11. Death of the Vampire

It started with a full-page advertisement I happened to see in a Daily News my father brought home. Korvettes was offering a full sound movie-making package for $100. You got a movie camera, you got a microphone, you even got a projector so you could watch what you created. The ad made the package look beautiful: the equipment was black, and came in a case you could take around with you to location shoots.
I saw this ad and immediately started thinking making my own movies. I had begun writing science fiction and horror stories, and there were a couple of those I thought would make excellent films. I could see them in my head, these short films of mine, almost as if they were finished.

“We already have a camera,” my father said, when I asked him to buy this package from Korvettes.

The camera he was about was an old silver thing I remembered from Christmas mornings when I was younger, my father pointing it at us as we gazed over our always too lavish assortment of gifts. We hadn’t used it in a while. We’d fallen out of the habit of making home movies. We didn’t even take that many photographs anymore.

“That camera doesn’t work,” I answered.

“Of course it does.”

“It doesn’t have sound.”

“Start off with that one. If you think you need sound after making a few movies, we can discuss it.”

I tried a few more times to convince him, and even went behind his back to my mother, but she agreed that I should try making a few movies with the camera we had and then maybe we could buy something better.

This surprised me. My mother usually got behind whatever wildly ambitious idea I came up with, especially if it was creative.

It was fine, though. It just made me want to make a better movie. When people found out I’d shot my film using some ancient1950s camera, I told myself, they’d be even more impressed.

The movie I decided to make was a vampire movie. I loved vampires. Dracula was probably my favorite movie of all time: the old Dracula, the one with Bela Lugosi. That whole beginning part, in Dracula’s castle, I watched that every time it was on Creature Feature, reciting along with the dialogue.  “I never drink…wine.”
My movie was called Death of a Vampire. It starts with a title card, describing how the vampire must return each morning to his native soil for rest. There’s a cut to the sun coming up. I managed this effect by making a sun out of cardboard, tying a string to it, and then slowly pulling it up the wall in our living room.

Another title card appears, introducing two vampire hunters brave enough to attempt to rid the world of this evil menace. Cut to: my mother and brother, as the vampire hunters. They are wearing dark clothing, to stay unseen under the cover of night. They creep slowly across the living room, and then recoil in horror at the sight of—the vampire!

Me, of course. Lying on a cot we used when we went camping. Cape, black pants, black shoes, a white shirt. Hair slicked back, white make-up on my face, and from my fangs two trickles of blood. My eyes closed: resting, in my native soil.

It had been a hard decision for me to act in the movie, since I really wanted to be the director. But I couldn’t see either my father or brother as Dracula. I was just so much more right for the part. I’d even already gone around as Dracula the previous Halloween. I made sure my father, behind the camera, knew exactly what I wanted for each shot.

The vampire hunters kneel on the ground and lay out their tools, a wooden stake and a rock. I wasn’t able to find a rock the right size, so they were using a whiffle ball instead. I told my mother and brother to try to put their whole hand around it whenever it was on screen, so it would look more like a rock.

The vampire hunters are preparing to drive the stake through the vampire’s heart when, shockingly, the vampire rises! He licks his lips, tastes the blood on them, looks wildly around for who has disturbed his rest. Spotting the vampire hunters, his eyes sparkle: he will have another feeding tonight.

Fear animates the faces of the vampire hunters as the vampire approaches (I’d coached my mother and brother on portraying fear), but then one vampire hunter produces a cross. The vampire shields his eyes with his cape. The vampire hunters move slowly forward, the cross in front of them. The vampire backs away, until he is once again lying on the cot that serves as his coffin.

One vampire hunter produces the wooden stake, holds it to the chest of the now-prone vampire. Takes the stone and strikes down on the stake, plunging it into the vampire’s heart.

The next effect I’d read about in one of the monster magazines I collected. My father turned off the camera for a moment and I switched the full stake the vampire hunters had begun to strike with the rock to a stake I’d cut in half and painted red at the bottom. When I held it against my chest, it looked like the stake was stuck in my chest. I also put blood all over my white shirt, using a mixture of food coloring and Karo syrup.

Again, I’d gotten the recipe from one of my monster magazines.

The vampire hunters look on in awe as the vampire writhes with pain. Finally, there’s a cut back to the vampire’s grave…but the vampire is gone. Only dust (dirt I’d scraped up from the backyard, and after some pleading with my mother been allowed to bring inside) remains. One final shot of the awed vampire hunters, and then a final title card: “The King of Vampires…Is Dead.”

We had to send the film away to be developed. When it arrived back in the mail about three weeks later, it was torture to wait until my father came home to watch it, as my mother insisted. I thought we’d have to wait even longer, until my father had dinner (my mother, brother, and I ate before he got home), but he said no, no, put it on, he would warm something up later. He seemed as excited as the rest of us.

We had a movie screen somewhere in the attic, but no one wanted to wait for my father to go rummaging up there, so we just set the projector up pointing at one of the living room walls. My father threaded up the movie, and I leaned back on the couch to watch.

Right from the very first scene, I hated it. The title cards I’d created, with my explanation of the vampire’s native soil, were blurry and unreadable. Then, during the shot of the sun coming up, you could see my hand pulling on the string. “Dad,” I said angrily, “why did you do that?”

“I couldn’t tell when I was filming,” he said. “Shhh, I’m watching.”

It got worse. The vampire hunters: they didn’t look like vampire hunters, they looked like my mother and brother in raincoats. You could tell they were walking across the living room, you could see my father’s lounge chair in the background. You could tell the whiffle ball was a whiffle ball. My vampire make-up was pretty good, but the scene where I writhed to my death went on forever, and there were a few spots when I got overexcited and let the half stake lift up from my chest, totally ruining the effect. My mother and brother’s looks of fear and awe at the vampire turning to dust were completely fake.

I couldn’t wait for it to end. I wanted to crawl under the couch, run off to my room and slam the door. I felt embarrassed and angry. Not angry at my father, I knew it wasn’t his fault, although his shaky camerawork didn’t help. More at myself, for letting my expectations get so high, and for failing so miserably.

“Wow,” my father said, when it was over.

“Rewind,” my brother said. “I want to watch it again.”

“That was excellent, Chris,” my mother said. “That scene where the vampire jumps up, that was very scary.”
I thought they were just humoring me, trying to keep me from feeling bad. But as they watched it another time, and then another after that, it became clear they weren’t trying to make me feel better. They really did love it. They were getting a kick out of seeing themselves on screen, that was part of it. But they were also impressed.

 “I wonder if that sale at Korvettes is still going on,” my father said, as the movie was rewinding after the third showing.

I wanted to accept their praise with a smile, point to myself and laugh, like my mother and brother were doing. They were all enjoying this so much, and I wanted to enjoy it too. I couldn’t, though. How, I kept thinking, had what ended up on the screen gotten so far from what I’d been seeing in my head?