JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES ** (R) (out of four)
Jack Crow: James Woods Montoya: Daniel Baldwin Katrina: Sheryl Lee Valek: Thomas Ian Griffith Cardinal Alba: Maximilian Schell
Directed by John Carpenter. Written by Don Jakoby. Based on the novel Vampire$ by John Steakley. Running time: 107 minutes. Rated R (for strong vampire violence and gore, language and sexuality).
BY AARON MICHAELS
Vampires have been shown in movies through the years as blood-sucking demons that prowl the night looking for a snack. The film's have ranged from very good (Bram Stoker's Dracula) to just awful (Once Bitten). Recently though, vampires have been very big. "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" is a huge TV hit and Blade did a bang-up job at the box office. Now the most liked horror director has put his touch on the genre.
John Carpenter's Vampires is about Jack Crow (James Woods) who along with a group of a dozen or so hunt down vampire nests. They use a variety of automatic weapons (but they have to use a wooden stake also) to beat up the vampires. They then use a pulley system to drag the vamps into daylight which causes them to explode in a big fiery mess.
Jack Crow is your typical nonhero character. Carpenter has used this character before in Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.. Crow is so much like Kurt Russell's character in those two movies it makes you wonder if Carpenter is losing originality. The only addition to the character is that now he sounds like a Howard Stern wannabe. He drinks, he swears, and he makes inappropriate conversations with priests.
After a tough day of work Crow and his team party at a nearby motel. They are interrupted by a vampire named Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), who can't be hurt by automatic weapons or stakes, who brutally murders the group. The only surviving members of the massacre are Crow, his right hand man Montoya (Daniel Baldwin), and a hooker named Katrinia (Sheryl Lee) who just happened to be at the party.
After Crow consults with his church "sponsors" who pay for the destruction of the vampires, he finds out that Valek was the first vampire ever. He plans to find a black cross and when he finds it he will be able to create a new race of super vampires which can walk the day. Katrinia, while at the party, was bitten by Valek before he took out the rest of the group. She has 2 days before the vampire 'virus' overcomes her. In these 2 days she is able to have a physic link with Valek and is able to see what he sees. Crow and Montayo use this to stop the evil vampire from destroying the world.
John Carpenter is one of the most well liked director's in the horror/sci-fi/action genre. He has made such classics as Halloween and The Thing (not 1951 version). His 70s and 80s collection of films have developed a huge following by fans of the genre. Then the 90s came around and his movies went into the toilet. No J.C. film in the 90s has been worthwhile. Vampires is quite a bit better than most of his productions of this decade but that's not saying much.
What Carpenter was known for is the horror classic Halloween. In that movie he relied heavily on tense music (which he almost always creates himself) and wonderfully made scenes to the scare the heck out of everyone. Although Halloween is a violent movie with a pretty high body count, the film didn't rely on gore to create scary situations. Vampires believes that if we see a vampire knock a priest's head off with bloody results we are going to be scared. This is not true.
Another major complaint I have with the film though is the villain. Valek just isn't that good of a villain. He's your tired old character who is indestructible and will stop at nothing to rid the world of good guys. He vanishes from the screen many times in this movie for 15 minutes sometimes. Then when he reappears he just kills a church member who is in his way (seen mostly through psychic images in Katrinia's mind) and then disappears.
Of course Vampires isn't all bad. Woods does a good job as the anti-hero and will no doubt be well liked by Carpenter fans. The vampire hunting sequences (which are suprisingly short and far apart) are cool. They are brutal fights with machine guns firing everywhere and vampires erupting in fire. Scenes of Crow burying his dead group members are great. I can just barely recommend this movie to fans of John Carpenter or of violent action/horror movies.
Vampires, had it been done more originally, could have been a great horror film and one of Carpenter's best. But it is currently just a mixed bag of a movie that supplies some quick small thrills and is easily forgotten.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews