire podcast about Forever Night, which one would argue is about the only television show you can find, which is directly Middle Road. It's so good.
Rachel:So I asked her here to talk about her top 10 vampire properties. I wrote down my top 10 vampire properties, and I figured it would be fun. And as I can tell, it already is. So, Meg, do you wanna start on your number 10?
Meg:Okay. So full disclosure.
Rachel:Okay.
Meg:I I might have 11. I had a hard time counting.
Rachel:I have 10 to 1, and then I have also. And below also, there's an there's more. And then I have pet peeves, wasted opportunities, and, other things I felt like I should include.
Meg:Oh, I feel like pet peeves and wasted opportunities is gonna be just half of me talking about the things that I I enjoy, because I feel like you and I have had this conversation, I think, through Discord a whole bunch. There there's just so much garbage. There's so much vampire garbage and I feel like it doesn't need to be. And I feel like I shouldn't have to be as ashamed as I am to be like, oh, I like vampire TV shows. Oh, I like vampire books and movies.
Meg:Because people in their head immediately go, oh, you like garbage? No. I don't like garbage. There's a lot of garbage out there.
Rachel:Yeah. You don't get to have pride as a vampire fan. No. You get to be like, oh, I'm a zombie fan. Don't don't you fucking love The Walking Dead?
Rachel:You get to be like, oh, yeah. Werewolves, they're the best. But as soon as you're like, I like vampires, people are like, oh, you're weird, and you like kinky sex. Is that what you're saying?
Meg:Yeah. So yeah. It's the yeah. It's I broke my brain. I broke my brain.
Meg:It was so accurate. So I feel like you can say that you like I agree with you entirely. You can say that you like zombies, and people are like, oh, you like all these prestige TV shows and movies and even the comics, like The Walking Dead comics, I think. There's, like, a level of prestige with them. And you can they're, like, oh, yeah.
Meg:You can you can look at The Walking Dead and and discuss the human condition and, like, really, like, examine, like, people's souls, whatever. I feel like you can even do that a little bit with werewolves. You can be like, oh, like, you like all the all the black and white werewolf movies and there's like a certain, like, it like, it's it's like saying I like any other kind of, like, noir movie, like, there's like a certain level of, like, respect, but, like, the second you say vampires, like, oh, fucking plastic leather coats, weird kinky sex shit, or you're, like, the super nerd with the gelled up hair who, like, lives in a basement somewhere and mouth breathes and eats Cheetos and, like, you're just you're gross.
Rachel:The life you've chosen for yourself. Of course, we always respect you here.
Meg:I'm not saying that's not my life, but
Rachel:I mean, it's just it's but that is the image that I think people ponder. You're one or the other. You're like
Meg:You're a super nerd or you're a pervert freak. Like, those are the only or you're a super nerd and pervert freak, in which case, mazel tov, congratulations. I mean,
Rachel:if you wanna be all of those things, perfectly fine. Yeah.
Meg:But don't ask
Rachel:I just don't put don't put that on me just because I told you I like vampires. If I also like the other things too, that's fine.
Meg:No. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, I don't, like, be kinky and bite people in your in your leather trench coat.
Meg:I don't
Rachel:Do your thing.
Meg:Have a good time. Right. You know?
Rachel:But, also, can I get a good vampire movie?
Meg:Like, it's just Why is it so hard?
Rachel:I don't know. I feel like we get ones where we have a good premise. We're gonna get there, we almost do, and then we just can't finish.
Meg:Yes. Which, actually, that that actually describes my, like, my number 10 pick, frankly.
Rachel:Okay. Go.
Meg:So, I I got into a place where I just started typing in, like, vampires and dragon land stuff into, like, the search feature on, like, Apple TV plus just to see what came up. And I was finding a lot of, like, old timey 19 thirties, 19 forties movies that I had never heard of before, and I don't have any self control, so I bought a whole bunch of them. One of which is called Dracula's daughter, which I feel like the name of it, it sounds derivative. It sounds like garbage. It sounds like trash.
Meg:It was amazing. It was so it was something so unexpected, and the ending crashes and burns and it sucks. But, like, up until I get to the ending Always. Always. Always.
Meg:Okay. So picture this. The the woman who stars in this movie, who I should have looked up her name, and I didn't and I didn't do my homework and the whole podcast is ruined. But she the woman who stars in this is so strikingly, masculinely beautiful, like, if you close your eyes and imagine Bela Lugosi, and then, like, went, make him a lady. Bam.
Meg:Like, that's what this woman looks like. So it's, like, a very striking, like, really square head, but, like, be so beautiful. Mhmm. So like, if you saw her
Rachel:Like Daryl Hannah. From splash? Yeah. Daryl Hannah is a very she's not a feminine pretty.
Meg:I guess, like, in my head, I only ever think about her as being the mermaid in Slash, so it's hard for me to see
Rachel:She's also Chris in, Blade Runner.
Meg:I still haven't seen it. I know. I know.
Rachel:I have no Keep going. Yes. Masculinly pretty.
Meg:I have no cultural capital. So she okay. So she plays, like, the actual it's not super clear to me whether she's the biological daughter, like, Dracula and a lady had a baby and that's this woman, or whether she's just a woman that was turned into a vampire by Dracula, so she's the daughter of him, like, vampire wise. It's not really made clear because it's the thirties and they didn't care. Yeah.
Meg:So, the movie starts off with, her having stolen Dracula's corpse. So somehow Dracula and Renfield are both dead. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Meg:I don't remember Renfield dying at the end of Dracula, but, like He's not immortal, so. Well, yeah. But, like, they're they're, like, dead together is what I mean, like, at the start of this movie, which I don't recall.
Rachel:Full disclosure, I actually hate Dracula. So I know.
Meg:I I feel like I go back and forth between neutral and, like, neutral tinged positive. I like I like some of the special effects that I didn't remember being there until I rewatched Dracula and I like Bela Lugosi, but I feel like you have to have what is the phrase you use that your context blends is in when you're watching, like, stuff from the thirties? Because things that are, like, meant to be heightened somehow come across, like, extra heightened and then things that, like, they treat very subtly and one off, you're, like, what? What just happened? Why did you, like, you just brushed off that thing?
Meg:Like, it's Yeah.
Rachel:It's a
Meg:whole it's a weird it's a different movie watching experience. But okay. So I don't remember Renfield dying in the original, but in this, Renfield is dead in, like, coffin a and Dracula is dead in coffin b and they're both in a big room together, you know. So she, hypnotizes, like, a police guard, she goes in, she grabs Dracula's corpse, She, goes out to the woods somewhere, and she burns it because she thinks that it's going to cure her of her vampirism. Oh.
Meg:And I'm, like, watching
Rachel:Yes. Yes. I was, like, where
Meg:did this even come from? And, so you and I have also been discussing vampire literary fiction and how that's also a disappointing mire. But the 2 books that we had been discussing recently, Woman Eating and The God of Endings, which are both, like, they're fine. They're not great. They're, I mean, they're, like, they're They're okay.
Meg:They're getting us on the pathway to better things, so I'm happy that they exist. But in both of those books, you have vampires who are artists. And I remember, like, remarking to you, that seems weird that there's, like, this that you have these 2 books coming out at the same time with 2 lady vampires who are also, like, visual artists. Like, that seems like is that a trope that I'm unaware of? Like, where did this come from?
Meg:In this movie, there's a vampire who's an artist. And I was like, what? What? Are we going all the way back to Dracula's daughter? Dracula's daughter?
Meg:Is that where this comes from? This, to me, obscure, but, like, maybe not actually all that obscure movie. So, okay. So she drags Dracula's corpse out into the woods and she's, like, I'm going to burn it so I don't have to live with this curse anymore. And she has a familiar who is creepiest, but he's sort of like Lurch from the Addams family.
Meg:I think he's meant to be, like, a regular human person. Like, I don't think he's, like, a I think he's, like, a regular familiar, not like a special supernatural whatever. Mhmm. And he is a jackass. We don't like him.
Meg:His name is Sandor. He sucks. So she's, like, I'm gonna be human again. He's, like, yeah, no. So which is, like, whatever.
Meg:So she burns the corpse and she thinks she's gonna be made human again, it does not pan out for her. So then she meets this psychiatrist, psychologist, it doesn't it's the thirties, they don't know either. It's like some kind of a doctor who, deals with, like, addiction and things, and he's, like, yeah. I've I've dealt with addicts and, like, it's sort of like Katharine Disher in Forever Night, like, you're just gonna think real hard, and then you won't be a vampire anymore. It's fine.
Rachel:I'm sure we can figure this out.
Meg:Yeah. Just just drink the smoothie. It's great. So, she he he has, like, a fun relationship with his assistant. Well, I think she's, like, assistant secretary, you know, woman of all trades who works for him.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Where they both just, like, shit talk on each other the entire time, which again, for the thirties, I'm, like, oh, okay. Like, you're both being, like, really aggressively dickish to each other, but, like, it was fun. Workplace sexual harassment. So, it's like it feels like one of those things where, like, you know, 2 characters who just kind of, like, sass at each other, and then, like, afterwards they when one is in peril, they realize that we actually, like, we we like each other. Sort of one of those relationships.
Meg:So, long story short. So vampire lady, is, like, talked to him and he's, like, just try not to be a vampire anymore. Well, she he doesn't know she's a vampire. It's, like, just addiction.
Rachel:Not being a
Meg:vampire. I tried not. So, like, he's, like, what I recommend for addicts is that they basically, like, go right up until the edge of the thing that they, like, really wanna do and they, like, try to, like, by force of will, not do that, and I'm, like, well, that sounds dumb, but, like, okay. Sure. It's the thirties.
Meg:So she's, like, okay. Cool. So she has Sandor go find a pretty lady, so it's, like, early lady vampire lesbianism. Uh-huh. So, finds a pretty lady, brings her back so that she can paint her, and I'm like, what?
Meg:The sort of the trope. What? So so she brings so they get, pretty lady, pretty lady, has just, like, a little, like, spaghetti strap under top, like, under her little jacket, and she's, like, oh, I assume you want me to, like, pull those straps down so you can you can paint a real good picture, and Vampire Lady's, like,
Rachel:yes. Yes. So
Meg:so it's, like, it's, like, little 1936. It's just, like, bloop, like, oh, look at that look at that line of my shoulder where there's no spaghetti strap there. What? And Vampire Lady cannot control herself and almost murders her. So, victim goes to the hospital and psychiatrist is, like, what happened?
Meg:And she's, like, oh, vampire. So, then, there's some of those stuff happened. So vampire lady ends up, like, kidnapping sassy secretary, to her house. She, like so literally Vampire Lady goes from, I don't wanna be a vampire, and the ways that I'm gonna do that are, burning Dracula's corpse, didn't work, trying to be next to a hot sexy lady full of blood and not eat her. Well, that didn't work.
Meg:Yeah. It didn't work. So I guess I'm a vampire forever. And I'm, like, at that point, I was, like, are you fucking are you kidding me?
Rachel:They're always with the ending.
Meg:They're always with the ending. Yeah. So I'm, like, I'm, like, so at the beginning, she is so sympathetic. She is so, like, dramatic and sad and, like, I don't want this life anymore and, like, free me from this curse, and it's all drama and angles and lighting. And I'm just, like, oh, I love it.
Meg:I love it so fucking much, and she's so beautiful, and every outfit, every costume is just, oh, so good. And then she's, like, well, I tried 2 things, but it didn't work.
Rachel:I've tried nothing, and I'm all out of my place.
Meg:Yes. Yes. I tried. So I
Rachel:guess I'll just murder people.
Meg:I tried, sitting on my hands for 20 minutes and burning a body, and none of it made me a human being. So, so she's, like, well, I guess what I need to do is steal the secretary, so that, psychiatrist comes after to try and get the secretary. And with also, when she steals the secretary, there's like a very she, like, goes down to bite secretary's neck and then she's, like, interrupted. It is, like, the most lesbian longing I've ever seen. Like, she just slowly is bending over this woman's prone corpse just, like, inch by inch by inch, and then the door flings open, and it's like, lesbian blue balls.
Meg:Oh, bitches. So so so good. So, even it's, like, even unclear, like, what was going on there, because she specifically tells Sandor, like, I'm not going to bite her because then, like, psychiatry just won't come if she's dead. Like, there's no point to it. And it's, like, well, then, what the fuck?
Meg:What was what are you doing? What's doing on there? What's ah, you just you can't even the lesbian vampirism is so strong. You couldn't even for, like, 10 fucking minutes to, like, get this other guy. You couldn't even just sit on your hands.
Meg:So then psychiatrist breaks it, and it's like a whole it's a whole fight, whatever. And she's like, look. I will, I will wake up your secretary because she's under, like, a psychic sleeping spell kind of deal. It's it's dumb. Don't worry about it.
Rachel:It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Plop, plop, plop.
Meg:Yeah. Which she does with her magic ring, which is a very nice ring, by the way. Way. So, she's like, I will I will wake her up with my magic blinky blinky ring, if you let me turn you into my vampire lover forever. And he's like, well, okay.
Meg:Goddamn it. Alright. Yeah. He's, like, I have no other choice. So she's about to turn him, and then Sandor, her fucking useless he has, like, that, what is that, the kid from Little Rascals with, like, is it Alfalfa who has the one little ears?
Meg:Oh, yeah. Okay. So he has fucking Alfalfa haircut. So I hate him because of his haircut already. He's a dickhead.
