Concessions

Almost exactly a year ago—Halloween 2007—I was hanging
out at Bela Lugosi’s grave. (See Lugosi in Dracula, The Black
Cat, and The Body Snatcher this week at SIFF Cinema.) He’s
buried in the same cemetery as my grandfather (Holy Cross in Culver
City, also eternal home to Rita Hayworth, John Candy, John Ford, Sharon
Tate, Darby Crash, and Uncle Fester from The Addams Family), so,
out of curiosity, my sister and I decided to stop by. It’s a humble
thing, a stone rectangle set flush with the grass, and it reads, “BELA
LUGOSI, BELOVED FATHER, 1882–1956.”

On Lugosi’s grave, my sister and I found a sweet little scene of
passive aggression and goth sentimentality. Several someones had
been there before us—first, a concerned Catholic from the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who left a little pink note taped to Bela
Lugosi’s (and only Bela Lugosi’s) grave: “Dear Patron: The special
decoration of graves is permitted only during the Easter and Christmas
holidays. HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS ARE NOT PERMITTED.” In other words,
keep your pagan witchy ways out of our Catholic dead-people depository.
Not to be deterred, the goths had been there too. In defiance of the
Catholics’ small pink decree, they had left the following items on the
grave of their 50-years-dead vampire king: one (1) withered red
rose; one (1) white calla lily; one (1) black plastic fork, tines
broken off, stuck into the dirt; three (3) pitch-black votive candles;
one (1) clove cigarette.

Dear Archdiocese: Screw you. Love, Goths.

I was reminded of that rogue clove cigarette at the Seattle Lesbian
and Gay Film Festival’s screening of The Hunger on Sunday night,
as Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” played over the opening credits. If
you haven’t seen the 1983 lesbian-
vampire classic (I
hadn’t), it concerns Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie),
a handsome New York couple who spend their days playing chamber music
and their nights drinking the blood of attractive people.

But while Miriam is a centuries-old real vampire, John is
only a formerly human semi-vampire. So, just like all of
Miriam’s past loves, John’s immortality malfunctions a few centuries
in, and, over the course of a few days, he turns into J. Howard
Marshall and his withered but eternally living corpse has to be stored
away in the attic. Bummer.

Enter Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a specialist in aging (is
that a thing?), who piques Miriam’s interest. Her LESBIAN-
VAMPIRE
INTEREST! There is a brief courtship (“You just met her and she gave
you a present?” “Well, she’s that kind of a woman. She’s… European”)
and a less-brief consummation. And they roll around all goth together
in that smoky ’80s way. And someone (1) winds up living forever. Not
Bela Lugosi, though. He’s still dead.