Retro-Shock Theater: Vampires (1998)

With the final installment of the Twilight saga now out, horror fans seeking some counterbalance might be craving a film slightly less sympathetic towards bloodsuckers and less interested in wooing the teen girl demographic. To that end, I recommend John Carpenter’s Vampires.

Based on the novel “Vampire$” by John Steakley, Vampires saw Carpenter indulging his long time love of westerns as hard as he ever has. This is a straight up cowboy and Indians style story with James Woods starring as Jack Crow, a vampire slayer under employment by the Vatican who leads a team of fellow slayers in a covert, Catholic Church-endorsed campaign to purge vampires from the face of the earth.

Crow and his crew do a brisk business ferreting out vampire nests and they’ve got a pretty efficient system going for wasting “goons” that involves spearing them in their nests and dragging them out via steel cables on a winch into the sunlight but when Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), the king of all vampires, puts his boot down hard on Team Crow in a surprise ambush, killing all but Crow himself and Crow’s right hand man Tony Montoya (Daniel Baldwin), Vampires becomes about Crow’s single minded hunt for Valek.

Making this about more than payback is the fact that Valek is in pursuit of a holy item known as the Bérziers Cross that will figure into a ceremony that will give vampires the power to walk in the daylight. And if that happens, then it’s game over for humanity.

Caught up in this battle is Katrina (Sheryl Lee), a hooker who was partying with Team Crow on the night they were decimated and who was bit by Valek. Katrina hasn’t turned all the way yet but the psychic connection she now shares with Valek is something that Crow believes he can use to his advantage. Katrina is dragged against her will along with Crow and Montoya in the hopes that she’ll be able to get them close to Valek before it’s too late. Just to make sure things go smoothly, the Vatican assigns a young priest named Father Adam (Tim Guinee), an archivist for the church, to tag along with Crow.

Of course, the pursuit of Valek proves to be anything but a smooth operation and by the end of it all, loyalty and faith are tested, old bonds are severed and new ones are formed. The action in Vampires lacks the sort of state-of-the-art pizzazz that most modern action pictures strive for (released just a few months earlier, Blade offered a much more stylish slice of vampire slaying) but on the plus side, everything in Vampires is accomplished with practical gags and stunt work. Every inch of this movie is old school – there’s not a single frame of CGI to be found. The vampires are depicted with minimal makeup work and when they burst into flames, it’s not rendered with CG (something that was common even on TV by then with vampires crumbling into CG dust on Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Vampires is not about spectacle and splatter (even if KNB do come through impressively in that regard – with one of the best gags involving the vertical bisection of one character) so much as it is about the ways that each character finds themselves tested. Carpenter cares less about carnage (the climactic battle is depicted not in an orgy of FX but rather by the off-camera sounds of gunshots and screams) and more about where the characters end up by the movie’s end and how their relationships to each other have been changed.

Much of this choice in focus is no doubt due to budgetary considerations. There was no way that this modestly priced movie ever had the means to compete head to head with top of the line, big studios action pictures but Carpenter wisely didn’t even try. Instead, he and screenwriter Don Jakoby kept the focus on the small cast, giving each of their arcs a distinct meaning.

At the heart of Vampires is the long time friendship between Crow and Montoya and how Katrina and Father Adam both figure into, and ultimately change, that once-insular dynamic. Vampires is a very profane film, filled to the brim with f-bombs and derogatory slurs. It’s been accused of misogyny, homophobia (at one point, Crow taunts Valek by calling him a “pole smoking fashion victim.”), anti-Catholism and general surliness. And, on the surface, it’s true that there is an awful lot of crude attitude on display.

Carpenter’s filmography is famously host to its share of anti-heroes with harsh demeanors but Crow is in a league of his own. Even aside from the very ungallant way he treats Katrina, the physical abuse he personally delivers to (the wholly sympathetic) Father Adam during the course of the film is astonishing. Beating the meek priest at what seems like almost every turn, for various minor infractions, he stops just short of curb stomping him (nowhere else in the annals of film, by the way, is there another movie in which the hero kicks a priest across the dirt like a dog and then afterwards asks if that savage beating sexually aroused him). And Montoya is every bit as thuggish as Crow, as his treatment of Katrina attests.

It’s hard to argue with viewers who find all of this too much to take. Perhaps Vampires was Carpenter’s retort to the rise of the PC mentality in the ‘90s. Who knows? And yet, underneath all the machismo and displays of bad behavior, there lies an unmistakable streak of sentiment. Crow and Montoya aren’t the type of men to ever sit around and talk about their feelings and yet there is a deep connection between them and their final parting scene is every bit as heartfelt as the goodbye at the end of Carpenter’s Starman. Well, that is if Starman had also ended with one character promising to hunt down and kill the other after a brief grace period. But still...

