Vampires (John Carpenter's)

Unfortunately this Halloween season wasn’t the greatest for me.  I did come across a new classic in Hellraiser III and enjoyed The invisible Man but everything else that I watched was shitty or mediocre.  So I guess I don’t recommend It’s Alive, House (1986), Ginger Snaps, Dark Tower, The Resurrected, The House of the Devil, Video Dead or Subspecies.  I didn’t find anything too special about those films.  And after many years I finally brought myself to check out Memoirs of an Invisible Man.  It was the only John Carpenter feature that I still hadn’t seen (and I still need to watch his TV movie Elvis and the segment he did for Body Bags).  Memoirs is probably his worst film because it fails to be either funny or dramatically engaging.  If I didn’t know this was a John Carpenter joint I never would’ve guessed it was made by him.  But I can’t fault him for trying something different so in one respect it’s interesting to see how Carpenter handles a comedy adventure type movie.  Ok I’m sure you’re asking yourself by now, “why all of this introduction?”  Well after striking out with the pictures listed above I wanted to ensure that I had a surefire hit to watch on Halloween itself.  So I chose to go with Vampires and Frankenstein (1931), something new(ish) and something old.  I hadn’t seen either in a pretty long while so they were due.  Frankenstein is still great and it’s by the same director as The Invisible Man, James Whale.  It’s quick and concise but also packs in a boatload of good drama especially when it comes to the monster.  The scene with him and the little girl is so goddamn heartbreaking.  It’s definitely worth seeing and better than I remembered.  Vampires on the other hand was pretty much how I remembered but that one calls for more detail so let’s get into it.

The church (apparently going as high as the Vatican) enlists and trains slayers to wipe out vampires.  But these guys aren’t some yahoos that stumble upon the things and then have to try to defend themselves.  These badass dudes are elite vampire hunters and killers.  They have tools, armor, training, knowledge, priests and even a set of rules to help them battle these bloodsuckers or “goons” as the movie likes to refer to them.  I like that term by the way and I think it should be used more often in vampire pictures or any horror picture really.  Anyway, one day a master vampire (yes there is a hierarchy of vampires in this film) shows up in the American southwest looking for a black cross.  He needs it to complete a ritual so that he can go out in the daylight and not get burned up.  Only one guy can stop him and that one guy is none other than James fucking Woods (Cop, Another Day in Paradise).

I’m not even sure if I can accurately describe to you how strange I think it is that James Woods is our lead for this thing but I’ll give it a shot.  First of all when you think James Woods you don’t necessarily think of “action star” or “horror maestro”.  I mean he’s intense as fuck but you don’t see him too often running around shooting guns and getting in hand to hand fights.  He has done that stuff but it’s more like the third or fourth thing to come to mind.  Second, he’s kinda old.  He was 51 when he did Vampires and when he stands there among his men in his black leather jacket over black shirt, jeans, black boots and sunglasses holding a silver crossbow in his black gloved hands he just doesn’t look very intimidating.  Maybe it’s because he doesn’t look very tall or muscular compared to the rest of his gang, maybe the crossbow is a bit too big.  I’m not sure.  Whatever it is he does look cool but just not fearsome.   And third, he’s a fast talking wise cracker that could bring you out the movie easily.  Fortunately he restrains himself fairly well throughout and this last part isn’t much of an issue, most likely because of Carpenter’s direction.  But with all of that said I can’t deny that I absolutely love James Woods.  And I think Carpenter actually turns all of those cons that I just listed to work to his advantage in this film. 

Here’s the main reason why those negatives don’t matter, even though I said that Woods doesn’t look terribly tough when he’s just standing around that’s all forgotten about when he springs into action.  Woods earns his “badass motherfucker” badge because he shoots vampires in the face at point blank range, stabs them in the forehead with a giant stake, blows their hands off, nails them in the heart with his crossbow and strikes a match on one of their charred skulls to light his cigar.  Fuckin’ a.  I love how Woods yells out “Die die fucking die!” when he’s killing these sonsabitches, I love that he’s so serious when it comes to dealing with them never letting his guard down, I love that he doesn’t wear any armor while the rest of his men are all covered up and I love that he doesn’t care what he has to do or who he has to hurt in order to kill the master vampire.  Any preconceived notions you (meaning “I”) have about Woods’ toughness and/or his age are erased after the opening scene.  But I want to say that he wouldn’t work as well if he had to carry the whole movie by himself so Carpenter was smart enough to give him an (almost) equal.  You see Woods really co-stars with Daniel Baldwin (Nothing But Trouble, Mulholland Falls) in this.  Both seem to have about equal screen time and both roles are very important.  Woods represents the older, wiser and more experienced slayer while Baldwin represents the slightly younger, cockier and brawny understudy.  They complement each other nicely.  And they say “fuck” a helluva lot.  Any movie becomes at least a little more fun when the characters curse a bunch and I really think that adds to the badass atmosphere in this.  Almost every conversation each of them have involves a couple of fucks.  Like when Woods is assessing the situation towards the end of the film he says, “he’s got…the biggest nest of blood drinking motherfuckers the world has ever known”, when Baldwin is stealing a guy’s (Frank Darabont (Dir: The Shawshank Redemption)) car he yells at him “shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your fucking teeth out of the back of your head asshole”, and even when he’s getting a hotel room he says “what’s the fucking total guy?”.  It’s music to these ears.

