MOVIES: Zombies vs. Vampires

In his review of Land of the Dead, Sean T. Collins writes,

Somebody (I feel like it was Ken Lowery, but damned if I can remember when) semi-recently argued that zombies should, by now, have as definite and defined a set of conventions (undead resurrected cannibals, contagion-laden bites, kill the brain and you kill the ghoul, etc.) as do vampires (wooden stakes, sunlight, no reflection, etc.).

That got some gears turning in the ol' noggin. It's true that there's plenty of variety in zombie movies. Sometimes zombies are slow, sometimes they're fast. Sometimes zombies are created by chemicals, sometimes by monkey virus, sometimes by voodoo (that's right, I'm counting Weekend at Bernie's 2 as a zombie movie), sometimes by a mysterious comet. Sometimes new zombies are created by zombie bites, sometimes it only takes a single drop of blood. Sometimes the transformation into a zombie is slow, and occurs only after death, sometimes the change is near-instantaneous (that's the third use of 28 Days Later as an example; it tries so hard to be a zombie movie that's not a zombie movie!). Sometimes zombies are completely mindless, sometimes they demonstrate intelligence. Sometimes they can only moan, sometimes they can speak. Sometimes they'll eat any part of a human, sometimes they specifically want brains.

But! This implies that vampires are presented in a uniform fashion, which is hardly the case. Some vampires fear religious symbols. Some don't. For some, religious symbols only work when the wielder has faith. Some vampires can turn into bats, some into wolves, some into mist, and some can look like any person they want to. Some vampires are burned by the sun, some are not. Some fear garlic, others don't. Some vampires are killed with a stake to the heart, some must be decapitated, some are killed by silver (which is just plain stupid -- are they so lazy they can't even keep werewolf and vampire mythology separated?). Some vampires must sleep in a coffin, some in the earth, some sleep upside-down like bats, some sleep wherever the hell they feel like. Some vampires turn humans into new vampires with a bite, some take a specific number of bites, some have to feed their own blood to the human. Sometimes vampires will become human again if the head vampire is killed. Some vampires rapidly age when killed, some burst into dust, some explode, some just plain die. Some vampires have hypnotic powers, some don't. Some have reflections, some don't. Some have irresistible sex appeal, some are unbearably hideous. And don't forget the space vampires!

I'm worn out looking for links; you can probably supply your own for those I skipped. And I'm sure you can think of several other variations that didn't occur to me. My point is, vampires are hardly presented in a uniform fashion. They change to some degree in almost every film, according to the whims of the filmmakers. Sometimes they're not even consistent within the same "universe" (such as the Blade series, which had different kinds of vampires in each installment, or the Buffy movie and TV versions, or even only within the Buffy TV show -- remember the Dracula episode?). Zombies are as similar as peas in a pod compared to vampires!