To cleanse the palate. Nearly a hundred years ago, Mencken began an essay on Lincoln this way: “Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States—first, murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.” You’ve got three out of four here right off the top, and vampires being vampires, there’ll probably be a woman onscreen overpowered at some point. This is based on the book by the same guy who wrote “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” I haven’t read either, but per Wikipedia, it sounds like he was going for something a bit more ambitious than “Wouldn’t it be funny if Abraham Lincoln fought vampires?” Something for the whole family: Part history lesson (as metaphors for slavery go, you can do worse than vampirism), part action splatter-fest, and part instructional video on learning to loathe the undead. That important lesson has been lost on the “Twilight” generation, I fear.

Here’s the movie trailer, which was released yesterday, followed by the book trailer (yes, they have those now) that came out in 2010. I … kind of like the second one better.