I was 5 or 6, something like that, and the wild imagination
I’ve possessed pretty much from the womb was well up and running by that point.
Also, I’d been raised on scary movies. One of the local TV stations (we only
had 3 back in those days, one for each of the 3 networks) used to run old
monster and Horror movies on Sunday mornings. “Science Fiction Theatre,” it was
called. I’ve searched in vain for some record of that weekly program in the
annals of local television lore but have always turned up empty-handed. The
only trace of this beloved and oh-so-important introduction and indoctrination
for me into the world of spooky cinema lies permanently imprinted in my
memories. The first movie I can remember seeing was King Kong (the original, of course), and I can well remember the
anticipation I felt when my mother told me that the next week’s offering would
be Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster.
Some others I remember seeing are Blood
and Black Lace, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, and Mighty Joe Young. As these were old movies, they were “clean” and
thus safe, and my parents quickly figured out that when they parked me in front
of the TV set with one of these monsters or spooks to entertain me I’d sit
quietly and rather harmlessly for the 2 hour duration. They loved Science
Fiction Theatre almost as I did, I think, for that reason. They got peace. And
I was in heaven. My love of Monster movies and the Horror genre was born of
those Sunday mornings.
Knowing I’d watched plenty of scary movies and, instead of having nightmares, had found them entrancing, they thought nothing about it when the miniseries Salem’s Lot came on television one week and I wanted to watch it. This adaptation of Stephen King’s novel has both its admirers and detractors, but it will forever remain for me the scariest movie I have ever seen.
Remember the sitcom Alice? It was about a diner owner named Mel and several of the waitresses who worked there. I remember it, though not as clearly as I wish I did, same as with so many things from my earliest childhood. Alice got a spin-off series, called Flo, wherein the popular character from the original series went off and opened her own restaurant. (You may remember Flo for her trademark line, “Kiss my grits!” I have wondered if this character, played by Polly Holiday of Gremlins fame, may have been the inspiration for the Progressive Insurance spokeswoman of the same name.) Okay, so, Flo starred Geoffrey Lewis in a supporting role as a character named Earl. We always watched Flo, and I knew Earl well. But I failed to recognize Lewis as one of the vampires in the miniseries Salem’s Lot. Guess I couldn’t get past the glowing eyes and the fangs.
There comes this scene wherein vampire Earl is sitting in a chair, and he turns his head to look at the camera. Speaking to another character, it looks as if he is speaking to the viewer, i.e. he seemed to be speaking directly to ME. “Look at me!” he hisses. I almost climbed the back of the couch. Actually, I did climb the back of the couch. I ALMOST climbed up the WALL. “But that’s Earl!” my mother tried to reassure me. “You’re not afraid of Earl, are you?” Oh, hell yes I was. My mother intuited that it was now time for me to go to bed. Too late. That image was branded into my mind for eternity.
I would have been
fine, though. I had no bad dreams that night. I would have forgotten about Earl
the vampire with his glowing eyes; only we went to the grocery store the next
day.
Remember that imagination I mentioned? It’s important. I was
also in some ways a precocious kid. I knew, even at 5 or 6, that the news was
real, whereas movies and TV were not. If it was on the nightly news, it was
true. Likewise if it was printed in a newspaper. I think this was driven home
to me on the day Elvis died. My mother cried upon hearing the news. I was
confused, as she didn’t usually cry when someone died on TV. She explained to
me, in language I could grasp, that those other deaths were fictitious. But
Elvis had REALLY died. Thus the evening news was always real to me. Or more
real, anyway.
(I also remember being terrified over coverage of the
Atlanta Child Murders. Atlanta was a long way away, I knew, but I didn’t know
HOW far, and what was to stop the killer from getting in his car and driving to
MY house to get ME? That I was a white kid living way out in the countryside of
rural Alabama, and thus probably in no danger from the Atlanta kid killer, that
didn’t register.)
I did not, at that young age, understand what a tabloid was,
or that tabloids are different than newspapers. They LOOKED like newspapers,
didn’t they, especially the ones in black-and-white, like this one was, the one
with the big bold headline VAMPIRES ARE REAL!!! And then in smaller print
underneath it, VAMPIRES ARE ROAMING OUR STREETS—AND THEY ARE THIRSTY. Yup. That
did it. A newspaper had said it; ergo it had to be true. Vampire Earl was REAL.
Vampire Earl could come into MY bedroom window and get ME on any given night.