Meg:So he's, like, oh, you're gonna make that random hot dude into a vampire to be with you forever and not me, your creepy asshole manservant who did not support your dreams, first off. Did not support your dreams. He's, like, well, fuck that. So he shoots her. He fucking shoots her in the chest with, like, a bow and arrow.
Meg:And so she's, like, oh, sexy die. So she dies. And then Sexy die. And then, like, the the she it was very I I wasn't a lesbian before watching
Rachel:this movie, but it's just okay, it's bright down Dracula's doctor. It's very
Meg:I went through an emotional journey. So then, so Sandor shoots, lady I I don't remember the her name is countess
Rachel:Something.
Meg:Maria something, I think. Just sexy lady vampire, Dracula's daughter. So he shoots her, and then the cops finally show up because they're fucking useless in this movie. And then, the cops show up and they shoot Sandor, like, once in the chest because, you know, shoot first, ask questions later.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:They die. Lady secretary wakes up, and she's fine, and she's good and normal, and I and she gets together with psychiatrist and movie. And I was like, ah.
Rachel:Yeah. Monsters die. Everybody is saved.
Meg:The monster was so sympathetic and she had, like, a problem and she wanted to fix it and she was trying to better herself and it's I was like, oh, and she's sexy and has beautiful outfits. And I was like, oh, I want more of this. And she paints and I was like, that's fun. Can we see her painting? I would watch that.
Meg:No. Fucking Try 2 Things dead god. And I was just like, but I recommend it. I recommend this movie. It is so it was like $4 on iTunes.
Meg:That's probably not right. I don't know. Less than $10. Pay the money. Pay the money to watch this.
Meg:It is so good for, like, 75%, and then just turn it off. Turn it off at that point, because the ending is kind of a bummer.
Rachel:Get to the lesbian hot scene, and then test.
Meg:The whole thing she's just so sympathetic, and it's it's a con it's a conceit that, like, I don't I didn't realize it was as old as this movie, because the movie is is from the thirties, I think.
Rachel:Well, isn't Camilla? Camilla is, like
Meg:Camilla is, yeah, the original lesbian vampire, but, like, I the the conceit, not of the lesbianism, but the conceit of, like, the I'm a vampire and I don't wanna be. I don't like this anymore. I don't want like, not, like because I feel like I don't remember seeing anything like this before the eighties. I feel like before that, it was just like, I'm a vampire or, like, I don't wanna be a vampire, and then I get turned, and I'm super cool about it. Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. Like, I'm either, like, really happy to be a vampire, or I'm, like, I'm sort of a zombie with better hair. Like like, those are the only
Rachel:with better hair.
Meg:Like, those are the only options they presented. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Like, those are the only options, and so, like, to see this, this progenitor of that idea of, like, the unwilling the unwilling vampire who, like, is already a vampire, not the person who just, like, is going to be and doesn't wanna be.
Rachel:Right.
Meg:I was, like, that's really interesting. And, also, like, yeah, point number 2, super fucking hot, this movie. So good. Black and white drama, sexy outfits. I recommend it.
Rachel:Thank you, Meg. Well, my number 10 I have a list too. Mine's more contemporary. Sorry. I did, Byzantium.
Rachel:Did we talk about Byzantium? That's my number 10.
Meg:You and I have not talked about it.
Rachel:It's a movie. It's I don't know why it didn't get any more hype. It's got Saoirse Ronan in it. It's got Gemma Ertriton. Artriton?
Rachel:I forgot to say her last name. Johnny Lee Miller, who was in Hackers.
Meg:I know these names.
Rachel:I know these names. This is the one where vampirism is entirely mystical. Like, to become a vampire, you have to go to this island, and you have to have the map. And, apparently, you can get there in a rowboat from England, so it's somewhere in that vicinity. Because then
Meg:that, like, that narrows down the places in the world that this could be. You could go with this, like, you
Rachel:go in this temple, and if the gods, like, want to make you into a vampire, then, like, the waterfalls turn red and you get this whole, like anyway, that aside, Saoirse Ronan, of course, is amazing. So
Meg:She is great.
Rachel:Yeah. I like her. And it's a very, like, Gemma. I forget what her character's name is, but she is, like, she's just it's like, I think, the 1800, whatever. She ends up getting sexually assaulted by, Johnny Lee Miller's character, and he's like, I have now given you your profession.
Rachel:Yeah. So that's your setup that's your setup for the beginning. So she ends up getting pregnant, and she has a baby, and the baby is Saoirse Ronan. And she gives the baby away to, like, nuns.
Meg:I'm sorry. The baby is Saoirse Ronan is my new favorite sentence I think I've ever heard. I just had this mental of delight pop Saoirse Ronan.
Rachel:It will be Saoirse Ronan. So she gives her to, like, a nun, like, a nunnery or whatever. Oh,
Meg:no. No. I know what nunnery. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:You know? That. And then she finds out that, like, Johnny Lee Miller is being accepted into this, like, elite group of gentlemen dudes who are apparently all vampires because all vampires are male. And she's like, fuck you. Cherokee.
Rachel:She's like, fuck you. That's dude, that's that's awful. So she steals the secret map.
Meg:Wait. Wait. Wait. Was he okay. Wait.
Meg:Was he a vampire already? No. Okay. So it's just it's just we're gonna invite you to join this group of people who are vampires,
Rachel:who are
Meg:the weak of vampire.
Rachel:We think you're a cool enough dude. We want you to be in our dude group forever. Ugh. Even though you I hate them. Rape women and then tell them that they're whores now.
Meg:Alright. Yeah. The patriarchy of this bluntly. Does he die violently? Of course, he dies.
Meg:Oh, good. Okay. Alright. So I'm vested again.
Rachel:Because she goes, and, she steals the map. Gemma's character steals the map, and she ends up becoming a vampire. And she shows back up, and they're like, what have you done? You're, like, illegal. And she's like, fuck you.
Rachel:I've got the map. You're illegal. I'm I'm a vampire now. So she's kind of on the run, but also kind of still in love with her daughter, so they end up like the same age because her daughter ages, and she doesn't because now she's a vampire carrier. Right.
Rachel:Yeah. And so Johnny Lee Miller, carrying on the tradition, finds her daughter and is like, I'm gonna get back at her because she stole my opportunity to become a vampire. She stole the map. Nobody knows how to get there now because she's the one with the map.
Meg:What about the all the other vampires?
Rachel:They don't know how to
Meg:get they have to have
Rachel:the secret map. It's mystical. Don't ask questions.
Meg:I mean, look, I'm bad at directions, but, like, if I've been to a place, like, 6 times with 10 other guys to make them vampires, you don't think you'd, like okay. Okay. I'm mad about it. Okay. All right.
Rachel:Not if it's a mystical vampire island. Okay. But the whole point of this is eventually Saoirse becomes a vampire, and she is a very interesting character. She doesn't want to be what she is. She's in this, like, she hasn't processed her trauma, like, ever.
Meg:Wait. How does she become a vampire? Like
Rachel:Oh, okay. So you interrupted me.
Meg:I'm sorry.
Rachel:Johnny Lee Miller finds her, and he's like, well, it worked with her mom. I think I'll do the same thing to her daughter, And, Gamma shows up right after he's, like, raped her daughter. And so she kills him violently. And then he's like, I know it will make you feel better. Let's make you a vampire.
Rachel:So she takes her daughter out and makes her into a vampire.
Meg:Fucking what?
Rachel:Yeah. That was good. It's good. Just gotta watch it. Look.
Rachel:I can't explain this movie. It's wild. My only complaint, and, ironically, one of my pet peeves, is when we reinvent the wheel, they don't get fangs. They get, like, a sharp thumbnail.
Meg:Boo. Boo.
Rachel:Gotta have I mean,
Meg:the fangs are the best part.
Rachel:I hate it when we reinvent the wheel. But, anyway, I think Byzantium is, like, way better than it gets credit for because it's more art house than it is, like, horror vampire.
Meg:But wait. What? Okay. So mom's a vampire, daughter's a vampire, then what? Bad guy has been murdered, then what happened?
Rachel:Well, they're not allowed to be vampires, because only dudes can be vampires. So they've been on the run for, like, 100 of years. And to, like, process her trauma, Saoirse Ronan's character writes out the story of what happened to them over and over again, and then, like, throws it away, and then writes it down and then throws it away. And she ends up falling in love with this boy, and she's like, I kinda don't wanna keep going the way we've been going, because her mom's just been taking care of her. Even though they're the same age, she's still kind of her mom.
Rachel:Yeah. And she's just been taking care of her this whole time. So she, like, finds a guy, exploits him, like, does exactly what she needs to do to survive. It's very exploited, exploitative. And Saoirse Ronan is like, I'm really tired of this.
Rachel:Like, I'm tired of hurting people. I'm tired of, like, constantly having to be on the move because we can't have a real life. Like, there is a way for us to to work this out. Like, we can we can handle this. And her mom hasn't told her that, oh, yeah.
Rachel:By the way, an entire secret society of vampire dudes is hunting us and trying to kill us.
Meg:Well, wait. Why does Saoirse Ronan think that they're just, like, always constantly on the move?
Rachel:I don't because her mom kills people. I don't know.
Meg:And that's fair. That is fair. Okay. I would say
Rachel:I don't wanna keep going all the way to the end, but the ending's fine. I mean, it's not like I don't know. It's one of those ones where you're like, okay. I mean, that wasn't
Meg:happens. I can't tell you on the podcast. Why can't you tell me what happened? I told you what happened with dragons.
Rachel:Boiling A 19 thirties movie that's been out for a 100 years is different than spoiling that. I think it's 20 12 ish. I don't know. Fast forward, like, 30 seconds, maybe a minute. But the boy that she falls in love with is, like, terminally ill.
Rachel:So she's like, aren't you in luck? I've got a map. So she takes them as and then, like, the evil society of dudes binds them. And, Gemma is kinda like, I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's 2020 it's 2012 or 2014, whenever this movie came out.
Rachel:Don't you think we can move past this now? And the guy's like, okay. Yeah. I'm willing to give you a shot. There's more to it than that, but, basically, he always let the one that's hunting them, he always liked her, but he was a vampire.
Rachel:He was in the secret society. He couldn't really
Meg:I am so enraged by this movie.
Rachel:You gotta watch this movie.
Meg:The whole premise
Rachel:is It's number 10. It's number 10. That's why it's far down. It's good. It's good because it's fun.
Rachel:It's unexpected.
Meg:Yeah. I didn't expect any
Rachel:of the things you said to me. Absolutely. Alright. What's your 9?
Meg:I don't know. Okay. So for 9, I have I it's, like, 9 a and 9 b.
Rachel:So 9 part 1, 9 part 2.
Meg:Yeah. And I I will not go into them as much in-depth as with Dracula's daughter because that's the reason that they're 9 a and b. So, I'm calling these the music video vampire movie.
Rachel:Okay.
Meg:Which is to say, it looks nice and the music is great, and I have feelings while watching it. And I enjoy it, and I would watch it again, but the plot seems entirely beside the point. The character development also is beside the point. Like, it's just it's one that you just turn your brain off, and you go, this is real pretty. And you just you just sit there and you you soak in the prettiness.
Meg:So my 2 my my 9 a and my 9 b are a girl walks home alone at night and only lovers left alive.
Rachel:Okay.
Meg:So a girl walks home alone at night. Right. Okay. So
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:A girl walks home alone at night is, an Iranian, Iranian can't say it right. It's fine. I'm trash. An Iranian, vampire, western in black and white. And that sounds that sounds like it's trying to be more than what it is.
Meg:Like, it sounds like, oh, like art house, it's not. It's but it's good. It's so good. It's story wise, like, there is there is really no story. It's sort of just, like, scenes scenes that happen with this, Iranian vampire girl and she mentions character driven.
Meg:No. They're but they're not even really characters. Like, they're just they're sort of, like, they're part of this beautiful scenery. It's sort of part like, the vampire girl doesn't get a name. I think she's just the the vampire girl.
Meg:Mhmm. Her boyfriend not boy her the boy she leaves at the end of the movie with, who might at some point become her boyfriend, his name is Arash. They they get together, she kills some people, and, like, at the end of the movie, like, they they leave together. Like, there's, like, very little that happens, but visually it is so creative. Okay.
Meg:So she wears she's got a little striped t shirt, sort of 19 fifties type jeans. She's riding around on, a skateboard a whole bunch and she wears a chador, so, like, the long, the long cloak that kind of goes over the top of your head. She's not wearing, like, a full on she doesn't ever have it covered. I think maybe one time she kind of dramatically covers her face under the eyes, but, like, generally, it's just sort of, like, she she took this and, like, plopped it on the top of her head and it just kind of, like, sits sits on, like, the back of her head and kind of breaks down behind her. So if you imagine that silhouette on a skateboard and the way that her, the Shador, like, the cloak kind of billows around her, it's it's sort of one of those things where you're, like, how did I never visually put that together with the Dracula cape?
Meg:Like, how did that never occur to me ever in a 1000000 years before this? And then you see her and you're, like, that is the same silhouette. It's the exact same fucking silhouette. And it's one of those things where, like, I feel like if I told you there's an Iranian girl wearing, like, religious garb, you'd be, like, oh, is it one of those, like, I'm cute and innocent. Don't worry about me.
