31 Days of Halloween (Day 8) - Vampires

I hear it now, "another John Carpenter movie?" Well, stop your whining; there will be a couple of other ones before this thing is over. Carpenter makes great horror and science fiction movies. Well, at least he did up until In The Mouth of Madness. At that point, his output became more uneven. One of those uneven films is Vampires, based on the John Steakly book Vampire$, which I enjoyed and recommend.

Carpenter's Vampires is a good example of the parts being greater than the whole. The movie has some very nice scenes, images, ideas and acting, starting with the first ten minutes. James Woods plays Jack Crow, leader of a team of vampire hunters, supported by the Catholic Church. The movie opens on a sun blasted southwestern plain, with the team approaching a dilapidated ranch house. They have located a nest of vampires ("goons" as they call the less powerful creation of "master" vampires) and are going to exterminate it. These first ten minutes see Carpenter at the top of his game. Carpenter conveys a sense of professionalism through the use of specialized equipment (chainmail neck guards, metal pikes, highly polished and functional looking steaks), the look of the team (scruffy, but tough), the direction of the action (the team seems to function as one, using various tactics that look like the product of years of fighting the undead) and Woods scenery chewing, but effective, take on the team leader, complete with a list of "rules" for vampire hunting. In short, in this ten minutes you get the sense of what a team of vampire hunters would actually be like, if vampires existed.

Jack Crow and company ready to kick some undead ass.

Some of the acting is good as well. Although Woods plays his profane, violent, misogynistic, fanatical vampire hunter in the most bombastic, hyper-macho mode possible, it works in terms of the film. You would have to be an ultimate badass to survive fighting against monsters that are stronger and faster than humans and almost indestructible. And Woods has a screen presence, something some of his co-stars lack. Time Guinee, playing Father Adam Guiteau also does a good job as the newest member of the team, assigned to Crow after his last priest (and most of his team) is killed.

They should have stayed at a Motel 6.

Carpenter also comes up with some arresting images. In particular, a scene of a group of vampires rising out of the desert floor at sundown is creepy and memorable. In addition, as is usual with Carpenter's movies, the soundtrack enhances the film, the southwestern/electric theme playing into the film's modern western feel.

Unfortunately, there are significant problems. Daniel Baldwin, playing Anthony Montoya, Crow's right-hand man is terrible, with two emotional states - screaming and sleepy. Sheryl Lee, playing Katrina, a hooker who is bitten by the chief vampire and sharing a telepathic link to him, is fun to look at, but seemingly bored with the role. Thomas Ian Griffith, playing Valek, the protagonist and, apparently, the source of all vampires, has no personality. In spite of Carpenter trying to create a new more "realistic" type of vampire - at one point Crow tells Guiteau they aren't "hopping around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody with cheesy Euro-trash accents" - what we get instead are Goth looking people who mostly growl.

Sheryl Lee giving us her best "come hither" look.

The story has some serious problems, particularly how Valek (and all vampires) were created created by an "inverse exorcism" and how his master plan is to complete it so he can walk in the daylight. Um, okay...but,if the exorcism was to drive out evil (and something went wrong) why would completing it make him more pwoerful? And, while some of the set-pieces work well, others do not. Much of the second act in a motel room having to watch Baldwin and Lee try to emote which is, frankly, dull. and, there is a nasty streak of misogyny with both Crow and Montoya. I guess it was to make the characters as old-school, un-PC as possible. What it does is make them seem like dicks. And, finally, there are some pretty clunky lines...or, at least,they are poorly delivered.

It is unfortunate that Carpenter took a great premise - a professional vampire hunting team - and didn't go anywhere with it. Instead we get another one of his riffs on Westerns (in this case, Rio Bravo) with horror trappings. Still there are enough fun bits that I don't ever mind watching the film; I just see what could have been, something that could've made the movie a classic instead of just okay.