Vampire

"The Embrace: A True Vampire Story," by Aphrodite Jones. Pocket Books. 384 pages. $23.Aphrodite Jones is a vulture of crime. Every year or so she swoops down in the aftermath of some bizarre murder, picks over the grisly details and a few months later regurgitates a book. She's on daytime talk shows; Hollywood's got her phone number.Her latest bit of journalistic voyeurism, "The Embrace," examines the sensational murder of a Florida couple in 1996. Sensational because the accused were five teen-agers who dabbled in ritual blood-sucking and occult practices.

The Ballet Theater of Annapolis staged its version of "Dracula" so soon after the Pasadena Playhouse's dramatization opened that I feared I would be Dracula-ed out. Happily, I wasn't.Artistic director Edward Stewart's dance adaptation proved interesting and exciting.Created last season for the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker's Victorian novel, the ballet has much to recommend it -- spectacular dancing, haunting music, fine costuming, expert staging and great lighting.Dmitry Tuboltsev, the former Bolshoi Ballet dancer who has become the theater's principal male dancer, has the stage presence, acting ability and dancing skill to realize all aspects of the bifurcated vampire, who is both living and dead, forbidding and attracting.

Scattered among Jennifer Toth's belongings are an exercise bike, a Brad Pitt movie poster, dried roses reminiscent of proms past and seven shelves of epic fantasy books.Six days a week, Toth is herself -- a 22-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed computer trainer living in Cockeysville. But come Sundays, she becomes "Rohan," a warlock vampire roaming the streets of "Chicago" in search of knowledge.Toth and six other faux bloodsuckers meet at her apartment every week for vampire sessions that run five to six hours.

The century-old Dracula legend has all but achieved theatrical immortality, reincarnated in various guises, from the 1931 horror movie with Bella Lugosi to the recent Gothic romance with Gary Oldman.Now comes the Pasadena Theatre Company and its production of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in the Humanities Recital Hall at Anne Arundel Community College on weekends this month.The story remains romantic, but what decades ago was sexual innuendo has become more explicit. The vampire sets about seducing the sanitarium owner's daughter, and she seduces her suitor to learn his secrets.

Blood doesn't just run fast and furiously in "Blade." It drips, sprays and oozes. It flows in rivulets, trickles in thin streams, smears like sweet jam across delirious faces. It bursts in great globs from horribly deformed villains. In Stephen Norrington's overlong but extremely stylish adaptation of the cult comic book, blood is nothing less than sex, drugs and death themselves.In "Blade," which should wind up as a finalist in the "Crow" looka-like contest, blood is a fashion statement, the recreational substance of choice for the ultimate in-crowd of night people.

The first thing you need for a story ballet is a compelling reason to tell the story in dance.This is not the only element missing from Ballet Theater of Annapolis' "Dracula," but it's the most important one.For much of the new ballet, created in observance of the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker's Victorian thriller, choreographer Edward Stewart hasn't made enough dance steps to fill up the music. Nor has he paid very much attention to the novel, as you can tell from such gaffes as Dracula's death.

Can you give me some information about the "vampire tours" in New Orleans?They're called the Anne Rice Tours for the author of vampire books, who lives in New Orleans. The tours have been running since August 1996 and this year added Rice's homes as part of some tours. Locales include Lafayette Cemetery, Garden District homes and several places in the French Quarter.Organizers and most tour guides are Rice relatives. Tours operate on foot or on buses, range from two to five hours and in price from $20 up. One is a progressive dinner tour to three different famous restaurants.

A Florida newspaper report linking a man known as the "vampire rapist" to a string of 32 unsolved murders nationwide -- including nine in Maryland -- met with skepticism yesterday from police, who say they have no evidence to support the claim.But the disturbing habits of John B. Crutchley make it risky to ignore the allegations completely, say those who have followed his case over the years."Anybody who would do the kind of things this guy has done in his life is capable of pretty much anything," said James Wilt, a private detective in northern Virginia who tracked Crutchley for more than six years in an effort to link him to the 1978 murder of a Fairfax County woman that is still unsolved.

