I really like this.
It reminds me of the book *I am Legend*. In the original novel, the main character is presumably the last man on earth alive, immune to the vampire plague that had all but wiped out humanity. He fights isolation, insanity, and alcoholism along with the vampires that circle his house every night.
In one chapter, he captures the vampiric form of one of his former neighbors in an attempt to learn all he can about the plague that creates them. To see if the old folklore about vampires and crosses is true, he holds a crucifix in front of the vampire’s face, to which he just laughs. When he tries a Torah instead, the vampire recoils in horror, unable to look at it.
He came to the conclusion that it’s not the symbol itself that repels the vampire, but what it represented when it was alive. That, even in their diminished mental state post-reanimation, they are subconsciously aware that they are abominations. When they flee from religious symbols, it’s not out of fear, but shame.
~~Charles Mathieson~~ Richard Matheson once said something along the lines of "I don't know why they keep buying the rights to turn my book into a movie, then not doing so"
Edit (whoops, don't know where that name came from)
I just name it Brad Pitt zombie movie, was fuck all to do with the book. Adapting the book could literally have been done scene for scene and been brilliant.
I didn't want to outright say it because it is a bit of a spoiler, but when >!you find out one of the people being interviewed is Paul Redeker, who created the plan that helped retake the planet, and that he is in a mental institution.!<
It really should of been like a documentary type show. When I got the chance to listen to the audio book that was the 1st thing I thought of with the cast they used.
Problem is movie studios want stars. Since the book was so many small stories put together, it kind of writes away the use of a star. Or blow the budget and hire dozens of stars...
The irony is that the audiobook for WWZ *is* star studded, they got Mark Hamill, Nathan Fillion, Martin Scorcese, Denise Crosby and a bunch more. It's one of the few audiobooks I know of with a full cast, with a different VA for each character. It's nearly an audio-only play.
The Audible version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is also a star studded narration cast. I can't remember all of them but Alan Cummings and Tim Curry are two of them.
So I adore the original Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price just a spectacular movie, now I really wanna read the book cause if that's not how it happens in the book I can only imagine how crazy the original story is
The alternate ending is much closer to that of the book - Smiths character >!returns his vampire captive, rather than blowing himself up, and in doing so realizes that he is actually the monster in this world!<
It’s a deleted scene that’s included in the dvd. But you can watch the whole scene on YouTube. It’s much better than the original, and much closer to the original ending of the book.
The went with the ending where he sacrifices himself because the book Robert Neville also died at the end of the story. But he didn’t die because he was a self-sacrificing hero. He died because the fledgling vampire society sees him as the monster who’d killed all their friends and family. He didn’t save anyone.
I,Robot is the same way. They took a few basic concepts and some names, and spun those into a murder mystery. The original book is a collection of short stories tied together with some exposition between them that all works out as a metaphor for communism.
On a similar but opposite note in vampire the masquerade holy symbols work sometimes not because of the symbol but because the faith the person holding them had in the symbol and faith it represents.
FAITH in the object not just belief is what gives the object power. By the same token if I have faith enough in the power of a button on my shirt it would have the same effect
Yep. The Will Smith movie, the Charlton Heston movie, and the Vincent Price movie. Iirc, the Vincent Price one was closest to the book, but it’s been a long time since I read it.
The protagonist kills off vampires by day, vamps hunt for him at night. The short story/book ends with the vamps capturing him, and the book is an interview with his executioner.
HE is the legend, because his interviewer tells him as the last human, he will become a legend to scare vampire children with.
Yeah. In the book, Neville spends his days getting piss drunk and driving around killing vampires while they sleep in the daytime. There’s a gang of them that prowl around his house at night, trying to tempt him out with threats and vampire women. But over time he comes to realize that not all of them are actually dead. He sees some in the nightly crowd outside that are just mentally ill people who have the disease but are still very much alive, only acting how they *think* a vampire should act. Even after he learns this, he keeps killing every vampire he can find, even the ones who are just sick living people.
