Vampire Sex

Rating: Null/10 (9 June 2001)

Spoilers herein. Cat's eye comments follow.
Vampirism has always been about sexual domination. This is the story of Norma Louise Kuzma, an illiterate Ohio jewess. Molested at ten, raped by her father, pregnant in junior high, she ran away at fifteen. In the big city, she became a disciple of a sex cult, then a minor leader in the cult.
Her lord, Frost, was one of an organized group of men who consumed and enslaved women (and weak men, enlisted to do the dirty work of the enterprise). We enter the story with two events underway:
--Frost decides to exploit a force from ancient wisdom to further his power: this force is the deep subconscious power of vampire icons to harness more powerful images of sex. He intends to subsume and leverage the power of his peers (pornographers and pimps) for a new medium: the vampire movie. He expects to affect countless millions and become immensely rich.
--Coincidentally at the same time, a TeeVee preacher named Blade decides to fight sex generically. He does so not because of the destructive effects of sex slavery, but because he is reviled by sex in general. He himself is a sexual being -- he hates himself and strikes out at every instance of sex he finds, and incidentally finds himself confronted by Frost.
The story focuses on Norma, here using the name Racquel, and her betrayal. She fights the fundamentalist because he is so destructive -- in fact Blade's actions drive her and her comrades closer to Frost. Frost offers family, protection, bliss, while Blade offers only death. To a large extent, Frost's power comes from the people like Blade who drive confused souls in his direction. (Most cops -- and politicians -- are also driven to Frost and his peers because of the outrageous inability of Blade to compromise, to see their humanity.)
But the tragedy is that Frost lies to Racquel. He is using her for pleasure and for her abilities as a lieutenant in the liberal Army. He promises a future of new levels of honor, perhaps even some notion of self and control over her own life. But he has another queen in mind.
The story is presented very cleverly with a lot of stupid, blunt, battles between Frost and Blade. The point is to show how superficial are their own ideas of self, how pointless the carnage and how meaningless the battle. Norma is only seen on the edge, which is apt. She expects to have her role as porn star be elevated to that of real artistry in playing a vampire goddess. The tragedy is both in her failure and in how she fails; she is abandoned by Frost, then stabbed in the eye (no foolin) by Blade. She literally explodes because of a sexually transmitted disease of the blood -- cooked up in a scientific lab for other (useful) reasons but enlisted here in the battle between `good' and `bad.'