30 Days of Night

It took me two days and fourteen starts and stops but I finally managed to get through a scary movie without watching it at any time while the youngster was awake. 30 Days of Night is an excellent vampire movie. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed every blood-soaked moment of it. The premise, the northernmost town of the U.S. virtually shuts down for 30 days of night. Of course, the more rugged folks - and by rugged I mean Josh Harnett (yum) and this one gorgeous blond chick, who happens to miss her plane out before the sun sets as the thirty sunless days begin - are left behind. Enter vampires from, well, wherever vampires come from. These guys are weird looking and fierce and have a scream that is far worse than nails on a chalkboard. If you like scary movies, order this one on a dark night, sit back with your bowl of buttered popcorn and enjoy. You're in for a treat. And, since the little one is currently asleep and I've got spare time, here's another rousing rendition of...

30 Days of Night Lessons Learned

1. Don't live in the northernmost town of anywhere. Seems these places attract vampires and that won't turn into a good thing no matter how much you might like a little nibble on your neck every now and then.

2. When a tattered looking stranger jaunts into town and starts asking for a bowl of raw hamburger, you should assume he's a vampire and chop off his head right then and there to save yourself the trouble of having to listen to his creepy ass later on.

3. If you start noticing that everything that connects you to the outside world is systematically being shut off, dismantled or destroyed, it's 'cuz the vampires are coming to get ya. And they be hungry. Take a month's worth of food to an attic no one knows about, hunker down, and don't make a sound. That's the only way to survive.

4. You may notice that bloodthirsty vampires have issues with drool. If you are a parent, do not, I repeat, DO NOT jump to the vampire's rescue with a burping cloth in hand to help clean the drool up. See those teeth? Those are eating-the-flesh-of-humans teeth.

5. When your nearly demented father decides to head out to the middle of town after successfully escaping the vampires' notice for ten plus days, regardless of the reason, let him go. He is pretty close to death anyway and one person eaten by vampires is better than two.

6. Vampires speak a scary sounding vampire language. Do not waste time attempting to understand what they are saying or try to communicate with them. They have come to town to eat you and aren't interested in what you might want to say to them anyway.

7. Unless you're a good shot with the gun, it might be necessary to start killing said vampires with other weapons, like axes. Axes suck as a means of killing anything because using them requires you to get very up close and personal with the thing you are going to kill. Try to use the element of surprise to your advantage when you have an ax in hand, and aim for the jugular. When this fails, you can always lure the vampires into whatever industrial complex is nearby and shove them into a machine that will chop up their parts until they are merely minuscule pieces of their former selves.

8. On the off chance you see a little girl, who has somehow managed to survive on her own for nearly 30 days whilst vampires ravaged the town killing all the other folk, roaming the streets, leave her be. 'Cuz if you go after to help her, this will only lead to your downfall. And by downfall I mean this will eventually cause your ex-boyfriend, a.k.a. the best looking dude in town, to inject himself with tainted vampire blood so he can duke it out mano e mano with the head vampire guy. And once he's got that blood in him, that pretty much ends your relationship whether he wins the hand-to-hand combat or not.