"Well first of all, they're not romantic. It's not like they're a bunch of fuckin' fags hoppin' around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Euro-trash accents, all right? Forget whatever you've seen in the movies: they don't turn into bats, crosses don't work. Garlic? You wanna try garlic? You could stand there with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you fucking over and take a walk up your strada-chocolata WHILE he's suckin' the blood outta your neck, all right? And they don't sleep in coffins lined in taffeta. You wanna kill one, you drive a wooden stake right through his fuckin' heart. Sunlight turns 'em into crispy critters." - Jack Crow on vampires.
In New Mexico a team of hardened Vatican-sponsored vampire hunters led by Jack Crow (James Woods) routs a nest of undead suckfaces, destroying nine of them with extreme prejudice.
The team of Church-appointed vampire slayers receives a blessing before getting down to the business of wiping out undead suckfaces.
Not a bad day's work, but where is the master vampire? Seemingly nowhere to be found. But no big deal. The team celebrates their victory at a sleazy motel, surrounding themselves with whores and getting hammered. Too bad they didn't do a more thorough search of the acreage where the house serving as the vampires' nest was, because they they would have noticed the blatantly fresh grave only a couple hundred yards from the residence.
At sundown the master vampire, Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), claws his way out from the soil, and track the hunters to their place of revelry. In short order the master suckface mercilessly and gorily slays all but Crow, whom he calls out by name, and Crow and his righthand man, Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) barely manage to escape, dragging a bitten prostitute with them. Despite Montoya's protests, Crow knows that prostitute Katrina (Sheryl Lee) has 48 hours before she fully transitions to being a vampire, but as she chcnages she will become connected to the master, hearing what he hears and seeing what he sees, so the hunters can track the master through Katrina. And there's also the question of how the master knew Crow's name. Crow realizes that the hit on the vampires' nest was a setup because the master knew not to be present, so who marked the team for a massacre? After returning to the motel to stake, behead, and bury the dead and burn the place to the ground, and, with a young priest in tow (Tim Guinee), the proper hunt for Valek is on. But exactly who is this Valek, why is he so powerful, and what is he after?
Yer Bunche has been a John Carpenter fan since seeing the network television debut of HALLOWEEN back in 1979, and I have seen all of his films over the 44 years since. His films often bear a signature look, feel, and sound and, good or bad, they tend to entertain me with an experience akin to reading a comic book, but some comics books are masterpieces, others are just okay, and what remains are wastes of trees. VAMPIRES, though quite entertaining, a very much a flawed work that feels like Carpenter's heart just wasn't fully in it. The script is about 2/3 polished, but it falls apart significantly during the final act. The ending is one of carpenter's weakest, and by the start of the final reel I found myself checking my watch.
I first saw VAMPIRES
when it came out, but that was during a period I consider my "lost
years," when I went through life engaging in excessive drinking and
weed-smoking, so I saw a lot of movies in states so wasted that I barely
remember the details of a lot of those flicks. This was one I remember
finding middling at best, so I hoped that in seeing it again I would
experience a work whose merits I had mostly erased with my own drunken
disconnect. But no, my initial impression was spot on, and what I got
was pretty much a mid-level actioner that was like what I would have
come up with in my backyard at age seven while enacting a story with my
Adventure Team G.I. Joes and their mobile support vehicle, only with
vampires. (Though I did not have any dolls that would have made for
decent vampires. I did, however, have a Mego Supergirl that served as an
all-purpose female character, so she would have been a good fit as
Katrina.) The film doesn't bear the signature Carpenter look or feel,
nor is the score as pronouncedly loaded with Carpenter's composition
flavor. Among the roster of the director's works, VAMPIRES, while an
okay way to pass just over ninety minutes, is a lesser work, and you
miss little if you give it a miss. There are many much better vampire
films to be seen, so go for something like Hammer's KISS OF THE VAMPIRE
or TWINS OF EVIL.
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