Vampires

John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)

Very Trashy
Ranking: No

My my. Story of a couple of fearless vampire killers (James Woods & Daniel Baldwin) tracking some big papa vampire (Thomas Ian Griffith) across the southwest in order to stop him getting the Black Cross, an ancient artifact which will allow him to walk around in the daytime.

Almost a good companion piece to Near Dark, being about the white trash, scuzzy vampire hunters rather than the white trash vampires. Only this movie is a piece of crap.

I dunno, James Woods is just such a dork, and Daniel Baldwin is such a fatass. One of the other inferior Baldwins, I guess. Like if Alec really let himself go even further.

And all that stuff with that girl, the prostitute or whatever the hell she was, was really weird. For instance: why in the hell was she naked? I kept thinking fatass was gonna rape her or something. Right after he finished eating a hamburger. And why the hell did she end up with fatass anyway? Christ.

We also have the requisite anti-Catholic vibe (turns out the Catholic church somehow created vampire guy, something to do with a reversed exorcism. I don't remember, I was busy making fun of James Woods and Max Schell simultaneously), present in many a Carpenter flick.

I myself am down with the Catholics, for the most part. I can't say I care much for that screwing little kids business, but they're not all perverts. Male celibacy is a bad idea any way you look at it. Catholics are often lovely people, and they were the only kids who would play with me during the brief period I was in school.

Moving on. The one thing I did like in this movie was the music. Carpenter movies often do have good music even when the rest of the film belongs in the toilet.

Other than that, though, it was just so unbelievably stupid and obnoxious. There were a whole bunch of scenes where all these guys would just walk up to the camera and stand there, looking like some kind of photoshoot for an album cover.

God. Yeah, not only was the movie dumb, it was also really dorky. And sleazy. Most John Carpenter movies are sleazy, but usually there's something kind of endearing about them. They Live, for example. Big old pile of sleaze, but strangely fun to watch.

This movie was just pure, 100% unadulterated sleaze. Not very fun at all to watch.

END

Directed by: John Carpenter. Written by: Don Jakoby, based on the novel by John Steakley. Starring: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith, Tim Guinee, Maximilian Schell