American Vampire - The bad and the ugly

[andydecker]

I guess everyone has some real trash in their collection, and not good trash, too. I have a couple of those awful vampire novels which are always cited as accerelating the descent of the genre to hell.

So, for a good laugh, here are a few. The covers alone are good for a chuckle.

Vincent Courtney - Vampire Beat (Pinnacle, 1991, 302 pages)

BLOOD FORCE
The Streets of Miami are hot with sleaze and sin.
And nobody knows those streets better than homicide detective Christopher Blaze. Or so he thought ...
As an undercover cop, it was his job to bust the creatures of the night - not become one of them. But sometimes even the best cops turned and no one suspected, not their captains, not their girlsfriends, not even their partners.

Now Chris Blaze is working the graveyard shift, huntin a centuries-old serial killer leaving behind a trail of beautiful young victims. For another vampire is stalking the hot Miamí night and this time Blaze has nothing to lose but his immortal soul!

Ah, where to begin? From the great cover to the originality of the premise, but naming your hero-cop Chris Blaze? Is he the cousin of the Ghost Rider or the cousin of detective Knight?

Still, I am unfair. I have a hazy recollection of actual liking this one. It wasn´t as bad as it sounds, and the cover-text is actually quite clever in places. The novel spawned two sequels, so it must have sold better then the rest. But the cover is a class in itself.

Michael Cecilione - Domination (Zebra Books, 1993, 443 pages)

VAMPIRE LOVE
It´s called Domination. It´s New York´s trendiest downtown club, where the beautiful people go to act out their most dangerous and violent fantasies.
But Domination is much more than that. Investigative reporter Kelly Mitchell will find out when she meets its owner and star perfomer, the enigmatic and beautifil Ilana Florescu. Ageless and irresistibly seductive Ilana will lure Kelly deeply into her erotic nighttime world of pöain. pleasure and insatiable bllod lust. Slowly, exquisitly she will sap Kelly´s will as she begins to transform her into a voracious creature of the night.
But Ilana isn´t the only one who wants her.
Soon Kelly will find herself the pawn in a mellenia-old struggle between two powerful vampire masters - one of whom seeks to destroy her body ... and the other to enslvae her immortal soul!

I never finished this one. I remember hating this from the start and not even the promise of s/m and sex could made me wallow through its 443 pages in fine print. Those NEL guys knew why they made their novels short.

[dem]

Wow, that was a close one. For a second there, Dominion shot straight to my wants list until i spotted that fatal "445 pages in fine print". It's a bit of a cheat to salute 'Arabella Randolph's The Vampire Tapes here, as it dates from 1978, but it's a magnificent example of a bad vampire novel - in fact, it's still one of my most loved novels of any genre. Perhaps more apt is the first of 'Valentina Cilescu's forays into vampire erotica Kiss Of Death (Headline, 1992). And then there's this one which i've wanted to review for ages, but to do so would mean reading it again. 1993 was certainly a good year for boring sex vampires.

David Dvorkin - Insatiable (Pinnacle, 1993)

Blurb
Once, Richard Venneman was a normal man. Now he is hunted for the immortal pleasures only he can give...
In a moment of frenzied passion, Richard Venneman was changed forever. Changed by a beautiful woman named Elizabeth Valle. Changed by blood. Changed into one of the undead...
For Richard Venneman, there is no joy in blood. Only unbearable agony. But for his victims, his kiss brings an ecstasy they can never stop craving.
Now, everyone wants Richard Venneman. And they're coming after him. Hunter and prey, this vampire lives for only one desire: revenge upon the woman who brought him into this horrorscape of pleasure, pain, perversion and endless blood ....

[dem]

Ah, it's coming back to me now.

John Tigges is an author who presumably won't be troubling an Ellen Datlow listing of recommended reads any time soon, but you're not likely to doze off during Vessel (Leisure, 1988), "Horror at its chilling best ... makes Count Dracula look like a schoolboy!" according to 'Fresno Bee' who provided the cover artwork. As if that weren't enough to persuade you:

"LOOK OUT STEPHEN KING! VESSEL IS TERRIFYING FICTION AT ITS BEST!"

Centuries ago she had been a proud noblewoman, the toast of every glittering capital of Europe. She had wealth, breeding and beauty — and an insane desire to live forever.
Blood was the key to her eternal life, her eternal youth — blood drawn from the still-living bodies of virgins.
Now her hunger had taken her to America where she was about to unleash her ancient appetites on an unsuspecting country — a blood lust that could never be sated.

Leisure were clearly proud of having Mr. Tigges on board. There's even a nice photo of him on the inside back cover and "My books are more frightening because they're based on true events and real people, such as the countess in Vessel".

John Tigges - Book Of The Dead (Leisure, 1988)

Tigges followed this with Book Of The Dead (Leisure, 1989) - "Written in Blood, bound in ancient leather, the solid gold pages were inscribed with indecipherable markings, symbols that resembled nothing ever created by man" as the blurb so accurately has it. In fact, he was incredibly prolific over a short period. Under the pseudonym 'William Essex', he even has one called Slime which must surely be worth seeking out.

[andydecker]

Here are the next ones.

Zebra 1995

BLOOD ROOTS
Hello, it´s me again: Deirdre Griffin, vampire. When we last met, my lover, Detective Mitch Greer, had finally given in and become one of us. We had moved to London to begin a new life together. Now we´re back on the streets of New York - our old feeding grounds - at the request of The Cadre, a secret society of ancient vampires, because another series of shocking murders is taking place. At first, it was believed there was a rogue vampire on the loose. But it turns out this guy isn´t just killing humans ... he´s also killing vampires.

It is hard to believe that a vampire would want to kill one of his own, but sometimes immortality will do that to a guy - push him right over the edge. Now it´s going to take all my powers - as a vampire and a woman - to stay one jump ahead of this bloodthirsty murderer. And this time around, Mitch and I aren´t the hunters ... we´re also the prey!

From the super-cheesy cover to the funny back text, I guess this has all. Woman vampire and lover? Check. Ruling vampire mafia? Check. Terrible danger? Check.

But this is the third of a series, at 347 pages not as thick as others. I never got over the first chapter.

Pinnacle, 1993

From the author of Vampire Winter comes a novel in the terrifying tradition of F. Paul.Wilson´s bestseller The Keep.

It was World War II, and the nazis had found the perfect weapon ...

Wolff, a Nazi SS officer, had an innate talent - and thirst - for killing. As he sliced the throats of enemy sentries, his strength and stealth allowed him to drain and drink their warm blood with ease. Now, his new assignement at a Nazi weather station in the arctic left Wolff basking in the darkness of the winter days, yet a need for blood consumed him; and with a scarcity of enemies , Wolff would have to make some desperate choices ...

Two Weather Groups had already been taken prisoner by the U.S.Coast Guard, and Luftwaffe Captain Martin Dietrich was glad to see Wolff at his Greenland weather station. Yet there was something sinister about the SS officer, something that reeked of death and terror. And when his men started to disappear, Dietrich sensed a waking nightmare was about to begin ...

This sounded not bad when I read it at the catalogue - before the Net I used to order at an outfit in Texas which made a terrific montly catalogue made like a newspaper - , but I couldn´t get into it. According to the writer it is based on facts - the weather war, not the vampire -, still this unexcited writing style put me to sleep. This The Keep reference is of course nonsense.

Btw sorry for the bad scans. These covers are terrible so scan. Guess it is all the black background.

[dem]

Good grief! Zebra were still churning out stuff like Blood Ties in 1995! And when did vampires take up WWF wrestling?

Some novels are once read, never forgotten, but that doesn't seem to be the case with either of these revenge of the fang-face titles - can't even remember whether I liked them or not. The Vampires Apprentice blurb reads like it takes up after an apocalyptic episode of The Office.

Richard Lee Byers - The Vampire Apprentice (Zebra, Jan. 1992)

Blurb
Awakening to find himself embalmed and buried in his own grave, David Brent clawed his way to the surface to find himself transformed, a walking corpse, abandoned by his mentor, and tortured by a relentless thirst ...
This was not what Carter, the charming vampire had promised David before biting him. Where was Carter now ... and who was going to teach David how to feed his insatiable
hunger, use his new immortal powers, and stay out of harm's way?
Abandoned and betrayed, dead to everyone he'd ever loved, David loathed and feared his savage new existence ... But his rage would not let him perish. An inhabitant of the darkness, a bloodthirsty night stalking monster, David found his own way teaching himself the answers to the ancient myths he was now heir to ... and when he finally mastered his many powers, David went looking for Carter — because David was dying again, but this time he was dying for revenge.

Lee Weathersby - Kiss Of The Vampire (Zebra, March 1992)

Blurb

Free, free at last! Vampire Franz Drake grinned with insane pleasure as he surveyed the peaceful Florida coastal town. At last, he had escaped from a terrifying imprisonment. Now he could again stalk the glorious night and finally sate a new, insatiable thirst - for revenge.
Franz was the Bloodmaster, the powerful vampire who long ago had made his brother Simon a night-hunter like himself and given him abilities beyond mortal ken. But Simon had betrayed him - left him for dead while he succumbed to the lure of human love...
Now, Franz would turn these moonlit beaches into a savage hunting ground. Now, he would drain the life and soul of their unsuspecting inhabitants and render it his eternal kingdom of darkness. And soon he would teach his traitorous brother the real meaning of undying passion, ravening fury - and endless terror.

Some we've met earlier. If it's sex crazed Nazi's versus the Brides of Dracula you're looking for, there's always John Ruddy's The Bargain (Knightsbridge Easy Eye, 1990).

And an earlier Zebra (August 1979): John Shirley's deliberately barking Dracula In Love!