What followed were several WEEKS of me living in mortal fear
of vampires. Lots of sleeping with the parents. I would cut little crosses out
of cardboard cereal boxes, reinforce them with masking tape, and affix them to
the walls of the house with thumbtacks. Not just in the bedroom I shared with
my little brother, but all over the house. I would sharpen sticks to use as
stakes. I had this one large piece of wood, about a foot-and-a-half long, sharp
on one end, that I drew crosses on to lend it extra efficacy against the
undead, and I actually slept with the thing! (I sure wish I’d kept it. I’d love
to have it today.) And as if I wasn’t traumatized enough, somewhere in the
midst of all this hysteria, either my parents weren’t watching or I snuck
behind their backs or something. Anyway, I also saw DRACULA for the very first time. Because, y’know, vampire Earl
wasn’t scary enough, with his orange eyes and hissing and all that. Noooo, I
needed to top that, reinforcing my phobia by replacing vampire Earl with a far
scarier, far more threatening Bela Lugosi.
When they’d focus on him, with his
face largely in shadow but the light zeroed in around his eyes to make them
seem to glow, and he would stare right at the camera, right at ME…Oh, snap.
Weeks beget weeks. My parents drew the line when I wanted to
hang garlic up over all the windows.
“He ain’t never watchin’ another g*ddamn scary movie!” my
father cursed.“Well, YOU let him watch it!” my mother reminded him.
“I didn’t now he’d pull this $#it!” my father retorted.
Neither of them thought to blame the tabloid as much as, or
more than, the movie. I’d taken one look at that headline and felt THE FEAR.
You’ve all had the experience. It’s a primal, animal reaction to fear, this
cold feeling that goes shooting through you. Left brain or right brain, I can’t
remember which, but I’ve read about the sensation. It’s common to all human
beings. You all know, it isn’t pleasant. You might feel it when you’re in a car
wreck, right before you hit. That tabloid headline did it to me. And vampire
Earl. And Bela Lugosi. I had a Dracula action figure, released
in the early 80s, comparable in size to the original Star Wars action figures
and doubtless intended for play along with them. (Drac and Darth Vader teaming
up? Now THAT is scary.)
I took the action figure and destroyed it. Just
LOOKING at it reminded me of my fears. I also threw away a copy of Marvel’s
Dracula comic book I had in the house, and this kids’ magazine about monsters
that featured Dracula. Yes, I was genuinely THAT disturbed.
Time passed. My parents relented soon enough. I went on to watch other scary films. None of them bothered me. My fear of vampires remained, though, for some YEARS. Then the most curious thing happened. As I grew older, that terror I had felt somehow became transformed into affection, then into love, a passionate love, for vampires in particular and for Dracula specifically. As profound and powerful as had been my fear, equally so, and moreso, became my love and devotion. I went from living in mortal fear that a vampire would come tapping on my bedroom window some night to a fervent desire that one would. Today, I’d give ol’ vampire Earl a hug, as a small child would embrace a teddy bear. And my love for the Count, the King of all vampires, is so intense that I went out a few years ago and got myself a Dracula tattoo. I wear a Dracula prop ring, an exact replica of the one worn by Bela and by Christopher Lee in the movies. I won’t even go into how many Dracula action figures I have (Yes, I replaced that one from my childhood. He stands now on top of my computer.), how many books I’ve read about him, how many of the movies I’ve seen. I wore a Dracula T-shirt and movie prop medallion to an awards banquet a couple of years back, where I won an award for my original play DRACULA: LORD OF THE VAMPIRES—which I dedicated to Bela Lugosi.
It explains a lot about me, doesn’t it, how I became warped
in such a peculiar and wonderful way? I owe vampire Earl and Dracula a lot. And
my parents, for being dumb enough to let me watch Salem’s Lot. (AT least when I saw Dracula, it was shown during the day. That fact may be the only
thing that kept me out of an institution.)
These days, I hang welcome signs outside my windows instead
of garlic. No, I’m not “Goth.” I don’t sleep during the day, believing myself
to be, or playacting as, a real vampire. I don’t crave or drink blood. (Ugh.
Gross, much?) And while I am all about freedom, and believe that what is done
between consenting adults is patently their business, I’m not at all interested
in the practices of real-life “vampires,” though I have met a few, and they
seemed like nice enough people. But not until one of them turns into a bat or
rises from the dead will they command the kind of fascination for me that does
the vampire of Myth.
Note the use of the capital M for the word, there. To
understand the difference between “myth” and “Myth,” check out the writings of
Joseph Campbell. Myth is something profound and primal, as primal as that left
brain or right brain stimulus of fear I described above. A “myth” is a made-up
story. “Myth” is potent. Myth can bite you. It sure bit me.
And boy am I glad that it did.
