Screen to Scream: Boys from County Hell and With Teeth

 

Vampires! What associations does that one word conjure in the minds of horror fans? Well-dressed pale beings sipping blood from crystal goblets? Creatures with chalk white skin, sharp teeth and mouths smeared with blood? What springs forth in the readers’ imagination depends, of course, on what vampire media they have consumed. And there is a lot of vampire media to consume. Some simply glut the zeitgeist with mediocre monsters, but a few creators of vampire fiction can sculpt their bloodsucking fiends to fit any kind of story they want to tell. Two examples of this are the movie Boys from County Hell and Brian Keene’s latest novella
With Teeth.

Boys from County Hell follows Eugene Moffat (Jack Rowan) who lives in Six Mile Hill, an Irish town where there’s nothing for he and his buddies to do except drink and spook tourists with tales of Abhartach, the vampiric creature that supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to write his classic novel. He and his father Francie (Nigel O’Neill) are responsible for putting in a new bypass, one that will destroy an old friend’s farm while also releasing Abhartach from his prison under the earth. Now Euguene, his father, and a group of locals must bandtogether to defeat Abhartach and save the town, or at least survive the night. Mixing comedy and horror, Boys from County Hell milks its laughs from the colorful characters, who end up being very unlikely saviors. Its horror comes from those that are killed by Abhartach, who come back as bloodthirsty monsters unable to recognize their friends. It’s a delicate balance that this film, for the most part, achieves.

People who watched this movie and pick up With Teeth will not be getting as many laughs but will be getting some fearsome vampires and some down-on-their-luck main characters, even though Keene’s novella takes place in rural West Virginia. To earn more money, Frank and his buddies decide to start cooking meth. All they need is a secluded spot away from the prying eyes of law enforcement, which leads the men to a holler with very little sunlight and a few vampires that are excited at the prospect of human blood. The humor present in With Teeth, such as it is,  is very dark. Keene begins the novel by narrator Frank explaining that “Vampires don’t sparkle” as well as busting up any romanticized myths about vampires. These vampires are not charming or cultured; they are hissing, snarling monsters that don’t spout catchphrases and murder with grisly, gory glee. The book can be interpreted as a decline of fortunes in Appalachia and how easy it is for men looking for a big score can quickly get in over their heads, but the book never becomes didactic, the “vampires don’t sparkle” speech notwithstanding, thanks to Keene’s character development, particularly with Frank. Some of the men in this tale might be readily dismissed as fodder for the undead onslaught, but their early banter establishes that they mean more to Frank, and to the reader, than running, screaming bags of blood.