John Carpenter's Vampires Review
by Michael Dequina (michael_jordan AT geocities DOT com)October 28th, 1998
(out of ****)
_Bride_of_Chucky_ (R) * 1/2
_John_Carpenter's_Vampires_ (R) * 1/2
In 1988, killer doll Chucky made his splash in _Child's_Play_; in 1978, director John Carpenter burst onto the horror scene with _Halloween_. Ten and twenty years later, respectively, neither Chucky's novelty nor Carpenter's horror skill have aged very well, as evidenced by the schlocky _Bride_of_Chucky_ and _John_Carpenter's_Vampires_.
Unlike eating a box of chocolates, walking into the movie _Bride_of_Chucky_, you're pretty sure what you're gonna get. For the fourth film in the _Child's_Play_ franchise, you pay your admission to see Chucky, the diminutive, redheaded "Good Guy" doll possessed by the spirit of a dead serial killer, slice and dice his way through a long line of human victims--no more, no less, all done somewhat tongue-in-cheek but largely done in the name of a good scare.
How surprising it is, then, to watch _Bride_, which plays less like another sequel than a Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker sendup of the series. Perhaps writer Don Mancini (the creator of the series) saw self-parody as the only way to keep Chucky alive in the irony-drenched post-_Scream_ horror climate, making free use of self-deprecating dialogue such as "Chucky? He's so '80s!" The plot itself is a joke, with Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), a former flame of the incarnate Chucky, becoming Chucky the doll's (voiced by Brad Dourif) partner in serial murder after her newly-liberated spirit inhabits a female doll.
All of the added humor, though, does not make _Bride_of_Chucky_ a good film--just a campy one. For all their irony, post-_Scream_ thrillers, in the end, are horror films, going after the big scare. _Bride_, however, makes no attempt to be scary; the scariest thing about it is the fact that it was directed by the gifted Ronny Yu, who in his native Hong Kong directed the brilliant 1993 action fantasy _The_Bride_with_White_Hair_. As gruesome as some of Chucky and Tiffany's murders are (for instance, one man's face becomes a pincushion for nails), they are too over-the-top to truly shock. In fact, the film's big problem is just that, being too over-the-top too much of the time, from the acting (the dreadful Tilly in particular) to story developments (yes, a doll-doll sex scene is funny, but _still_...). Even a film called _Bride_of_Chucky_ could use some restraint and be all the better for it. By the time the film came to its predictable "twist" ending (hint: what logically follows "_bride_ of..."?), you may eel like groaning. The audience with whom I saw the film did (and quite loudly, I might add).
That's all _Bride_of_Chucky_ leaves you with--a groan: a groan that this tired series may not yet be over; a groan that you blew hard-earned cash to see it; but most of all, a groan that you've just lost 80-some-odd minutes of your life that can never be recovered.
More polished technically, but no less groan-worthy, is _Vampires_. Carpenter obviously has a lot of fun at the helm of this one, staging the brutally (and, some would argue, excessively) bloody scenes of carnage with gleeful abandon: blood, bodies, and body parts fly across the screen in every direction. A great deal of credit goes to the make-up work by the KNB EFX Group (Robert Kurtzman, Gregory Nicotero, and Howard Berger), which is convincing and, yes, more than a little repulsive.
So what's the problem? Just about everything else, but mostly Don Jakoby's odious script, which is based on John Steakley's novel _Vampire$_. There's no real plot, just vampire slayer Jack Crow (James Woods) hunting out master vampire Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), who is after a sacred cross that will make him and his fellow bloodsuckers, as Crow's priest sidekick (Tim Guinee) says, "a force unstoppable--unless we stop him!" That line, which would make the late Ed Wood proud, should tell you all you need to know about the overall quality of the dialogue.
But the laughable dialogue and lack of plot isn't as problematic as the uninteresting and unlikable characters. For someone who was raised by the Catholic church after his parents died when he was young, Jack is awfully disrespectful, tossing around priests, threatening them with mortal violence, and frequently flinging F-words at them. Woods's insufferably smug performance makes the character even more unsavory. In addition to being anti-Catholic, the film is also terribly misogynist, with female lead, a Valek-bitten prostitute named Katrina (Sheryl Lee, reduced to screaming and trembling), constantly getting slapped around and humiliated by Jack's boorish partner Tony Montoya (Daniel Baldwin, who, quite simply, sucks--bad pun intended). Even more insulting? Tony eventually falls for Katrina, and--yep--her with him.
Like _Bride_of_Chucky_, I'm certain a number of _Vampires_'s laughs are intentional; Carpenter has always displayed an arch sense of humor, and that comes through in certain scenes, including the ridiculous resolution scene. But I'm not so sure so much of it was meant to be laughed at; two women sitting behind me at the screening understandably laughed non-stop. The most disheartening thing about _Vampires_, however, is not its campiness, but its lack of scares; it's hard to believe the same man who made the elegantly creepy (and largely bloodless) classic _Halloween_ directed this piece of schlock.
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Michael Dequina
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