Watch This: Even 'South Park' is Doing Vampire Shtick
Filed under: Animation, Comedy, Fandom, Trailers and Clips
Those of you who caught last night's South Park episode would have noticed a pretty familiar and topical theme: vampires. We're not sure whether the boys intentionally made sure this episode aired the week Twilight was to arrive in theaters or if they just got lucky, but it was all pretty funny nonetheless. And while they didn't reference Twilight (the one thing the episode was missing)*, they did take a few jabs at Hot Topic and the difference between goth kids and vampire kids. In the episode, the character Butters mistakes some vampire-themed kids at school for real vampires, and when his friends and parents all reject him, he turns to this new group for acceptance. Check out the scene below which shows Butters' transformation into a vampire, and you can catch the rest of the episode over at South Park Studios.
*Yes, they do reference Twilight once early on. Thanks for pointing it out.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-20-2008 @ 10:01AM
Luke Mullen said...
First off, they DID reference Twilight, just once in passing, but the girl vamp kid said something about liking that Bella girl from Twilight towards the beginning of the episode. And second, South Park creates each new episode during the week before it airs, so yes, it was very much intentional to have this episode air when Twilight was coming out. Just like it was intentional to have the Obama/McCain episode come out the day after Obama won the election...where they talk about Obama winning the election in the episode...where they start off the episode with whole sections verbatim from both Obama and McCain's speeches. They did a lot of that episode in less than 24 hours. Think about it. How else do you include sections of speeches that happened late Tuesday night in an episode that airs the following Wednesday night?
Reply
11-20-2008 @ 10:07AM
Erik Davis said...
Thanks, I completely missed the Twilight reference early on -- will have to go back and watch it again. You're right, some episodes are created the week before, but some others are created farther in advance -- but since I wasn't entirely sure this was an intentional tie-in to Twilight, I did not want to state it as a fact.
11-20-2008 @ 10:20AM
Luke Mullen said...
No worries, like I said, it's there but it's in passing. When I was watching the episode I thought right after that she said that she was a "psy-vampire" but I read a comment on South Park studios where someone said they thought she said she was a "smeyer-vampire" for Stephanie Meyer so that could be another reference. Also, I didn't know if maybe the "per se" thing was a reference, it was funny as hell but I didn't know what it was from, maybe Twilight? Haven't read it so I can't say. As for the production schedule, I was basing my comments on this article:
http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/southpark/
They talk about the production schedule at the top of the 2nd page. It sounded to me like they were doing every episode in 6 days. Obviously they have a lot of elements that get reused from week to week and don't need to be created from scratch, but I was thinking mostly it was an every week type of thing. I could be wrong about that, but my guess is this one was definitely a Twilight tie-in. Much easier for me, as random reader, to state that as fact than you as editor with a paycheck and responsibility.
11-20-2008 @ 10:05AM
Alex said...
they actually do mention twilight the first time you see the vamp kids, the chick with red streaks says you know that girl bella from twilight i think i like her
Reply
11-20-2008 @ 10:06AM
alex said...
beat me to it
Reply
11-20-2008 @ 3:31PM
Gary said...
Erik, All the episodes of this second half of season 12 have been movie parodies. Not sure why have decided to do this but kinda cool.
In order we have had Indiana Jones, Three O'clock High, Cloverfield, Oceans 11, High School Musical 3 and now Twighliight.
My favorite was "About Last Night", Obama wins the election and gets into the White House but it turns out it was all part of some elaborate Oceans 11 style plan to get some diamonds under the Smithsonian that can only be accessed by a tunnel in the oval office. It is very funny.
Reply
11-21-2008 @ 12:20AM
The Addict said...
Is it bad that the thing I enjoy most about that clip is that the main vamp's wearing a shirt with the Death Records logo from Phantom of the Paradise?
Reply