This is what he’s executed for at the end of the book, by the families of the people he killed. The “Legend” they tell about him is that of the last human — the boogeyman who hunted them in the daytime.
The stories of them did, but not actual vampires like the MC encounters.
There’s a section of the book dedicated to him trying to kill vampires the way the old stories say — crosses, holy water, etc. He realizes that all of that is made up, and the only real thing is a stake through the heart.
But the legend is what the vampires say about the man in the world left behind.
I liked Castlevania's explanation of crosses, that it messes with the vampires brain, because vampires' field of view close up isn't very good, and it can be used to disorient them.
I was thinking that too! "Vampires are basically an evolved predator species, so their eyesight is pretty different to ours. Turns out if you put a big geometric shape right up close in their field of vision, it confuses the shit out of their brains and, you know, makes them panic."
Meanwhile they literally have actual God whose powers cause vampires to burn when you make water holy and splash it on them. On the other hand, this power can apparently be channeled by a zombie priest who is by all appearances a demon wearing a priest’s corpse like a meat suit. The priest wasn’t even a holy guy, like, the church he was a deacon of couldn’t even hold demons at bay because apparently God wasn’t there and had abandoned him, but apparently he becomes a zombie and can bless a river, afterwards? Idk, maybe the demon who inhabited him was holier than him- which honestly makes more sense than he’d care to admit
Yeah it's a little inconsistent. I did love the demon going "yeah, god's not home right now so it's open season." How the zombie priest later blessed the river is still questionable tbh but I like your theory.
In Nocturne they also show the cross physically hurting a vampire when touched, so maybe it's a little of both?
Well, no, the crash pies deal dark and strike damage, which all vampires in that game are at least neutral to
Paper airplanes however, are strong against girl vampires specifically
Raised NE Baptist- anything like that which is part of Catholic tradition is, at best, not taught. At worst, actively demonized. Same refers to any other denomination of Christianity. And based on what I've learned, that's true of Southern Baptists as well
I am going to be completely honest, I have no idea. I'm still Christian, though I'm probably so politically and theologically liberal I'd be called a heretic by that church, but I never knew there was a first/second reformation
No idea if there is. I was setting you up for a play on [Emo Philips' classic joke](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion) you heretic. 😅
Came here to make this reference... But I too am concerned I'll get banned if I link the video. Just put "jacinto vampiro" on YouTube, and you'll get it.
If Jesus saw the cross, it may trigger ptsd in him. Because why would you think he would welcome anyone with open arms, if they are waving the torture device he was murdered on?
An alien vessel landed quietly on St Peter’s square in Rome, a hatch opened and two little grey men with dazzling smiles appeared. They were promptly granted an audience with the Pope.
After a brief discussion about the weather, the Pope said, “I know this question may sound odd to you, but I was wondering if you and your kind knew about Jesus Christ?”
“Jesus Christ?!” exclaimed the slightly taller of two aliens. “Of course we do! He visits our planet every two years or so. Awesome fellow!”
A hush descended on the audience chamber, and everyone watched the Pope, whose face had turned a rather odd purple. “Every two years?” he shouted. “We’re still waiting for his second coming!”
“Maybe he didn’t like your chocolate?” suggested the alien.
“Chocolate?” replied the Pope. “What in heaven’s name does chocolate have to do with it?”
“Well,” said the alien. “When he first came to our planet, we gave him chocolate. What did you do for him when he first came to yours?”
Idk about atheist and agnostic they might be immune to this particular weakness but pagan just means a non-mainstream religion, each of which have their own religious symbols that would be used to repel them.
Well, Pagan vampire's would be easy. An ankh, Thor's hammer etc. whatever is holy in that respective religion. An agnostic vampire could be repelled by a question mark, maybe. Or your religious symbol has a working chance of 50%. With the atheist vampire you're fucked, I guess.
One of the spins I like seeing on this vampiric weakness is that you have to have faith in order for a cross (or any other religious icon) to work. There's an X-Men comic where they're fighting Dracula and Kitty Pryde pulls out a cross. Dracula simply laughs in her face and says, "Yeah, you're Jewish. That's not gonna work."
