Werewolves And Vampires

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I saved the ticket from the day the power went out in the middle of the movie I was watching in the theater next to Petsmart...I rolled over to Petsmart this afternoon, and thought to see if I could get a ticket refund, or see another movie...and the theater obliged, and I found myself seated in E3, last seat available, surround by kids and their moms watching Hotel Transylvania 2...I'd thought it might be a comedy like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and I was close, it's a cartoon movie for kids!

News stories roll into the past really fast, which is a good thing for most of them...the 'moving pen' writes, and skips into a new news story without a pause...myself, I've hit the pause button at the story of the Palestinian girl being shot at the border crossing...the occasion for tears something to consider...

and there I was this afternoon watching the cartoon turn all the fears of life and death upside down...surrounded by giggling kids...and it's funny...and of course the cartoon isn't real, but it's funny...

the cartoon's plot is simple...a child has been born to a vampire married to a human, and the mom vampire's dad is concerned that the half human half vampire kid won't, or will,  grow up to be a vampire...this transformation happens when the kid will grow fangs, or not...various adventures ensue, the kid under close observation for when the fangs will appear...

I've been going on about 'biting'...the transformation that happens when someone is bitten, as when a werewolf bites, or a vampire bites...I don't know what this moment is called in the vocabulary of Hollywood script writers...in the movie Friendly Persuasion...brb...here's wiki link to that movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Persuasion_(1956_film)

curious, Ronald Reagan gifted a copy of it to Gorbachev , and Gary Cooper didn't like acting in it...not enough action for him!...it's about a Quaker family and how they deal with the Civil War and being attacked on their farm by confederates...the film is laying out the dilemmas of being bitten by war...transformed by war...

in the cartoon, getting fangs means the kid will acquire Vampire super senses...turning into a bat and such, and generally being really scary...and having fangs means he can remain living in the Hotel which is home to all kinds of monsters...

the fangs aren't appearing, and if they don't by his fifth? birthday, he'll 'just' be human...and the kid is having a birthday party, the fifth, and it is urgent to his grandpa vampire that he grow fangs, and it is urgent too to the kid's great grandpa vampire Vlad, who has been invited to the party...Vlad shows up with his side kick giant bat, and Vlad, and his bat,  are really old school monsters...and Vlad tries to scare the kid into growing fangs...being really scared being what usually makes fangs appear in vampire kids!...earlier efforts along this line had failed, and Vlad's do too...the party gets out of hand, and the kid runs away with his girl friend kid werewolf to get away from it all, and Vlad's bat follows, pretty much intent on eating both of them...but when the bat attacks the kid werewolf, the vampire kid gets his hackles up, seeing his girlfriend in peril, and the fangs come out, and he lays waste to the bat, and all the other bats that show up...the vampire half of the family transform using their super senses and join a fine cartoon bar fight battle!...a happy ending...I picked up about here before the celebratory scenes, and exited the theater, alone with some thoughts...

Vlad is played by, by played I mean Vlad has the voice of, Mel Brooks, and Mel Brooks uses a comedic Jewish accent of a stereotypical old Jewish guy...I blinked when I heard this, and the cartoon took on a serious cast...the kid is half vampire, half human...and now I saw him as being half Jewish and half Gentile...and saw the whole arc of the cartoon, like I see the arc of a movie like Friendly Persuasion, as an effort at transformation...at being bitten...Israel is like the Farm in Friendly Persuasion, and both are like Hotel Transylvania...which looks to be a bit modeled after the Castle on the Island in Lake Tahoe...an observation which is neither here nor there...but once with E. I was standing on the roadside cliff overlooking the Island, and E. said, 'it looks unreal', and suggested just jumping...I smiled...'that's just too scary...'

DavidDavid