John Carpenter's Vampires

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month, I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, and some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc. 

SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.

JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES

Look, I've watched John Carpenter's Vampires probably seven or eight times now. That should tell you something right there – it's not a good movie, but I keep coming back to it. I don't know what that says about me, but here we are talking about this 1998 picture that I simultaneously love and hate.

James Woods plays Jack Crow, a church sponsored vampire hunter who leads a team through the New Mexico desert hunting vampire nests. The setup is actually pretty solid: Crow and his crew, including Daniel Baldwin's Tony Montoya (and yes, it's Daniel, not Stephen Baldwin like I initially thought), use modified crossbows with harpoons to drag vampires out into the sunlight where they burst into flames. It's a brutal approach to vampire hunting that strips away all the gothic romance we usually associate with vampire films, and this is something I love.

After successfully wiping out a nest, the team celebrates at a local motel with what you'd expect from a bunch of vampire hunters blowing off steam – booze, women, etc. That's when the master vampire, Valek (played by Thomas Ian Griffith), crashes the party and slaughters nearly everyone. The only survivors are Crow, Montoya, and Katrina (Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer on Twin Peaks), a prostitute who gets bitten during the massacre and slowly begins transforming throughout the film.

This is where the film goes in a few different directions for me. Katrina's psychic connection to Valek becomes the key to tracking him down, but she's also turning into a vampire herself. It creates this ticking clock element that should build tension, but the film never quite capitalizes on it. Meanwhile, we learn that Valek is seeking the ancient Black Cross of Béziers to complete a ritual that would make him immune to sunlight – essentially making him unstoppable. Turns out the church is involved and Jack is finally able to slay Valek with the Black Cross. The film ends with Jack giving Montoya and Katrina a two-day head start as he must now hunt them down.

The problem isn't the plot, which actually works pretty well on paper. It's everything else. Baldwin's performance is particularly weak, delivering lines like "Hang in there, kid" when someone's literally dying from vampirism. These big emotional moments fall completely flat because the dialogue just doesn’t deliver. Even James Woods, who I love in films like Casino, seems uncertain about what movie he's supposed to be in. He's a great actor, but I never buy him as this grizzled vampire hunter.

Carpenter has said he wanted to make his horror-Western, drawing inspiration from Howard Hawks and specifically Red River. You can see those influences in the desert setting and the "hired guns" mentality of the vampire hunters. Vampires feels surprisingly hollow. The film is all surface-level coolness without any of the emotional depth that makes great Westerns work.

The vampire design is particularly disappointing. Valek looks like every generic vampire you've seen – pale skin, long dark hair, fangs, and a leather coat. For a director who created Michael Myers and The Thing, this feels pretty lame. There's nothing particularly frightening about him, which is a problem when your entire film builds toward this confrontation with the ultimate evil.

That said, there are moments that work. The vampire hunting sequences are unique and fun to watch. Watching these creatures get dragged screaming into sunlight has real impact. The film's violence is brutal and unflinching, which serves the Western tone Carpenter was going for. And Sheryl Lee does it for me as Katrina, bringing some genuine believability to the scenes.

Vampires was adapted from John Steakley's 1990 novel of the same name, though Carpenter and his co-writer made significant changes. The book apparently has much more character development and explores the mythology more thoroughly. The author himself said the film kept his dialogue but none of his plot, which might explain why the movie is what it is.

Despite my constant complaints, I keep watching this film. Maybe it's because I desperately want it to be better than it is. Carpenter's influence on horror cinema is undeniable – Halloween, The Thing, The Fog – these are landmark films that are meaningful to me. Vampires feels like it should be in that company, and I love vampire movies, so I want this combo to be successful.

Is it worth watching? If you're a Carpenter completist or a vampire film enthusiast, probably. There are worse ways to spend two hours, and the practical effects work is solid. But if you're looking for either a great Western or a genuinely scary vampire film, forget it.

Vampires is the kind of film that makes you appreciate how difficult it is to successfully blend genres. Carpenter took two things he loved – Westerns and horror – and couldn't quite make them work together. The result is a film that's neither particularly scary nor satisfying as a Western, but somehow remains watchable despite its flaws.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back to it. It's a swing and a miss from a master filmmaker, and sometimes those can be more interesting than straightforward successes. John Carpenter, we love you, buddy, but this one just doesn't quite get there.

Enjoy the trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSfGOdPSvPQ