Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius catches up with the best friend a horror comic ever had, 30 Days of Night author Steve Niles.
Raised on a diet of King, Carpenter, Barker and Romero, prolific author Steve Niles, 42, has worked harder than most to make comicbooks scary. "I'd love to say I had a master plan to revive horror comics," says the creator of Aleister Arcane and Criminal Macabre, "but when someone finally gave me the chance to write my own comics, I just acted out of an honest need to tell frightening stories, and to tell them differently than people had in the past. I'm just lucky to be getting paid to do what I'd be doing as a hobby anyway."
Today Niles is chatting mostly about his and artist Ben Templesmith's most famous creation, vampire masterpiece 30 Days of Night, and its terrifying big screen adaptation, co-written by Niles and directed by Hard Candy's David Slade. Reminiscent of horror classics Night of the Living Dead and The Thing, yet fiercely original and entirely modern, 30 Days of Night tells the story of a band of bloodsuckers who descend upon a remote Alaskan town after it's plunged into darkness for an entire month.
"When I first came up with the idea for the comic book," says Niles, "I was determined to create scary vampires. When I thought about vampire movies, I couldn't think of a single one that scared me. I'm not saying non-scary vampire movies are bad. I'm a fan of the Blade movies. I'm just saying I wanted to make something really terrifying. Basically, there was no way I was going to have Bela Lugosi running through the town. From the very beginning, Ben and I were very much aware that we had to come up with a new idea. We had to get rid of the romanticism. Up until then vampire stories did the whole seduction thing. They had a kind of romance to them, but I wanted all that to go out of the window. Some of that started with the comic, but David Slade maintained that thread and ran with it.
"Having worked on other vampire movies, not just the Blade films, when it came time to plan how the vampires attack, the stuntmen went immediately into martial arts, but David and I had the same reaction: since when do all vampires know martial arts? They're strong, they're fast, they're savage. they don't need to move like Jackie Chan. Nor do they need to wine and dine you. They just lunge at you and tear your throat out. That's what we wanted. Once we'd established that, I remember seeing some test footage of the stuntmen rehearsing their attacks. It was the first footage I saw shot by David, and right then I knew he was the right man for the job."
Collaborating on the screenplay with two other writers, Niles says he was more than happy to share the workload. "I wrote three drafts," he remembers, "Stu Beattie wrote some drafts, and so did Brian Nelson. It kind of backfired for the studio because I think the whole idea of hiring a second and third writer is to get rid of the first one, but me, Stu and Brian became immediate friends, and were in communication the whole time, working together to make the movie work. I love collaboration. Especially with movies, it's all about working together. You're only a part of any creative process, and the story is only one layer. Ultimately it's all about the end product, and with 30 Days of Night, I honestly couldn't be happier."
Nor could the fans with this faithful adaptation. "I didn't think there was any way a film could capture Ben's beautiful, crazy artwork," admits Niles, "but David figured out a way to do it. He was a fan of the comic and really wanted to keep it intact. I think for the most part he put the comic in the movie. The colours are over-saturated. The blacks are so black and the blood is so red, and when the attacks come, blood seems to just explode out of people. And that's Slade very much doing Templesmith on screen. He did a great job. If I'd had nothing to do with it, this is exactly the kind of movie that I would love."
In his love for the movie he is certainly not alone. "I'm thrilled at the reaction it's getting," says Niles, smiling broadly. "Right now the vast majority of the stuff I'm reading is from fans. This week in particular is the week I've been waiting for my whole life. I'm getting letters from like, 13 and 14-year-old kids asking me what books I read to get me started. I get to tell them to go read I Am Legend. That's my favourite book, much better than any of the movie adaptations, but if they help to introduce new generations to Richard Matheson's book, then I'm happy. When I was a kid I read lots of comicbooks but my parents had terrible trouble getting me to read prose. It was I am Legend that got me, and I became a voracious reader after that. I even produced my own comicbook adaptation of I Am Legend, I love it so much."
Currently hard at work on a number of big screen, straight-to-video and comicbook projects, fanboy Niles can't help enthusing about a series he's working on with legendary illustrator Bernie Wrightson, "a nod to noir and Fifties horror" called Dead, She Said. "Bernie's inking again, which he hasn't done for more than 15 years," says Niles with genuine excitement. "People are really going to be into this new series."
As for 30 Days of Night, for once here's a movie that lives up to its hype. Available now to add to your list, it could well be the scariest vampire movie ever made. So see it soon, and see it often. We're sure you're going to love it just as much as Niles does.