Astro Al: July 2025

Count Zarloff, Vampire

We are parked in the last row of the drive in movie theater. On the screen the final film of the night plays on. The order of my orderless mind, is beyond my power to find.

The first movie was Monster of Frankenstein. It had this really messed up monster that was partially made from the corpse of a dead extraterrestrial being. The soundtrack made my skin crawl.

The film on now is, called Count Zarloff, Vampire.

It's a real low budget cheapo movie.

I'm barely watching the stupid movie, neither is my date. Her name is Marla Kairn.

We're mostly making out. That part is fantastic.

She knows how to make my lips melt.

The flicker of the film burns a thousand dead colors into my eyes.

Capes and fangs

In the sunrise, on the beach wall, the body hangs

The rubber bats fly on fish wire

Reaching higher than you can ever aspire

Seventeen burn on the funeral pyre

Mostly, Monster of Frankenstein was a great scary gothic movie. There were a couple of boring parts. Marla and I made out during them. Her thighs were so taut and smooth.

There's a flash of lightening just before the Zarloff flick started, but no thunder or rain. The sky is dark, yet free of clouds. You can see the swell of the fat moon and the dazzle of the stars. Yet, they offer scant light.

The last row is the best place to park when the movie is bad. No one can watch you make out.

Drink the blood of the human heart

Growing ever further apart

Someday we'll never be

Tonight your lips are made for me

Dreams break down into nightmare-scapes

Fangs and capes

Blood licked off hungry lips, eager lips, no blood slips past those crimson lips on a field of snow white flesh.

No make up could be that made up

The year is nineteen seventy eight

Up late, hot date, the undead lust is hate, to never sate, too late, bled, dead, late

Scenes from coming attractions drag you to another time, sometimes less than sublime, a sublime slime. Double features full of nightmare creatures, giant spiders on high school bleachers, fiendishly faceless fiends, and a supernatural apocalypse. I throw the switch. Third eye twitch.

“I, Count Zarloff, am a vampire. My age is roughly six hundred and eight. Now it's 1978. Do my fangs and capes disturb your comfort?”

The gorgeous brunette character, Myra Kriswell pursed her lips. “No, but why do you wear two capes? Oh, yeah, and you didn't have to tell me you were a vampire, you don't do a very good job of hiding being dead.” Her voice is an echo of vibrating dreams inside your thighs

The snack bar has great fries

Pepper fries

Green pepper fries

The snack bar has great fries to rub on your sleek thighs

“If you hate your existence so much, why don't you shut it down?” Myra asked. Dawn was coming. The count has to be in his coffin at Dawn and Sunset. During the day he is muted, weakened, un-charismatically quiet, but he can function. During overcast days he feels more. At night, he is most dead, yet most alive. His power is at it's zenith.

“My body doesn't always obey my will. I can not do anything that will lead to my demise. I am cursed to be this way, until someone finds a way to destroy me,” Zarloff said with a melancholic sigh.

A blood stained, hallucinatory, poetic, vampire story.

Your eyes will melt when you witness his blasphemous glory.

The villain of every story,

is the villain of your story.

“You never answered my question. Why do you wear two capes?” Myra asked. She wore a red velvet dress.

“I am cursed to wear them. They protect me from danger,” the count answered. It was the truth. If he somehow managed to be caught outside in Sunrise, or Sunset, one cape would cover his entire body. The other cape could attack his enemies. Ensnare them, suffocate them, strangle them, kill them.

Marla can turn water into light

The images live at night

Auto translate,

the vampire's evil estate

“Are you the one who can destroy me? Can you be my ending?” The voice of the vampire whispers of dried blood and the ending of all sound.

“Drink my blood. What you seek is in my veins,” Myra answers so seductively.

Zarloff leans forward. Sinks his fangs into her neck. Blood spills. Deeper red, almost blinding the undead, blood deepest red, flowing red.

Holy water is in her veins. The vampire smiles as his skin flakes to ash.

That's not the movie I saw.

Fangs and capes

Psychotic escapes

Wasted mindscapes

Stuttering film stock cinema escapes

This movie looks cheap even for 16 millimeter film

Marla Kairn bought and ran that drive in for many fruitful years

Cast aside fear, embrace what you fear, kiss away fear, love away fear

She sold it to a family that runs the theater to this very day

What I saw that night turned me into a priest of an Undead God

Psychedelic light pulsating as you sway

It's rays brilliant and eternally broad

I saw into a vampires eyes. I saw a million lives full of lies.

I prayed to the depths of darkness and it prayed back unto me.

Sci-mancers are science based magicians who reprogram matter with a certain gesture and string of mystic high-tech gumbo. Sky-mancers are endless romancers.

Your face bleeds four hundred and seventeen cracks into the eroding quality of the movie. Myra may or may not have died. It's presented as impressionism, ambiguous color palette of images. You must decide to live.

At the climax, the vampire is nothing more than a fang grinning skull. Even his clothes are nothing but sterile dust.

“Thank you for my death.”

Every movie I saw in the seventies never looked as good as the movie poster

Except this one,

somehow this one was even better than the poster

We're in the basement in my parent's house. It's not quite the mid-1980s.

The old movie, Count Zarloff, Vampire is in the VCR.

There's four of us. We're all making out while the movie plays.

The only light, is the TV, and a frightened tea light candle.

There's a flash of red light from the inside of the car in front of us.

Blood sprays out the open windows.

Then it never happened.

Until it happened again.

Until the blood ran again.

Until once more it happened.

A flash of dark red light from the inside of the car parked in front of us.

Something unearthly happened in that basement. Not sure what transpired, exact memory expired. Two of the people there that night wouldn't talk about what happened, other than to say, they saw something terrifying, vilifying, defiling, unholy sanctifying, not soul satisfying, or spiritually satisfying,

it was horrifying.

It wants to enter through your eyes, spread a million germ soaked lies,

up and down, your gorgeous thighs.

An altar so profane, that it turns it's followers insane

Mind drain soul drain become profane

“You write about drive ins, and old forgotten strange films, far too often.

You've covered that ground more than a grave,” with a voice more distant than another galaxy, that's what Zarloff said.

Myra's friend Sally, said, “Your kind is never truly dead.”

More than a vampire's grave. Blood slave. Mystikal stave.

End this before you drain your own creative life blood.

It's best to drive away your nightmares.

There's been drive-in poetry before