by Tony Sokol:
You’ll want to get every drop.
In the last season of True Blood, on HBO, Arlene Fowler, the fiery redheaded waitress of Merlotte’s, and her boyfriend, Terry Bellefleur, went to a Halloween party in a neighborhood heavily populated by vampires. The couple was costumed as zombies because “zombies are the new vampire.” With the wild success of the AMC series The Walking Dead and the movie Zombieland, as well as various zombie survival guides, it does appear that a zombie apocalypse is overtaking entertainment, spawning dozens of movies, books, comics and a TV series, everything but a cookbook. Zombies have risen to become as popular as vampires. But who has the better diet?
Zombies…not big fans of venison
The cliché is that vampires drink blood and zombies eat brains, although zombies have been known to eat flesh and entrails and vampires also feed off of psychic and sexual energy. Vampires are usually pale when hungry and gain a robust red glow after feeding. Zombies, whose diet seems on the surface to be more substantial, always seem hungry. Animal blood is already a staple in human diets, but can lead to too much iron after a while, as are brains. However, as Wadsworth, the butler portrayed by Tim Curry, points out in Clue, “monkey’s brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington D.C.” The capital city seems well-suited for vampires and zombies alike.
A romantic dinner at Twilight. I’ll just have the salad.
Blood Is Thicker Than Water
An ounce of blood has about 107 calories, 4.1 grams of protein, 0.4 grams of carbohydrates, 193 milligrams of sodium, 0 fiber, 160 milligrams per liter of iron and 34 something-or-other of cholesterol. It is 4% dissolved solids with about 0.9% dissolved sodium chloride. The rest is water. One ounce of brains contains 41 calories which comes from 2.9 grams of fats and 3.6 grams of proteins. Brains have no carbs, making it perfect for any Atkins Diet-zombies but they contain almost 200% of the U.S. recommended daily allowance of cholesterol. Zombies are a heart attack waiting to happen. If they even have beating hearts.
TV series have more freedom than movies to explore the backstory of the tales they are telling, because they have longer to tell it. We know on The Walking Dead the details of the virus that causes zombification. We learn that the virus lies dormant among the living and takes over the host body at death. We are getting to know the histories of the vampires, weres, fae and other creatures in True Blood’s Sookieverse. We know there are bars and restaurants for vampires, werewolves and all the two-natured. We know that fairy blood is intoxicating to vampires, which leads to some sloppy table manners. We don’t see any zombie establishments.
Piece of Mind
In early zombie movies, like White Zombie from 1932 and 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie, zombies were easy to feed and, for the most part, didn’t try and chew your fat. They were usually zombified by means of voodoo and occasionally were the product of some kind of mad scientist. It wasn’t until Italy’s The Last Man on Earth, a 1964 science fiction horror film directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow and starring Vincent Price that was based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend that we saw the dawn of the mindless virus-created eating machines that evolved into George A. Romero’s 1969 film The Night of the Living Dead. I don’t know when zombies got the brain-eating rap. Maybe it was The Simpsons.
Clean-up on aisle seven
Zombies know where the food is. Zombies take over a mall with a food-court in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead (and its 2004 remake.)The flesh-eaters of the zombie-comedies Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead wait in supermarkets for their Twinkie-fattened meals to come to them. Both movie-zombies and movie-vampires avoid the fresh produce aisle because they just don’t seem to like garlic, a known blood-thinner. But regardless of where they stop and shop, zombies never seem to get enough. There is something wrong with their digestive system. Maybe it’s all the rotting organs that can’t break down what they eat. And brains don’t stop them from rotting. They only seem full when you shoot them in the head.
I Never Drink… Wine
Were you going to finish that?
Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella and Gary Oldman, in their respective takes on the infamous impaling ruler of Transylvania and Wallachia, Dracula, set sumptuous meals before Jonathan Harker (or, erroneously in the 1931 version directed by Tod Browning, Renfield, played by the ever-delightful Dwight Frye who himself subsists of a very interesting diet of flies, spiders and rats), and excuses himself because he had supped already. George Hamilton’s Dracula, in Love at First Bite, also “doesn’t smoke shit.” Johnny Depp’s Barnabas in the new Dark Shadows follows the call of real-life mega-vampire McDonald’s, but can’t quite stomach his breakfast waffles. I think I remember seeing Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas drinking sherry once. Spike, the brooding Brit on Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, happily drinks liquor when miserable.
Movie vampires are held back by garlic. but the zombies in Last Man on Earth are also held back by it. Further movies based on the Matheson classic, such as in the 1971 science fiction film, The Omega Man, directed by Boris Sagal and starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend, from 2007, do away with the crucifixes, mirrors and strings of garlic. Garlic doesn’t come to play in many more modern vampire films and there is no mention of it in 28 Days Later, the 2002 British horror film directed by Danny Boyle. That movie also stood on its head the Stephen King notion, “the zombies are coming, walk faster” by featuring fast-moving zombies. Zombies need their cardio too.
True Blood is named for a beverage form of synthetic blood. It frees the vampires to circulate among the living with the promise that they are no longer in danger. There are no synthetic brains for mass consumption, although a zombie apocalypse might open an untapped market for the “pink slime” meat additive that we regular humans are too squeamish to eat. I haven’t seen too many squeamish zombies.
