On Twilight Cocktails

Seems like cashing in on the Twilight craze with a "vampire inspired" drink is a popular thing to do this week. A microtrend? Sorrento has something called the "Bella Edward," which uses a balsamic vinegar reduction to color a vodka martini bloody. Canlis is now serving something called "The Temptation of Edward Cullen," which was created by Canlis' head barman to "create a biting crisp taste, just hinting of a forest, and visually feeling like a vampire," to echo the feeling of being a vampire in Forks, Washington. The drink contains gin, Zirbenz pine liqueur, absinthe, Champagne, and wine, served over crushed ice, garnished with "lemon fangs."

Now, excuse us, but neither of those sounds like a vampire drink. They sound like drinks that a nine-year-old girl would order had the National Minimum Drinking Age Act gone very, very wrong. But that's to be expected--the drinks are built on a poor foundation. We don't blame either restaurant! These cocktails are accurate to the spirit of Twilight. Far be it from us to say that the Twilight franchise of books and movies is bad--they're super-entertaining and enjoyable. We just think Twilight is wrong about two things: Forks, Washington, and vampires.

Forks is a timber town and a fishing town, and if we know anything about the residents of timber-and-fish towns, it's that they like their liquor simple and strong. Beer and cheap brown liquors are what you drink in tiny working class towns, not absinthe over crushed ice.

And, call us kneejerk-subtextual, but romantic, sexy vampires leave kind of a bad taste in our mouth. We always thought vampires were scary because they remind us that even the most outwardly civilized person can contain a bloodthirsty beast. The "vegetarian vampires" of Twilight are castrated, pallid shades of truly scary film vampires.

If you're not into the Twilight thing, may we suggest you crack open a can of the cheapest beer you can find (get a six, you'll need it) and queue up Near Dark, one of the most underrated (and most brutal) vampire films we have ever seen. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow of recent Hurt Locker fame, Near Dark is that rarest of things: a vampire western.

Adrian Pasdar (now of Heroes) stars as a ranch kid who meets a pretty li'l thing at a local saloon and finds out too late she's one of the undead. He's kidnapped by her family, nomads who traverse the American West in a Winnebago with blacked out windows and a pile of guns to accompany their fangs. This "family" isn't a clan of noble creatures who avoid killing as in Twilight, they're a less-Beatles-focused Manson family. Pasdar's understandably reticent to join them, given that becoming one of the family means slaughtering drunks and itinerants, and setting fire to farmhouses along the way. What follows is one of the most grisly major-release vampire stories we've ever seen, filled with unalloyed brutality, including a particularly stressful setpiece in which the vampire clan takes a small town roadhouse apart person by person.The film plays out like a combination of Terence Malick's Badlands and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These aren't romantic vampires like Edward Cullen. It's animalistic, senseless murder. They're killers, plain and simple. Check it out for a gory, weirdly dreamy alternative to Twilight.