Half Breed

"Both sides were against me since the day I was born."
- Cher, "Half Breed," 1973

It's all about half-breeds when it comes to vampire movies. Other action adventure movies have halfies, too. People who live in two worlds (half-human half-whatever else). Harry Potter's world (the Potterverse) had half-bloods. But when it comes to vamps, the heroes are often not completely human and not completely vampire. Blade, the Underworld series, Even Buffy was magically different, if not half-vampire. It stems in part from the ancient folk tales of vampires in eastern Europe.

Vampires were often scapegoats for small pre-Christian communities. If someone committed suicide, (which could be interpreted as a mark upon the community in some way) they would often be dug up and decapitated days after the burial. Sometimes the build up to the decapitation would include tales of sounds and whispers at night, walking on the roof, and other ghostly stuff. Very reminiscent of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. It was a way to put to rest personal guilt with an albeit grisly communal ritual. Similarly, there were tales of women who managed to get pregnant immediately after a husband's death. The curious situation of a child born 10 or 11 months after the husband's death was deemed a result of the husband, who had now become a vampire. So he was dug up and staked or decapitated and the community could put this little incident to rest. The child would be considered "different" and possibly magically able to spot vampires due to his or her lineage. Doesn't it make youthink of how differently the Virgin Mary's life would have been had she been living in Romania instead of Israel? Sometimes half-vampires are called "dhampirs."

It's also a useful narrative device, as storytellers want to revel in the brutal and violent aspect of vampires, but find it difficult to get viewers to identify with someone too bloodthirsty. Well, some viewers anyway. With a half-blood, you have a vampire that probably doesn't mind killing other vampires and who wishes for full humanity. Being torn between two aspects of your identity is something many people can identify with as well, so it makes sense for lots of different reasons. In my Axis of Ava comic, my central character is a half-breed, but not by birth. She's the result of a scientific experiment that didn't work out too well. Mostly because I wanted to address the idea that the government has known about vampires for a long time, but it does allow for a more complicated and more interesting character. For the record, Ava probably wishes she was more vampire than human, but she's a contrary Mary.


So not surprisingly, this movie, Blood the Last Vampire features a gal who is a half-breed vampire hunter (huntress?). She exists for one purpose, and one purpose only: to kill bloodsuckers. It's based on an anime film from 2000 of the same name. It looks pretty damn cool! Check out the trailer.

Blood The Last Vampire