I have a copy of the movie version of Buffy the Vamprie Slayer. (I mean, of course I do. And even though it’s not considered canon by a lot of Whedonites, I still love it like the concrete business loves mobsters. However, in order to be fair to the ravenous hard-core Whedonites out there — which I imagine to be a little bit like Reavers, with their houses decorated in Fox executive guts and skins — the canon version of Joss Whedon’s original script can be seen in Buffy Omnibus #1, the graphic novel released by Dark Horse. I’ve read it and like it too, but PeeWee Herman’s death scene just makes the entire movie for me.*)

The copy I have looks like this:

Cute, funny, and not unlike Ms. Summers herself. The whole reason behind the non-canonical movie adaptation is that Mr. Whedon wrote a darker, edgier script that just so happened to have a cheerleading blonde named Buffy slay vampires. That was the source of the hilarity — the jarring juxtaposition of a somewhat ditzy girl having the fate of the world in her hands. According to story, the executives — the ones that are still alive and not part of the decor — decided that it needed to be lighter and they changed the mood and composition of it entirely. The series is much closer to Mr. Whedon’s original vision and he wrote it as a continuation of his original script, not what went to the big-screen.

The other day, however, whilst shopping, I ran across this:

Now, this is dark, edgy, and closer to feel of the series than the original movie…but it’s the same damn movie, just with different packaging. They did this with Near Dark as well, as the version I own has a disfigured and burnt Bill Paxton smiling like a crazypath and the new cover looks like, well….

Fracking Twilight.

So, is the lesson here that people judge based on the covers of books movies, even though we’ve all been expressly told by after-school specials that it’s wrong? Is it that the people marketing these things think we’re all popularity-following drooling fools? I mean, they try to make a fluffy Buffy look gritty when it’s just popcorn fuzz, and a violent and grotesque vampire western into a cuddly romance. Is the lesson here that nothing is sacred?

I’ll go with the last one, because not only have they announced that they want to remake Buffy the movie — that’s right, the movie, without any of the characters we love like Angel, Willow, Xander, Spike, etc. — but David Tennant, the coolest Doctor, has been cast as Peter Vincent in the Fright Night remake.

Let sleeping vampires lie, dudes. And don’t redecorate their coffins while the sun’s still up.

*Rutger Hauer also makes me an extremely happy bunny because his last name is one letter off from mine. I think this makes me more like Buffy than the average citizen, because she too, has a thing for rhyming boyfriends. Pike / Spike anyone?