MGibster
Legend
When you write a history paper, one of the first things you do is come up with a historiagraphy. A historiography is basically a history of the history. i.e. What have other historians written about the subject. What you'll find is that there are historians whose work is impossible not to reference. If you're working on the history of Scottish Witchcraft, the name Christina Larner is going to pop up because her scholarly work from the 80s changed how people viewed the subject and is still relevant today. It boggles the mind that anyone who was really into vampires in the 1980s would have missed out on Anne Rice. I suppose it's possible, but I am skeptical. Barring some evidence to suggest otherwise, we might never know the truth.I would take their denials with an enormous grain of salt. It would be extremely hard to find people in the early 1990s who were pumped about vampires who hadn't read Anne Rice. But it would be legally dangerous to say so.
That said, VtM also gets a lot of its DNA from the excellent (and largely forgotten!) Near Dark.
But what we do know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that Near Dark is a fantastic vampire movie.