April 3, 1996

Spelling’s Out for Blood With a Clan of Vampires

MARVIN KITMAN

HAVING EXPLORED SOCIAL issues of the New South in “Savannah” on WB (WPIX / 11) and wholesome cultural values in “Malibu Shores” on NBC already this second season, Aaron Spelling last night on Fox began examining an alternative lifestyle in San Francisco in “Kindred: The Embraced.”

From the humorous vein Spelling goes to the jugular vein as “Kindred” starts in its regular time slot tonight at 9, replacing “Party of Five.” Spelling, who some might say has driven a stake through the heart of American culture with his trash, focuses in this one-hour drama series on five contemporary and sophisticated clans of vampires in San Francisco who call themselves the Kindred.

Vampires in San Francisco? I always knew it. They have so many strange people wandering around that city. Transylvania-by-the-Sea? Why not?

The Spelling series these days usually combine the elements of “Melrose Place” and “Charlie’s Angels,” his biggest modern successes. This is much heavier.

While it has its usual gorgeous, trendy ’90s people – all white bread regardless of color – it is history! Based on a novel by Mark Rein-Hagen and created by filmmaker John Leekley, “Kindred” tells the story of another San Francisco, one dating back to the early California Gold Rush. The ’49ers had their vampires, apparently. These ’49ers now live and interact among the non-vampires or so-called humans in the city. They have their own customs and language, beyond “whatever” (“embraced,” for example, is the word for doing “it”).

Actually they aren’t called “vampires” in “Kindred,” a trend I noticed on Fox as early as the 1991 multi-generational epic “Blood Ties.” Created for Spelling by Richard and Esther Shapiro (“Dynasty”), it followed an extended family of vampires who preferred to be known as “Carpathians.” Vampires have almost as bad a press these days as Aaron Spelling.

In the last attempt to present this minority in a more favorable light, the Carpathians were trying to assimilate. In “Kindred” the vampires are already “in.” They are in the media, city hall, the hospitals, the motorcycle gangs, Chinese tongs, even the police and organized crime. They have their own hip club. They ride limos and Harleys and wear designer clothes and earrings.

“Kindred” makes you look at your friends and neighbors more closely. How do you know your girlfriend isn’t one of them? Anybody who is gorgeous, a good dresser or without a heart is suspect after two hours in Spelling and Leekley’s world. Maybe even the network executives are vampires. And what do we really know about Aaron Spelling himself? He’s ageless, the Ponce de Leon of TV.

“Kindred” goes beyond “The X-Files,” which only presupposes the government is out to get us. This suggests that everybody is out to get us – through “the masquerade,” the way the Kindred live among us and obtain positions of power in popular culture and human society, especially organized crime. Talk about your free-floating paranoia.

“Kindred” was very unclear in the two-hour introduction about who’s who in this conspiracy. As I gather from reading the press releases, there are five vampire families battling for control of society.

All of this is more complicated than the new major league baseball interleague play schedule. But in the battle over who controls organized crime, the major preoccupation of the current arc of shows, what happened to the Mafia? Gone. No problem. The Cosa Nostra should sue for character defamation.

The Prince of the City, the new Godfather, is Julian Luna (played by Mark Frankel), publisher of the leading newspaper. Not The Sun, I’m sure. He lives in the biggest mansion on the hill and never comes out by day. It’s an evening paper, fortunately. By his own admission, he is a lot older than we think. Nobody ever questions that he seems to be in remarkably good shape for a man who may be between 140 and 180 years old. Why, he looks even better than George Hamilton!

It’s a strange world Spelling and his spellbinders are opening up. There’s a lot of hard drinking going on. Blood, or ketchup, is yet another substance to abuse. Keep your Bud Lite, man, those Bloody Marys of Spelling’s must give you quite a rush. They drew more blood the first two nights than hockey games.

There were also a lot of hickeys. “Embracing,” or sex, has some quaint customs. Among the rules in dating: Embracing without permission is a serious offense, punishable by death.

Kindred folk spontaneously heal, so they can even take bullets. On the downside, they can burst into flame. Talk about your spontaneous combustion.

There is also more talk than action, some of the dialogue sounding 150 years old. “I have a taste for you,” a thirsty one said last night. But at least they don’t say “Fangs a lot.”

“Kindred: The Embraced” is not “Dark Shadows.” Unfortunately, perhaps. It’s not Anne Rice. It’s Aaron Spelling. Instead of the usual vapid airheads and nincompoops, we have vampires.

But Spelling and his trash masters have struck a blow for every vampire in America. “Kindred” is a pro-vampire story. It makes them seem preferable to humans. Maybe in L.A. that’s true.

“The Kindred” masquerade ball, whatever, is an appealing concept today, especially the ageless part. Whatever Julian Luna and his crowd are into in alternative medicine sure beats plastic surgery.

The show is liable to turn the whole country into vampires the way Spelling has a whole hip generation acting like Melrose Placeniks. What happens if this isn’t all a joke and there really are vampires, or at least vampiroids? I need a few hundred years to figure this all out. Suffice it to say now, “Kindred: The Embraced” is much deeper than “Malibu Shores” and “Savannah,” you all.

Bon appetit, vampire lovers. To watch future shows I’m going to get a necklace of garlic, some silver bullets and a wooden cross. A warning: If you tape this, don’t try to watch until after sunset. My tape went up in smoke Sunday afternoon.