Caress Of The Vampire

The Decapitated Model From Kanye's "Monster" Video Speaks

And found she had a great time kneeling at Kanye's feet during the shoot. "That video was so much fun to make!" she wrote online.

West's video shows him, Rick Ross, Jay-Z, and Nicki Minaj living in a sort of torture-palace-mansion thing, littered with the dead, dying, and dismembered bodies of models. Occasionally, models — who may be zombies, or vampires, or vampire-zombies? — try and break into the mansion; they are, naturally, killed and dismembered. Warren appears in the clip as a vampire who kills a man with a stiletto and drags his body across the bottom of a drained swimming pool. Later, Kanye raps an entire verse while dangling Warren's severed head by its hair from his right hand.

It comes as a surprise to no one — least of all West and director Jake Nava — that the video has been incredibly controversial; West even pre-emptively instructed us all that "it is an art piece and it shall be taken as such." I'm of many minds about this: the use of violent imagery in fashion has long been commonplace (Warren points out that the inspiration boards for the video included photographs by Steven Klein and Guy Bourdin), and it often ends up glamorizing violence against women. (That was something I thought a fair bit about when I modeled.) On the other hand, a depiction of violence (or misogyny) is not always an endorsement of it. And the violence is not necessarily inappropriate to the song's subject matter. You can see how the video could be a commentary on the typical depiction of black men in the American media, as violent monsters.

And maybe the video's real problem is one of narrative: the models are supposedly the aggressors, the zombie/vampire-attackers, but they're shot to look pretty wimpy as they set upon the mansion. Their manicured hands reach through metal bars, but it's to caress Kanye, not attack him. And a whole crowd of these supposedly fearsome creatures can't even manage to break through a set of French doors. If the models seemed like a more credible threat, if they seemed more powerful and less sexualized, their apparent deaths might not be so disturbing, and the video might be a lot more interesting.

How did you and the other models feel about your looks?
Everybody thought everyone else looked awesome, but nobody was really into how they looked. We didn't feel very sexy. It was really creepy and I didn't like my look at first ­-– I had this huge, ugly gash on my neck. But now I understand why they did what they did.

Radiation-Scarred Reviews: Caress of the Vampire (1996)

Greetings, readers. A coworker of mine handed me a stack of DVDs today, all "bad" horror movies that he thought I'd get a kick out of. Apparently I have some sort of reputation. Tonight's film is one he was particularly keen to get my opinion on, so I figured I'd watch it first. That being said, here's the direct-to-video 1996 vampire lesbian softcore flick, CARESS OF THE VAMPIRE. A CGI space ship (and remember what CGI was like in the mid-90s, readers!) flies through space, zips over Ayer's Rock in Australia, and disgorges the deadliest threat humanity has ever known. Nymphomaniac lesbian space vampiresses. Or one of them, at least. We see her get attacked by a trio of mortal toughs, and promptly beats all three of them down before feeding. "His simple unadorned reviews always cut straight to the heart of films" -- T.L. Bugg, THE LIGHTNING BUG'S LAIR "A barrel of toxic fun!" -- Rhonny Reaper, DOLLAR BIN HORROR "I like your site its very creative...you have a good style of writing. I look forward to reading your reviews" -- The Movie Encyclopedia "Beautifully written and enormously satisfying...