John Carpenter's Vampires Review
by Edward Johnson-ott (PBBP24A AT prodigy DOT com)October 25th, 1998
John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)
James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith, Tim Guinee, Maximilian Schell, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mark Boone Jr., Thomas Rosales, Frank Darabont, Anita Hart, Henry Kingi, Gregory Sierra. Screenplay by John Carpenter, Don Jakoby and Dan Mazur (based on the novel "Vampire$" by John Steakly). Directed by John Carpenter. 104 minutes.
Rated R, 2 stars (out of five stars)
Review by Ed Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly
www.nuvo-online.com
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Call it a horror version of a spaghetti western, with lots and lots of sauce. John Carpenter's "Vampires" is an incredibly bloody, gory machismo- fest, with as much snarling, hateful, no-nonsense manly-man posturing as Carpenter can cram into 104 minutes. This is the kind of film that will prompt countless Internet postings with subject lines like "'Vampires' Kicks Ass!" and "Carpenter Rules!" And trust me, anyone who posts otherwise will quickly be deemed a "pussy" or a "queer" by those same zealots.
Based on the novel "Vampire$" by John Steakly, the story focuses on a crack team of vampire killers, financed by the Catholic Church, roaming the American Southwest looking for head bloodsucker Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), the fallen priest who started the whole undead thing centuries ago. Team leader Jack Crow (James Woods) is a coked-up version of the standard Carpenter anti-hero: imagine a gaunt Snake Plissken, only way more surly, whupping major vampire butt while spitting out vicious one- liners (at one point he taunts a priest, saying "When I was kicking your ass, Father, did you get wood?").
Crow's second-in-command, Tony Montoya (Daniel Baldwin), is another man's man. He explains the harsh realities of vampires to recently-bitten hooker, Katrina (Sheryl Lee), growling "It's not like they're a bunch of romantic Eurotrash fags dressed in formal wear." In the hours before a victim "turns," they have a telepathic link with the bloodsucker who nailed them, so Crow and Montoya coolly inform Katrina that they will use her as a vampire radar-detector, but the minute she turns, they'll kill her in a flash. In the meantime, they strap her face down on a bed, conveniently nude so Carpenter devotees can ogle Lee's shapely rear-end. While Montoya baby-sits Katrina, Crow threatens the Catholic powers-that- be and tortures a priest for information.
Am I painting a vivid enough picture? If not, here's a little more. The vampires are feral creatures, mean as hell and dressed like Marilyn Manson roadies. They're extremely violent: Valek slices one victim from crotch to head and we get to watch the body split in two, with guts spilling all over the place. They're not easy to kill either. Basically, you have to stake them, then drag their bodies into the sunlight where they burst into flames while screaming and flailing about.
As mentioned earlier, the whole thing plays like a souped-up spaghetti western and, for a while, it works. After years of enduring Anne Rice's effete Harlequin Romance vampires, it's fun to see the lace-cuffs ripped away from the genre. James Woods has a great time playing a bastard and it's entertaining watching him enjoy himself. There are some striking images: vampires striding confidently across the desert towards the camera, Valek lying on the ceiling waiting to strike. There's a great set piece at a motel, and the inevitable show-down, while awfully stupid, does have a strong sense of perverse style. And, for a while, it's amusing listening to dialogue so calculated to offend.
But eventually, the nihilism becomes tiresome, the gore and mayhem grows repetitive and you just want the damn thing to end. Carpenter did creepier gore in "The Thing." He did more effective fight scenes and B- movie gags in "They Live" and better stoic macho theatrics in "Escape >From New York." "Vampires" is a minor guilty pleasure, but I'm tired of watching Carpenter rework his old tricks. It would be so terrific to see him try something new, like skipping feature-length pissing contests and creating films with actual characters and plots with some meat to them.
So there you have it. Ed Johnson-Ott's "Review" of John Carpenter's "Vampires." Zealots can reach me at [email protected]. Feel free to put "pussy" or "queer" in the subject line so I'll know it's from you.
© 1998 Ed Johnson-Ott
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