The Undead Overkill

This is a vampire! He is surrounded with darkness, a sense of ruling and power and bats at his call. He is clearly evil, nothing more, nothing less. He looks cool and creates a small amount of envy for one's self to look and be cooler. This man is a vampire!

This is Anowon the Ruin Sage, a powerful card from Magic; The Gathering. He is a Vamperic Shamon and a Ledgendary Creature to boot. He can destroy your enemies per turn and has a pretty good attack power. He is a vampire!

This is a Krovikan Vampire from Magic: The Gathering. He has the traditional power of a vampire in a game, in that any enemy creature it destroys comes under the power of the vampire until either the creature or vampire is killed. Being one of the oldest vampire cards in the game series, and clearly doing what Vampires do best, he is a vampire!

This is actor Christopher Lee, he is playing a vampire in a movie. He is clearly insane, finished feasting on some poor girl's neck and has a great amount of power from it. While he probably played the role to death, he is still playing a vampire.

This is a modern vampire, AKA: Edward Cullen. He sparkles in the sunshine, is a vegetaerian (doesn't feed off humans) and is emo. He is NOT a vampire. I mean come on, look at the other pictures again and then back at him. Surely you can see he is nowhere near a vampire. Scroll down and check out Alacard and look again. NO COMPETITION!!!! The only real power he has aside form the standard heightened abilities of strength, speed, etc is the ability to read minds, which is common amoung vampires anyway.
Let's put it this way, the idea of what a vampire is changes a little over time, depending on the rules of the author/director etc. But here are some general points to consider on what kills a vampire.

* Garlic: Vampires develop an extreme alergic reaction to garlic, causing either a severe nerve reaction or fatal reaction. (See: Blade)
* Silver: Same as garlic, but more effective. (See: Blade, Hellsing)
* Holy Items/People/Churches: Because a vampire is the living dead, it cannot enter/touch/feed form a holy source, as the goodness repels it instantly. While it is often displayed as a Christian symbol, it has been ruled in that Pagan things also do the same thing. (See: Buffy, Hellsing)
* Stake to the Heart: Wood, one of the natural elements of the earth, is effective when stabbed into a vampires heart. The pure element destroys the evilness in the heart and the being. (See: Buffy)
* Beheading: No one can live without a head. Only truly powerful vampires can regenerate this. (See: Blade, Buffy, Hellsing)
* Sunlight: It is symbolic that the sun, the symbol of living humanity, destroies vampires because they are no longer apart of the human world. Or you can go back to the same debate re: garlic and silver. (Buffy, Blade).
*Running Water: While a more outdated idea, running water (another natural element) stops evil from crossing because of its natural energies. However, this rule was laid down more for demons than vampires.
*Sword to the Heart: While the effect is debateable on effect, the general rule was that a swords metal, not as pure as wood, could paralyse a vampire until they were either beheaded or the sword was removed, bringing them back to life. (See: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)

My problem is that now that Twilight is boardering on finishing its run at the movies and in text, I was kinda hoping to get a bit of a break from all of this shit! No such luck! Vampire movies up the friggin wazoo! It is beyond an epidemic, it is a conspiracy. What I really want to know is that between "Vampire's Suck", "Female Lesbian Vampire Killers" (which is a grammatical error) and other vampire movies right on their trial, how many are going to stick to the rules? Because from what I can tell, they are starting to slice away at them with a giant Masamone. Twilight completely disreguarded any rules except for the blood and the continuous struggle between vampires and lycanthropes, and just how many more rules are gonna get short down before the definition of vampire is "Glittering person with a medical condition requiring them to drink blood; be it human or animal" or "Medical condition for someone who is intolerent to sunlight but is extremely sexual and has weird fetish for blood-sucking"? Clue people?
I debate with anyone who enjoys Twilight for the actors, because they can't act, look bad and usually come across as either stoned or spaced (or both). These people are reffered to a Twihards. If someone can present to me three good reasons why I should read this book and like it, I am all ears. I did read 'Twilight' and I will admit it wasn't too bad, except that a lot of crap could have been removed and the characters more developed. But since Bella is a sue and Edward is a fruitcake, I won't read any more.
I want more home truths on vampires again. Buffy and Blade, although in two different worlds with differing rules, still stuck pretty closely to the genre of what a vampire is, gore displays being the only exception. Blade's vampire's couldn't stand garlic or silver, Buffy's couldn't stand a stake through the heart or holy items, and both sets weren't to good with sunlight or decapitation either. Hellsing (image below) wasn't too bad, but did make characters either too strong or immune to sunlight with no explanation, and there weren't enough episodes.
At the end of the day, I want to see some proper vampires on screen again. If I have to put up with this crap for a long while after the last Twilight film, I think I will kill a number of fans with the many means aforementioned and use their blood to write "This is how you kill a vampire". But that is just me. Chat soon,
Pez