Q: Vampires or Werewolves? Oh, by the way, Pete, I love the look in a little less than 16 candles. where did you get the idea?
Posted by: CheyStumpWentz Jul 10, 2009

A: the movie “the lost boys” meets “clockwork orange” meets “blade”- personally i like coyotes cos they run as a gang and they arent interested in letting any humans in.

 

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 book by Anthony Burgess and a 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick about — among other things — a gang of distinctly-dressed youths who wreak as much havoc as they can, called Droogs.

One of the things Burgess said about the inspiration for the Droogs was

Lynne and I had come home to a new British phenomenon – the violence of teenage gangs. We had on our leaves of 1957 and 1958, seen teddy boys in coffee bars. These were youths dressed very smartly in neo-Edwardian suits with heavily soled boots and distinctive coiffures. They seemed too elegant to be greatly given to violence, but they were widely feared by the faint hearted. They were a personification of the Zeitgeist in that they seemed to express a brutal disappointment with Britain’s post war decline as a world power and evoked the age of Edwardian expansion in the clothes if nothing else. They had originally been called Edwardian Strutters.


A Clockwork Orange


A Little Less Sixteen Candles

 

Blade

Blade (1998 film)

Pete’s character in the Sixteen Candles video is a vampire hunter who must control his own craving for blood, like the character Blade from the film trilogy of the same name. Pete’s salvation is a ‘blend’ that Patrick’s character has created and which Pete drinks, while Blade injects a serum.

 

I Am Legend

I Am Legend, first published in 1954, is a horror novel by Richard Matheson about a vampire hunter named Robert Neville. Apparently there is a Rolling Stone article (I have not seen a scan myself, so I can’t confirm this for certain) in which this book is mentioned as an inspiration for the A Little Less Sixteen Candles video.

This is plausible — indeed, likely — so until I have proof otherwise I’m going to assume that it’s true.

The ending of the Sixteen Candles video plays along similar lines as the end of the book, as both the captured Pete and a captured Robert realize that they can’t save society from the vampires, because the vampires have made society their own.

 

Kung Fu Hustle

Kung Fu Hustle (2004 film)

Like The WarriorsKung Fu Hustle is set in a society divided up into distinctive and warring gangs. The film’s over-the-top action style, blending intricate choreography and real violence with cartoonish mayhem, influenced the fight sequences in A Little Less Sixteen Candles.

 

Let The Right One In

This Swedish vampire movie, based on the book of the same name, isn’t an inspiration for the Sixteen Candles video — for starters, it came out two years later — but gets a page because of comments Pete and Joe have made about it.

Pete posted the trailer for the film in his blog on October 30, 2008, along with the caption: “the right one”. smokes twilight, true blood and 16 candles… see this if your get a chance”

Joe posted in his own blog a short time later with: There’s this Swedish vampire flick called ‘Let The Right One In’. Wentz turned me onto it. There’s some ghoulish vampire blood slurping noises in the preview. Insanely gross. Bravo to them.

Case #183(a) would like to second Fall Out Boy’s endorsement of this movie, because it’s one of the most interesting and generally striking vampire movies ever made. The book is even more amazing. Check ‘em out.

 

Sunglasses After Dark

Sunglasses After Dark (1990 novel)

Pete’s character in the Sixteen Candles video is, according to Wikipedia, partially based on a reluctant-vampire-slash-vampire-hunter named Sonja Blue, the protagonist of a series of novels by Nancy Collins. (Of course, with Wikipedia one can never be 100% certain of anything, so a more verifiable source would be appreciated for this bit of info, if you happen to have one.)

Your intrepid site creator wasn’t able to get her hands on a copy of Sunglasses After Dark, the first in the series, so here are a couple of excerpts from In The Blood, the second book, in which Sonja faces Morgan, the vampire who created her.

p.161

She was here. He sensed her presence in the house the way a spider monitors the strands of its web. How could he have slept, unaware, when first she walked these halls? How could he have been insensate to anything so exquisitely lethal?

At first he’d refused to believe she could be one of his by-blows. But now he knew it to be true. His hand had sown this dragon’s tooth. In a perverse way, he was proud of her. Even from a distance there was no mistaking her potential strength. She was a thing of fatal beauty, to be feared and admired, like an unsheathed samurai sword. To know that he had played a role in creating such a fearsome and deadly creature was flattering. Such a pity she must be destroyed.

Morgan rose from the ornately carved rosewood chair in his study and opened the antique chifforobe with the blacked-out mirror. If this was to be a formal confrontation, the least he could do was dress for the occasion.

p.174

“Cut the routine, dead boy! You know why I’m here.”

Morgan sighed and studied his fingernails. “I know! I know! You’re here to kill me. How tedious. Tell me child, what exactly would my demise prove?”

“That I’m not like you.”

“Indeed? If you are not like me, how have you survived these past few decades, little one? How have you kept yourself fed?”

“I-I have my ways.”

“Caches of bottled plasma, no doubt. But that is hardly enough, is it? You can’t lie to me, child. I know how bland prepackaged blood can be. Have you killed, my pet?”

“I-”

“Answer me true, child.”

“Yes.”

Morgan smiled a slow, sly smile. Sonja fought the urge to rip off his face.

 

The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys (1987 film)

The opening sequence of the Sixteen Candles video is a take-off of a scene from the 1980s cult hit The Lost Boys. In The Lost Boys, the couple making out in their car are killed by their vampire attackers, while in the Sixteen Candles video the whole setup is a trap laid out by the hunters (with Andy as the reluctant bait).

 

The Warriors

The Warriors (1979 film)

The social system of the vampires — the gangs/cliques — in the Sixteen Candles video is an homage to the 70s punk/action movie The Warriors, which is set in a New York which is demarcated into areas controlled by different gangs, each of whom dress in a specific and elaborate way in order to mark what tribe they run with.


A Little Less Sixteen Candles


The Warriors


The Warriors


The Warriors


A Little Less Sixteen Candles

 

Thriller

Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released in 1983. The video, directed by John Landis, runs for fourteen minutes and is one of the classics of the medium. References to both the song and the video are frequent in Fall Out Boy’s work: in the Dance, Dance video (which, just to make things MORE complicated, is an homage to teen movies such as the Molly Ringwald film… Sixteen Candles), Pete performs the dance from the Thriller video, and Infinity on High’s opening track is named Thriller.

Thriller, like A Little Less…, is a mini-horror movie, with Michael Jackson playing a werewolf and a zombie throughout the action. The large dance ensemble in the Thriller video are echoed by the vampire brawl in A Little Less.

 

 

Vampire Hunter D

     

Vampire Hunter D was a series of novels which were then made into an anime film in the 1980s. The human vampire hunter in the film, a young redhead named Doris, uses electrical weapons similar to those created by Patrick in the Sixteen Candles video.

This film was one of the inspirations for Pete’s character being a vampire who hunts other vampires. As director Alan Ferguson explained in his Sequential Tart interview,

“There’s one anime film called Vampire Hunter D, and that was a big influence. It’s about this guy who’s actually a vampire — he’s a half-human, half-vampire — and I love that film, visually.”