Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

Concordian Review: Love Bites (Vampyres of Hollywood II) - by Adrienne Barbeau

This review originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of the Digital Concordian.

Actress turned author Adrienne Barbeau brings back her bestselling Vampyres of Hollywood for another snarky and entertaining adventure in Love Bites.

In case you don’t know, vampyres (and not the vampires of falsified legend) react favorably to Hollywood film stock and lighting, so many of the Industry’s brightest, biggest, and greatest Hollywood stars and legends are, in fact, vampyres.  The ruler of the Vampyres of Hollywood is Scream Queen and studio chief Ovsanna Moore, a vampyre whose cultural background and professional history has a lot in common with Barbeau’s.

Love Bites pretty much starts right where Vampyres of Hollywood left off.  Two weeks have past since Moore waged a vicious battle to the death with the ancient evil that coveted her position of power in Hollywood, and she is still considered a “person of interest” (i.e. a suspect) in the “Cinema Slayer” case.  Something that is complicating her burgeoning romance with Peter King, the Beverly Hills Detective assigned to the “Cinema Slayer” case.

But all that turns out to be the least of Moore’s worries, as Love Bites opens with Moore getting attacked by a vicious and foul smelling creature she calls a “were”.  “Weres” aren’t just werewolves, though.  They are a creature or person capable of shape shifting into another creature, but only just that one kind of creature.  Most vampyres, however, seem to be able to change into whatever they want to.  “Most vampyres” because it depends on which clan the vampyre was either born or converted into.

As you can tell, Barbeau did not skimp in creating rich alternative mythologies and histories for her otherworldly creatures.

If an attack by a foul smelling “were” weren’t enough, Moore also has to deal with the melodramatic temper tantrums of Maral, her girl Friday and personal blood bank.  Maral hates that Moore has struck up a romance with Detective King, and the jealous woman isn’t above using some Black Magic to try and get rid of her vampyre’s new man, for good.

Although the start is a bit uneven, since Barbeau doesn’t seem to know what to do with her characters, and the romance between Moore and King feels more than a bit forced, once Love Bites gets moving, it becomes an entertaining and amusing enough monster romp for readers with a nostalgic love of 80s horror movies (especially the 80s horror movies that starred Adrienne Barbeau.)

Vampyres of Hollywood - by Adrienne Barbeau & Michael Scott

For someone that is pretty much ambivalent to the point of having an almost acute disinterest in vampire stories, I sure have been partaking in a lot of vampire stories of late. Just before Halloween my wife and I saw a well done production of Hamilton Deane’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the Lesher Center for the Arts. Around that time we also began watching the vampire series True Blood. Not too long after that I began to binge on quite a few Dracula movies; watching John Badham’s 1979 version and following that with several (superior, I think) Hammer productions (Dracula Has Risen From the Grave and Dracula A.D. 1972, respectively). Then I cracked open Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott’s frothy vampire confection Vampyres of Hollywood.  I'm glad I did.

Ovsanna Moore isn't your typical B-list Hollywood Horror Movie Scream Queen, albeit one that owns and operates her own production company.  She is also Los Angeles' reigning Vampire Queen.  Los Angeles is her town, literally.  But when those around her start turning up dead, Moore begins to suspect that someone is hunting for her throne.

Vampyres of Hollywood is no classic of the genre, but it is a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, or two.  The cast of characters - save for the villains and the real life Hollywood blowhards that Barbeau and Scott satirize - are, for the most part, likable and, as difficult as it was for me to believe, the "vampyre" mythology that Barbeau and Scott create is a fairly interesting one.  But even if the novel's vampires had turned out to be not all that interesting or original, Barbeau also wisely drew upon her own personal experiences making horror movies (she has, at the very least, two acknowledged genre classics on her resume, the original The Fog and Creepshow) and her hilarious behind the scenes look at the decidedly unglamorous reality of movie making does make for some entertaining set pieces.  Although, I think, she did make one in-joke about her colorful career too many.  Or maybe I just did not want a reference to The Cannonball Run intruding on my B-move as novel reading experience.

There Are Worse Things I Could Do - by Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne Barbeau pulled me through puberty.

How is that for an attention grabbing opener?

Too much information, you say?  Bah!  Any and all that were ever a teenager knows of the desires of which I blog...

But Barbeau was more than just a beautiful face (with, to be despicably honest, some big and just as beautiful boobs beneath it) that appeared in several of my all time favorite movies (The Fog, Escape from New York, and Creepshow) and guilty pleasures (The Cannonball Run, Swamp Thing).  She was also married - for a time - to my biggest childhood idol, genre film maker John Carpenter.   This made her, to my hormonal crush fogged mind, something akin to an angelic supreme being.  She had, I believed, the perfect life and the perfect career.  If I had been born a girl, I would have wanted to be her.

I am much older and the rose tint to my world vision has long since faded, so I began There Are Worse Things I Could Do with no small amount of trepidation.  There was what I knew of the world and the reality of what (thanks to reading countless interviews, books and magazines and listening to numerous commentaries) making the movies was like, but I did not want too much reality shattering some of things that I have held most dear for most of my life.

Those concerns turned out to be completely unfounded.  There Are Worse Things I Could Do is an engaging and entertaining memoir.  One that focuses less on dishing dirt about celebrities (although there are some choice revelations about the bad behavior of Maude star Bill Macy and action-comedy superstar Burt Reynolds) and more on the author's personal journey, and what a journey it was/is.  Adrienne Barbeau has lived (and is still living) quite the life.  A life that her engaging and conversational writing style makes easy to relate to.  

Barbeau's memoir is not the self-aggrandizing work of an attention starved narcissist.  She presents herself as a fairly down-to-Earth person, one that has worked very hard to get to that point.  She is also fairly diplomatic about some of her more negative experiences in the film industry.  Although no amount of diplomacy can polish the pile of human crap that is Burt Reynolds (I also noticed - long ago - that she was not at all amused by Reynolds' slapping and hitting the late Dom DeLusie during the filming of The Cannonball Run, but I am glad that she went on the record about Reynolds' horrible behavior) and she knows when to just forgo the diplomacy and just give the unvarnished and unpleasant truth (such as the hilarious chapter devoted to the nightmarish filming of what Barbeau only refers to as The Rat Movie, the ordeal of making it sounds like something worthy of Dante).

All of that was interesting and entertaining to read, but I have to be honest that my biggest interest in reading the book was to learn Barbeau's personal perspective and her feelings about making Creepshow with George Romero and co-stars Hal Holbrook and Fritz Weaver, and also what working with (and being married to) John Carpenter had been like.  I will be honest and admit to dreading reading about the latter.  Yes, people have plenty of warts and dirty laundry, but Carpenter was (and pretty much remains) an idol to me and I really did not want to read about what an asshole he was.

Turns out that (as far as Barbeau is concerned) John Carpenter is decent guy (whew!) and working on Creepshow (although she makes no secret as to not getting the script or her character) was a complete and utter hoot.  Even if that had not been the case, however, I would still recommend the book, for it is well worth reading.