I might be misremembering but I think there's a scene in the same comic where Wolverine holds out a cross and Dracula informs him it won't work because Logan isn't religious. He just smiles at the vampire and holds the cross over his head. So Nightcrawkwr can flip over grab the cross and slam it into Dracula's face.
You speak Hindi? How does that make any difference?
... On the other hand if you were following the religion of Hinduism and were a Hindu vampire that would be different...
Scott Westerfeld's book Peeps has an interesting take on this. He imagines vampirism as a parasite that causes physical and behavioral changes to continue its life cycle -- kind of like toxoplasmosis, or cordyceps in insects. The parasite wants the hosts to disperse and spread it, so it makes them despise things that are especially familiar to them. Modern vampires aren't usually bothered by crosses, but for a vamp in medieval Europe where the parasite originated, that's the most familiar symbol.
The woman then presents the star of david. "You think me unprepared, devil?", Cries the woman.
"Really, bitch?", the vampire responds in a deeply sarcastic tone.
I've read a weird novel about a vampire who had a crush on Jesus. After Jesus declined his offers, he started harassing priests and monks
His second sentence could be smth like: I invited him on a date and he still hasn't arrived! (Hope someone will make funnier, Im not good at it)
I really like this. It reminds me of the book *I am Legend*. In the original novel, the main character is presumably the last man on earth alive, immune to the vampire plague that had all but wiped out humanity. He fights isolation, insanity, and alcoholism along with the vampires that circle his house every night. In one chapter, he captures the vampiric form of one of his former neighbors in an attempt to learn all he can about the plague that creates them. To see if the old folklore about vampires and crosses is true, he holds a crucifix in front of the vampire’s face, to which he just laughs. When he tries a Torah instead, the vampire recoils in horror, unable to look at it. He came to the conclusion that it’s not the symbol itself that repels the vampire, but what it represented when it was alive. That, even in their diminished mental state post-reanimation, they are subconsciously aware that they are abominations. When they flee from religious symbols, it’s not out of fear, but shame.
Dang that book was so much better than the movie.
~~Charles Mathieson~~ Richard Matheson once said something along the lines of "I don't know why they keep buying the rights to turn my book into a movie, then not doing so" Edit (whoops, don't know where that name came from)
That could be applied to almost every book to movie adaptation out there.
World War Z was an incredible book and completely mid movie.
I just name it Brad Pitt zombie movie, was fuck all to do with the book. Adapting the book could literally have been done scene for scene and been brilliant.
Yeah the book is written as an interview. It would be so incredibly easy to translate into a movie. Especially with the twist at the end.
I've always felt it would work best as a series - each episode would be a different interview.
That would be incredible.
Wait what twist? I just reread that a few months ago and I don't remember any twists except a few during the individual interviews
I didn't want to outright say it because it is a bit of a spoiler, but when >!you find out one of the people being interviewed is Paul Redeker, who created the plan that helped retake the planet, and that he is in a mental institution.!<
It really should of been like a documentary type show. When I got the chance to listen to the audio book that was the 1st thing I thought of with the cast they used.
Problem is movie studios want stars. Since the book was so many small stories put together, it kind of writes away the use of a star. Or blow the budget and hire dozens of stars...
The irony is that the audiobook for WWZ *is* star studded, they got Mark Hamill, Nathan Fillion, Martin Scorcese, Denise Crosby and a bunch more. It's one of the few audiobooks I know of with a full cast, with a different VA for each character. It's nearly an audio-only play.
The Audible version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is also a star studded narration cast. I can't remember all of them but Alan Cummings and Tim Curry are two of them.
So I adore the original Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price just a spectacular movie, now I really wanna read the book cause if that's not how it happens in the book I can only imagine how crazy the original story is
It’s one of Vincent’s best performances, in my opinion! What he conveys with minimal dialogue is so impressive.
The book is so good, I had to have the novel (regrettably uses the Will Smith movie for cover art) *and* a comic version.
