Every few years, journalists go through this thing about how "there's a vampire craze." Hellooooo, there's been a vampire craze for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, Dark Shadows was on TV in the early afternoons and Batman (ok, not exactly a vampire show, but it does have a guy in a bat suit) in the evening. In 1972, this lovely Muppet started appearing on Sesame Street:
(At 12, I was too old and yet too young to appreciate the genius that is Count Von Count.)
Anne Rice's book Interview With The Vampire came out in 1976. Bestselling books came out in this series until 2003. The movie came out in 1994.
The comedy horror film Love At First Bite (starring king of the suntan George Hamilton!) came out in 1979. My memory of it is that it was funny, but I suspect it hasn't aged well. (For a 1970s comedy that represents its period well, I suggest Car Wash.)
The movie The Hunger (with Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) came out in 1983. I saw this with a then-boyfriend. He really thought Deneuve was extremely sexy.
Buffy started slaying vampires on TV in 1997. As numerous articles have pointed out, the subgenres of horror fiction and "urban fantasy" have been a real fertile ground for various takes on vampires.
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The vampire novels that I like are the ones where the vamps are trying to live in the real world. They may not be out (as in Lynsay Sands' Family Argeneau series or Marta Acosta's Casa Dracula books) or they may be out and trying to make it with the rest of us striving Americans (such as in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries.) I am not as fond as fanciful vampire novels that purport to have magic in the same world that we live in (example: Michele Bardsley's Broken Heart, Oklahoma vampire, etc. series).
But the vampire novels I dislike the most, and the ones that seem to be the most prominent out there are of the transgressive variety. It's not enough to have sex, the sex has to be transgressive. And not just transgressive, but insanely transgressive. In fact, the sex is more important than the story. It seems like it's the rare vampire novel that doesn't have an emphasis on sex.
And that includes the nauseous, noisome, annoying and downright evil Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. The lack of sex in Twilight is just as transgressive as the novels filled with sex from page 1 to page 312. (Here Lie Spoilers.) Her flat, lifeless heroine, Bella, is stalked by the "sparkling" vampire Edward Cullen, who has no problem with standing in her room and watching her sleep, but won't have sex with her until they're married (seriously, though, there's nothing at all wrong about this), but it's just creepy and stalkeriffic. Can't he stand outside under a tree? Then, once they are married, they have sex, and it goes all wrong, because Bella's going to die as a result of the one sex act that's producing the Killer Froot of the Womb. Considering that the average readers of the Twilight books appear to be teenage girls, all I can say is that this is really giving them good, healthy ideas about sex and marriage. NOT.
So, basically, I like the vampire novels with the vampires living in the real world, I am not at all interested in vampire pr0n, I'm not into sparkly vampires. I would say my tastes are running towards "urban fantasy" except more emphasis on the urban, less on the fantasy. I checked out Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs, by Molly Harris. It's a light, humorous read in my opinion, but met my criteria for more urban, less fantasy and not much sex at all.
But one novel I picked up at the library a week ago just GROSSED ME OUT. It was Happy Hour of the Damned, by Mark Henry. Reviews indicated it might be funny. For some reason, I like my zombies braindead, not literate and certainly not literate and hungry. Otherwise they remind me too much of Hannibal Lecter and a certain book by Thomas Harris. There are few things to which I'd like to apply brain bleach, but I do not want to read about people eating other people. It's why I can never again eat lobster, after I found out that a lobster's favorite food is lobster.
Therefore, while I think Happy Hour of the Damned was a perfectly sucky book, I really liked Max Brooks' World War Z. Definitely worth the time if you want to find out what happens when the zombies get loose.
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