Vampires are everywhere, in the realms of popular culture anyway, and it seems now more than ever. Granted, I’ve penned a vampire novel myself, Ritual of Blood (2003, 2nd edition 2009), and I don’t see these creatures of the night disappearing any time soon. Currently the vampire is coming over more and more as a romantic figure who is troubled by a vicious blood lust that they are fighting to control, such as in Stephanie Meyer's ‘Twilight’ series; an every teenage girls’ fantasy to be tamed despite of the danger. This has either drawn you in, making you long for a vampire lover of your own, or repulsed you, as a betrayal of everything the vampire legend stands for.
In King’s novel, ‘Salem’s Lot, the vampires are evil, plain and simple, using powers of hypnosis and sexual allure to draw their victims in and turn them also into the Undead. Traditional vampires, you might say, with a hint of the modern nature of the time (1975).
I have nearly finished reading ‘Salem’s lot, (and shall be reviewing it as soon as I have), and the influence of Bram Stoker’s classic, Dracula, leaps off the page of this book, and not to its detriment. It doesn’t need to re-write the rules, it assumes we know them, or know most of them, and when it adds a little here or takes away a little there, it doesn’t jar with the vampire myth.
What we discover about the vampires in ‘Salem’s Lot frightens us when it differs, and only ever so slightly, from what we expect from a vampire tale, for example, the mere bite of a vampire in ‘Salem’s Lot can begin the change into one, and the fact that while the victim is being bitten it provokes a state of sexual arousal.
‘Salem’s Lot has endured because of how King uses the vampire legends he grew up with and sets them in a story that it truly terrifying.
No comments:
Post a Comment