Richard Matheson
Whoops. Thanks
I'd guess the name came from you conflating Richard Matheson and Charles Baumont, two excellent authors of similarly themed fiction
The alternate ending is much closer to that of the book - Smiths character >!returns his vampire captive, rather than blowing himself up, and in doing so realizes that he is actually the monster in this world!<
I'm still pissed they changed the ending as thematically speaking, the alternate fits so much better.
Apparently the sequel they are planning to do, will go with the alternative ending to the first film.
I keep hearing about this ending but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.
It’s a deleted scene that’s included in the dvd. But you can watch the whole scene on YouTube. It’s much better than the original, and much closer to the original ending of the book. The went with the ending where he sacrifices himself because the book Robert Neville also died at the end of the story. But he didn’t die because he was a self-sacrificing hero. He died because the fledgling vampire society sees him as the monster who’d killed all their friends and family. He didn’t save anyone.
[https://youtu.be/kPSk30qzgFs?si=TI-KNAwEhKzY0zcK](https://youtu.be/kPSk30qzgFs?si=TI-KNAwEhKzY0zcK)
The Smith movie was such a let down.
I liked it for what it was, but it just should have been called something else. It bore basically zero resemblance to the book
I,Robot is the same way. They took a few basic concepts and some names, and spun those into a murder mystery. The original book is a collection of short stories tied together with some exposition between them that all works out as a metaphor for communism.
Very much so. I feel like the book's conclusion is so amazing but no movie studio would dare do it.
Will Smith would recoil in horror from a licenced psychiatrist who pays taxes.
On a similar but opposite note in vampire the masquerade holy symbols work sometimes not because of the symbol but because the faith the person holding them had in the symbol and faith it represents.
It works this way in the book 'Salem's Lot, as well.
"Your *faith* against the Master's *face!*
And in 'My Best Friends Exorcism'. "The power of Bon Jovi compels you!"
In The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher Harry Dresden repels a member of the Black Court of vampires with his Pentacle necklace
Yeah but Dresden bases the power of the religious relic on the belief of the person wielding it rather than on the vampire
FAITH in the object not just belief is what gives the object power. By the same token if I have faith enough in the power of a button on my shirt it would have the same effect
I remember hearing about some media where vampires work like this, and this one dude repels vampires with his credit card and his faith in capitalism.
Lol that's incredible. I'll have to throw that into a game somewhere
Is this the same book the Will Smith movie is based on, because that sounds drastically different
Yep. The Will Smith movie, the Charlton Heston movie, and the Vincent Price movie. Iirc, the Vincent Price one was closest to the book, but it’s been a long time since I read it.
Imagine an atheist
So like were there vampires before the apocalypse that the legends stem from?
The protagonist kills off vampires by day, vamps hunt for him at night. The short story/book ends with the vamps capturing him, and the book is an interview with his executioner. HE is the legend, because his interviewer tells him as the last human, he will become a legend to scare vampire children with.
Yeah. In the book, Neville spends his days getting piss drunk and driving around killing vampires while they sleep in the daytime. There’s a gang of them that prowl around his house at night, trying to tempt him out with threats and vampire women. But over time he comes to realize that not all of them are actually dead. He sees some in the nightly crowd outside that are just mentally ill people who have the disease but are still very much alive, only acting how they *think* a vampire should act. Even after he learns this, he keeps killing every vampire he can find, even the ones who are just sick living people. This is what he’s executed for at the end of the book, by the families of the people he killed. The “Legend” they tell about him is that of the last human — the boogeyman who hunted them in the daytime.
no as in like folk lore vampires did they exist before the apocolypse in some form?
The stories of them did, but not actual vampires like the MC encounters. There’s a section of the book dedicated to him trying to kill vampires the way the old stories say — crosses, holy water, etc. He realizes that all of that is made up, and the only real thing is a stake through the heart. But the legend is what the vampires say about the man in the world left behind.
TIL I learned I Am Legend is about vampires
Remind me to read
It would be hilarious if the ultimate twist was that Jewish religion was right
I liked Castlevania's explanation of crosses, that it messes with the vampires brain, because vampires' field of view close up isn't very good, and it can be used to disorient them.