Meg:Like and then, like, she turns into, like, a scary vampire, like, you think that's where they're going. It's not. The religious garb on its own, like, is what makes her menacing. Like, it's just it's like no one else in the movie, it's set in a city called Bad City, because it's again, it's not trying that hard and that's okay, because it's beautiful. There's like a little like 10 year old boy who's kind of like a little punk ass kid, and then there's Arash whose father is the drug addict, and I think he I don't I I know you do see where the guy works, and I don't I don't remember very much about it.
Meg:He ends up also being a drug dealer, like, by convenience at the end of it. Like, it doesn't really matter. So, like, no one else is wearing, like, religious religiously, like, affiliated clothing.
Rachel:Got it.
Meg:There are characters that are, like, I mean, the, the drug dealer slash pimp, he's kind of dressed, like, the way that you would imagine if you close your eyes and you're, like, Iranian drug dealer pimp. Bam. Like, that's what he looks like. Okay. So, like, it's not and the movie is sort of, like like, time period wise, it's kind of hard to tell, like, it sort of feels like the fifties, but then there's, like, there's, like, those, cordless house phones that sort of made me think maybe the 8 It's
Rachel:one of those, like, ambiguously timed.
Meg:It could be yeah. It could be really, like, at any at any point in time, but it doesn't it doesn't feel especially, like, of the moment. It feels, like, slightly in the past, and I I couldn't tell you when. But so visually okay. So she's got the shador and it blows it builds around her and then and I don't really understand I don't know how to, like, and, like, I feel like traditionally, we have it's like the fang the fangs are on the on the
Rachel:is it your
Meg:canines? Canines. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then True Blood had them on the those teeth the the eye teeth, they're, like, one set closer to your front two teeth.
Meg:Okay. So on her, on the vampire, I don't know if that's where her canines are or if they did in fact go, like, one extra row out, but they seem, like, really, really wide, like, far apart. So the effect that you get with these really wide, fangs, which also kind of do the true blood, like, click click, like like, in and out, like Yeah. So, the effect that you get with the the hood behind her and the really wide space bangs makes her look like a cobra. And, like, I don't know why it never, like, obviously, like, obviously, like, when you have the true blood vampires and the fangs are coming in and out, like, that's either, like, a spider or a snake.
Meg:Right? Like, that like, obviously, like, that's visually what they're pulling from, but somehow it never It didn't hit. It didn't hit me. Like, it was never I was just, like, okay, a new a new way for vampire fangs, like, cool, like, a new a new masturbatory Great. And, like, it never it, like, never occurred to me.
Meg:It never occurred to me, like, that that's that's the the thing from nature that they're pulling from. And in this movie, they make it like a really clear visual reference to her being a serpent and there's even when she she bites the drug dealer at at some point, there's, like, even a moment where she's kind of doing that thing that cobras do where they, like, hypnotize you with their eyes and kind of, like, it's like a like a cobra stare, and then she kind of rears back and then, like, right at him, like, to bite him. And it's the snake imagery is so unexpected and so delightful and so perfect, and it's sort of, like, how did how did I never how did I never get to that? So, like, as a movie, I feel like it's not really a movie. It's it's a music video.
Meg:It's a short. Mhmm. It's a I mean, I think it's, like, an hour and a half long, so it's not, you know, a short short, but, like, the story wise, like, do I know how she became a vampire? No. Do I know her name?
Meg:No. Like, do I know where she's going at the end of the movie? No. Do I know anything about her except that she seems to have, like, a really good collection of vinyl records and, she stole a skateboard from a kid? No.
Meg:Like, that's No.
Rachel:That is still enjoyable. It's
Meg:entertaining in life. It's a it's a vibe. It's a feeling. And so that's kind of the same the same thing I get from Only Lovers Left Alive. Although, I feel like Only Lovers Left Alive wants you to know it's an important movie.
Meg:Yeah.
Rachel:I never I get it's always on the list. Like, if you Google non romance, non horror vampires, it's like, oh, you mean Only Lovers Left alive?
Meg:Yeah.
Rachel:And it's like, well, thank you. I also love Tilda Swinton. And Tom Hiddleston. Yeah. Like, mad love for everyone, and Anton Yelchin is in that too.
Rachel:Like, you drank Ian. Like, okay, great. I but I feel like it was a movie that didn't know I mean, they knew what they kinda wanted to say, but they didn't also didn't know what That's
Meg:that's why it's so low down my I I like it as a vibe. I like it as a music video. I think the sets are sumptuous. I think the I like that it's clearly made by someone that knows Detroit and loves Detroit and mourns for the Detroit that used to be. And I I find that really compelling also, having lived in Michigan a little bit and having just, like, a little bit of familiarity with the beauty and the rundown and the, like, nostalgia for what was there before it all turned into spare.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:So I I like I like all the vision. And then even when they go into I don't know where they actually film, but, like, the part of the movie where they're in, Morocco. Is that where Tangiers is? I am I thinking of No. No.
Meg:You're right. No. You're no. You're totally right. That's it's Tangiers because I keep thinking Algeria, but that's because I don't know anything about the world.
Meg:So, like, I'm pretty sure that's where they No. You're right. You're totally right. But so when they're when they're in Morocco, like, there's a similar amount of care to the surroundings, I feel like. Like, it feels like you're in an actual place.
Meg:You're you're not on a set somewhere. Like, it feels like a very real lived in world. I think their, their homes, like, where she's covered in books everywhere and he's covered in, like, musical instruments and then and records and things. I think, it's it feels like a very real place, and their their clothing is perfect. I kind of hate that they all have, I've never brushed my hair hair.
Rachel:Yeah. The really dry hair.
Meg:It's I don't know. I I don't know why it bothers me so much. Maybe, like, because only maybe only because, like, I know that, like, I've had that hair, like, if I had, like, a week where, like, I didn't have to, like, be anywhere and I was depressed and, like, I didn't, like, brush my hair. Like, that hair is a bitch. That hair is a you have to cut that hair off.
Meg:You can't brush through that hair. That hair is like, I know that, like, they can't see each other in mirrors. Maybe they don't I know they don't really go into mirrors. But, like, you can see him and he can see you. So, like, brush each other's fucking hair.
Meg:Just fix it.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:So I I don't know why even even, the Christopher Marlowe vampire also has, I've never brushed my hair hair,
Rachel:and I'm just, like, I don't supposed to be like a this is a this is a telltale sign.
Meg:Of vampirism that your hair is Your hair. I
Rachel:You don't know what conditioner is. Maybe they're allergic to conditioner.
Meg:I you know what? I would love that sequel.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:I just, so other than the fact that their hair disturbs me more than I realized until we started talking about it, which is I really I don't
Rachel:like it. Disturbs me greatly. That's one of the reasons. I'm like, oh, the one with the
Meg:hair. It's upset it's it's upsetting because everything else is so beautiful, and then they're like, what if we just fucked up your hair? I'm like, don't do that to Tilda Swinton. Tom Hiddleston does not deserve that from you. They are beautiful people who need beautiful hair.
Rachel:I mean, the whole point was, here's how thin the veneer of civility is. But did we have to have the hair? Like, the hair doesn't forward the
Meg:the body. In a rock club, like, that doesn't make you any more vampiric than the guy next to you. Like Right. So but, like, I feel like the movie, and I don't know if this is just me revealing my dumbness and that's that's fine. I can be the dumb one on this podcast, but, like, I feel like the movie sits there and goes, like, I have a deeper meaning that you just cannot see yet.
Meg:It's there. It's very art.
Rachel:It's very on the nose. It's very they were talking to us, people like us, but they were like, oh, you want an elevated vampire experience? Like, no, I want a horny vampire, but I want the horny vampire who doesn't wanna be a vampire
Meg:who Yes.
Rachel:Yes. No. I have struggles to fit into real life.
Meg:I will say that, like, the sexlessness of this, I don't I don't mean that I mean, there there is I don't recall there being, like, any actual, like, sex scenes, but, like, there
Rachel:are nudity scene.
Meg:But, like, but that's what I mean. So, like, the nude the nude moments are somehow so sexless, and their bodies are, like, exactly the same. I don't I don't I'm Yeah. In the movie, I'm sure, like, Tilda Swinton is a beautiful lady and Tom Hiddleston is a masculine man, but, like, somehow somehow, like, their their nude, objective hair bodies
Rachel:Yeah. I think they were supposed to feel, androgynous.
Meg:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, the I and I'm fine with I kind of like that they have I like their relationship, but it also it just sort of feels meandering and, like, and, like, winking at the audience, like, there's a there's a deeper meaning that I'm that I'm trying to, impart to you and you're just too stupid to get how how genius this movie is. And then all the scenes with them wearing gloves and taking off gloves and, like, touching things and knowing how old they are.
Meg:And I'm just, like, are you are the gloves are is that you putting up a barrier between yourself and other people, but then there's moments where you're, like, not wearing the gloves and you're, like, with other people? Like, I literally sat there and I was, like, gloves on, gloves off, gloves on, gloves off, like, what's the meaning? And then I was, like, maybe this is, like, every other thing in my life where I'm trying to find the dig the deeper meaning I'm trying to dig into it, and maybe there is no deeper meaning and it's just, Tom Hiddleston with no genitals and Tilly Hinton. Tilly Hinton. Tilly Hinton.
Meg:I had a little mini stroke. It's fine. Dilla Swinton, also with no genitals and they're just she has an annoying little sister and then they have to go to Morocco and eat people because Basically. Yeah. I'm just I'm like
Rachel:That was the entire plot.
Meg:Yeah.
Rachel:So here's a little sister. They have to go to Morocco and eat people. The end. Yeah. And there's some mushrooms somewhere in the middle there, and he somehow has an electric car that he invented.
Meg:Yes. Yeah. That he's, like, an inventor in his spare time. Yeah. The mushrooms I I kept thinking about the mushrooms, like, the those poison Amanita mushrooms that pop up.
Meg:Yeah. This is not your season. Okay. Okay. Why?
Meg:Why? I'm real dumb. I don't like when movies feed, like spoon feed, but like, you know what? It turns out I'm stupider than I thought it was. Like, life is hard, my brain is melting.
Meg:It's just
Rachel:one of those movies. It's one of those that like, you know, you get it or you don't get it, and nobody actually gets it, but everybody has to say they do, because if you say you don't, then you're the one that didn't get it.
Meg:But you know what, Jim Jermush, like, could you email me maybe? Could you just tell me I don't know.
Rachel:My favorite what's
Meg:going on?
Rachel:Favorite use of this character is Tilda Swinton reprises this role. Oh, I see.
Meg:See what we do in the show.
Rachel:And I was, like, alright. I forgive you. I forgive you everything, Tilda.
Meg:I do love I don't remember what episode that's in, but when when all of the famous movie and TV vampires show up for, like, the Zoom call with the vampire council and what we do with the what what we do in the shadows, with the premise that all these actors are actually vampires. And I was just, like, you know what? I I know that, like, they're calling Tilda Swinton Tilda Swinton and not Eve in the TV show, because they didn't have the rights to to bring, like, the character across from the movie. Like, I get that. But I it makes me retroactively like Only Lovers Left Alive more Yeah.
Meg:If I assume that Tilda Swinton is just playing herself in that movie. They just
Rachel:they gave her a wig because her hair doesn't look like that, and then she just played
Meg:herself.
Rachel:Yeah. She's in a movie called Orlando. It's one of the like, it's what I always remember her from. She's in it with
Meg:Billy Zane. Is that Orlando, like is it Virginia Wolf who may wait. The it's the character that goes, like, man, woman, man, like, changes gender?
Rachel:She changes it. She changes he changes from a man to a woman, and he does, She does. They do in the movie. And so that was the first thing I'd ever seen Tilda Swinton in. And for a very long time, I did not know if Tilda Swinton was female.
Meg:It's my favorite thing about she, she does that, a little bit in Constantine.
Rachel:Totally fine. Yeah. She's androgynous and or she's non binary in, Constantine, because it's supposed to be an angel. Angels don't have genders, but, like, in Orlando, she is so believable as both that for a long time, I was, like, that's really cool. This character this actor plays, like, whatever.
Meg:She is such a good actress, and so is Tom Hiddleston, and it's all like, I feel like I feel like they're bringing their a game to a movie with no plot. But, like, Jim Jarmusch went, there's a secret plot. And then they all just had to be, like, yeah. Okay. Secret plot.
Meg:And then they just and they just acted their hearts out. So it's so He's,
Rachel:like, though, you'll understand when I edit it altogether. It's fine. No. But nobody does.
Meg:No. I no. And if the if there was one guy that did, I have to think that Jim Jarmusch probably shot him in the head and went, you you can't tell the secret to anyone.
Rachel:Just like a pirate lined them all
Meg:up around a hole. Yes.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. No one else will find the treasure on this island, and inside, the treasure is like a DVD commentary for the movie that explains what's going on. So, like
Rachel:It must never be found.
Meg:I so I recommend both of these movies. I feel like I understand A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night because I don't think there's, like, subtext. Maybe I missed this. Maybe there's a lot of stuff
Rachel:that I'm missing. Oh my god. Is there a subtext? There's always subtext.
Meg:I I know. I I'm I'm simple. So I just feel like A Girl Who Wags Home Alone at Night is just beautiful and, like, I don't suspect that there's a secret key. I feel, like, with Omen Lovers Left Alive is beautiful, but I I feel, like, I feel a little bit, like, playing Super Mario where, like, I know that there's a secret room somewhere off the screen and I know that, like, if I could figure out a way to, like, glitch myself under the ground and, like, find the key, then I would open the door that would get me to the secret room. Like, I know that there's a secret room there.
