The Last Days of Christ the Vampire

reviewed by L. Chernyi

The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, J.G. Eccarius (Ill Publishing, POB 8362, San Diego, CA. 92102: 1988) 180pp. $5.95 paper.

Looking for some light, entertaining, yet garishly critical reading? J.G. Eccarius' new book, The Last Days of Christ the Vampire may be just the thing to read during the coming holiday season—while the rest of Judea-Christian civilization mindlessly celebrates the (re)birth of 2,000 years of a still-undead nightmare.

Typically, works of the horror genre invite themselves to be taken as overtly metaphorical expressions of the ghastly social reality we experience every day of our lives. The simultaneously repulsive fascination involved in reading works of this genre (or in viewing the films) allows us to vicariously experience in fantasy the same type of realizations we are forced to repress the rest of the time. Certainly this must be one reason for the perennial popularity of vampire stories.

But whereas typical vampire fare keeps the metaphor subdued, Eccarius' The Last Days takes the vampire theme for a ride on a new roller coaster. The book is an unlikely mix of scraps from punk and anarchist subcultures with a literally Christian reinterpretation of the vampire myth. The result is a whacky (but all too logical, when you think about it) romp through Christian civilization in search for the real Christ behind the curtains, the vampire. And he's not such a long way from Lynchburg as you might think.

Though the novel is unevenly written, showing a few hasty mis-steps from a new writer, it succeeds where it counts; it's fun, entertaining and in a few places hilarious. As Hakim Bey says (quoted on the cover), the book contains "Course invective, crude but effective, like a sock filled with buckshot."

SOURCE: Chernyi, L. Review of J. G. Eccarius, The Last Days of Christ the Vampire; North American Anarchist Review, Number 1, Winter 1989-90, p. 2.

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