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| photo by Nik Fiend |
The 1980s had been a relatively quiet decade in vampire cinema, with films like Fright Night, Vamp and The Lost Boys skewing the subgenre towards teens, special effects and lowbrow comedy, and only Near Dark developing it in an interesting grown-up way.
At the same time, somewhere below the radar of highbrow literary commentators and the mainstream book pages, vampire fiction was continuing to flourish; Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles were becoming increasingly stodgy with each new volume (but establishing roots for the massive boom in Dark Romance that was just around the corner) while writers like Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Suzy McKee Charnas, Robert McCammon, George R.R. Martin and John Skipp & Craig Spector were all exploring the vampire myth in imaginative ways.
But in the early 1990s vampires were finally beginning the big crawl out of the generic shadows and into the mainstream limelight (and since that’s technically nothing like daylight, it wasn’t going to burn them up). Francis Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which would put the seal on the deal when Joss Whedon remodelled it as a TV show a few years later) and the BBC’s The Vampyr: A Soap Opera (a trendy update of Heinrich Marschner’s 19th century opera) brought bloodsuckers to the attention of ignorant snobs who like to sneer at horror fiction the mainstream media and also happily coincided with the publication of my own vampire novel, Suckers (now available for download as an e-book) as well as Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula. So we got to talk about vampires and publicise our novels too.
The following clip is from 1993; it’s a BBC daytime show called Behind the Headlines, introduced by Linda Agran. The guests are Christopher Lee, Nik Fiend of the “deathrock” band Alien Sex Fiend (and a really lovely guy – afterwards he sent us copies of the photo at the top of this page), Kim Newman and me. Note the width of my shoulders; apparently this was quite a normal look for the era, though now I think it makes me look like a cross between a stunted stevedore and a small American football player.
CHRISTOPHER LEE TALKS ABOUT VAMPIRES from Anne Billson on Vimeo.
Apologies for the crappy quality of this video, which goes a bit wibbly here and there. What can I say? It’s old technology, transferred by a non-expert from home video to digital video to iMovie to Vimeo. The entire clip is about 15 minutes long.
(Also, my vampire novel Suckers is available as a paperback or e-book. Tell your friends. I have also written books on the Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In and on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
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Thanks for the video. 🙂
Came across it on my hunt for everything about Sir Christopher Lee, and this talkshow is fantastic, despite the “video”-quality!
Thanks! I thought it was worth uploading for Lee admirers and vampire fans. A historical document! And of course it was an honour to meet him.
I can imagine! He seems like the sort of vampire that a woman would happily hold her neck towards. 🙂 (I would, anyhow).
I love all of the movies, interviews, documentaries and narrations I have heard and seen with him so far (and also his music), but the thing I respect the most about Mr. Lee is his immense knowledge about literally everyone and everything, including languages. Whenever I hear him talk in my native language (German) I sit there in total amazement. (He can be heard in German quite often, actually, from the animated features Walhalla and The Last Unicorn to some of his early movies where he usually played German soldiers, to one episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, to Spielberg’s movie 1941 where he played a German submarine captain to recent stuff like the TV series “The New Adventures of Robin Hood” where he also dubbed the German voice of the magician “Olwyn”). He also did a few movies in French, and as much as I dislike that language, he even makes French sound awesome.
I recently saw him in Dracula père et fils in which he spoke his own French dialogue. His voice was unmistakeable – it was definitely him. (Strange you should dislike French; I lived in France for 10 years, and it IS an awesome language.)
There is nothing wrong French. How can anyone dislike it?
The Hunger from 1983 with opening Bauhaus tributesong for Bela Lugosi, that’s the 1980s…
I don’t think The Hunger did very good business when it opened; critics and audiences didn’t like it much, and it wasn’t till later, when it came out on video and then DVD, that audiences began to discover it. There were several vampire movies released in the 1980s (Vamp, Near Dark, Fright Night etc) but it wasn’t until the 1990s that vampires took off in a big way – with Coppola’s film, but especially with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series, which made vampires massively popular with younger generations in a way they’d never been before.
I enjoy watching all Sir Christopher lee’s film and Peter Cushing, Christopher has a lovely deep mellow singing voice in which i enjoy listening to.
Funny, I dreamt about Christopher Lee last night. A friend and I were trespassing somewhere or other, and a night watchman turned around and lo! It was Christopher Lee in disguise! Of course we were thrilled to see him.
I enjoy Christopher lee discussing a topic i like eg Dracula,vampires etc, he knows these things because he researches and reads a great deal, i have visited Dracula (non vampire) castle in Translyvania where Christopher went when he done a marvellous documentry called In Search of Dracula.
Hi Anne. I remember the first time I watched this. Imagine as a child you grow up on these Horror films…mother must have been a naughty mother. And the Lead Singer and fantastic artist Nik Fiend from ASF is your Music Legend and on the show…. Back in time, my girlfriend and a few years later my Wife wrote to ASF and they sent a really funny photo of themselves signed for my birthday. Thanks for the memory, to all of you that took part.