Description
Book SynopsisFirst released in 1987,
Near Dark is a vampire film set in the contemporary American Midwest that tells the story of Caleb, a half-vampire trying to decide whether to embrace his vampire nature or return to his human family. The film, an early work of the now-established director Kathryn Bigelow, skilfully mixes genre conventions, combining gothic tropes with those of the Western, road movie and film noir, while also introducing elements of the outlaw romance genre. Stacey Abbott’s study of the film addresses it as a genre hybrid that also challenges conventions of the vampire film. The vampires are morally ambiguous and undermine the class structures that have historically defined stories of the undead. These are not aristocrats but instead they capture the allure and horror of the disenfranchised and the underclass. As Abbott describes,
Near Dark was crucial in consolidating Bigelow’s standing as a director of significance at an early point in her career, not simply because of her visual art background, but because of the way in which she would from
Near Dark onward re-envision other traditionally mainstream genres of filmmaking.
Trade ReviewNear Dark is long overdue a critical reappraisal. In this lucid, accessible and scrupulously-researched book Stacey Abbott makes a compelling case for the film's importance as pivotal to both the vampire genre and Katherine Bigelow's career. Abbott's analysis is perspicacious and always illuminating: I came away with a renewed sense of why I Ioved the film in the first place and a fresh understanding of its continuing transgressive potential. -- Catherine Spooner, Professor of Literature and Culture, Lancaster University, United Kingdom.
’Stacey Abbott is pretty much the Night Queen of Vampire Studies by now, and brings the authority of decades of scholarship and the enthusiasm of the fan to bear in this punchy, readable and illuminating account of Kathryn Bigelow's cult hybrid vampire Western. A must-read!’ -- Roger Luckhurst, author of BFI Classics Alien and The Shining
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1 ‘Just a Couple More Minutes of Your Time, About the Same Duration as the Rest of Your Life’: Making a Cult Vampire Film 2 ‘The Sun is On the Rise’: A New Gothic Aesthetic 3 ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’: Genre Hybridity and the Action Vampire 4 ‘No You’ve Never Met Another Girl Like Me’: The Sympathetic, Not-So-Reluctant Vampire 5 ‘Fun Times’: Disrupting Narrative Resolution and Resisting the Status Quo Notes Credits