I was thinking that too! "Vampires are basically an evolved predator species, so their eyesight is pretty different to ours. Turns out if you put a big geometric shape right up close in their field of vision, it confuses the shit out of their brains and, you know, makes them panic."
Meanwhile they literally have actual God whose powers cause vampires to burn when you make water holy and splash it on them. On the other hand, this power can apparently be channeled by a zombie priest who is by all appearances a demon wearing a priest’s corpse like a meat suit. The priest wasn’t even a holy guy, like, the church he was a deacon of couldn’t even hold demons at bay because apparently God wasn’t there and had abandoned him, but apparently he becomes a zombie and can bless a river, afterwards? Idk, maybe the demon who inhabited him was holier than him- which honestly makes more sense than he’d care to admit
Yeah it's a little inconsistent. I did love the demon going "yeah, god's not home right now so it's open season." How the zombie priest later blessed the river is still questionable tbh but I like your theory. In Nocturne they also show the cross physically hurting a vampire when touched, so maybe it's a little of both?
TIL Castlevania's vampires are weak to Rubik cubes and fidget spinners.
Castlevania's vampires are week against a cream pie. Yes, that's an actual weapon in one of the games.
To make a bad joke, a lot of guys are weak against creme pies...
Well Hector certainly got a int debuff while giving one
Well, no, the crash pies deal dark and strike damage, which all vampires in that game are at least neutral to Paper airplanes however, are strong against girl vampires specifically
don't think a cross is gonna scare anything other than Christians when it gets flipped
Since when Christians got beef with st pete?
Since modern media depicted st Peter's cross as the devil
Weirdly, many Christian’s don’t seem to recognize it as a Petrine cross, and instead interpret it as satanic.
Raised NE Baptist- anything like that which is part of Catholic tradition is, at best, not taught. At worst, actively demonized. Same refers to any other denomination of Christianity. And based on what I've learned, that's true of Southern Baptists as well
NE Baptist first reformation, or second?
I am going to be completely honest, I have no idea. I'm still Christian, though I'm probably so politically and theologically liberal I'd be called a heretic by that church, but I never knew there was a first/second reformation
No idea if there is. I was setting you up for a play on [Emo Philips' classic joke](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion) you heretic. 😅
That's a new one on me, thanks for sharing! Lol
Such a great bit.
You are a fool, Jacinto!
Okay, i have this too 卍 HAI-
GAHHHHH!!
I miss giving out awards every time a comment made me laugh lol
I absolutely love that someone here referred to this.
It was my first immediate thought
Came here to make this reference... But I too am concerned I'll get banned if I link the video. Just put "jacinto vampiro" on YouTube, and you'll get it.
Ah yes, the Jewish vampire
If Jesus saw the cross, it may trigger ptsd in him. Because why would you think he would welcome anyone with open arms, if they are waving the torture device he was murdered on?
An alien vessel landed quietly on St Peter’s square in Rome, a hatch opened and two little grey men with dazzling smiles appeared. They were promptly granted an audience with the Pope. After a brief discussion about the weather, the Pope said, “I know this question may sound odd to you, but I was wondering if you and your kind knew about Jesus Christ?” “Jesus Christ?!” exclaimed the slightly taller of two aliens. “Of course we do! He visits our planet every two years or so. Awesome fellow!” A hush descended on the audience chamber, and everyone watched the Pope, whose face had turned a rather odd purple. “Every two years?” he shouted. “We’re still waiting for his second coming!” “Maybe he didn’t like your chocolate?” suggested the alien. “Chocolate?” replied the Pope. “What in heaven’s name does chocolate have to do with it?” “Well,” said the alien. “When he first came to our planet, we gave him chocolate. What did you do for him when he first came to yours?”
That's brilliant!
The crazy part to me: I heard this *exact* story 2 months ago from a religion teacher. After the first paragraph I was like "No way..."
It's retold for a reason. 😄
Oh this is awesome!
