Vampires (1998) [REVIEW]

The first half hour of this movie is pretty good, isn’t it? That’s all I had ever seen of this movie up until a few days ago. It was one of those situation where I had rented it on VHS but put off watching it and had to choose between returning it late and having to pay more money or take advantage of a ride to the video store to be able to get something new. GUESS WHAT I CHOSE. Hint: I chose to return this movie after only watching it for half an hour. I think you see boobs in those first thirty minutes so why did I care? I was never in too big of a rush to check this out, but I saw some people talking about it online the other day, and since I saw that this movie was available to watch online, it wasn’t too bad of a way to spend 108 minutes. Also, it’s John Carpenter. JOHN GODDAMNED CARPENTER. That’s guy’s pretty great.

Bet you wish you had that creepy gun hand thing to get ya out of this one, don’t ya?

Jack Crow (James Woods) is the leader of a ragtag group of vampire hunters who are performing a raid on a house where they think there’s a master vampire. They can’t find that master, but they are still able to kill a whole bunch of them, so they celebrate in a nearby town with a bunch of loose women. The master vampire shows up at this party and kills most of the people there, including Jack’s team, but Jack is able to save Katrina (Sheryl Lee) after she gets sex-attacked by the master. Apparently this caused a psychic connection between her and the master vampire and Jack exploits this to track him down, despite knowing Katrina will ultimately become a vampire. Who is funding this vampire hunting team, you ask? Why the Catholic church, of course! Jack’s team has been reduced to himself, Katrina, a new and inexperienced priest named Father Adam Guiteau (Tim Guinee), and Anthony Montoya (Daniel Baldwin). These four are able to track down the master vampire’s whereabouts and perform another raid to kill a bunch of vampires, but the master vampire gets the drop on Jack and tries to use him in some ceremony that has something to do with sunrise and a giant cross, who the fuck knows. It’s vampire stuff. Luckily, Father Guiteau and Montoya are able to intervene, but not until after Montoya is bitten, but that doesn’t stop them from defeating the master vampire and freeing Jack. Hooray! Humans beat the vampires! There’s then some sad, sappy teamwork music being played as Jack and Montoya have a conversation about how they’l always be bros or some shit, and Montoya and Katrina take their vampire love on the road for a two day headstart. Jack and Father Guiteau then get an opportunity for some witty banter and the credits fade in.

Looks like Laura Palmer’s UNdead, am I right?! Because of that TV show? Twin Peaks? Where she plays Laura Palmer? And Laura Palmer is dead? Listen, if you don’t get it by now, then I give up.

Have I mentioned before that I don’t really care for vampire movies? Of course I have, I say it every goddamned time I watch a vampire movie. The only one that comes to mind that I actually like is 30 Days of Night, which mostly has to do with those vampires being portrayed as monsters instead of some sexy goth dudes. That was something that Vampires had going for it, as there was no sexiness on the part of the vampires. Another thing that it had going for it was that it was fun, violent, and James Woods was awesome. It was more of an adventure movie from 80’s era John Carpenter than it was a “horror” movie. I can just imagine how awesome this movie could have been had Kurt Russell been in it. Not to take anything away from Mr. Woods or anything, because he was good in the part, but you got that action/adventure/comedy vibe that John Carpenter and Kurt Russell really nailed with Big Trouble in Little China. Almost all of the special effects were practical, which for 1998, was pretty awesome. That was right around the time where CGI really started overpowering horror movies, so it was great to see Carpenter completely ignoring that trend with his effects. Another awesome thing was that Carpenter was responsible for the score, which is another reminder of some of his movies from the 80’s. Maybe it was because I had kept thinking of Carpenter’s hits from the 80’s that I couldn’t totally get behind this movie, but it was cool to see him making another “fun” horror movie that late in his career. Maybe you vampire lovers will like this more than I did.

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