director
John Carpenter
screenwriter
Don Jakoby
based on
the novel Vampire$ by
John Steakley
producer
Sandy King
cinematographer
Gary B. Kibbe
music
John Carpenter
editor
Edward A. Warschilka
cast
James Woods (Jack Crow)
Daniel Baldwin (Montoya)
Sheryl Lee (Katrina)
Thomas Ian Griffith (Valek)
Maximilian Schell (Cardinal Alba)
Tim Guinee (Father Adam Guiteau)
Mark Boone Junior (Catlin)
Gregory Sierra (Father Giovanni)
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (David Deyo)
Thomas Rosales (Ortega)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 108m
u.s.
release: October 30,
1998
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
other john
carpenter films
reviewed on this website:
- escape
from l.a.
- escape
from new york
- ghosts
of mars
- halloween
- the
thing
|
Vampires isn't another John Carpenter horror
film -- it's another John Carpenter western. Carpenter will be
forever identified as the director of Halloween,
but, like his idol Howard Hawks, he won't be tied down to any
one genre, even within the same movie. Vampires delivers
on its title, but it's not really about bloodsuckers; it's about
gunslingers, mercenaries, screw-ups and psychos -- men who can
stare down supernatural horror, blow it away, and pop open a
beer. The movie is best understood, and enjoyed, as a classic
piece of bad-ass cinema, a remnant of a less touchy-feely age.
Bram Stoker, meet Sam Peckinpah.
These vampire hunters are realistically callous, rowdy, and ugly.
Led by the scowling Jack Crow (James Woods), they drag vampires
out into the sunlight to incinerate them, then celebrate with
booze and whores. (They work hard and they play hard.) One night,
though, their revels are interrupted by a sort of übervampire
-- Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), a vicious Master vampire with
the long black hair and long black overcoat of a decadent rock
star. Valek tears through the motel in a matter of minutes, leaving
Jack, his right-hand man Montoya (Daniel Baldwin), and a prostitute
named Katrina (Sheryl Lee) to tell the tale.
Jack, it so happens, is being bankrolled by the Vatican; the
Church has retained him to slay vampires, for reasons I won't
give away. The cardinal (Maximilian Schell) saddles Jack with
a young priest (Tim Guinee) to replace the one he just lost,
and James Woods' violently impatient clashes with this cringing
rookie are among his funniest on film. Woods plays Jack almost
as a sequel to his best performance, in Oliver Stone's Salvador;
Jack is like Richard Boyle ten years later, recast as a vamp-killer
with ambivalent feelings about the Church he grew up in. (Remember
Woods' great confession scene in Salvador? Jack Crow's
heated reaction to the mere mention of the word "confession"
may be something of an in-joke.)
The motley band of Jack, Montoya, Katrina, and the priest drive
around the desert, looking for Valek, who may soon convert at
least one of Team Crow to Team Valek. The script, credited to
Don Jakoby, takes most of the romance out of the pitiless vampires.
They're not remotely elegant or complex; if they see you, they
butcher you. They have to be cut down like rabid dogs -- or like
the zombies in a George Romero film. In some ways, Vampires
looks and feels different from other Carpenter movies -- it's
more frenetic, its visuals less studied than usual -- but its
grimly relentless tone is perfect Carpenter. All the vampires
do is kill. All the heroes do is kill vampires. In lesser hands,
this could become repetitive and dull; Carpenter plays small,
surprising variations throughout, as he does in his score for
the film.
If Carpenter's films tell you anything, it's that he loves slobby
anti-heroes who go in and get it done: Jack Crow has a long line
of ancestors including Snake Plissken, R.J. MacReady, Dr. Sam
Loomis, John Nada in They Live, Napoleon in Assault
on Precinct 13, going all the way back to the bored astronauts
in Dark Star, his first film. Vampires is grungy,
disreputable fun -- the kind of blood-and-tequila western that
can only be made nowadays when disguised as a horror movie. The
film gestures towards a deeper religious meaning, but what it's
really about is the showdown between good guys and bad guys --
no, make that bad guys and worse guys. |
