Vampire

By Jon Caroulis Johnny Depp can make any film he wants. So why is he playing a 200-year-old vampire in a movie based on a gothic soap opera that's been off the air for 41 years? Such is the power of Dark Shadows. I was 10 and my brother was 7 when we watched on television as a young boy broke into the house where the vampire lived. The sun was beginning to set as the boy opened the door to the basement, where the coffin was hidden. I have no idea what happened next, because my brother and I ran screaming out of our house into the protective sunshine.

8 p.m. CW Elena (Nina Dobrev, right) comes home to a nightmare as she discovers the fates of Uncle John and Jeremy (David Anders, Steven R. McQueen). Damon (Ian Somerhalder) realizes Elena's vampire doppelgänger has returned.

Rockula is a vapid vampire comedy that tosses out the Transylvania rule book - vampires don't have mirror images, vampires can't venture into daylight, vampires go for the jugular - and replaces the Bram Stoker legend with rock videos. Lousy rock videos. A cable-ready teen pic from the cynically hip team that ripped-off Gremlins and called it Ghoulies a few years back, Rockula is a sorry attempt to do what Brian De Palma did with Phantom of the Paradise, a rock-musical inspired by a classic Hollywood horror tale.

With John Landis' Innocent Blood, the vampire once again strikes out - and diehard fans are best advised to await the next transfusion from Francis Ford Coppola's much-touted remake of Dracula. Landis' erratic, raucous and occasionally erotic stab at the genre has its moments of sly wit, but most of the gibes are too gross and clumsy to sustain the delicate balance of humor and horror that he wanted. To be fair, there is a pitfall - or perhaps we should say an open grave - in the path of any filmmaker trying to strike that balance.

After nearly 20 years stuck in development hell, one of Hollywood's most coveted and frustrating properties is finally going to make it to the silver screen. And not only that, the film will be helmed by the most talked-about director in town. According to industry sources, Neil Jordan - director of the smash independent film The Crying Game - has agreed to direct Interview With a Vampire, a film based on Anne Rice's 1976 bestseller of the same title. The project is tentatively scheduled to begin shooting in Hungary, perhaps as early as April.

"TWILIGHT: NEW Moon" is not a good movie, but who cares. Stephenie Meyer's saga has hacked into the reptilian cortex of the female brain the way "Grand Theft Auto" taps into the male (I'll leave it you to judge which is the superior gender), and all "New Moon" really needs to do is put Kristen Stewart within five feet of Rob Pattinson and his sparkly skin. Mission accomplished. Meyer has created something that no movie may tear asunder, and she's done it with an ingenious remix of the classic romance - desire, yearning, chivalry, yearning, torment, yearning, intimations of the eternal, more yearning, etc. Or, stated more simply: You're a teenage girl in a town where every guy, every poet, jock, vampire, werewolf and nerd is in love with you (and, consequently, at least one chick wants to murder you)

There are plenty of vampire flicks on DVD this Halloween, but the best films feature the unlikeliest of all monsters: children. Writer-director Paul Solet's feature debut, Grace, from Anchor Bay (www.anchorbayentertainment.com/; $26.97; rated R) is a doozy: The villain is a newborn baby who also happens to be a vampire. Jordan Ladd stars as Madeline Matheson, a beautiful, pregnant young woman whose husband dies in a car crash. Refusing to believe the crash also killed her unborn child, Madeline decides to carry it to term.

"You're not in Phoenix anymore," Charlie Swann tells his teenage girl, Bella, welcoming her to the rain-drenched, vampire-pocked Pacific Northwest town of Forks, Wash. And if that line echoes a famous one from The Wizard of Oz, well, so be it, because in Twilight - the surefire hit adaptation of the first book from Stephenie Meyer's mega-selling saga - Bella Swann, like Dorothy Gale, is in for the ride of her life. A pheromone-drenched high school romance rife with heavy-duty Dracula stuff, Twilight - directed with savvy humor by Catherine Hardwicke - turns vampirism into a metaphor for teen lust.

Here's a suggestion for you vampire-o-maniacs out there: Get ready for Twilight - opening next Friday (as if you didn't know) - by checking out the very fine, very frightening Let the Right One In . Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, this cold, cracking Swedish noir centers on a misfit boy, Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), befriended by a strange 12-year-old girl who recently moved in next door. However, as Eli (Lina Leandersson) explains it, she's been 12 for "a very long time.

