Vancouver — Somewhere in a dark smoky bar, a pasty Goth must be slumped over a glass of absinthe, weeping. Even though its snarly grip on popular culture seemed immortal, it appears that the vampire mystique has finally been sucked dry.
After 30 years of probing the inner psyche of the undead, Anne Rice says she is "weary of the constraints of the metaphor" and moving on. Blood Canticle, the latest instalment in her best-selling Vampire Chronicle series, will be her last book on the subject.
Over in TV land, Buffy the Vampire Slayer slammed the lid shut on the mouth to hell lurking in the basement of her old junior high and split Sunnydale for good. Spike, her neutered vampire lover who sacrificed his afterlife for the cause, has admittedly surfaced again this season in the WB TV network spin-off series Angel. But in a bid for higher ratings, network executives forced creator Joss Whedon and his writing staff to pare the show's epic, season-long storylines down to single-episode stories. Angel has lost its bite. Rumour has it, the show will not be renewed.
Yes, it's time to throw out your black eyeliner and burn the crushed-velvet Value Village wardrobe. Vampires are passé. But given our primordial appetite for the supernatural, it is almost inevitable that a new creature will rise from Vlad's ashes to fill the void.
Hark, a howl! Could it be possible that werewolves are the new vampires?
The proof is in the mangy paw prints. Today in movie theatres, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed will be, well, unleashed. In this sequel to the 1999 Canadian minor cult classic, Ginger's younger sister Brigitte writhes against her self-induced infection with the werewolf virus. This isn't the last we'll see of the kick-ass teen heroine. A prequel, which takes the Fitzgerald sisters back to the 19th century, was simultaneously filmed during the Edmonton shoot and will be released later this year.
Underworld, a sexy film about a centuries-old blood feud between vampires and werewolves, rose out of nowhere to bury its competitors at the box office last fall, making $22-million (U.S.) in the first weekend alone. When we left the urban battleground, it appeared that the hirsute underdogs had gained the upper hand. So successful was the film, Sony Pictures is turning it into a trilogy.
Down in La-La Land, Angelina Jolie is getting ready to bark at the moon in Bitten, a Warner Bros. film, purchased on her behalf. The story, still in development, is based on a novel about the only female werewolf on the planet, written by Kelley Armstrong from Aylmer, Ont.
And over on the new-release shelves, Stephen King's Wolves of Calla is ripping up the bestseller lists. In this fifth instalment to the horror master's seven-book Dark Tower series, a gunslinger and his rag-tag group of warriors descend on a village where the children are snatched away by beastly human marauders from the hills. While not quite werewolves, King's bandits owe as much to the legend of lycanthropes as they do to spaghetti westerns.
Emily Perkins, the Vancouver actress who plays Brigitte in Ginger Snaps 2, says she understands the werewolf appeal.
"To me, vampires are cold, cerebral, less emotional than werewolves. They're somehow less human. The werewolf is more gritty and empathetic. The biological transformation back and forth makes it easier to see the human inside them. It's very mammalian, whereas the vampire is very reptilian. They're harder for us warm-blooded creatures to identify with."
Werewolves are also so very Canadian. The first werewolf movie every made was The Werewolf, back in 1913. The silent picture, about a Navajo girl with the power to transform into a wolf, was directed and produced by Henry McRae, a Canadian working in Hollywood for the American Motion Picture Co.
In addition to Armstrong, whose two werewolf books were inspired by an episode of X-Files , Canadian lycanthropes lovers also have Sparkle Hayter on their side. Two years ago, the B.C.-born, Edmonton-raised mystery writer wrote Naked Lunch, a morality tale about werewolves in New York, trying to reintegrate into society.
Then there's Edo Van Belkom, the Brampton, Ont.-based author of 25-horror related books and more than 200 short stories. A former sports journalist, Van Belkom's very first novel, published in 1995, was Wyrm Wolf. It was set in modern San Francisco and based on the role-playing adventure game Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Nearly 10 years and numerous horror-writing awards later, he's back on the werewolf beat. The Wolf Pack, a young adult novel coming out this fall from Tundra Books (an imprint of McClelland & Stewart), tells the story of four teenage werewolves being raised by a forest ranger as humans in the heart of the B.C. forest.
The werewolf legend has been used as a metaphor for puberty for almost forever, it seems. Before Ginger Snaps linked the werewolf transformation to the onset of women's monthly menstrual cycle, there was Michael Landon in I was a Teenage Werewolf. And even Michael Jackson, who had only just begun his real-life facial deformation when he made Thriller.
But let's not forget Michael J. Fox, the hairy Canuck who starred in Teen Wolf (even if the film itself was rather forgettable). Scott Speedman, another B.C.-born actor, plays the hunky human who carries the genetic marker that the werewolves in Underworld want to use to create a new hybrid vampire-wolf creature.
Van Belkom has a theory about Canada's lycanthropic connection. "Werewolves are very politically correct," he explains, in all seriousness. "They're into nature and saving the environment. Canada, especially B.C., is a perfect place for them to live." For all its Canadiana cool factor, this hairy werewolf moment might soon come to pass. Already, the pack is showing signs of internal dissent. White Wolf Inc. has filed a suit against Sony Pictures. The publisher claims Underworld is a direct rip-off from its own werewolf and vampire fantasy role-playing games and books.
Back in Canada, Armstrong has already left werewolves behind and moved on to witches. Her third novel, Dime Store Magic, will be released in two weeks. Van Belkom is hedging his bets by releasing a new vampire book as well. Blood Road, about a vampire truck driver cruising the Trans-Canada Highway for victims, comes out this March. Which isn't to say he favours one demon over the other. But the problem with vampires, he says, it that they've become so utterly unrealistic to even the most diehard believers.
"Blood Road was my response to all these noble, gothic, romantic, bullshit vampires out there," he sneers over the phone. "I don't buy into Anne Rice. Vampires are disgusting parasites. Have you ever smelled dried blood?" Van Belkom isn't surprised by the current rise of the werewolf. But like anything else, he expects it will run its course.
"There will be a string of Hollywood movies. If one werewolf movie makes money, someone else will do the same thing. And it will go all the way down the list, until they catch its tail end."