Meg:Mhmm. But I also know that I am not a skilled enough Super Mario player to find that key to get to that room.
Rachel:But it's still an enjoyable game even if you don't
Meg:find
Rachel:the secret room.
Meg:Yes.
Rachel:Yeah. That's it.
Meg:I I enjoy it the way that I enjoy Super Mario on a on a a superficial level. Basic. I'm I'm never gonna be the speed player. I'm gonna be the real simple one who maybe gets to the end sometimes, maybe.
Rachel:So my number 9 is a book. I was like, I won't do all movies. I'll do some books. So number 9 is
Meg:a book.
Rachel:I know. And it's an okay book. It's good. You know what? I I put it on the list because I always appreciate when an author tries to do something different, but not so different that I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?
Meg:I understood that exactly. Okay.
Rachel:There is a there's a sweet spot of, oh, you have given me something new and interesting to think about, but but not, oh, now I have a sharpened thumbnail instead of fangs.
Meg:Yes. Yeah. Make a vampire still identifiably a vampire, but, like, add your own little flair to it.
Rachel:Right. So that is the shadow saga, which the first book in it is of saints and shadows by a author named Christopher Golden, and he it's an older book. It came out in, like, the nineties, but I think they've rereleased it. I found it on Amazon, and it was like, oh, the they have it's like the Peter Peter Octavian saga or something now, but it's the shadow saga. And we pick up with this character that I wish we had a whole book of him just as this character, which he's like, of course, he's solving crimes because they're always solving crimes.
Meg:But all vampires have to solve crimes.
Rachel:All vampires must solve crimes, but it is a he's like a detective. He's like a private eye,
Meg:but he's a vampire. We found the new podcast slogan.
Rachel:All vampires must solve crimes. Yes.
Meg:Yeah. Sorry. I gotta okay. I'm sorry.
Rachel:Like, why? Why? I don't know why, but they all have to be involved in true crime. But he is like a vampire, but he doesn't partake in. They call it the blood song, but it's like, he does because, of course, we have to come up with another name for it.
Rachel:Maybe they felt the same way about the word feed that I did. Christopher was like, I think I can come up with something different, Blood Song. But kind of the premise is, okay, god. The premise is there's this secret Catholic sect that is, like, dedicated to eradicating all vampires.
Meg:I I believe that, actually. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:And at a certain point so this is a bit of a spoiler, but at a certain point, they gathered up a bunch of vampires and, like, brainwashed them into believing that they were like allergic to the sun, and that all this other stuff was true about them, and it actually isn't. And what they can do is a vampire can change their form infinitely, so you can't just turn into a bat. You can turn it to, like, anything you want to, including if you believe it, you can turn into fire in the sunlight.
Meg:Okay. So they're just they're so psychically brainwashed that when they go out into the sunlight, they subconsciously make themselves burst into flames.
Rachel:Yes. Just give it a shot, but he has to, like that's part of the plot is like, they are, they are dying out because they have all of these weaknesses, but they don't actually have any of those weaknesses. They just believe they do. But anyway, it's, it's a good it's an interesting take. I think about it a lot, which is why I put it on here, because every once in a while, I'm like, what did who thought of that?
Rachel:Like, what if it's really all in their mind?
Meg:I mean, I know that, like, in True Blood, they had kind of the inverse of that where they're, like, oh, yeah. All the stuff about not being able to be seen in mirrors and, like, that's that's all stuff that we told people so that they would not suspect that we were vampires. So, like, I I I'm interested in the deconstructing of the myths, but, also, I fucking hate that. That sounds awful. Does someone does is there But in the same
Rachel:time, I fucking hate that, and it sounds awful.
Meg:Is is okay. Is the main character or, like, a main character, is there is it, like like, a someone realizes that these weaknesses are actually not weaknesses? Like, that they're actually, like,
Rachel:not is it one of those book. There's this, like, secret book that they have, and it's the book of shadows or something, the what it's named after of saints and shadows. And he has to get this book because it's what has, like it's like the fighting manual for destroying vampires, and he wants to get it because they're not sure why they have so much power over them, like, why the Catholic church has so much power over them, and so they're trying to unpack it. And so that's why it's a bit of a spoiler, because he doesn't find that out till he steals this book, and then he has to read it. And he's like, oh, shit.
Meg:Okay. I mean, I like I'm interested in the, like, Catholic church versus vampires angle, especially if the Catholic church is villains because I was raised Catholic and that appeals to me. So I sorry, Catholic listeners. I so, like, I I find that interesting, but I feel like I'm still stuck on the, like, we've all subconsciously taken in this myth that will burst into flames if we go outside. And so, therefore, because of that, we will birth.
Meg:Like, I feel like I feel like that's that's another common theme that I hadn't realized was a common theme until, like, the more that we're talking about this. Like, the idea that of, like, vampirism as, like, a not like an actual addiction, but, like, as a as a psychic crutch that we've all put on ourselves. Like, the whole, like, like, I keep calling her Katherine Disher, doctor Natalie Lambert being, like, just will yourself to not be a vampire. And then the psychiatrist in Dracula's daughter, will yourself not to be a vampire. And now now we have someone who's we have, like, the the flip side of that where it's people, psychically imposing, like, vampirism style what would you call that?
Meg:Weaknesses on on vampires. But it's, like but, again, none of this is real. It's it's all imposed by your by your sake. And and there's that one episode of Forever Night, which have you guys talked about the the lady with the 3 personalities?
Rachel:Not yet. Okay.
Meg:So but there's there's sort of, like, the but this idea of, like, vampirism is, like, a
Rachel:If you just don't know, you're a vampire. Are you a vampire?
Meg:Yeah. I just like, that I find that so frustrating. I mean, like, the version that you're talking about seems less annoying because it's someone externally brainwashing you into thinking a thing, and your physiology has made it so that whatever you think becomes reality. And so, therefore, you've been brainwashed into thinking you're gonna burst into flames. So today, you burst into flames.
Rachel:Like Yeah.
Meg:It's less annoying. But I feel like I feel like if you go if you go into, like, psychic trauma vampirism, like, what you're what you're actually describing is, you're describing a human being who is under a mental delusion, and that's why they're biting people and drinking their blood. So, like, if that's all it is, like, that's an interesting story.
Rachel:Well, they are vampires.
Meg:That's funny. I'm just saying, like, that the the psychic the, like, will yourself to not be a vampire conceit, which feels like a related concept to the, these tropes of vampirism are all in your mind. Like, I feel like I feel like the whole I feel like the whole all in your mind thing only works for me if it's a human being, a regular human being who, for whatever reason, is insane or under a a delusion or, like, a mental break that has made them think that they're a vampire, and they're actually just just a human being this entire time. And, like, that's an that's a story. That's an interesting story, I guess, but, like, I I feel like you're either a vampire or you're not.
Meg:So, like, if you're a vampire and you and you burst into flames and you have fangs and you've lived for 800 years, then it's not all in your head. You know? Like Yeah. I don't know. I I it's it's a pet peeve.
Meg:It's a
Rachel:I was gonna say, this feels like a pet peeve where we reduce we reduce the complexity of what's going on down to, like, have you tried just not being a vampire?
Meg:Which feels like so here's what this
Rachel:the reason for that. I mean, that's where we get into the vampires metaphor for mental health. Have you tried just not being depressed? Have you tried just
Meg:Yes.
Rachel:Maybe you need to choose happiness. Have you tried choosing happiness today?
Meg:See, this is okay. It's because it's the shadow side of the thing that I love most about vampires. Like, vampires as symbols of addiction and mental illness and, like, despair, like Like, being othered. And being othered in any way. Yeah.
Meg:I I like the I like vampirism as a stand in for all of those things, and so, in real life, being, like, could you just not be gay or black? Like, that doesn't work, or could you just not be depressed? Could you just not be addicted to alcohol? Just think real hard and be not addicted. Yeah.
Meg:Like, that doesn't work. So, like, I feel like when I see that in a vampire thing, the only way that works is if you're not actually addicted or black or gay or a vampire. Like, that's the only way that it doesn't work. That's the only way that that's the only way that it works. Otherwise, I hate it.
Meg:I hate it so much. It sucks.
Rachel:I think that's why I don't like, when we have an easy solution to the blood problem. Like, as soon as there's a cop out, like, oh, I just magically always have blood bags. Well, where are you getting them from? Are you like
Meg:Yeah. No. I'm I'm with you, and I
Rachel:because I don't want a cure. Like, I don't I want this to be a problem that we learn to manage. I don't want this to be something that is really just, like Yeah. It doesn't affect your life at all except it makes you immortal.
Meg:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah.
Meg:I well, so that that brings me back to the the other pet peeve, like, vampires need to be vampires. If a if you're, like, he's a vampire and that's why he lives for a 1000000 year for a 1000000 years and the only indication of his vampirism is that he lives for a 1000000 years or let's say to pull something totally out of thin hair. If the only indication that you're a vampire is that you have gelled up hair and your skin sparkles, No. No. I hate it.
Meg:And you're not a vamp where are your teeth? Where are your where is your blood addiction? Where is your teeth? Where's your blood addiction? Where's your sadness and despair?
Meg:And not just regular not just regular Robert Pattons and despair. I want real despair. I want, you know, I want Yeah. I want vampires to actually be vampires. And I'm not saying that, like, obviously, there's, like, there's a million, like, different little tropes that, like, some some stories use and some stories don't use.
Meg:Like, there's a lot to pick and choose from, but there's, like, a core nugget essence of vampirism. And if you don't have that core nugget, then make your character not a vampire. They're a wizard who lives forever. They're a zombie. They're a witch.
Meg:They're a scientist who discovered some something that they could inject in their cells and now they live for like, fucking make your vampires vampires and make your vampirism mean something. And I feel like those two things, that's all I want from this life. Why can't I why can't That's so hard. Why can't I get that from my vampire pop culture?
Rachel:Yes. It's so hard.
Meg:Vampires, it needs to mean something, and the vampires need to be vampires. And, like, I don't. I okay. I'm I'm tired.
Rachel:So you're number 8. I'm sorry.
Meg:I went into my soul there, and I came out of it.
Rachel:That's fine. I think that was that was a good I mean, that's I think that's the lament of a lot of vampire fans who are criminally underserved.
Meg:Criminally underserved.
Rachel:Criminally. The fact that I can Google, like, vampire movies, like I said before, non romance, non horror, and it's literally the same 10 titles, same 10 books, same 10 movies, same 10 tell like, same 2
Meg:titles shows. It makes me feel like the beggar at the feast. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, there are so many vampire movies, and they're mostly garbage.
Meg:There are so many vampire novels and, like, I'm not against, like, the urban fantasy genre. I think that's a good place to, like, to start. But every time I pick them up, it's like, oh, it's a lady in a trench coat with a job and she meets a vampire. He's real annoying. Like, I hate it.
Meg:Dumb. Oh, are they gonna get together? Yeah. In this book and every other book, probably. Like, I I liked the True Blood books until the Sookie Stackhouse books, until after going through 6 of them, I was like, oh, it's the same story over and over except in this one, he's a weretiger and this one, he's a little vampire and then they added in all the, like, princes and fiefdoms.
Meg:No. No. I don't want vampire royalty. I fucking hate vampire royalty.
Rachel:I want Vampires can't have government. That's another pet peeve. I I well Hard pass.
Meg:I'm not against the kind of government that's, like, in what we do in the shadows, like, where it's sort of, like, yeah, they have, like, affinity clubs or, like, or, like, in Moonlite and in I know there's other shows that do this, where it's sort of, like, we have a cleanup network or, in Being Human even, like, where the cops, are vampires or there's, like, enough vampires on the on the Blaze force that, like, that's how they clean stuff up. Yeah. Like, fine. Yeah. No.
Meg:They're, like, having infrastructure, don't have royalty. Like, I feel like
Rachel:Infrastructure, not government. Like, not Yeah. Yeah. Don't have a king. Don't have rules.
Rachel:Just have, like, okay.
Meg:I because it's annoying. Yeah.
Rachel:And I don't know Empire capitalism.
Meg:I don't know why it annoys me so much, but it makes me it makes me wanna ball up my fists and roll my eyes and go, this is what people think we're nerds. Like, I just
Rachel:It's because you don't want an external force exerted on the vampire to make them a good guy. Like, I want my vampire, like,
Meg:free. Well, we do.
Rachel:Whatever they want and then choosing to do the right thing.
Meg:But then even a lot of times, the vampire society is what's the force on them to make them bad guys. Right? Like, to encourage them to, like, stay being vampires and stay being, you know, evil and stuff.
Rachel:But it's still annoying. Like, a whole point of this is I want a free character. I
Meg:don't want a
Rachel:character that, like, if I'm gonna be immortal, I better fucking be immortal and have no rules. I want I better not be immortal, and I have just another president.
Meg:Someone else you have to pay
Rachel:to pay taxes.
Meg:I I want so because I like vampirism as a stand in for different aspects of the human condition. I want my vampires in the real world, as much of the real world as I possibly can and that's why I don't mind And I I like even when they're, like, oh, here's here's the infrastructure that we have so that you don't discover us because that feels like it supports the real world. Because you'd be going, like, oh, surely, the hospital would notice that, you know, they they put 6 bags of blood in there yesterday, and there's only one left, and they don't have anything on their chart showing where 5 bags of blood went. Like so I I like when when it's the infrastructure that supports going, oh, yeah. I could see that in real life.