Thomas Ian Griffith (The Karate Kid Part III) is pretty cool as the main villain Valek.  He has maybe five lines in the whole movie but he has presence and the scene where he rips a hotel room full of people to shreds is fucking great.  I liked that they used Griffith’s stoicism for maximum effect.  What makes these vampires work so well is that they’re savages and like wild animals.  There’s practically no human part of them left so you can’t negotiate or even talk to them.  All they know is to kill. 

So we got badass leads, a formidable bad guy and a great premise what could go wrong?  Well most of it does come together.  Carpenter essentially made a western but used slayers instead of cowboys and vampires instead of Indians or cattle rustlers or hired guns or greedy landowners or whatever other villains there are in westerns.  That whole aspect of it works and I like that Carpenter isn’t that subtle with his hints that this is an overlay for a western.  The slayers are the posse and when they get ambushed our hero and his partner have to find out who did it.  The film takes place in the southwest somewhere which is typical of a western, our leads are more like drifters that go from town to town looking for trouble, there’s a lot of gun toting and shooting and there’s also a search and destroy mentality to it that you find in movies like Unforgiven and For a Few Dollars More.  I love that Carpenter merged two kick ass subjects together (pretty successfully) in this piece.

The part of this movie that I have a problem with is the middle third.  The first third is the best part and the last third is pretty good but not incredible.  The middle third is where the film slows down a bit too much and we go through a long period of trying to find out who this villain is and what he’s up to.  That’s all fine but if there was another fight with Woods and Baldwin against some vampires in there then this would’ve improved the movie a great deal in my opinion.  But apparently the budget was slashed significantly before filming so who knows what had to have been cut.  The reduced budget also probably explains the odd number of montages in this one.  Carpenter doesn’t do that sort of thing and in Vampires he has a total of seven.  I’m not sure if he meant to do that from the start wanting to try out something new or as a way to work within his budget.  The last fight between the vampires and the slayers should have been an awesome climax that went on for a while with tons of blood and carnage but instead we just see the vampires running for cover in a montage.  That’s the worst example and really the only one that doesn’t work.  It’s obvious that there was meant to be a big battle to cap the picture but alas we don’t get it.  That’s a real shame.

Even with some of the flaws that this film has it’s pure John Carpenter.  Although, I still don’t understand why he switched to live instruments and hard rock music for his soundtracks a la Escape from L.A. instead of using his signature synth sound a la Escape from New York.  That never made a lot of sense to me.  But I’ve learned to accept it as part of who he is now.

To round this piece out here are a couple of things I found interesting.  In keeping with Carpenter tradition the opening scene is part of the main story.  I mean it serves to show us who these guys are and how they roll but they’re at this house for a reason, they’re looking for this master vampire.  I like that we’re thrown into the main story instead of having a scene just for the purpose of demonstrating how badass the slayers and vampires are, although I like that too.  Another thing I found interesting was the scene where Woods is telling his newly recruited priest the rules for vampires.  He explains that shit like crosses and garlic don’t work and that they don’t turn into bats and on and on.  It’s nice to have these things laid out for us but there seem to be some inconsistencies like Woods forgets to mention that these vampires can move like a freight train.  This trait is only used once though (or twice if you count the part where Valek actually rides a freight train) so I don’t quite get why it was included at all if it wasn’t going to be used more often or be integral to the plot in some way.  The vampires also have superhuman strength but Woods makes it seem at one point that only Valek has this power even though the other vampires are clearly very strong and can at least jump very high in the air.  This characteristic is actually used throughout the film so I’m alright with that one.  But during this conversation with the priest Woods says something that I don’t like and it’s the line, “forget whatever you’ve seen in the movies”.  I don’t understand why a line like that pops up now and again in some horror flick.  I get that it’s to try and convince you like the shit you’re watching is how it would go down in real life but are we not watching a movie right now?  It’s a bad cheesy line that actually takes me out of the film instead of sucking me in.  Just my personal pet peeve.

If you’re a Carpenterant and you haven’t seen this then you gotta get on it right away.  I love this film for what it could have been and for what it is.  The opening vampire raid including the part where the camera zooms in on Woods as he stares at the house and simultaneously the camera zooms in on the house like Woods is preparing for battle, like he’s becoming one with the house and the evil in it, is pure magic.  Also Woods’ name in this is Jack Crow.  I feel like you don’t see a name like that in action movies today (the few that are made).  When this picture is good it’s exquisite.  When it’s not so good it’s still entertaining and at least engaging on some level.  So of course you should see this.