The Kasturi/Files: Episode 22: Vampire Girls Go Round the Outside

It’s Day 22 of The Kasturi/Files at Speculative Chic! We’re in the home stretch! Gemma Files and Sandra Kasturi continue yakking about horror movies every day the entire month of October. We wanted to spend some time looking at some horror movies outside North American white culture. Today we start off with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. (Some spoilers!)

Sandra: Dubbed a “Persian language American vampire western” and the “first Iranian vampire western,” A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014, directed Ana Lily Amirpour) was unusual in that (a) it came out of Iran, not renowned for exporting a ton of horror movies, and (b) it was out of Iran and directed by a woman. What amuses me is that the tags the film was saddled with (no pun intended) suggest that there will be more Iranian vampire westerns to come. Don’t get me wrong — that sounds great, but also kind of funny. Like we’re at the dawn of a whole new very specific sub-genre.

Gemma: I think Amirpour might be thinking about it in terms of how alone her protagonists seem to be, as if they exist on the frontier of a whole new world (or an extraordinarily old, denuded one, the last living representatives of some Mad Max-like post-apocalypse that just still happens to have wax records and a single operating TV channel). Not to mention that the Middle Eastern suburb the film’s action takes place in is literally simply known as “Bad City,” which reminds me of that Clint Eastwood movie High Plains Drifter, in which he’s only known as the Stranger and is quite probably the ghost of a ridiculously corrupt mining town’s murdered sheriff, a burg so awful he eventually paints it red and re-names it Hell. Bad City definitely lives up to its name, chock full as it is of careless rich girls, drug addicts, pimps, hookers, beggars and what must be an amazing amount of murderers, unless we’re supposed to believe the titular Girl is responsible for every dead body in that gulley just outside of town. Not to mention that while we find out characters’ names here and there, do they really matter? The Girl simply stays The Girl; she very well might be so old she can’t even remember what she used to be called, back when she could venture outdoors during daylight without turning to ash, or at least falling asleep.

Sandra: Ah yes! She’s the Eastwood Stranger writ small: a diminutive, nameless person — nevertheless with unexpected power. I actually kind of like that you never know her backstory. The movie begins with a young Iranian man, Arash (Arash Marandi, looking like some brooding, latter-day, Persian James Dean), who’s having a hard time of it — his father, Hossein, is a heroin junkie, and he’s barely keeping them both alive working as a gardener and doing odd jobs for a spoiled rich young woman, Shaydah. Drug dealer Saeed takes Arash’s beloved convertible in payment for his father’s drug debts. (In a tense scene at their house Saeed picks up Arash’s cat, and I swear I was just waiting for something horrible to happen, but luckily kitty survived.) Saeed’s a total tool, but don’t worry, he’ll get his. In addition to loansharking and drug dealing, Saeed also indulges in a little light pimping, and gives Atti (the wonderful Mozhan Marnò, perhaps best known to western audiences from The Blacklist) a hard time. On his way home, Saeed crosses paths with a beautiful and mysterious young woman (the Girl), who looks at him all doe-eyed and dewy; Saeed of course is convinced of his own irresistibility and takes her home with him. She sucks suggestively on his finger . . . before biting it off and then ripping open his throat and draining him of blood. I love the way the Girl’s chador moves and flaps when she pounces — it’s reminiscent of the classic cloak in every Universal Dracula movie.

Gemma: Saeed’s also one of those dudes with tattoos everywhere on his body and face, making him look as if he’s scribbled all over himself haphazardly with a permanent Sharpie. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole myself, but I have to assume he tastes better than he looks.