Meg:Like, I I like that stuff. But the stuff that but, like, the, oh, my my principality, like, no. Like, that that takes me out of it. And it takes me out of it, from the real world standpoint, and it takes me out of it because it doesn't jibe with the vampirism as symbol. It becomes vampirism as, like, a horror fantasy.
Meg:And, like, fuck your unicorns. I don't want them.
Rachel:Fuck your I don't.
Meg:Anyways, I'm sorry.
Rachel:You're number 8.
Meg:I so I you know what? Because I'm I'm being real slow. So my 8 and my 7 and my 6 are, kind of, kind of, I'm gonna roll them together in a fat little ball. Okay. And I'm gonna call them my eighties vampire romps.
Rachel:Okay. So, I love that you're themed.
Meg:I it's because I'm not good at the number and things. I don't wanna choose amongst my children.
Rachel:Lawyer. I don't do math. I
Meg:numbers are hard for people like me. So, they my my category of eighties romps, I have, The Lost Boys. Mhmm. Of course. I have Once Bitten, and I have My Best Friend is a Vampire.
Rachel:Oh, yeah. My best friend is I almost put my best friend. I bought it. I went on Amazon. I was like, my best friend is a vampire, and it was only, like, 5.99, so I bought it.
Rachel:And then I watched Kronos instead, but I was like
Meg:Have you wait. Have you not seen it? My restaurant is vampire.
Rachel:I've seen it.
Meg:Oh, okay. Alright. I was gonna I was gonna have a moment. Okay.
Rachel:No. No. I have seen it. Yeah. You're like, no.
Rachel:I Renee Abourgeois is in it. I know. Yeah. So, of course, I've seen that one.
Meg:Okay. So, Do you like Once Bitten? I I do. I do. So I almost I'm gonna be entirely honest.
Meg:I almost put Once Bitten into the same category as music videos, but then I realized that really, it has I mean, it is it is, obviously, it's from, like, 19 I wanna say 80 I wanna say 87. It's it has more in common with the other eighties movies in that, like the music videos and also like all the eighties movies, like, what I want from a plot and internal consistency, it it doesn't have that to offer me. And I I I get that.
Rachel:Fun. It's a fun movie.
Meg:It's fun. It's funny. It's just it's because it's because it's those it's an eighties romp, like, I just know that if I try to tear not tear it apart. If I try to pick it apart to understand the world that they have presented me, like, it falls into tiny little pieces of images.
Rachel:Don't do that.
Meg:But, like, once bitten for anyone who hasn't seen it, which stop listening right the fuck now. Go go buy it. It's like like Rachel said, it's, like, $5. I I'll give you the $5. It's so don't don't hold me
Rachel:to that. It's so This blood's for you. Isn't that or we talked about once bitten. My best friend is a vampire. There's the scene where he's going through the, like, the montage of, like, you can manage your condition.
Rachel:Like, you have all these things, and he goes, yeah. This blood's for you, and he, like, holds his whole can
Meg:of blood. Funny. Like, they're all I just they're funny and they're sweet and, like, it's the eighties, so there's gonna be some things where you're, like, oh, I didn't age well. So, like, just prepare yourself for that. But it's I okay.
Meg:So once bitten, is high school age Jim Carrey. So, the other secret hidden theme of everything on my list is that, like, most of them have Canadian actors because I have to I have to support them. My soul won't let me not. So, it's cute young high school age Jim Carrey. He wants to get laid, but unlike fright night, he and his girlfriend, they both equally want sex, which I feel like for an eighties high school movie is, like, what?
Meg:Like, mind blowing.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:She wants sex, but she's, like, a, I don't wanna blow you in the back of an ice cream truck, which I think is fair. It's fair. Absolutely fair. Yeah. And, I don't know if I'm ready yet.
Meg:So, like, let me figure out, like, let me get myself, like, emotionally to the point of readiness, and then I'm I would love to have sex with you. I'm, like, wow. Wow. That feels so progressive. And she's not, like, oh, I'm frigid,
Rachel:but Like, I would consent feels progressive. It does. How do you know you've been watching too many eighties and nineties shows? Well, I think
Meg:what yeah. But, I mean, like, if you go back and watch these things from the eighties, it's either, like, you you have to be, like, you have to be unwilling, but eventually concede to having sex. That's that's the sweet spot for women. Because if you want it too much, you're a whore. And if you don't want it, you're frigid.
Meg:So you have to be like, no. I don't wink. Like, that's where you have to be in the eighties or, you know, in, what's that movie? Revenge of the Nerds. You have to be, like, in Revenge of the Nerds where you're willing, but for someone who's not the person you're having sex with, which gross.
Meg:So Beep. Beep.
Rachel:Yeah. Just awful. Flaggy. Terrible.
Meg:So I like this does feel super progressive, that she wants sex, but she's like, just not yet. Like, let me figure my shit out, dude. So then Jim Carrey and his 2 weird little friends, one of whom is very mousy and one of whom is, like, very horny, go out to this weird eighties club, which I'm I'm hoping this is, like, an actual type of club they had in the eighties, but it seems so foreign to me, just so bizarre that, like, maybe it was made up whole cloth for this movie, I don't know, but it's, essentially, a club where every table has a little tiny telephone on it, and a number, like a 2 digit number, and if you look across the room and be like, oh, the lady at table number 7 seems cute, you pick up your phone, you dial 7, and you're like, hi. And I'm like, in modern times, this would just be people sexually harassing each other over the phone across the room where you could get to watch.
Rachel:Isn't that Tinder? Maybe. Yeah. The one that's, like, people nearby you.
Meg:Yeah. I think some of them do have that, like, you know, hook up near me. I I wouldn't know. I You're like, oh, no. I should know.
Meg:Yeah. I might know later.
Rachel:I'm gonna montage you through these because we're at an hour and a half. I'm sorry. No. No. It's okay.
Rachel:I'm just
Meg:I know. I'll be I'll be faster.
Rachel:I would happily talk about this with you for 5 hours.
Meg:Could this be a 5 hour episode?
Rachel:What we need to do is just make an entire podcast.
Meg:I have been saying this for weeks. I don't. But okay. So so the okay. So the the basic gist is, of Once Bitten is Jim Carrey is hot and cool and young and a virgin, and he would like not to be a virgin.
Meg:And so his friends take him out to this weird club, which again, like, I don't I don't get this whole conceit of, like, calling random people at random tables because it just seems like it's going to end in a lawsuit. But, he meets Lauren Hutton, who plays a character called the countess. And the countess has a chauffeur slash butler slash man around the house played by, I think it's is it Cleavon Little? The
Rachel:It might be.
Meg:I feel like his name is Cleavon something.
Rachel:I remember liking the character.
Meg:Yes. Well, that's the other thing that felt progressive is so he is clearly not I was gonna say coded. He's clearly a gay vampire, a gay black man vampire who is her, like, man servant, but he's kind of like her best friend Major Domo. He's clearly like above the other. So there's like lesser vampires that she's made who just kind of work for her and move out of her.
Meg:And then, there's the Cleavon Little best friend brings me breakfast in bed, takes care of me, like, he's my best guy. And then, there's the countess. So, like, he's clearly he's above all these other characters, and he's gay. And there's like some jokes where he's like, inside her closet, But, like, it's it's not presented like eighties gay panic. I mean, there are moments of eighties gay panic, which I didn't remember till I watched the movie again, and there's a scene where they're in the shower, and a bunch of kids scream homophobic slurs, and I'm like, cool eighties, way to eighties.
Meg:But, like, this character is treated, like, he is sassy, but he is I sassy is not the wrong word because it sounds sort of like he's a trope. He he is, like, the smartest character in this.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Like, he he makes a plan for the countess to, to get Jim Carrey because she needs to drink the blood of a virgin three times from a vein next to his penis, but, apparently, not actually his the the base of his penis that he kind of thinks maybe something happened, but it's nope. No sex. No sex acts. So thumbs up. But he's like, he makes the plan for how to get him, he takes care of the countess, he makes a plan, like, at the end when she loses, like, how we're gonna take care of you, like, he's the one giving orders to all the lesser vampires.
Meg:Like, he's he's treated, like, he's not a joke character, and I really like, he's he has, like like, you know, comebacks. He's a funny character, but he's not a joke character. And I I really appreciated that. I was like, this feels very modern. And I also forgot that there's when they're at the very beginning in the club with the weird telephones, they, there is a trans character or possibly just like a man cross dressing.
Meg:It's the eighties, so they don't know the difference and everyone is just everything. But, like, that character, hits on, or I guess is hit on by one of the the 2, like, little nerdy friends of Jim Carrey. Mhmm.
Rachel:The little
Meg:nerdy friend is, like, oh, are you a man? And he's and the the as I say, he, I don't know, the cross dressing woman or the They? Cross dressing man. Yeah. The the person is, like, does that matter?
Meg:And the guy the kid's, like, and then, like, runs away. And then the the character the possibly trans, possibly like cross dressing man character, like, calls him a sissy, calls the little, like, teenage boy a sissy, and I was, like, that puts you in, like, this position of power, which I kind of like. Like, you're the one being, like, oh, you're not man enough for me. And I was, like, I maybe, like, in the eighties, I just read as, like, this person being the joke, but the way that it plays now is sort of, like like, okay. Like, you're not you're not tough enough to handle this.
Meg:And I was, like, I was, like, oh, okay. Alright. So, this movie, everyone needs to watch it just for the realization, which we all should have had before now, but somehow it always escapes, it escapes all of us, is that Jim Carrey is such a life and fluid figure that, of course, he's an amazing dancer. Of course, he would be. He has all arms and legs and no bones.
Meg:Of course, he would be an amazing dancer. There's a choreographed dance in the middle of this movie, And if you haven't seen this movie, go watch it right now. Go fast forward, you'll see it there in a high school gym and it's Jim Carrey. It's Halloween, and he is being pulled between his girlfriend who's dressed like Jill, like from Jack and Jill, and, the countess who is dressed it's she's it's like it's like that thing where, a woman wears a man's tuxedo, but it's, like, sexy, and so there's, like, there's no pants. It's like a it's like a not a onesie.
Meg:What do you call that thing? Like a like a bathing what do you call those things where it's like a bathing suit, but it's not a bathing suit? Like, a spandex?
Rachel:Oh, no. A dancing Like a
Meg:leotard kind of? A leotard. Yeah. So she's got, like, a, like, a the more I rewatch this movie, the more I'm like, Lauren Hutton, are you, like, 65 and, like, Jim Carrey's, like, 18? And I'm like I
Rachel:don't think she's that old in this. I think it's just the pro the part.
Meg:It it might be. And the purple lipstick, which was a choice, it's just you had to move past the purple lipstick to enjoy the scene. So they're dancing and they're pulling Jim Carrey between them, the 2 women, and it is choreographed to music and it is just it's it's why doesn't Jim Carrey dance more? Why isn't he on Dancing with the Stars? I want only retired now?
Meg:I he needs to come out of retirement. Mister Carey, I am from Toronto. We are from the same place, and I love you very much. And I want you to dance. Dance forever.
Meg:Dance for me. It is this dancing scene is so it is beautiful. I can't oversell it. It is so good. It is so good.
Meg:So, like, the movie, like, on a whole like, it's, like, just, like, an eighties romp and, like, at the end, like, he has to have sex with his girlfriend and it's fine, and they're in, like, a double wide coffin, and it's great.
Rachel:Yeah. The lid bounces up and down.
Meg:Yes. Yes. Yes. So, like, there are questionable things like, the homophobic slurs, and there's, like, a Confederate soldier vampire, which I, again, did not realize till rewatching and seeing the Confederate flags in the lover's coffin. But, like, Confederate soldier vampires are also a trope that just won't die.
Meg:So, anyways, it's for the dancing scene, eighties romp. My Best Friend's a Vampire is, like, kinda similar, like, where the so it's a kid, he also wants to get lit every 80s movie is a teenage boy who wants to get laid Yes. And I'm I'm here for it, I guess. It's a universal theme. He well, so here's so the first time I watched the movie was before all of the grocery stores had started doing, like, home deliveries again.
Meg:And so it was really bizarre to me to watch this kid taking groceries to somebody's house. Although, now that's a thing that we do again. So I guess, like, that's cyclical. But, he goes to some lady's house to drop off groceries, and she bites him and makes him a vampire. His parents think he's gay, because he's having he's having all these changes in his, like, behavior stuff.
Meg:But, again, very progressive for the eighties because they're not, like, oh, he's gay. That's bad. They're, like, he's gay. And they're, like, we love you no matter what. Now it's, like, hey.
Rachel:Books on, like, how to how to, like, talk to your child about it. Yeah.
Meg:Yes. Which means Like, for the eighties, like, that is not how I expected that to go. Like, that's amazing. That's great. And then at the end, when he's like, here's my girlfriend who, like, I I remember being, like, oh, she's not.
Meg:But it's it's sort of interesting because, like, looking back on these eighties movies, it's hard for me to get a really good register on fashion and hair wise, like, what what is the ideal.
Rachel:What are you trying to show me?
