John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)
Director: John Carpenter Cast: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith, Tim Guinee, Maximilian Schell Screenplay: John Carpenter, Don Jakoby, Dan Mazur Producers: Sandy King Runtime: 104 min. US Distribution: Columbia/Largo Rated R: strong violence and gore, language, sexuality
By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
Why are vampires so popular? Why are so many people obsessed with the idea of human-like creatures that suck blood in order to survive? Why does anyone care about garlic and holy water and crosses and sunlight? Why are there people who dress in black and put on white makeup to go see a movie about vampires? There are people in this world who believe that vampires do, in fact, exist. This is a sickness. It's an obsession. And I, unfortunately, just don't get it. Perhaps I shouldn't get it -- maybe I'm not supposed to. Vampires don't interest me. They don't interest me because they don't exist. I can watch a movie about vampires and be entertained, but my attraction to the subject goes no further.
The title of John Carpenter's Vampires is no joke: this film has vampires. It's all about vampires. There are vampires in every shot. Vampires get slaughtered on a regular basis. It's rare that Carpenter lets two minutes pass without showing us macho dudes decapitating vampires, or macho dudes driving stakes through vampires' hearts, or macho dudes dragging vampires out into the sun so the vampires can explode. But if you look past the vampire motif, what you have is a predictable and disappointing gore-fest: Carpenter has done better than this. Vampires starts out interesting, incorporating the violence with offbeat humor. By the end, though, the violence overtakes the humor, and we're left with a corny vampire flick drowning in an ocean of wretched excess.
And at the center of the excess is James Woods, playing super-duper vampire hunter Jack Crow with the kind of energy we've come to expect from a James Woods performance. Like most vampire hunters, Jack has a deep-seated hatred for vampires, because they had something to do with the death of his family. He's one macho dude, too, because he's willing to kill anyone or anything in order to get what he wants. After an introduction in which we see Jack and his group of hunters kill a bunch of vampires, Jack's group is quickly eradicated by the vampire master, Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith). So, with only his trusty sidekick, Tony Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) and a soon-to-be-vampire prostitute (Sheryl Lee), Jack heads out to kill Valek.
I think Carpenter knows how silly the entire vampire thing is. I sure hope he does, anyway. I realize I'm probably offending one in ten people who might read this review, but I just can't help it. I find this obsession with vampires deeply confounding. Carpenter, who has made some good movies (The Thing and Escape From [wherever] come to mind), begins Vampires with the right tone: it's funny and appropriately tongue-in-cheek. The violence is so extreme that we can't possibly believe it (Valek actually splits a guy in half with his fingernails). And some of the one-liners are pretty good.
But the story isn't very interesting, and Carpenter can't maintain the humorous tone to the end. A major problem lies in the Jack character, who just isn't very nice or sympathetic. Later in the film, when a young priest (Tim Guinee) tags along, Jack becomes a rather hateful guy (the bathroom interrogation scene is brutally unpleasant). And the violence takes hold of the film by the climactic scene, proving that a vampire movie can not keep from coming across as pornography for the violence-obsessed. (There's a scene that features gratuitous slaying of dozens of monks, and to call this "exploitative" would be excessively kind.)
And, based on this film alone, I would hypothesize that Carpenter is somewhat of a misogynist. The only non-vampire women in the picture are prostitutes (referred to by the male characters only as "whores"); Sheryl Lee's character is slapped around by the Baldwin character, and then we're supposed to believe that they love each other. Most of the vampires who blow up due to sunlight exposure are women, screaming wildly and relentlessly. Vampires isn't social commentary, and I doubt that Carpenter consciously decided to uphold a "hatred of women" stance. It's just one more element that adds to the generally unpleasant tone of the film.
It's a good thing Woods is the star; he's really the only actor who can rise above the mediocre dialogue and characterizations. Baldwin is a watchable presence, but doesn't do much acting. Lee is on hand simply for aesthetics. Griffith is actually good as a vampire, but, with two lines a dialogue, he doesn't prove himself as a thespian. All things considered, Vampires is just another vampire movie: thoughtless and excessive pornography. If vampires were real, I might be a little more kind to the film: it does, after all, offer a few new insights into the breeding habits of the blood-sucking creatures. But, seeing as how vampires don't exist, I'm left wishing that Carpenter had made a movie that doesn't just appeal to the people who will dress up to see it.
** out of **** (4/10, C-)
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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