Sandra: Yeah, I wouldn’t touch him either. He has “SEX” (poorly!) tattooed on his neck for god’s sake. Ugh. Arash, having stolen some expensive earrings from Shaydah, arrives at Saeed’s door to swap them for his car and sees the Girl leaving; he finds Saeed dead, so takes the opportunity to steal his money, his drugs, and get his car back — he sets himself up as the local dealer in Saeed’s place, hoping to make enough money to blow town permanently, while also cornering the market in such a way that he’ll force his Dad to detox. Later, at a night club where there’s some sort of permanent costume party going on, Arash turns up dressed as Dracula, runs into Shaydah, takes some X, and ends up wandering the streets confused. Inevitably, he runs into the Girl, who stares at him for a few minutes — could he possibly be another vampire?!? — before realizing he’s just another dumb human in creature-of-the-night drag. After he speaks to her kindly and implies that he’ll “protect” her from this savage neighborhood they’re both stranded in, she takes pity on his high-as-fuck ass, and rolls him home on her skateboard. Yep, you read that right. The Girl resists biting him, and a weird little romance begins.

Gemma: The sequence where the Girl puts on what appears to be her current favorite song, “Death” by White Lies, and simply begins to trance out to it is a really interesting one — experimental in nature, reminding me very much of what Jim Jarmusch does in Only Lovers Left Alive, in which music is used as a sort of shared telepathy between its vampire protagonists, the only way for an ancient, static creature to communicate with its prey, something locked into a brief, fragile, dying version of eternal life. As the lyrics mount — I love the quiet of the night time/When the sun is drowning in the deathly sea/I can feel my heart beating as I speed up/The sense of time catching up with me . . . yes, this fear’s got a hold on me . . . — Arash turns to the Girl and moves up behind her, almost as if he’s taking on the “normal” predatory role of a heterosexual suitor, about to enfold her into an embrace. Instead, she turns on him and grabs him up under the hinge of his jaw, effortlessly bending him backwards, but instead of going in for the kill, she sort of snuggles into his chest. They stand there mutually hypnotized, the Girl listening to the beat of his heart (mimicking the beat of the song), and it’s weirdly beautiful, oddly moving. A moment of absolutely inhuman humanity.

Sandra: Atti and the Girl also run into each other, and the vamp gives her money and jewels taken from the late Saeed, who owed Atti payment. They kind of bond, but you can see from Atti’s face that she knows on a gut level this woman is some sort of terrible predator.

In the meantime, Hossein, in smack withdrawal, rails at Arash’s cat as if he believes the cat is the reincarnation of his dead wife. Arash, enraged, gives his father enough drugs and money to kill himself with, throwing him out of the house — and insists he takes the cat with him! Hossein then finds Atti, forcibly injecting her with the heroin so they can snuggle in her bed together in an opiated stupor. This really pisses off the Girl, who descends on them and kills Hossein. Atti helps her dispose of the body, then tells her to take the cat and leave.

Arash finds his father dead in an alley, rolls him into the gulley full of dead people, then goes to ask the Girl to run away with him. When his cat saunters in, Arash has a lightning realization that she had something to do with his dad’s death. Arash, the Girl, and the cat leave in his convertible. He pulls over at one point and wanders off for a few seconds into the night, clearly torn about what he wants to do. He gets back into the car, and they sit there. Finally, he starts up the car, and they leave as the music swells up, signifying the movie’s end.

Gemma: Amirpour takes a lot of pleasure out of subverting audience expectations. I mean, according to the movie tropes she’s riffing off, the film sure “should” end in a big confrontation, a metaphorical shoot-out that perhaps destroys both Arash and the Girl, like the climax of Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant Near Dark. But instead of violence and rejection, there’s acceptance; much like the cat he loves and only pretends to “own,” Arash recognizes that the Girl is a creature who must be true to her own nature, beyond any moral structure he might try to apply, let alone enforce, upon her. She’s so much older and so much more powerful than he is, but for the moment, their interests are aligned — why shouldn’t he simply go off with her? What will be will be. It’s possibly the most eastern moment of this particular pseudo-western, and fascinating because of it.

Sandra: Yeah, I love that last scene so much — it reminded me of nothing as much as that final moment in The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross, as they sit there on the bus, heading off into an uncertain future. Beware of getting what you desire — you won’t know what to do with it!