Meg:Yeah. Like like, because in my head, it's sort of, like, when we're talking about Fright Night, like, in my head, the way that that, the girlfriend character is styled at the beginning, that just that to me, that just reads as, like, eighties girl, But then, like, you realize through the movie that actually the short hair and the sort of androgynous or not or, like, childlike clothing is not just standard eighties, like, it's meant to be, like, it's meant to say something about her. Same thing with sort of Darla Blake is I feel like watching the movie
Rachel:She's supposed to be nerdy.
Meg:She is supposed to be nerdy, but it's but, like, looking at it now from, like, a 2023. What year is it? 2023. Like like
Rachel:I know because IMDB says we're on our 2nd season. I
Meg:when does your first season end?
Rachel:I don't know. Congrats.
Meg:I should have gotten you a gift. I'm sorry.
Rachel:Throw that in there again. No. You can go ahead.
Meg:But it's sort of but it's, like, it's hard for me to get a good read on, like, is because to me, Darla Blake just looks like eighties girl. And then rewatch the movie, it's, like, oh, no. She's not eighties girl. She's eighties girl who's, like, a little bit boyish. Eighties girl who's, like, a little bit nerdy.
Meg:Like, eighties, like Yeah. There there are there's more that they're trying to say that would have been clearer, I think, to the audience at the time.
Rachel:I do think she's supposed to be the unconventional choice. Yeah. But I think it's supposed to make him look like he's actually interested in her, to make us believe the fact that he keeps trying to get her.
Meg:Which is weird, though, because, like, I thought he had never talked to her before. He just saw her across the room in, like, band class. But, I mean, maybe that's just sort of how eighties teen boy movies are gonna be. Yes. Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. I'm I'm deep because she has glasses.
Rachel:Yeah. Clearly, she plays, like she she's in marching band.
Meg:Yeah.
Rachel:She's supposed to be, like, the nerdy, the unconventional. This isn't, like, this isn't the this is the best friend character. This isn't the love interest character.
Meg:Yes. I can I can see that? Yeah. So it's I feel like all these eighties movies, they're sort of, like, the next step from the music video movies where, like, plot wise, if you question it too much
Rachel:Lost Boys?
Meg:Well, Lost Boy yeah.
Rachel:Lost Boys is one long music video.
Meg:Oh, it absolutely well, it is it's the bridge between the eighties ones and the straight up music video ones because it's just, like, beautiful mullets and beautiful scenery.
Rachel:I love
Meg:Lost Boys. I fucking I love everything about Lost Boys, except I wish they had given Edward Harriman better vampire makeup, and I don't know why everyone else got sort of this got similar, stylings. Like, all the other vampires look like they're part of the same group of animal, and then Edward Herman looks like like a zombie. And I can't figure out why I'm, like, he's green. His hair changes and becomes sort of, like because
Rachel:he's, like, the master.
Meg:Alfalfa. Yeah. But, like, why does alfalfa master get the the bad hair?
Rachel:I don't know. Because he's only a vampire for, like, 30 seconds in
Meg:the movie. I know. But, like, they could have done less, and it would have done more. But, like, here's okay. I like Lost Boys, because it has the thing that I really want in my heart, which is a hot, horny, bemulleted vampire who doesn't wanna be a vampire, and it has it has one of my, I'm gonna say, good time button push themes, which is scenes where you have the scene of the vampire being like, don't let them see me.
Meg:Don't let them see what I look like. And I'm like, oh.
Rachel:Yes. That's I think we can yeah. You're, like, fanning yourself. I think we can all agree that, like, don't look at me. I'm a monster scene is, like, yes, please.
Meg:Why does that get my soul so wet? I don't I hate I am such a simple animal, but, like, that scene where it's him and it Star is her name. Right? The girl?
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Who became the wife in that sitcom with Mark Addie.
Rachel:Oh, she's in Twister. Really? Yeah. What a weird career. I don't know.
Rachel:I everything about Starr. Starr's skirt, Starr's shirt, Starr's hair. She has that wrap. Just as teenage me was just like, I love everyone in this movie. I am so that's like by panic the entire thing.
Rachel:Because, like, Kiefer Sutherland, yes, please. Michael Patrick, I think his name he has two first names. It's all I can say.
Meg:I feel like I feel like it's his name. Mister Mullet. Mister Mullet.
Rachel:Yeah. I Michael.
Meg:I also love that he's clearly, like, 37.
Rachel:I'm an 18 year old. It's fine. I don't care. Star, great. Like, the whole it was just, like, I love this movie.
Meg:It is a very sexually releasing movie, and but but again, like, because it's that eighties slash music video movie, it's one of those where if you spend more than 12 seconds going, wait, what happened and when and who did you don't yeah. Don't, like
Rachel:It's fine.
Meg:Yeah. I'm still not even sure if, like, that little boy is actually stars, like, biological brother. No.
Rachel:It's just like another.
Meg:See see, I don't know the story of this movie. I've watched it 17 times. I'm not watching it's like you don't you don't you don't go to, like, Pornhub for the story.
Rachel:Do you know what
Meg:I mean? This is just
Rachel:You don't read Playboy for the articles?
Meg:No. Yes. Yeah. No.
Rachel:Right. Yeah. I could think we can all agree Lost Boys is just, like, eighties, but, like, eighties and the vampire tropes had this perfect little baby.
Meg:Yes.
Rachel:And And the vampire makeup is good.
Meg:Yeah. Like, it's it's that it straddles the line that I needed to straddle, which is to say 50% horny, 50% scary. And you have to top it up with a mullet, because all vampires have mullets.
Rachel:Yes.
Meg:And I don't that's just a rule.
Rachel:Some point in their lifespan. Yes.
Meg:Yes. All vampires have mullets. And so I think the eighties with the with the leather and the sweatiness. And and the way that it ends, like, the line that it ends on with the grandpa being, like, oh, like, was it there All the damn vampires? Yes.
Rachel:When he
Meg:reveals that he's, like, known about the vampires the entire time, and the whole family is, like, I'm sorry. What the fuck? And then the movie just ends.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Love it.
Rachel:Love it.
Meg:Love it. Love it. So good. So good. So all the horny eighties vampire romps, those are my, like, 6, 7, 8.
Rachel:Well, I'm gonna go with my number 6 in the interest of time, because I think Daybreakers was number 8. Have you seen Daybreakers? Yes. So I that was both number 8 and also on my missed opportunities.
Meg:Yes.
Rachel:Yes.
Meg:Yes. I'm with you over
Rachel:at once. The Ethan Hawke in the group of humans trying to cure vampirism needed to be longer. I think we can all agree on that one. But interesting take on how to cure vampires. And then the new Interview with a Vampire was really good.
Rachel:The new television show.
Meg:I forgot to add that to my list. Yes. That's that show is so great.
Rachel:The subtext is for fucking wussies. These 2 dudes are together, and their bullshit is amazing, and you are gonna love every second of it.
Meg:Yes. I like that they I like the new the new racial angle to it.
Rachel:Yes.
Meg:Like, instead of him being a guy that used to own slaves, he is a black man trying to run a business in, what, the 19 twenties. Right?
Rachel:Or thirties, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Meg:So, like, I I I think that adds so much to it because, again, vampires with, like, with subtext, vampires with, like, this other thing that it represents, so, like, you're racially othered and also, p s, you're gay, which you've got 2 things that, like, historically have not really meshed well together, like, culturally in American society. On top of that, you're a vamp like, the vampires and, like like, spanning both of these things, and also so fucking hot.
Rachel:All of them. Another by panic show. We all agree. Bailey Bass was perfect, and, like, everybody who was every change they made, I was, like, yes. Thank you.
Rachel:These are all of the problems that I have with the original adaptation and the original novel. And you were just, like, how do we make a movie in 2023 about a privileged white dude who owns slaves who becomes a sad vampire? Don't. We just don't. We just we just.
Meg:Yeah. We just Bring me a hot Australian. Bring me a handsome British black man who might have pretend to be American. Lestat? Holy shit.
Meg:I know this is not vampire related, but have you seen him in, the is it I think it's called the news reader. No. Oh my god. It is so it's a currently running show. They've just they finished the first season.
Meg:I think they're about to either air or, like, start filming maybe the second season. He plays a nebbish closeted gay oh, what? Newsreader in the eighties in Australia, trying to sort of, like like, rise up in I think he's in, like, a like, a small local station. He's trying to, like, rise up through the ranks, and dealing with, like, try like, dealing with being closeted and then dealing with, like, actual historical, events that happened in Australia and in the world, like, at that time. It is amazing, and the character could not be more of an opposite to Lestat.
Meg:Like, the only thing they have in common is that they have the same face, and that they're both gay men. Yeah. But it is it is so it is such a testament to Sam Reid's acting that in He was phenomenal. So good.
Rachel:But not like I was both terrified and terrifyingly attracted to him all at the same time.
Meg:Yes.
Rachel:Like, I would be terrified and scared, but I would still sleep with you.
Meg:Oh, yeah. No. You would wet your pants twice. Yeah. So he in the news reader, he is, like, so painfully closeted and, like, stabbing himself, like, emotionally, like, just so, like, wrapped up into a tiny little little ball of control and, like, self loathing and just trying to, like, not act on any of his impulses versus the Lestat character who is the exact opposite of I will do whatever the fuck I want, and I'm horny, and I'm beautiful, and I'm gonna murder people, and it's great.
Meg:And and, like like, it is such a testament to his acting ability that he is able to embody those characters so fully. Like, it's just it's just amazing, and he is so sexy in both shows. So I fully I recommend it's there's no vampires in it. I mean, maybe season 2 has lots of vampires.
Rachel:I don't know. But, like, so far, let me know. I'll probably watch it.
Meg:It is so it is so good. And then also, like, it's I also I enjoy it just from, like, an 80 standpoint of, like, I enjoy learning about historical events that, like, would be very common, like, common knowledge for an Australian person to know about because it's, like, part of the history of Australia that I would have no idea about. Like, I I I really I enjoy or, like like, also, I like I like learning my historical events from the perspective of an Australian TV show, like, historical events that I'm aware of. But I really enjoy just, like, things that would be really big in Australian history that I am, like, I have no fucking clue, because I'm trash. So, like, I really enjoy I enjoy that, but, like, oh my god.
Meg:Yes. Thank you for bringing up Interview with the Vampire. That show is so fucking good.
Rachel:So good. And, to bring us back down to earth after that, my number 6 is actually, Dracula Untold, because it's my favorite Dracula adaptation. Have you seen Dracula Untold?
Meg:I think I've seen, like so, like 10 minutes of that movie.
Rachel:Early 20 tens, they were like, okay. We have these. We have Dracula. We have Frankenstein. We have the wolf man.
Rachel:We have Swamp Thing. We have this huge back catalog of, like, these are classic vampire movie or these are classic monster movies.
Meg:When they were trying to do the universal monsters universe?
Rachel:Yeah. And so they were trying to reboot each one individually and create this, like, interconnected kind of like Marvel was trying to do, but they were trying to do it with their monsters. And so they where they released The Mummy with Tom Cruise, which I think we can all agree was shit. And, because it didn't have Brendan Fraser in it, it didn't need to be rebooted, but that's a whole another podcast. And then they did Dracula untold, where they were like, what if, what if now hold hold the phone.
Rachel:What if Dracula is a superhero? Like, what if all of the things he can do makes him a superhero? Wouldn't that be cool? And so you get the Dracula character.
Meg:I'm listening.
Rachel:I'm just waiting because okay. You get the Dracula character who, in order to save his family and save his kingdom, makes, like, a deal with the devil, expecting that he'll be able to save them and then he'll be able to, like, get out of it. But he ends up not being able to get out of it.
Meg:Okay. That's like a compelling I like I like the self sacrificing vampire trope Yeah. Anyways. So I like the self sacrificing person becoming a vampire trope. I I will buy that.
Meg:And this is on here for, like,
Rachel:the missed opportunity, because it's only an hour and a half long, which if it had come out right now in the heyday of streaming, you could create a dark universe television show where we have these little one and a half hour movies. Like, this one is Dracula. This one is Frankenstein. This one is wolf man. This one is whatever.
Meg:I would
Rachel:brush that. We could weave all of those together throughout the course of, like, 12 episodes and create this really cool finale where they're all interconnected. But because we tried to release them as, like, blockbuster movies, and Dracula is not a blockbuster movie in the way they want it to be, they just scrapped the whole thing. So we're end we left in, like, there's a really cool cliffhanger at the end, but we're left with this, like, this could have been a really intense and cool character. This, like, I only became this way to save my family, and now I'm stuck like this forever.
Meg:No. That's such a compelling a compelling concept to start from. So it makes it even more disappointing if, like, the execution fails. Because because if you started with something that I was, like, really here for Yeah. I wanna watch that now.
Meg:I mean, I will prepare myself to be annoyed, but I wanna watch it.
Rachel:It was good. I I like it. Like, I like it's not a deep movie. It's not a complex movie. It's not one of those movies you're like, I feel emotionally changed.
Rachel:You're just like, okay. The main character's hot. The main character is a vampire. Check and check. He's tortured.
Rachel:Doesn't wanna be what he is. We get the, like, I'm really hungry, but I can't give into my whatever scenes. Right? Exactly. Exactly what we want, but we it just didn't we didn't get the payoff.
Rachel:We didn't get more of the character.
Meg:Yeah. Yeah. So having something that hits all the points and, like, doesn't actually get where we need to go, I feel like that's that's a giant theme of, like, all the almost good movies and books and stuff on the list. You know what I mean? Like so, I have Blood Ties on here.