Our thirst for blood is on display in a pair of vampire films tonight -- and one of them is aimed at draining a donation from your checkbook.A Baltimore-based medical controversy also gets an airing on ABC's "Day One".* "Star Trek: Voyager" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) -- In a repeat of a strong episode that raises eternal moral questions, Neelix (Ethan Phillips) wrestles with the urge for revenge when confronted by a scientist who helped annihilate much of his Talaxian race. UPN.* "Mad About You" (8 p.m.-8:30 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11)

Neil Jordan won a Best Screenplay Oscar two years ago for "The Crying Game." He will not win his second for "Interview With the Vampire." Best Director, perhaps. But Jordan's name, which along with Anne Rice's was on an early print of the film under "screenplay by," is not on the print at theaters all over the world. "It's a thing with the Writers Guild," is all Jordan will say.However, Neil Jordan's signature is on every frame of "Interview With the Vampire." He underlines it in a scene where a journalist (Christian Slater)

The Informant! *** With any luck, before he reaches 40, Matt Damon will be recognized, as Edward Norton once put it, as "just a stone-cold good actor.... incredibly agile." He pulls off a brave comic change of pace in this Steven Soderbergh picture about a quirky whistle-blower. He anchors the movie with his unpredictable physical portrait of a man at odds with himself and makes it swing with his voice-over narration, full of quirky non sequiturs and Freudian slips. It's a brave performance, and a hoot.

You want your first crush to last" could have been the theme song for Twilight, the movie version of Stephenie Meyer's mammoth best-seller about a high school junior, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who moves from her mother's place in arid Phoenix to her dad's place in the dank, small town of Forks, Wash., where she is smitten with her biology desk-mate, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). He's part of a clan of gorgeous, super-pallid high-schoolers adopted by the town's respected, super-pallid physician, Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli)

The U.S. is about to become one big Twilight zone. That is, if it isn't already. With more than 8.5 million copies sold in this country - and 17 million worldwide - Stephenie Meyer's four-volume tale of vampire love among the high-school set is already a bona fide cultural force, especially among the young girls who hang on its every word. But tonight, with the midnight premiere in select theaters of Twilight, based on the first book of the series, the mania may really go big time. "It's just a big mixture of all this drama and romance," said 12-year-old Leia Cunningham, a student at Hereford Middle School who was one of about 50 teen and preteen girls attending a movie prerelease party Saturday at Borders Books in Timonium.

If you walked into the Swedish horror movie Let the Right One In midway through, you might see the 12-year-old boy hero chastely embrace a girl his own age and think, "How sweet." When she asks him if he'd love her if she weren't a girl, you might think, "How interesting," then under your breath start muttering, "Ah, youth. Ah, Sweden. Ah, nuts." But she isn't a girl; she's a vampire. And this boy is not just experiencing a surging crush but a life-defining bond. Most contemporary horror films derive shocks from mere torture.

If a shrill, high-decibel squeal suddenly disrupts the Sunday peace and quiet from sea to shining sea, blame Stephenie Meyer. Probably every teenage girl you know (and more than a few of their mothers) started reading Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final volume in Meyer's vampire saga, when it was released at midnight Saturday. So these 3.2 million fanatical readers are about to discover whether the heroine, Bella, ends up with the unearthly beautiful vampire, Edward, or with the devoted werewolf, Jacob.

IT'S GOOD to be underestimated!" That's what George Hamilton says, as we sit in the dimly lit bar of Manhattan's plush Plaza Athenee hotel. He has arrived; impeccable, calm, but amused by something that he said delayed him slightly. "It's time to get married or get a butler," he laughs, "being alone is not as much fun as one might imagine." (For the record, George has been married, to Alana Stewart, and they have a son, Ashley. The rest of the time has been spent romancing great beauties who never speak badly of him once the affair is over.

When Wesley Snipes declined the television reprise of the half-vampire superhero he played in three respectable B-movies, fan message boards predicted Blade: The Series would be the worst sci-fi show in action-adventure history. Which would, of course, be impossible, considering that history includes such cable and syndicated monsterpieces as Earth: Final Conflict, TekWar, Andromeda and Total Recall 2070. Lost in the uproar over the loss of Snipes was the good news: David S. Goyer, who wrote all three Blade theatricals, and directed the last one, signed on to shepherd the franchise's transition to Spike, where it will be the man-boy netlet's first scripted drama.

Part vampire, a hero fights creatures of the night with the help of an inventor (Kris Kristofferson, above) in Blade (9 p.m.-11:10 p.m., Starz).

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Anne Rice Alfred A. Knopf / 366 pages Three decades ago, Anne Rice published her classic debut novel, Interview with a Vampire, and with that a character nearly as iconic as Dracula was born. Rice's vampire, Lestat, was an angst-ridden, existentialist hero-villain, a vampire far more evolved than the average Hammer Film bloodsucker. Lestat had the suavity of many a vampire, but he also possessed soul and, to a degree, conscience; with Lestat, Rice had created a vampire for our time.

Nicolas Cage likes to keep his fans guessing. Take Lord of War, the recently opened action film in which he plays the proudly amoral Yuri Orlov, a second-generation Ukrainian emigre who's decided the surest way to achieve the American dream of wealth and happiness is to sell guns to anyone, be he street thug or insane African dictator. Cage plays Orlov like an old-time snake-oil salesman, all smiles and good manners and warm pats on the back, totally dismissive of his customers' plans for his merchandise.