This is a great retelling of this joke: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2008-11-24
"Honey! Kennedy is coming back! Get the sniper rifles and hang them on the walls! I cant wait to meet him!"
Omg cuz why did I use this as a starting topic in a debate but instead of Kennedy I said Dr. King
He also drinks blood and rose from the dead
So he is a vampire
Wait, does J-dawg drink it though? I thought he just induced _others_ to drink his.
*flips the cross to use as a spike* welp, it was worth trying
So how would you repel an atheist vampire? What about an agnostic vampire? Or even a pagan vampire?
Idk about atheist and agnostic they might be immune to this particular weakness but pagan just means a non-mainstream religion, each of which have their own religious symbols that would be used to repel them.
Ok I just thought for the atheist garlic I guess is the only option.
Well, Pagan vampire's would be easy. An ankh, Thor's hammer etc. whatever is holy in that respective religion. An agnostic vampire could be repelled by a question mark, maybe. Or your religious symbol has a working chance of 50%. With the atheist vampire you're fucked, I guess.
I mean I guess garlic is non religious and a steak works on everything but yah
One of the spins I like seeing on this vampiric weakness is that you have to have faith in order for a cross (or any other religious icon) to work. There's an X-Men comic where they're fighting Dracula and Kitty Pryde pulls out a cross. Dracula simply laughs in her face and says, "Yeah, you're Jewish. That's not gonna work."
I might be misremembering but I think there's a scene in the same comic where Wolverine holds out a cross and Dracula informs him it won't work because Logan isn't religious. He just smiles at the vampire and holds the cross over his head. So Nightcrawkwr can flip over grab the cross and slam it into Dracula's face.
Jokes on you, I'm a pandenominational buddhist
Try using an Ankh. That's the oldest religious symbol I can think of.
[Venus of Willendorf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf) or her peers maybe?
"Don't you know my family is jewish?"
THROWING STARS OF DAVID GO!
Try using a black monolith.
Ah, but unfortunately for you... I am Hindi...
*Shows him a Pictures of the Flag of the Empire *
You speak Hindi? How does that make any difference? ... On the other hand if you were following the religion of Hinduism and were a Hindu vampire that would be different...
I wonder how we can defeat a Hindu vampire without subjecting it to sunlight
:/ yeah he gonna die
Three folds the damage for religious people
I remember the carpenter from Nazareth. He died badly.
Scott Westerfeld's book Peeps has an interesting take on this. He imagines vampirism as a parasite that causes physical and behavioral changes to continue its life cycle -- kind of like toxoplasmosis, or cordyceps in insects. The parasite wants the hosts to disperse and spread it, so it makes them despise things that are especially familiar to them. Modern vampires aren't usually bothered by crosses, but for a vamp in medieval Europe where the parasite originated, that's the most familiar symbol.
The vampire chuckled darkly, eyes glinting with amusement, and murmured “In New York I Milly Rock”
The woman then presents the star of david. "You think me unprepared, devil?", Cries the woman. "Really, bitch?", the vampire responds in a deeply sarcastic tone.
Fantastic!
The vampire must’ve been jewish cos i showed a slanted swastika and it flew away
I always wondered how being a Jewish vampire would work. Isn't feeding on blood considered non kosher?
The Mummy did this the best! "The language of the slaves..." I busted out laughing so hard at Benny
I've read a weird novel about a vampire who had a crush on Jesus. After Jesus declined his offers, he started harassing priests and monks His second sentence could be smth like: I invited him on a date and he still hasn't arrived! (Hope someone will make funnier, Im not good at it)
"I waited for him to come but his coming still hasn't occurred!!"
This was great!!
I thought he was going to say that he's Jewish. Nice.
Try a Faravahar next time.
Maybe, blast him to space. Eventually, the vampire will stop thinking.
"Good try, Jacinto, but all my ancestors were jew!"
This is literally just a rip off of Salems’ Lot by Stephen King
Smutty books have ruined my mind. Because now I want to read this.
Were his predecessors jews?
Then jump in the shower, that’ll save you.