Meg:I have Forever Night on here. I forgot to add Moonlight, but, like, Moonlight is I'm just I'm adding it now.
Rachel:Blood ties, forever night, and moonlight. You could kinda group together.
Meg:There that's yeah. Yeah. So, I originally had a list I called a section of list called nineties Canada, but, like, that's we're gonna have to split that apart separately. So Moonlight and Forever Night and Blood Ties are all, like, almost good. Like, they're they don't get me to the finish line, but, like, they all know what they're doing.
Meg:So I feel like for okay. So, Blood Ties is a show about a lady cop in Toronto, because all vampires live in Toronto, I think, established. And she has a I keep I keep wanting to call it Based
Rachel:on a book series.
Meg:It is based on a book series.
Rachel:Yeah. By Tanya Huff.
Meg:Yes. I admittedly, I have not read the books. I I have the first book, digitally, and I've started reading
Rachel:You think Henry's annoying in the show?
Meg:I don't think anything about Henry. I just I just look at Kyle Schmidt, and I'm happy to look at Kyle Schmidt.
Rachel:That's fair. But you don't get Kyle Schmidt. You just get Henry.
Meg:I that's that's sort of a bummer. So, she has some kind of, like I I wanna say macular degeneration, but I I don't know if that's, like, the exact thing, but
Rachel:she No. She has another one.
Meg:It's a
Rachel:retinitis pigmentosa.
Meg:Oh, it might be. I think it's I know I know in the in the my understanding is that in the books, it makes her essentially that she can't see at night. Like, she's, like, like, blind at night. In the show though, they're just, like, she wears glasses, and I'm, like, that's not that's not the same thing. I think in the in the pilot, they try to make it more like what she actually has, like, she can't see at night, but, like, that that goes on for, like, 85 seconds, and then after that, it's just
Rachel:It's 85 whole seconds. Whole seconds.
Meg:And then it's just, like, I'm a lady who wears glasses. Who will love me? I can't have a job. And I'm just, like, okay. As a lady who wears glasses, fuck all the way off.
Meg:But, so she was a cop, she had to leave her job as a cop, because of her her vision thing. And now, she's a private detective. I don't remember how she stumbles upon, Henry Fitzroy, the bastard son of Henry the 8th, played by a very young, very hot, Kyle Schmidt, also Canadian. Shout out. So Also in being human.
Meg:Also in being a who also plays a vampire called Henry in being human, which I love so much. Okay. So, please don't block me on Instagram, Kyle Schmidt. So, so there's, so the police officer is played by Christina Cox, and what I can't think of her character name. Oh, my god.
Meg:Vicky? Vicky. Thank you. So Vicky is, like, in her thirties, I think. Kyle Schmidt is not yet in his thirties.
Meg:Kyle Schmidt is, like, her early twenties, but he also has a he has a mullet that ages him up just a little bit. Yeah. That's fine. But it's a nineties mullet, so it's just it's all party. There's no business.
Meg:Just all beautiful, just long hair.
Rachel:So why do they all have mullets? All vampires have mullets.
Meg:Maybe if we
Rachel:just got a show where the vampire characters had reasonable hair, we'd be like, oh, you did it. That was it. That was the magic formula that you always had.
Meg:Can I be honest? If there were a show where there were no vampires in the mallas, I don't think I would watch. Watch. I just
Rachel:Like, you're not real. Could Get out of here.
Meg:Could our vampire podcast be called All Vampires in the mullets?
Rachel:Yes. It could. And solve crimes.
Meg:Yes. Obviously. So, he's, like, in his twenties, but he's actually, what, like, 400 years old as the dead bastard son of Henry the 8th. And then and then there's a cop who is still a cop. Oh my god.
Meg:Well, I can't think of his name either. I can see his stupid face.
Rachel:It doesn't matter. Her he's like a former flame.
Meg:Yes. Well, former and, like, maybe future. Yeah. Kind of. Mike.
Meg:Mike Celucci. Yeah. God. Good job, brain. Okay.
Meg:So, he's, like, in his thirties, forties. She's in her thirties, forties, and then the vampire's, so just just push past it. And then, Vicki has an assistant who is a goth woman who is
Rachel:I love her.
Meg:God book. Corinne? Right?
Rachel:Corinne. I think it's Corinne or Corinne. Corinne. Something like that. I don't know.
Rachel:Yeah. She's I love her anyway.
Meg:She's she's great, and her name is confusing. And, she is a goth, and the you meet her in the first episode, as a college student, but I she's, like, 35. So she's she's just a 35 year old woman
Rachel:with a
Meg:lot of black makeup. I know.
Rachel:That's just that time period. Every every actor it's, like, Grease, like, the original Grease.
Meg:Yeah. Yeah. She is. Yeah.
Rachel:I Yeah. They're supposed to be teenagers. They're all, like, 45. Yes. Yeah.
Meg:Yes. So, don't think I mean, it makes it makes, like, all the all the sexy crime stuff, like, a little less upsetting if you just pretend that they're the age that the actors are.
Rachel:We're coming off of, is it Brooke Shields in the, Blue Lagoon? Legend of the Blue Lagoon? You've never
Meg:I've never I don't have any cultural understanding of the question being asked. Oh, god. I don't know where Shield is.
Rachel:Oh, it's a super controversial movie because she was in it when she's, like, 14. And she's in it with, like, the it guy of the eighties whose name I can't remember, but they, like, get stranded on this island together.
Meg:She, like, over sexed up, but she's an actual child?
Rachel:She's an actual child, and they end up, like, together. And the director was trying to, like, up the chemistry. So he was trying to get them actually together.
Meg:Oh my god.
Rachel:And so he would leave, like, photos of her in his dressing room.
Meg:Is the director in prison?
Rachel:I think she testified against him. I think it ended up in court because it was basically, like, it is wildly inappropriate for a, this character to be portrayed like this on screen, and b, for the act the actor to actually be that age. Because they're first cousins, they end up sexually active in the show, in the movie. Then they have a baby together. It's anyway, that's what
Meg:I do. God.
Rachel:And there's, like, so much nudity. Like
Meg:Okay. So, I mean, if my only options are sexed up child or adult playing sexed up child, I guess I'll go with adult playing sexed up child.
Rachel:Yes. That is the better option
Meg:Yeah. For sure. So, in blood ties, they just they, like, solve crimes together that need the help of a hot 21 year old vampire, and Vicky is torn between her hot 21 year old vampire and her, also very hot, do not sleep on him, played by Dylan J. Neil.
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:Very hot. Mushroom hair cutted nineties, cops. It's the commercial cop. Yes. Yeah.
Rachel:Julian Sands is in it too. He's in, like, 2 episodes.
Meg:I know that name. I don't know who that is.
Rachel:He played in Warlock.
Meg:You're just saying words that mean
Rachel:He also played in another movie called vampire, which I hate that's another pet peeve. It's the generic vampire titled vampire movie.
Meg:Well, then I'm never gonna be able to find it if I just Google it.
Rachel:Yeah. Julian Sands, he just died. He went missing. Like, he went hiking and went missing, and they found his remains, like, 3 months later.
Meg:Oh my god.
Rachel:But he was in it. He's in the ark where, like, he get, Henry gets captured, and he has the, like, son.
Meg:Oh, is he the, like, the rogue priest or anything?
Rachel:The rogue priest.
Meg:Yeah. So it's not like okay. It's the nineties, and it's, it's a procedural 2000s. Oh my god. It might be the early 2000s.
Rachel:Yeah. I think it's 2,007. Because there's another Emotionally, it's the nineties. There's another blood ties television show that they tried to have a pilot for, which is completely unrelated to the novels, which is actually under my missed opportunities list. And it came out in 1991 and it's, Blood Ties, but it's again, unrelated.
Rachel:And it's like, there is a whole group of people who are vampires, but they're not like they're not like mystical vampires. They're like people with what I guess you could call it a disability. I don't know. They're from they're all, like, genetically similar, but they're similar enough to humans that they can kind of live with them. I'm not describing this well, but they the funniest part is they call themselves Carpathian Americans instead of vampires.
Meg:Okay. I was with you up until you said that. I was so going to watch every episode of the show, but the second you say Carpathian Americans Yeah. No. Okay.
Rachel:Well I just it's worth it just for the funny, like yeah. You gotta
Meg:watch it. I still kinda wanna watch it. So the Blood Ties, the the non Carpathian American version. Yeah. It's you're right.
Meg:It is it is definitely the early 2010s, which, look, time 2007. Time has not time has not moved for me. So I think anything that happened before today was the nineties. Yeah. That's how I live emotionally.
Meg:Yeah. It's fine.
Rachel:So,
Meg:they they solve crimes. There's a a love triangle back and forth. Goth girl is into vampire boy, but that never goes anywhere. The vampire makeup is very good and very horny. There are lots of, sexy romps.
Meg:It is not as weird as you think it would be to watch a 21 year old and, like, a 35 year old lady make out. So, like, you know, do with that what you will.
Rachel:Yeah. Roll with it.
Meg:There are many silk sheets. It is it is not the writing is not great. The the vampire, he is supposed to be I think in the books, he's like a novelist, but in the TV show, he is a a comic book writer, as a comic book artist, I think.
Rachel:Artist. Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. So that comes up, like, every 17th episode. They some some versions of finding this online will say that there are 2 seasons. Sometimes, they just say it's one really long. 1st season, they there's there's some, like, confusion between, when it was first aired in Canada and then when it came to the States on Lifetime.
Meg:They end the first season slash second season they end the whole show on an awful, awful cliffhanger
Rachel:Yeah.
Meg:And then nothing ever happens, the show gets canceled. So, you know, it's you're gonna have blue balls at the end of it, but, like, it's it's one of those shows that, like, doesn't ask too much from you. Like, there's, like, demons sort of it's sort of like Buffy where, like, every every 4th episode, it's, like, oh, yeah. Now there's a demon.
Rachel:Yeah. There's a monster of the week. Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. And they don't they don't expect you to, like there's not a lot of world building around it. Like, they don't need you to know too much. One of the actors who was on forever night actually is in blood ties in one episode. It's, Blue.
Meg:He plays the he's the final,
Rachel:Blue man Kuma?
Meg:Yeah. Thank you. Reese. The final, chief of police. Yeah.
Rachel:Well, the main character, Vicky, she plays on Forever Night.
Meg:That is true. She's got she has 2 cameo episodes. Right? 1 where she's Joan of Arc. Joan of
Rachel:Arc, and then she's, like, skanky. Ticket. Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. Oh, it's kinky. So it's like it doesn't ask a lot from you. There are sexy scenes. I like it because it's it's my Canadian cop show from the early 2000.
Rachel:What's your number 1? So Do you have a 1? Is it 1 a, 1
Meg:b c? You know what? Okay. So I had my nineties shows. Right?
Meg:So I have Forever Night, which I fucking love, but disappointing ending. Blood Ties, disappointing ending. Moonlight, no fucking ending, but, like, but it knows Moonlight had all of the like, it hit all of the, like, horny vampire buttons.
Rachel:We were about to get good. Like, the cliffhanger is right where I wanted it to start. It
Meg:yeah. It Okay.
Rachel:Go ahead.
Meg:It's 2 hours of hot garbage. Okay. So I've got my nineties ones. Right? So I've got blood ties in forever night and moonlight, where they like they know all the buttons of like, okay.
Meg:Vampire doesn't wanna be a vampire, and we're gonna have them, like, feel bad about themselves, but, like, be horny, but be sexy. I'm like, okay. Good. Yes. So, like, they hit all those buttons, and then you get to, like, the ending of the program, and I feel, like, they don't stick the landing.
Meg:There's not a lot of consistency in, like, world building, if there is any world building, and you just end up sort of blue balled and sad. But, like, the experience, I like it. There are mullets. There are beautiful vampires. Like, I'm here for it.
Meg:Then the I I realized while making this list that the ones that I like that, like, sit in my heart in the little cavity in my chest, the ones that make me feel good are the sweet and funny and gentle vampire shows. The ones where, like, where there's, like, a little family. So, Dracula the series, which has also has Grant Wynd Davies in it Yeah. As the turned vampire son of Van Helsing. And I can't even I just, okay.
Meg:No one no one is going to watch this show, but I need someone to watch this show because it is admittedly a show meant for like 10 year olds. The main characters are, like, I think the boy is like 10 and then his brother is maybe like 16 and then there's a girl, who as an adult goes on to play on Vampire Diaries as like the aunt, but she's in this I think she's maybe like also 16. It's set in somewhere in in Eastern Europe. I think they maybe give it, like, a fake country name. I'm trying to remember, but they film it in Liechtenstein.
Meg:Okay. So it's it's like a half Canadian, half Liechtenstein TV show, which is great. There should be more of those. So, setting wise, it's beautiful. The guy who plays Dracula, I thought he was doing a weird accent the entire time.
Meg:It turned out that that is his that's his normal speaking voice with just a very slight accent added on top of it. So I feel very bad. His name is Jordy Johnson, I think. Also, mullet cut because it's the nineties. Yes.
Meg:And then so so, all the kids go and they stay with is he Van Helsing? No. He's, like, the old man. He's, like, their uncle. I keep I keep calling him Van Helsing.
Meg:Wait. No. Is it Van Helsing? Oh my god. Anyways, anyways, the old man the old man.
Meg:So they go and stay with the old man who was, like, related to them somehow. He's, like, their great uncle, whatever. And then, there's, like, vampire stuff, like, vampire hijinks, basically. It's like it's like one of those, like, mystery of the week shows. But here's why I say don't sleep on it.
