The Pecan Park Eagle

Abraham Pugg, Vampire Hunter

There is a new movie opening soon called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Apparently Lincoln had a fairly unknown underlife as a vampire hunter while he was also championing the Union through it’s most difficult crisis in history.

Abraham Pugg, Vampire Hunter is my suggestion for the initial sequel in this new franchise film trunk, assuming that people buy into the original premise that John Wilkes Booth was nothing more than a hit man for the International Brotherhood of Bloodsucking Children of the Night.

In this sequel, Lincoln’s part alien Pug, Toby “Abraham” Pugg, picks up the challenge of carrying on the fight after his master falls to the hired assassin’s bullet on April 14, 1865.

When Abraham Pugg (Toby Pugg) gets wind of his master’s/best friend’s violent mortal wounding at Ford’s Theatre, he immediately dives through an open window at the White House for the long run over to Ford’s and the recovery house across the street where Abraham Lincoln lays dying. Unfortunately, Pugg is on the second floor when he makes the jump and is knocked unconscious for about ten minutes on the east lawn.

Revived by President Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay (Shia LaBeouf), Pugg scampers past every tree on the way as he scurries to Ford’s. After a quick trip through all the legs across the street to listen to the voices of hopeless desperation about his master’s impending demise, Pugg ambles back to Ford’s Theatre. At Ford’s, Pugg picks up what he can about the man identified  as Lincoln’s assailant, actor John Wilkes Booth (Johnny Depp).

Back on the street, Pugg sniffs the spring night Washington air as his ears also perk to hear the rumble of horses moving quickly toward the bridge that leads to Maryland. Pugg quickly deduces that it is the movement of troops in hot pursuit of the scoundrel Booth and he immediately heads that way too.

Once the trail leads to a farmhouse deep in Maryland, it is Pugg who sniffs out Booth and his traveling co-conspirator, the dim-witted David Herold (Sean Penn) hiding in the barn.

Herold surrenders, but Booth holds out to make his last stand. The siege is shortened when Pugg’s barking lures Booth into an abortive attempt at strangulation of the super canine, only to lean his body into firing range of a soldier named Boston Corbett (Matt Damon). Corbett gets off a shot to the neck that mortally wounds Booth. Like Lincoln before him, Booth experiences a lingering death that only completes itself with the dawning of a new day,

For his role in bringing Booth to anger’s quick justice, Abraham Pugg is taken back to Washington by the army and hailed as a national hero. No one in Washington ever learns that Pugg also speaks, writes, and understands every language in human history – nor do they learn that he also is the only son of Archimedes Pugg, who taught math to the Incas.

In a long and winding road from the Booth death moment, Pugg is cared for by a Washington conservancy from April 1865 forward, where he secretly carries out his will to continue the initial work of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. By the power of his magnetic intergalactic will, Pugg is able to get all kinds of help from Washington politicos. Only his personal manservant Albert (Arnold Schwarzenegger) knows of his true identity and powers – and the two often converse in the words that fit into Albert’s limited capacity for dialog. (When Arnold says, “I’ll be back!” in this movie, it’s usually because he has excused himself in mid-conversation with Pugg for the sake of consulting a dictionary.)

One day, a Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi (Adrien Brody) drops in on Pugg to discuss the death of Booth. What happens from there is incredible, but, if you want to know more, you will have to wait and go see the movie. In the meanwhile, don’t discount the possibility that this film may likely morph into the first really great monster rock show since the iconic Rocky Horror.