True Blood’s Eddie, not the best example of a healthy vampire
Fictional vampires have a history of trying to find non-threatening substitutes for living blood. In Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Louis restricts his diet to animal blood and the occasional transient. In the Sookie Stackhouse novels, by Charlaine Harris, Bubba, the nom-de-plum for the unfortunately-turned, undead Elvis, is most interested in cats’ blood. Drinking the blood of the already-dead carries its own hazards. It was nearly lethal to Lestat in Interview With the Vampire. It’s also not very tasty.
Near Dark’s Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton
“Cut off my legs and call me shorty,” the vampires in Near Dark, written by Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow, and directed by Bigelow in 1987, supplemented their diet with beer. Living on the liquid diet doesn’t guarantee a svelte figure, as evidenced by Steven Root who plays a slightly pudgy vampire named Eddie who is chained in sliver on True Blood. The young vampires in Lost Boys snack on Chinese takeout between meals. The vampires of the Twilight movie franchise seem well-fed for the most part. But they obviously suffer from vitamin D deficiency, even though they can go out in the sun. The suburban vampires of Vampire Diaries on CW are tan by comparison. Love Bites: The Reluctant Vampire starred Adam Ant as a vampire who ate human food in an attempt to become human because of love. Maybe brains and food are not a good mix. In The Addiction, Abel Ferrara’s 1995 urban vampire film, Kathy, played by Lili Taylor, is repulsed by people eating and reading philosophy at the same time.
Lili Taylor in Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction
Food for Thought
For deeper research, I tried talking to some zombies, but was met with, not the stony silence I expected, but gurgling sounds. I listened politely as they mealy-mouthed their answers for what seemed like hours. But really, even with translators, I’m sure it would be incoherent and come off like the ramblings of a far-right pundit on Bill Maher. At least zombies eat brains. The zombies of Zombie, Ohio, A Tale of the Undead can talk, but Ohio’s quite a commute. It was far easier to talk with vampires.
Merticus of the Atlanta Vampire Alliance, a real vampire researcher, says “Blood sausage, deer blood capsules, bloody steaks or blood-infused salad dressing may cut it for some vampires, yet the more discerning fanged blood critics prefer drinking straight from the tap. It may not be on the mind of vampires while the blood is dripping onto their tongue, but they are consuming a rich diet of proteins, lipids, hormones, vitamins, and minerals — everything a gracefully aging vampire needs to keep up their energy. In the coming years sanguinarian (blood drinking) vampires will probably require full health evaluations from their donors instead of just the standard disease testing. This may especially hold true for America where the waistline is increasing and bad habits are polluting the blood supply. It’s already forcing an increasing number of desperate vampires to move to the cities to find suitable donors. Perhaps one day medical science and the culinary arts will catch up to what real vampires have known for years, and blood cocktails, appetizers and desserts will become a staple among the finer dining establishments.”
Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows
Sara Pope, author of Needleteeth and The Shadow of Rhiannon and former publisher of V Magazine tells me “The Energy carried in living cells as well as the amino acids and proteins present in blood are extremely healthy for the unique physical makeup of a vampire. Fellatio as well is a means of feeding in the same way as it carries the same sort of nutrition as blood as well as a great deal of energy. As the orgasm is a burst of energy all in itself and can be consumed as pranic energy even if the physical substance is not ingested. Obviously, the energies carried in living cells are healthier than the consumption of steak, which is dead.”
The lost boys of Lost Boys. With sekhem you get eggroll.
And how do vampires get enough libidinal energy to sustain themselves through the long arid days? Etu Malku Magus of the Ordo Luciferi writes “Through our khaibit, as this is the predatory side of the soul. If we learn to separate the khaibit, to move through it, and to utilize our connection with it during its depredations, we are going to draw in the sekhem needed to the vitalization of will.”
I couldn’t find sekham at my local D’agostino grocery. Maybe they have it in Chinatown?
So brains may have more substance, but blood appears to be better for you. At least it stops you from rotting and fills you up. Vampires seem to enjoy their meals much more than zombies do. Robert Loggia tells Don Rickles that he “smells good” in Innocent Blood, Gary Oldman licks the blood off his knife in Dracula, Blacula takes a moment to enjoy the aroma of fresh food. Zombies just wolf down their brains. In Eric Spitznagel’s Vanity Fair article, “Who Says Zombies Eat Brains?” George A. Romero, who was working on the sympathetic zombie film, Survival of the Dead, said “I’ve never had a zombie eat a brain! I don’t know where that comes from. Who says zombies eat brains?”
I did.
Personally, I like chocolate.
Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. He currently contributes to Silver Tongue, Inside the Reel and Altvariety and has written for Wicked Mystic, Delirium and other magazines. He has had over 20 plays produced in NYC, including Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera “AssassiNation: We Killed JFK”. He appeared on the Joan Rivers (TV) Show, Strange Universe, and Britain’s “The Girlie Show.” His music has appeared in such films as Zaritsas, Hide Me and the upcoming homage to Russ Meyer, Desperate Fate. He was born in Brooklyn, NY. You can find him on Twitter @tsokol, Facebook, YouTube and at Den of Geek.
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