Crazy like a fox, if you ask me. Rookery is a piece of work, and this is the character study post which will examine every component of what makes him such, though this has been touched upon in Logic of The Little Vampire Part 2.
A Tongue of Silver
As I have been going through the movie in chunks, I was almost forced to pick up on one particular element of Rookery's character that my mind has glossed over consistently in years of watching in single sittings. Rookery is highly manipulative. He invites the cemetery caretaker for drinks and then regales him with little bits and pieces about vampires and magic and local legend and family history, scaring the poor man half to death. The rest of the half is covered when Rookery plays on the caretaker's sense of responsibility toward the graveyard and gets him to descend into a subterranean chamber after a vampire. He coerced the man into allowing himself to become bait, getting Rookery the biting he needs to convince Lord McAshton to fund him. Once Lord McAshton is convinced, however, Rookery learns more about "his worries", and uses them to gain access to the McAshton mausoleum, the lord's pocketbook, and possibly free reign about the village, as he has no problem drilling dozens of holes in search of an unmarked grave. Rookery knows for a fact that Elizabeth McAshton is deader than dead, but he still plays on the worry that this might not be the case after all in order to get what he wants. During this process, perhaps unbeknownst to him, he put the idea in the lord's mind that his employee's son is one of the undead and must be dealt with accordingly. But then, Rookery would probably have been pleasantly surprised by the news.
Inquisitor
By this, I mean "torturer and heartless killer". On two occasions, Rookery tries to kill Tony, first by running him over with his behemoth of a truck, and the second time by trying to shut him up in a coffin and leave him to suffocate. To the vampires, he is considerably worse, actively causing them excrutiating pain (the "torturer" part of the equation) by lowering a giant, bright light into their cavern in the middle of the night and turning it on, backing them all into a corner as they slowly get crispy fried. As he had the means to explore this cavern during the day, it is in no way inconcievable that he could have gone down there during visiting hours and staked the vampires in their sleep instead, if he truly is so hell-bent on killing them (pardon the pun). But this is apparently too humane for him, and he takes sick pleasure in listening to the vampires scream in pain as they are roasting alive. In fact, he is only shown actively trying to stake the vampires once, and he takes several warning shots first to show them he means business (if he means business, this is debateable). Everything else he does is for the sake of getting the stone and having fun along the way, though his idea of "fun" is disgusting and deplorable.
Fantastic Racist
This man, for no reason at all, despises vampires and thinks the only thing they are good for is being sent to hell, a sentiment he expresses no less than three times throughout the movie. He regards vampires as "filthy" and "things" (in the same sentence no less) even though this universe clearly establishes that vampires used to be human and still retain nearly all of their human characteristics and make efforts to be as human as possible while they wait for the chance to become human again. Rookery simply doesn't care about any of this and goes on about his merry way, manipulating, torturing, and trying to kill in order to achieve his goals.
No comments:
Post a Comment