The following is a transcription of a telephone conversation with my father concerning Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a movie by the man who directed WANTED.

Me: So I went and saw Abraham Lincoln: Vamprie Hunter.
Dad: The movie?
Me: The movie.
Dad: Well, I just spent a coast to coast flight reading the book on my iPad. It was rather interesting. I didn't know he had killed so many vampires.
Me: He did kill a lot of vampires. I didn't know that either.
Dad: The history books must have ommitted that little bit.
Me: The movie dwelled on that idea for a while. It also dwelled on his axe-gun.
Dad: Now, how did his axe-gun work? Did it shoot axes?
Me: No, it was more an axe that has a gun inside it.
Dad: Where was the trigger? How did it work?
Me: The axe-head sorta collapses out to reveal the trigger and it fires a sort of one-shot out the bottom of the handle. He only really uses it once after the horse stampede. A vampire throws a horse at him, and then he catches and rides on the horse.
Dad: That wasn't in the book.
Me: They must have taken some artistic liberties for the movie reinterpretation. Of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Dad: They must have. So was it good?
Me: Oh, it was a riot. There was the perfect mix of heat-fatigue and beer in the audience to make people kinda punch-drunk to begin with. When a vampire threw Abraham Lincoln through a barn in the first fifteen minutes, people were laughing their heads off, and we all knew what kind of movie that was going to be.
Dad: The book had the Union fighting Confederate vampires at Bull Run. That was cool.
Me: Yeah, they only fought Confederate vampires at Gettysburg in the movie. That was after the train-fight sequence. Lincoln punched the king vampire in the spine after wrapping his fist with his silver pocketwatch chain.
Dad: Ohhh. Bet that dude got dead.
Me: That dude got dead. And then Mary Todd shot the evil vampire girl in the head with her dead son's silver toy sword. Mary. Todd. Lincoln.
Dad: I did know that Lincoln's kid died. That is true.
Me: Right, because of a vampire attack. 
Dad: I don't think it was because of a vampire attack.

Me: I think it was because of a vampire attack. Look, any movie that has a guy grabbing a horse by its hoof and throwing it at Abraham Lincoln is pretty okay with me. It's kinda like 300: America Version -- a stupid retelling of history. But it was stupid on purpose.
Dad: Right. So that makes it okay. Was 300 the one about the Spartans where they build the giant wall of dead guys?
Me: Yeah.
Dad: Okay. The movie does sound pretty great.
Me: Oh, it was.

-- Alex Crumb (originally published 6/27/12)
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