Walking With Vampires

The Vampire story was the first (and the longest-running) photorial story we ever did. Like most of our projects, it started out as a joke.

Duckie has more than just a casual interest in Goth Erotica, and he'll spend a few hours surfing over websites looking for artistic and unusual photographs in that style. Unfortunately, it is often like finding a needle in a haystack, and he was frustrated with the mountains of cheesy photos he'd have to sift through.

I suppose I ought to tell you that his specialty is making acrylic fangs. So finding photos of chicks in black lingerie drinking catsup with "fangs" made from drinking straws really drove him nuts. One day he said "You know, we could do better!"

At the time, Steve the Bald Guy was our room-mate, and he was also an amateur photographer. So one night we got dressed up and ran all over our apartment complex snapping photos. We were living in a place that was very worthy of the title "luxury apartments" and Duckie and I had permission to use the recreational facilities after hours on account that we were night owls (and paying almost a grand a month for the privilege of living there.)

A few days later we had five rolls worth of beautiful photographs, which we took to work with us. Others saw them, thought they were great, and wanted to get involved in another photography session.

So we thought about how many other photos we've seen of women in white being seduced by vampires, and we decided to work out a plot to explain how two individuals like that came to meet. Yep, we sent a clan of vampires out to crash a wedding.

We started with a small clan of four vampires and had them methodically knock off the priest, the groom, and the bridesmaid before cornering the bride. This time we got permission to shoot during daylight (since our vampires all worked at night) and also rented the extravagant clubhouse to use as the vampire's lair.

By the end of the weekend, we had the first six segments of the Vampire story and had developed four characters that would go on to complete the tale.

It was only a matter of time before new faces would join the cast.

The next character to be introduced was "Gilgamesh", the oldest living vampire and our narrator's sire. His arrival was completely accidental. We'd met Chaz while running our weekend shop (where Duckie would make fangs for paying customers), and he had us do him up as a vampire for Halloween.

Later on he told us that he wanted to have some photos taken of himself as the vampire surrounded by pretty women. We got in contact with a photographer we knew, and then the wheels in our heads started turning again.

So Chaz got his photos with women, just not quite in the way he anticipated. To be fair, we shot two sections, one "pretty" and one "nightmarish" and gave his new character the power of glamour and mind control.

Since Duckie and I had painted our bedroom to look like a castle, it was the perfect place to shoot this section. Then, because I just have to get messy, I suggested that we have Chaz feed his captive women a cat.

Don't fret - no cats were actually harmed in the making. Our old cat Panther actually loved all the attention when we were shooting the "What the girls see" section. For "What really happened", I bought some organ meats at the local grocer.

When all was said and done, we had a brand new character for the story who really needed a cool name. So we hit the mythology books and decided on the Babylonian man-god "Gilgamesh".

Gilgamesh needed an introduction, so we decided that as a young man in ancient Babylon he survived an encounter with a Lamia creature in a segment called "Vampire Genesis".

The Lamia was the fastest critter I've ever whipped up, and I had a lot of fun playing the part. I kept thinking "really ugly Amazon" when I put her costume together. She had to be sexy enough to get his attention, but ugly enough to be a convincing monster. So I gave her a feathered loincloth and that was about it.

We already knew that she had to have similar facial features to the ones that we'd established with Gilgamesh. It was at that point that we decided we would differentiate older vampires from younger one by how many sets of canines they had and how distorted their features were.

I suffered greatly on this shoot.

First of all, we had a brand new cameraman and assistant who were using this project to cut their teeth on. I'm not ragging on The Mormon Kid and Skunk Punk though, because they did an excellent job. But they were nervous about doing a good job, so it was a slow process.

The fact that there were animals and stunts involved slowed us down even more. We had two goats that would not take camera direction running around and eating the sweet stage blood. Then a shot called for me to jump out of a tree and tackle Chaz to the ground. On the second take, my knee landed in the last place he wanted it to land. I think we got the shot on the fifth jump.

An hour or so after we'd wrapped up, I discovered that every insect within a three mile radius had taken a nibble out of my corn syrup-coated flesh. I was sick for a week with insect bite toxins.

After the first year of shooting segments, we had a cast and crew of about thirty people. Among them was Lance, who was often teased about looking like Jesus Christ. We decided to use this.

Ever since Gilgamesh's origins were revealed, we had started using myths to explain our characters. We had the Indian vampiress Livtara begin the Hindu myth of Kali by following the Thugee cult and feasting on their victims. So the idea of making Jesus a 4,000 year old vampire with ambitions to save mankind from wickedness wasn't too far-fetched for us.

We inserted Geoff (played by Lance) into the Christian story by having the real Christ-child murdered as a baby when King Herod ordered the slaughter of the Innocents. He is later discovered by John the Baptist as he walks across a river, and the Baptist proclaims him to be the prophesized Savior. Geoff doesn't bother to correct him.

After Geoff fakes his own death (his crucifixion), we learn that he watched sadly as mankind distorted all his teachings to suit their own agendas. This called for a good old-fashioned witch-burning sequence.

As a general rule, I never ask anyone to do something that I wouldn't do myself. So I volunteered to be burnt, despite my aversion to fire. Chaz decided it'd be fun to burn with me, so we played the unfortunate couple at the auto-de-fay.

Kids, don't try this at home!

The stake was set up a few feet behind the fire pit, but the bloke in charge of the fire got a little trigger-happy with the accelerant. As a result, Chaz and I were nicely singed and the looks of terror and pain on our faces are very real.

And we had to do this twice.

After about two years of shooting vampires, the project came to an end after we finished the Jesus story in "The Immaculate Deception" chapter.

It's a shame, because we had actually started shooting another segment involving the birth of a child and a great conflict between older and younger bloodsuckers. But there were other projects coming up and so the vampires had to finally be laid to rest.

On the right is a photo of four generations of vampires in the same family... Gilgamesh (Chaz) sired Anthony (Duckie) who sired Bethany (Shiva) who gave birth to Caleb (The Mormon Kid).

Below are some more photos behind the scenes with the Vampires.

"Vampire Genesis" cast stops to do a "Blair Witch" parody shot.	Jesus takes a moment to autograph a bible for his fans.
Gavin's Mob Boss Vampire tries to convince US citizens that Gilgamesh is the best choice for president in 2000.	Gilgamesh misunderstands the concept of "baby kissing" as his Campaign Manager (Mormon Kid) looks on...
Indian Vampire Livtara (Hil) finds her inner peace with the flower children during the 1960s.	Vampire Nikolia (Kalidas) beckons for the bridesmaid.
The Vampire Anthony claims a bride.	Vampire Anthony (Duckie) dresses Bethany (Shiva) more to his liking.