Masters of Horror creator and writer Mick Garris said that The V Word wouldn't be a romantic depiction of vampires, and that's definitely true. However, these vampires are not the breed found in cynical, doom-and-gloom existential metaphors like The Addiction or Habit, which is what I was anticipating. Instead, Garris himself wrote a pretty straightforward "teens explore crypts, get bit, get undead, get hungry, get gone" type of story. Michael Ironside, the ugly, angry vampire, was about as entertaining as Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick; too bad we didn't see more of him. I don't know why he carried a parasol in the graveyard, but what I don't know probably won't hurt me.Even though The V Word wasn't misted, shadowed and full of velvet and candelabras, Garris paid his respect to the romantic vampire by writing in some noticeable nods:— Ironside's character, "Mr. Chaney" (pretty obvious), is a nod to Lon Chaney, who was first considered for the role of Dracula (1931)...
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