At first glance, you might think that A Vampire in Brooklyn looks terrible. On second or third glance, you might be sure of it. But, really, it wasn't that bad. Now, admittedly, I haven't seen it since it opened on October 27th, 1995, but I remember being surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Or at least by how much I didn't hate it. While the box office was weak, the film itself was actually solid, if lightweight, and Eddie Murphy didn't play it campy at all. He's as sincere in his performance as Johnny Depp was in Dark Shadows.
Genre-wise, the fall of '95 was dominated by Seven and Copycat and compared to those two grim thrillers, a "comic tale of horror and seduction" looked way too corny to bother with and, in turn, most audiences didn't. Copycat, in fact, opened the same day as A Vampire in Brooklyn and was easily the bigger draw on Halloween weekend.
Both Craven and Murphy rebounded with some of the biggest successes of their careers - Craven with Scream and Murphy with The Nutty Professor but A Vampire in Brooklyn deserves a little recognition as an entertaining entry in both their catalogs - even if it doesn't have much of a bite.
No comments:
Post a Comment