Meg:Okay. When the show has the kids and you're focusing on the kids, it's like Scooby Doo Mystery. Whatever. It's a it's a white TV show made for children. Whatever.
Meg:Dumb. The second the second that it is just the adult vampire characters on screen, they are all Shakespearean ham actors. I cannot. They are, you know it's true. Yes.
Meg:They are are all Shakespearean hams, and they know that the camera is on them, and that there are no children to distract, and the level of acting with a capital a that happens, it is it is I can't. I have no words. It is so good. It is so it's not it's okay. So when I say ham acting, I don't mean, like, cheesy ham acting.
Meg:No no no. I mean Ham scores. I mean like quality Yeah. Like they are actually Shakespearean actors. So there are scenes where Klaus, so Grant Wyndavies, who I love, and, Dracula, Jordi Johnson, also love.
Meg:When they are in a scene together, they're like in Dracula's, like, office, because Dracula is a businessman in this because, you know, it's the nineties. And they are like reciting Shakespeare quotes to each other and, having like pointed barbed conversations about, like, what do you what do you want me to do as your minion and I don't like being your minion and I want freedom, and, like, I want like, they are they are, like, conversations that don't have anything to do with these with the children and are more about, like, the vampires and, like, their, like, their relationship with each other and, like, the the business of everything, and the chafing against vampirism. And the language that is used, like, this heightened language and then these Shakespearean quotes that come out of just nowhere and this, like, emotive acting, it is it is mind blowingly good and impressive acting hidden in this teeny tiny, like, chocolate nugget oopsie doopsie show. Like, I can't even it is it is, like, where the fuck did this come from? Like, it's, like, it's, like, I'm a little teenage boy and I wanna go find vampires.
Meg:And then it's like, and I'm like, what? What? Where did this what? And then okay. So it also ends in a cliffhanger because no good vampire thing ever lasts, but it No.
Meg:But it ends on, like, such an interesting cliffhanger, and, like, I will admit that, like, the last episode, Grant when Davies, like, got some direction, and was, like, oh, I can be a ham, and he hammed it. He hammed it all the way up, like, and there is some, like, peak nineties, vest dressing. Like I love a good vest. Like, tennis tennis pro vest dressing, and then they wanted to make a very clear distinction between Grant Wyndavies as the vampire with his hair slicked back, and Grant Wyndavies, cool human dude. So they like blow blow dried his hair a little bit too much, so like some of the fashion in the very last episode will make you pause.
Meg:It will make you wonder what's happening with your life, but you have to watch it just to dig through and find these it's on YouTube in its entirety. There's 2 separate people who have uploaded this entire show, which God bless you. God bless you. I have uploaded the show in its entirety onto YouTube. And I I just I want you to watch it for these beautiful dramatic moments that should be in a much better program, but instead, like, they just got free rein in Liechtenstein with children, and it's just it's amazing.
Meg:So, just And and you, like, you believe that the characters, like, feel about each other, which is why I have it in my list of, like, my top 3, like, in that category. Because you want, like, their characters who are they are an actual family, but they're also sort of a found family. So the 2 boys are brothers, then there's, like, the the old man who's, like, sort of their great uncle, like, twice removed or whatever. So, like, they become a family. And then there's the girl who lives there who I don't think is related to them in any way.
Meg:She's just, like, the girl, because it's the nineties and that's her personality. Girl. So but, like, they get to I don't know. You have that family relationship, and then you get to see, like, the struggle between Klaus, Grant Wind Davies, and his dad, who I think is played by Bernard something old man old man and young Grant Wyndavies. And you get to, like, see all these family relationships, and I'm, like, yes.
Meg:This is what I want, all this family drama. So you get that also in my number 1 on 2 shows, which are What We Do in the Shadows, the show, and the movie.
Rachel:Yes.
Meg:Where you have all these, made relationships. They have this found family.
Rachel:It's not just the best vampire show. It's probably the best television show
Meg:I think
Rachel:I have ever seen.
Meg:Right? I just I like I like how much they focus on the relationships. Like, yes, like, there's goofy vampire stuff, and, yes, they also get to have, like, scary vampire stuff, which is which is it's a hard balance to do to have them still be, like, lovable and also commit, like, mass murders and then be, like, back to lovable. Like, it's a hard line to it's a hard needle to thread, and they do it. But I like the focus in the movie of the relations the relationships between both the housemates, amongst themselves and the housemates with people, like, outside of the house.
Meg:So, like, the, is it, Viago who's played by, Taika Waititi? Yeah. So, Vago and his, like, 96 year old lost love. You have, I can't think of his name. He was in, Flight of the Concords, Dutch with a j.
Meg:But
Rachel:he Jermaine Clements? Thank you. God.
Meg:So you have Jermaine Clements' character who I wanna say is Fladd. I don't know. Anyways
Rachel:And he's Fladd the poker.
Meg:Yes. Yes. So character names never stick with me for some reason. It's just like the actor. So you have his relationship with the beast.
Meg:You have, the housewife familiar who becomes a vampire, and Nick and the guy that turns them who's is it Duncan? Yeah. I think it's Duncan. You get, like, you get, like, all of these these different relationships, and it's not just, like
Rachel:And even the Nosferatu guy?
Meg:Yeah. Peter. Yeah. Yeah. So you you get these you get these characters that feel three-dimensional and fleshed out who have wants and needs, and some of those wants and needs are related to, like, they want and need other people.
Meg:And you get to see, like, you get to see them, like, interacting with people and, their vulnerabilities and them, like, working together and, like, caring for other characters. I feel like that's it shouldn't be rare in modern television, especially not in, like, genre stuff to have characters that care about other people and you can see them care about other people, outside of like a like a sexual relationship type character. I I don't know why that's so rare, but, like, you get you get that in what we do in the shadows in the show and the movie, and I feel like it was less in the show until recently, until the finale. I don't want to spoil anything for anybody, but I the the 2 part finale of the what is this? The 5th season, I think?
Meg:Yeah. So good. So emotionally resonant. And these characters that, like, can be very cruel and flippant to each other, you get to see that they actually care about each other and respect each other and, like, want to support each other's wants and and needs and, like, be there for each other. And I was, like, this is unexpected and beautiful.
Meg:And, like, the show gets to be, like, funny and stupid and mean still. It can be it can be just as mean.
Rachel:It gets to do all the things and it gets to do them all really, really well.
Meg:And the show that I feel, like, most exemplifies all of this, even though I don't it's not a successful show, like, in any way that you could define success, but I that defines it in a way that warms my heart is the US version of being human.
Rachel:It was really successful. It was, like, the highest viewed television show on sci fi for, like, the 18 to 35 range when it came out. Because, like, sci fi, when it was first really when they were first releasing it, sci fi was like a dude network. It was almost exclusively male, their viewership, and being human actually got them, like, female viewers.
Meg:Well, I mean, that makes perfect sense.
Rachel:You're like, because Sam Witwer
Meg:said, yes. You know what? I I dare not speak his name. I love him so much. So he just seems like a cool dude.
Meg:So I got distracted.
Rachel:So Sam, hang on. I gotta
Meg:You know what?
Rachel:This is It was good. I I enjoy both being humans. I had just had a discussion with somebody online about this because they were like, oh, won't it look? And I was like, no. I mean, season 1 is almost a mirror.
Meg:Yeah. They copy a lot.
Rachel:They copy a lot, and then they make one different choice at the end. Yes. And then we have 2 completely different shows.
Meg:Yeah. I feel like I do I like being human, like, the UK version? Like, yeah. It's like, it's it's fine. I don't I wouldn't, like, not recommend it.
Meg:I like the US version more, because I believe that these characters care about each other more. Yeah. That's fair. In the UK version, they are roommates and I feel like they stay roommates, but they are, like, roommates who, like, now feel, like, slightly more obligated to help their other roommates, like like, as the show goes on.
Rachel:They're just not open with each other.
Meg:They're not they're not open. Well, I mean, in the US show too, like, they
Rachel:More so than in the UK version.
Meg:Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. Like, they're both for sale. All of a sudden, they'll be like, okay. Sit down. I'm gonna tell you the tea for the last, like, 2 weeks.
Meg:Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah.
Meg:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But they I feel like in the in the Canadian US version of the show because it's found in Montreal. So Canadian.
Meg:So in that in that version of the show, I believe that they start off as strangers, then they become roommates who are slightly more comfortable with each other and then they become friends and close friends and then family. Like, I feel like you can see
Rachel:you can
Meg:see that progression, of these people kind of weaving around each other. And, like, I I think the ending of the show is good. I mean, you can you can tell that the last season was originally meant to be 2 seasons because you I mean, it it feels really clearly, like, 2 seasons where the storylines that they just went mash and then, like, mash it into 1. And and I know why they did that. I know that there were, like, financial issues that came about, and so, like, I think I think it's a successful way to do what you wanted to do from the beginning and get through everything.
Meg:And the the finale, I thought, like, it it does have a good sense of closure to it, like, it it's a happy ending for for the characters, that you care about, like, it's nice. I think it's sort of, like, a lot of the other stuff on the list where if you think too hard about, like, the plot at any given moment, it's all gonna fall apart into, like, little dust clumps in your hands. Yeah. I think some of the seasons are less successful than others, like, because there is a season where they're, like, oh, like, the vampire royalty shit, and I'm just, like, ugh, pass. But, like, I I like this show because it for me for me personally, like, it helps remind me of the healing power of friendship.
Meg:And I know that sounds like a My Little Pony thing. But, like, being reminding yourself that, like, you can have a found family and you can reach out to them and rely on them and they can reach out to you and rely on you, and that that's not like being a burden, that's friendship. That's what friendship is. Like, you can you can do that. Like, you can reach out to people and have people there for you and that's an acceptable thing.
Meg:Like, I feel like that show helped open that door for me, helped remind me of that. That you like, that it's not like, well, if I if I talk to someone, like, that's gonna be bothering them. I'm gonna be a burden to them. Like, I don't wanna. It's like, oh, no.
Meg:These people are very fucked up. And they what do they do? Like, they rely they rely on each other. Yeah. Like, I I feel like the fact that the actors seem like they were friends, behind the scenes, like, that really comes through.
Meg:And it just it feels very, very real in that way, and it has the thing that I like the most, which is they're not just monsters because they're monsters. Like, their monstrousness represents part of the human condition. So Right. Like, the ghost is disconnected from everybody. She is depressed.
Meg:Like, the werewolf is full of anger that he can't control, and that scares him. The vampire is played like a heroin addict, so, like, thumbs up. Like, that comes across really clear. Like, I just I think I think it's it does what I want from a monster show. It has the the monstrousness represents something in the real world.
Meg:It has the characters fully grounded in the real world, and it has this found family as a response to all these monstrous things and, like, you're not going to fix vampirism and werewolf is a lycanthropy and you're not going to fix, you know, the ghost character. Like, they try and they can't, but they but they're able to be there for each other and help each other deal with these problems in their lives and get through that. So I think, like, that's that's what I want from a monster show. Like, I want it to be more than it is, and I feel like like, concept wise, being human really does that. And it does that more successfully, I feel, like, than the original being human, which started off started off with that kind of mindset of, like, oh, like, the like, the monstrousness represents stuff and the roommates and they're gonna help each other.
Meg:And then it, like, it really veered off into, like, monster of the week, more of that, like, genre TV thing. And then when all the main actors, like, leave and new actors come in, like, they're they're still good actors, and they're interesting characters, and I still like the world, but, like, the stories that were being told were just not as interesting to me. Yeah.
Rachel:It lingered a little too long.
Meg:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I want I feel like, the the vampire character, the 2nd vampire character that they had, the one at the end, Prince Hal, I think, in the UK version, he had some of those things that we have on the US version where, like, his vampirism seems like it's it's meant to talk a little bit about his mental and emotional condition, and then he has kind of, like, a split personality. So, like, I feel like they were they were, like, almost getting to that place with that show, like, where they were they were having it they were having it, like, represent stuff, but, like, then they just went right back into genre TV, and I was, like, well, this is like, monster of the week is kinda boring to me.
Meg:Like, you need to you need to have more. So I like that the US, Montreal being human. I like that it it gave us more. And, also, you know, Sam Sam Whitweller being shirtless a lot didn't didn't hurt where it fell on the rankings. I will not say that it was the sole reason for it being at the top of my list.
Rachel:I was nice.
Meg:You know, if anyone is casting anything, where they need a guy to be shirtless and they wanna hire him, I will I'll watch your program.
Rachel:Alright. Alright. Any kind of recommendation you want for that.
Meg:I will watch that program.
Rachel:Yeah. Alright. Thank you, Meg, for coming.
Meg:I'm sorry. I talked too much.
Rachel:No. You did not talk too much. Do not apologize. I invited you here to talk about vampires and you talked about vampires for 2 hours and 20 minutes. So thank you very much.
Rachel:I have to go retrieve Matt from the airport or we would talk longer.
Meg:Okay. Well, if this goes well and you wanna what what have you decided that the vampire podcast should be called? All vampires wear mullets
Rachel:and solve crimes. Vampires have mullets and solve crimes Yeah. Should be our slogans. We just need to figure out a shorter version of that for the for the title. So if anybody has any good ideas, feel free to let me know.
Rachel:And until that time, I guess we'll just see you next time. So goodbye, friends.
Meg:Bye. Goodbye.