John Carpenters Vampires 720p Movies
Alke Stilwell
(CNN) -- I think we need to explore the misguided concept that John Carpenter is enough of a hot-shot director to have his name included in the titles of his silly movies. We don't even get "Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas" or "Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List," for heaven's sake. Those guys are brilliant; you try making "Schindler's List." Carpenter, on the other hand, is repeatedly cited as being a Master of Horror, but I can't think of a type of film that sports more supposed "masters" than that particular genre.
Stephen King, Wes Craven, Dean Koontz, George Romero, Clive Barker -- the list gets longer all the time. I can't even remember the name of the guy who wrote "Scream," but you can bet your ass I know he's a Visionary, with the capital "v" conveniently forced into our heads by studio marketing departments. Evidently, all you have to do to be received into the Knighthood is participate in more than one high-grossing film that features somebody getting nailed in the face or neck with a sharp object.
Yes, Carpenter made "Halloween" 20 years ago, and, yes, it's pretty good as far as that kind of thing goes. But "John Carpenter's Vampires?!" Anybody remember Carpenter's "The Fog," "Christine," "They Live," "In the Mouth of Madness," or that stupendously boring remake of "Village of the Damned?" I sure wish I didn't.
So, "John Carpenter's Vampires" stinks, and "Paul Tatara's Review of John Carpenter's Vampires" won't be a review so much as it'll be a check list for posturing teenage boys. Scares in the '90s aren't measured by the skillfully crafted, mounting sense of dread that you can find in Hitchcock, or even the first two "Alien" movies. Nowadays, people just jump out of the dark all of a sudden and screech (cheap scare) or creatively disembowel screeching second-string actors (more gross than actually frightening.) Couple that with a veneer of macho stylishness, and you've got yourself a relative facsimile of a motion picture.
James Woods, who apparently has bills to pay, plays an incredibly cool vampire killer named Jack Crow. I don't think he's incredibly cool, but he does all kinds of stuff during the movie that seems designed solely to excite the corpuscles of ravenous dumb horror connoisseurs, the younger and less mind-agile the better. Jack's trying to snuff a super-duper 600-year-old ghoul (played by Thomas Ian Griffith) who looks a lot like Adam Ant did during his "musically untalented pirate" period.
The movie's first several minutes (which feature a gaggle of vampires being butchered, followed in short order by the butchering of the butchers themselves) is as blood-gushing as anything in the equally lame-brained "Blade," but is presented in a much more realistic manner as far as blood-and-guts go. And Carpenter must be convinced that they go real far.
- Talking Tough -- No 15-year-old worth his salt will blanche at Jack's gutter-mouthed attitude towards his work. He's one mean, itty-bitty cigar smokin' hombre, spitting out his inane code of anti-ethics with as much needless bile as humanly possible. Jack doesn't get along with anybody, except for maybe his assistant (played by Daniel Baldwin), and even he gets glared at a lot.
- Walking Cool -- Everybody in the movie walks cool. This denotes stylish world-weariness in the un-dead as well as the plain old living. Basically, the hands have to hang stiffly to the side, and the hips need to sway suggestively as you slowly walk directly towards, or directly away from, the camera. If you have a long leather coat, wear it, and make sure it flaps in the wind. CLICHE WARNING: At one point Jack ups the cool ante by casually strolling away from a building as it explodes, sending debris flying everywhere. However -- and this is pivotal -- Jack doesn't look back when the explosion hits. He's simply too cool to do that.
- Consorting With Hookers -- Nothing says "I'm a hipster" more than a needlessly semi-nude bodacious babe. Jack and his short-lived team of vampire killers have tons of them running around their hotel room, some with bare breasts, most wearing tight shorty-shorts that ride up every available crevice, and all looking like they're ready to peel off and pound away at a moment's notice. This includes a working girl played by Sheryl Lee who, after getting chomped on her inner thigh by the befanged Adam Ant impersonator, proceeds to slowly evolve into a flesh-oriented sucker of an entirely different sort.
- Priest Abuse -- I admit this is a new one, but it happens so much in the movie it might be that somebody out in L.A. determined its untapped commercial potential. You can bet your rosary if a priest shows up, either Jack or a vampire is gonna slap him around or embarrass him for the sheer sport of it. One guy literally gets his head swatted off. Another one is kicked across the road and has a gun held on him. Later, the same guy is purposefully slashed with a knife and has another gun stuck in his face. I guess it's also fun to include priests in light-hearted joshing about sexual mechanics, since it happens more than once. I was bitterly disappointed that nobody got folded up and crammed into a tabernacle.
- Kill-kill-kill, Daddy-o -- All kinds of necks get snapped. A vampire jabs his arm through one dude's torso, then proceeds to strangle the girl on the other side of the initial victim. One man literally gets cut in half -- vertically. Vampires get shot by hundreds of rounds of ammo, all in one serving. If they aren't dead after that, they get a big spike slowly driven through their chests ... unless, of course, a spike is driven through their forehead. At one point, in order to keep his dead friends from turning into vampires, Woods cuts their noggins off and buries them in the desert. You get to see it, too, because John Carpenter cares about you, dammit.
As foul as it is, I'd argue that the main reason kids shouldn't see "John Carpenter's Vampires" is because it might stunt their emotional development. Sex, nudity, offensive language, violence, rah-rah-rah, sis-boom-bah. Rated R. 107 minutes.
I don't tend to think much about the 1998 John Carpenter film Vampires. The fact I remember it at all is simply because it was a movie that came out when I got deep into horror as a teenager and then saw the box a lot when I worked at a video store. It was a vampire film for my era, which makes it tragic that the film sucks. A really good vampire film from that time would have stuck with me better, it'd be something I hold up as essential watching for any vampire fan (you know, like The Forsaken). Instead I got John Carpenter's Vampires. It's tragic.
Related to that point, though, is the fact that no one really was expecting a sequel to that film. The original barely made back its $20 Mil budget in theaters, not counting whatever they spent on advertising, and could could considered a bomb both critically and financially. It is not the kind of film that screams "sequel me!" And yet, four year later, a sequel it did get. Yes, it's direct-to-video, and it doesn't feature any of the original cast, or even John Carpenter in a directorial role. It was sold on the merits of his name, and Vampires brand, such as it was. Apparently someone out there thought a Vampires sequel was a good idea. I don't know who that would have been at the time but, honestly, the end result isn't as bad as you might expect.
A very loose sequel to the original film, Vampires: Los Muertos (which just means "the dead", which, yes, thank you for that pointless subtitle, movie) follows Derek Bliis (Jon Bon Jovi while he was in his acting phase), a freelance vampire hunter. After the events of the previous movie most vampire hunting left the control of the Church, getting doled out to freelancers like Derek, people good at killing vamps who want nothing more than to stake the undead and collect a paycheck after. Having killed plenty of vampires, Derek is just the right guy to take out a really nasty master: Una (Arly Jover), a queen running around Mexico and the southern U.S. Derek is brought in for this kill but he is told he needs a team for it because Una is too much for any one hunter to kill.
Derek then heads on a road trip (surfboard strapped to the back of his jeep for some reason) to collect the rest of his new crew. Only problem: every time he gets close to one of these guys he finds that Una has already gotten there first. Soon enough he begins to suspect that Una is stalking hunters specifically, purposefully killing all the people that might be able to stop her. The only killers he can get is another freelancer from up-state, Ray Collins (Darius McCrary), a young kid who tags along, Sancho (Diego Luna), the only priest to survive a massacre by Una's hands, Father Rodrigo (Cristian de la Fuente), and a half-vampire working to fight off her own infection with a special drug cocktail, Zoey (Natasha Gregson Wagner). This team is all that stands between Una, her plans to become a daywalker, and the fates of the rest of the world.
As far as connections to the original film, Los Muertos is tenuous at best. There's no mention of previous characters, the setup for finding vampires is different, and the Church is hardly a factor here at all. The only thing that marks this as a direct sequel in any way is that Una, the master vampire, wants to get her hands on the dark cross (and a priest that knows the ritual) so she can turn herself into a daywalker. That plot-line is our one concession to what came before.
Frankly, though, having as little to do with the original film as possible only works to this film's benefit. The original Vampires was an awful film in all respects, equal parts stupid and misogynistic, ugly in a way that makes the film hard to watch now. James Woods is a terrible person as well as a bad actor, and having him headlining that film made the whole affair that much worse. Bon Jovi might not be a great actor (he's a tad flat here) but he doesn't have any of the baggages of Woods which automatically makes him a better hero for this film. It does also help that a couple of decent actors (Wagner and Luna) are in here, giving this film some real talent and credibility.
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