"There's something happening in the vampire ranks," cautions Kris Kristofferson. "Something big. " Yup: There are vampire car valets and vampire doormen standing at attention outside the city's best restaurants. There are all-night raves where bloodsucking throngs feast on "fresh meat" lured to their strobe-lit boites. There are board meetings where uptight vampire capos sneer at the young hotshot half-breed who's planning to take over the world. And there's Wesley Snipes wearing a really long, heavy-looking leather coat and a really long, heavy-looking stare.

By Jon Caroulis Johnny Depp can make any film he wants. So why is he playing a 200-year-old vampire in a movie based on a gothic soap opera that's been off the air for 41 years? Such is the power of Dark Shadows. I was 10 and my brother was 7 when we watched on television as a young boy broke into the house where the vampire lived. The sun was beginning to set as the boy opened the door to the basement, where the coffin was hidden. I have no idea what happened next, because my brother and I ran screaming out of our house into the protective sunshine.

The French haven't exactly been famous for their horror films, having entered the game only in the past two decades with a crop of directors including Eric Valette ( Maléfique ), Alexandre Aja ( High Tension ), and Pascal Laugier ( House of Voices ). That is, unless you count the prolific visionary (or charlatan, depending on your point of view) Jean Rollin (1938-2010), a master of the peculiarly Gallic genre, the fantastique, and who released 52 features between 1968 and 2009.

Jonathan Frid, 87, the man known to fans around the world as Barnabas Collins, the suave vampire from the cult hit soap opera Dark Shadows , has died. The Hamilton Spectator, of Hamilton, Ontario, reports the Canadian actor died of natural causes in his hometown of Hamilton at the Juravinski Hospital last Friday. Mr. Frid's final screen role was a cameo in Dark Shadows , the soap opera's big-screen revamp directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas, and due out next month.

Little girls need role models. So do grown women. Instead, they get characters like Katniss Everdeen. Katniss, in case you haven't heard, is the bow-and-arrow-wielding teenage heroine of the film The Hunger Games, based on a best-selling young-adult trilogy that is deeply adored by teenage girls and substantially older women. In cultural terms, it's the successor to the Twilight series of vampire romances. By most accounts, Katniss is the opposite of Bella, the protagonist of Twilight.

TODAY'S budget address by Governor Tom Corbett is not expected to be pretty: not with an expected shortfall of $500 million that will undoubtedly be met with cuts in health, human services and higher education. We can expect the usual outcry from education and social-service advocates over these cuts, and the usual complaints from the governor and others that spending for higher ed, human services and health is wasteful and needs to be pared. Here's a suggestion - let's instead moan about another key cause of budget problems in the state: the vampire class in Harrisburg, otherwise known as the members of the General Assembly, who help suck the monetary lifeblood out of the state.

Winter has been relatively mild and virtually snow-free so far. That's helped take the chill off utility costs. In fact, the people who monitor such things say electric bills are down, especially in Pennsylvania. But there's a way to cut costs even more, though it may not be immediately obvious: Slay the vampires. "Vampire power," also known as "standby power," is electricity consumed by electronic devices and appliances even when they are switched off or in standby mode.

Patrick Rodgers, the self-styled Philadelphia "vampire" whose celebrated legal fight with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage garnered national headlines last year, is a big Ron Paul fan. So the music promoter with custom-made fangs is attempting to get on the Pennsylvania primary ballot as a delegate for the Republican presidential candidate. If he wins a spot, he can then go to the Republican National Convention in August in Tampa, Fla., to support Paul. Vampire. Republican convention.

American TV has been overrun by fantasy shows: We've rarely had as many ghosts, trolls, vampires, werewolves, witches, and warlocks. And we love it! The delicious deluge continues this month with two imports: Lost Girl , a slick, steamy story about a sexy Canadian succubus, and the BBC's superior The Fades , a uniquely terrifying and humorous take on the ghost story. Created by Skins writer Jack Thorne, The Fades premieres Saturday at 9 p.m. on BBC America with a six-episode first season.

This week's new DVD selections include vampires, a heroic panda, and lots of monkeys. Fright Night (Grade A-): A teenager discovers his neighbor is a vampire. Director Craig Gillespie opted for a different approach with his remake of the 1985 thriller Fright Night, and the new version is as much fun as the original. And, in the biggest shock of the movie, it's actually scarier because it goes a camp route. Colin Farrell is the perfect vampire, with the dark good looks to charm victims who fail to see that the glint in his eye signals a lunatic deep inside.