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a strange, lyrical, pared-down story. Shot entirely in black and white, it has a stark, minimalist feel that is offset by the cross-cultural soundtrack of semi-popular North American hits, and Persian pop music; some of the score even has that Sergio Leone western feel, that Ennio Morricone sound from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Though ostensibly there’s no gunslinger-type confrontation, the movie is about trying to remain moral in an immoral world, which is what all westerns (and noirs) are about. The flavor is certainly that of a horse opera, and I do mean opera — in its tragic deaths, narratives spiraling toward some sort of relentless conclusion. Even certain scenes, like the repetitive dream the Girl has in which she sees Arash silhouetted in a tunnel while strolling towards her, are reminiscent of recognizable shots like that of Gary Cooper walking toward a final confrontation in High Noon. But ultimately, Amirpour doesn’t quite give you that. She gives you a quiet romance about two damaged people who have managed to find each other, against many odds.

It’s a quiet movie, and I can understand how some people might not like it because it will maybe feel slow, but it operates at exactly the pace it should — and it has precisely the correct ending. I’ll be dreaming in black and white, and hearing White Lies’ “Death” in my head for days to come.

Gemma: Hey, meandering is good, sometimes. It’s a lot more like life than a straight series of cuts from one thing to another, over and over, eventually culminating in a fade to black.

Cocktails: Virgin Mary

Sandra: I kind of feel that because A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is set in the Muslim world, we should have a non-alcoholic beverage as the cocktail rec. I love Bloody Marys, and the “virgin” option is still super tasty.

• 3 ounces tomato juice
• 1/2 ounce lemon juice
• Dash Worcestershire sauce
• Celery salt
• Ground pepper (freshly ground)
• 2 dashes hot sauce (Tabasco or Cholula)
• Garnish: Celery stalk

Directions: Mix everything together in a highball glass with ice. Garnish with celery. Drink up! And you’ll get your veggies and your Vitamin C. Which is handy if a vampire is chewing on you. Keeps up your strength.

Book Recommendations

Sandra: I think what’s required here is a quiet sort of vampire novel. But I think I want to recommend Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. Because Octavia Butler is one of the greatest genre writers who ever lived. And because Fledgling is a very disturbing kind of vampire novel. That’s all I’m gonna say. I can also recommend Nancy Baker’s duology, The Night Inside and Blood & Chrysanthemums. The first takes place in Toronto in the early 90s and residents can pick out their favorite landmarks. The second is set primarily in Japan, so if you’re from there, you can do the same! Suzy McKee Charnas wrote the interesting book, The Vampire Tapestry, which has a different kind of vampirism and plays on the trope of vampires being sexually seductive: this one thinks humans are just prey and sleeping with them is just viewed as disgusting.

Gemma: In terms of stuff with a similar vibe to A Girl Walks Home, there’s a very odd little Weird Tales short story by Everil Worrell called “The Canal” that comes to mind, which subverts expectations by having a female vampire trapped on a houseboat in a canal that’s almost become stagnant, but not quite; she’s waiting for the running water all around her to finally still, allowing her to escape her current predicament, when an equally strange, insomniac young man who likes to spend his nights wandering around in the city’s wildest and least appealing areas comes by, allowing her to form a relationship with him and (eventually) lure him into carrying her across to the other side. You can look it up online, but it definitely could do with a reprint, and the guys at the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast did a really wonderful episode unpacking it. A roster of similarly strange vampire tales can be found in Dracula’s Brood (HarperCollins, edited by Richard Dalby), which collects vampire stories written from 1867 to 1940, some of which are intensely unlike the “normal” post-Dracula scenarios we’ve come to expect — there are vampire trees, vampire portraits, vampire sculptures, vampire fingers, vampire anglerfish. It’s trope-breakin’ pleasure!

Sandra Kasturi is the publisher of ChiZine Publications, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and HWA Specialty Press Awards. She is the co-founder of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and a frequent guest speaker, workshop leader, and panelist at genre conventions. Sandra is also an award-winning poet and writer, with work appearing in various venues, including Amazing Stories, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She recently won the Sunburst Award for her short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,” in the anthology The Sum of Us. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Sandra is currently working on another poetry collection, Snake Handling for Beginners, a story collection, Mrs. Kong & Other Monsters, and a novel, Wrongness: A False Memoir. She is fond of red lipstick, gin & tonics, and Idris Elba.

Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). Most are available from ChiZine Publications. She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidence and Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).