Richard Baker <rcdb100@hermes.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>There has to be a huge fight scene with Swiss Guards leaping through the
>air firing automatic pistols with cross-inscribed dum-dums in there
>somewhere, and vampires ripping people's heads off (and maybe we could
>have that helicopter crash thing intercut with the opening credits),
>but I think we've got the premise sorted out.

Y'all just really *have* to read John Steakley's _Vampire$_.  
I swear, almost all that is in there.  (Well, I don't remember
a helicopter, but...)

Even a halfway-decent adaptation would have been really cool,
but instead it got turned into the silly silly "John Carpenter's 
Vampires".  For example, in the book, to kill the vampires their
general procedure is to blow up the building they're hiding in, 
and then dig them out into the sunlight with heavy equipment, 
with guys with big long pikes ready to impale them and hold them 
to fry when they come out screaming.  In the film they go into the 
nice dark building, and get ambushed.

The only neat thing they kept was the "shoot the vampire with a 
crossbow bolt tied to the truck's winch and haul it out into the 
sunlight" scene.  Oh, and the party massacre wasn't bad either.

But the book has much more of the cool stuff.  (I don't have it 
on hand or I'd list some of it.)  There's a nice impaled/
burning/car-run-over man at the end, for one.  And a vampire 
ripping a guy's spine out and beating people with it.

xROU That's Gotta Hurt

-- 
Scott Beeler          scbeeler@mindspring.com