Peter Travers, the movie critic at Rolling Stone whose propensity for pithy jibes and shrewd encomia has made him ubiquitous in film columns and movie posters, is the latest observer to seek to make sense of the slowly ebbing storm of vampire mania that's suffused pop culture over the last several years.

What's interesting is that the most mileage from his column on the best and worst vampires in film and TV is deriving, as with Mr. Blackwell, from the characters banished to the "worst" list. Travers's vote for the worst screen vampire is Carlisle Cullen, the patriarch of the Twilight film's Cullen clan, played by Peter Facinelli.

As Travers notes immediately, it's not Facinelli's fault: he plays Carlisle as written. The problem, I think, is that Carlisle is written as a wuss. And this reveals something essential about our attraction to vampires: wussiness is an unacceptable attribute even in vampires that are supposed to be sympathetic.

The rest of the "worst" list mostly (again, mostly) fall into the category of bad characters badly acted in bad movies: Eddie Murphy in Vampire in Brooklyn, Gerard Butler in Dracula 2000, Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire. Cruise's Lestat comes closest to committing the same sins as Carlisle: anemic, unscary, boring. Even vampires who fight being a vampire, like Angel or Mitchell from Being Human, still need to suggest that they've got more demon in them than the average orthodontist, and in that category Carlisle is accounted a big Fail.

Carlisle's role is as progenitor of the clan, playing cupid to his adopted vampire progeny, and as mediator, defusing conflicts both within the family and, as in the confrontation with Laurent in the first movie, with outsiders. Carlisle is not only noble and compassionate, he's pacific. As highly valued as those qualities are in mere mortals, they align badly with public expectations of vampires--even good vampires.

A strong candidate early on for Most Useless Cullen early on might have been Jasper (Jackson Rathbone): in the first movie he has nothing to do but look pained, and in the second Bella gets a paper cut and Jasper immediately succumbs to blood lust. But in Eclipse, Jasper suddenly gets a very meaty two-track storyline, and Rathbone more than lives up to the occasion. But where Jasper has proven he can kick ass, we get the sense--perhaps unfairly--that the only thing Carlisle can smack down is a baseball.

The defanging of Carlisle is revealing of the newly revamped allure of vampires: their appeal is the thrill of fear, combined with a dangerous sexuality. A sympathetic vampire is the ultimate bad boy, offering exposure to delicious peril that he also, because he's been heroified, has a supernatural capacity to protect you from. Carlisle fails as a vamp because his yuppified, chaste demeanor has denuded him both of danger and sex appeal.