ENTERTAINMENT: ‘Bite’ gets staked on Halloween

Even sexy topless vampires eventually get dragged into the sunlight or end up with a piece of picket fence in the heart.

“Bite,” the campy dance revue, will close Halloween night after eight years at the Stratosphere.

Performers in the show were told producer Tim Molyneux would search for a new home on the Strip.
“Halloween night is the appropriate night to say farewell, and thank you, for eight years of entertaining our guests,” Stratosphere general manager Paul Hobson said in a statement.

“Twilight” and “True Blood” weren’t around in August 2004, when Molyneux had the inspired notion of vampire women bumping and grinding to classic-rock anthems.

“I still remember very clearly the day I was sitting in my office in Nashville at my computer with a nice single malt, and I wrote that thing in an evening,” the producer recalled last year.

Eight years is a great run for an independent producer in a land-locked hotel. But “Bite” hasn’t been feeling the love from the Stratosphere ever since the hotel threw its marketing resources behind singer-songwriter Frankie Moreno.

Moreno is the rare Las Vegas entertainer to draw a salary guarantee from the Stratosphere, rather than leasing his show space as Molyneux and most producers do. It makes sense then, that any casino-financed advertising would go to Moreno’s show.

“The Stratosphere likes the ‘Bite’ show because it makes money for them,” Molyneux said in January. However, “They were not crazy about having a topless vampire show be the face of the Stratosphere.”