Vampires proved to be a modest hit back in the fall of 1998 but it got a lot of flak and derision as well. That’s par for the course for a Carpenter movie as, more often than not, they have to exist awhile before they’re appreciated but now almost fifteen years since its release, the scrappy Vampires isn’t looking long in the tooth at all. In fact, I see a hint of immortality in it.

Originally published 11/16/12 at Shock Till You Drop

Trick or Trailers: Vampires (1998)

Back in the '90s, it was still a given that any new John Carpenter film would open in theaters. No question. Even though he hadn't had a hit in a while, whenever a new movie from him would arrive, there was hope that this would be his "comeback" and Vampires kind of fit the bill in that regard. Released on October 30th, 1998, it opened at #1 at the box office. By its second week, though, it had dropped considerably with the Halloween weekend that had boosted its profile now past and with it getting poor word of mouth due to the fact that it was more of a western than a horror film.

For me, though, this remains one of my favorite Carpenter efforts. Late-era Carpenter has been enjoying a renewed appreciation over the past few years and among that bunch, Vampires definitely rates a more favorable reputation.

James Woods' performance as misogynistic, misanthropic, homophobic and all-together ill-tempered vampire hunter Jack Crow has received criticism for going too far even for a John Carpenter anti-hero, a character that some find abrasive to the point of offensiveness. While it's true that he's way over-the-top, I enjoy Woods' comically surly, doggedly anti-PC approach and I like the chemistry he has with the much more laconic Daniel Baldwin.

As a fan who (somewhat greedily) wishes that Carpenter was still active (well, a little more active, at least) and still getting his films into theaters, it bums me out that we live in a world where we're not likely to ever see another new Carpenter film on the big screen again. At this point it seems like his career has, for the most part, run its course. It might seem unfair to those of us who'd like to see more from him but from interviews, Carpenter seems perfectly content these days and as any undead bloodsucker would be quick to point out, everyone's time in the sun has to end sooner or later.

The legacy of a great body of work, though, is eternal.

The Gentlemen's Guide To Vampire Slaying

With rare exception, John Carpenter's films have traditionally met with disdain or indifference and have had to wait - sometimes for years - to be embraced by fans and critics. Thirteen years after its release, I think it's time to get an answer on 1998's Vampires.

Of Carpenter's latter-day pictures, Vampires is usually held up as proof that, even if he isn't coming up with a classic like The Thing, he's still got some chops. But fans of the John Steakley novel Vampire$ insist that Carpenter squandered the potential of the book. Still others fault Vampires for indulging in misogyny, citing the abuse that Sheryl Lee's character suffers throughout the movie.

I can't speak as to whether Vampires does its source novel justice because I've never read it but the misogyny charge is more easily addressed. The bottom line is that it's kind of a bum rap. Oh sure, the hooker character of Katrina that Lee plays isn't exactly treated like a lady but her abuse at the hands of James Woods' merciless vampire slayer Jack Crow has been misreported and misremembered. The character that Crow really uses his pimp hand on is Father Adam Guiteau (Tim Guinee), a young priest assigned to aid Team Crow.

Reviews of Vampires commonly cite the ugly incidents of abuse regarding Lee's character (a recent mention of Vampires in Fangoria noted that "seeing hooker Sheryl Lee getting the crap beaten out of her every five minutes ain't funny") but the actual film tells a slightly different story. In the wake of a car crash, Crow slaps the recently bitten Katrina a couple of times to get her to wake up and walk. Later, he pulls open her mouth to check for fangs and then pushes her face away when he's done but there's none of the beat-downs that some people seem to remember. The only time that Katrina is struck by anyone is when Crow's right hand man Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) slaps her after she's infected him with a vampire bite.

Contrast that with the abuse that Father Adam receives. This poor milquetoast gets the full treatment. At one point, Crow violently yanks him out of the passenger seat of the truck he's in, throws him down on the side of the road, and kicks him across the dirt as he helplessly tries to crawl away. Later, in a hotel room, when Father Adam attempts to make a phone call to Cardinal Alba (Maximilian Schell), Crow takes the phone from Father Adam and cracks him across the face with it, sending him flying into a nearby wall. Still later, there's a confrontation in another hotel where Crow is looking to get information out of Father Adam and he chokes him, stuffs a washcloth in his mouth, then takes a knife and slices open his hand. I believe he also delivers a punch to his gut sometime during all this. Crow doesn't have the time to beat the shit out of Katrina - he's got his hands full with Father Adam.

Some would say that any way you look at it, Crow is just too unlikable and that Carpenter made a miscalculation in letting his behavior be so over the top. Carpenter is no stranger to anti-heroes but even many fans of Napoleon Wilson and Snake Plissken find Jack Crow to be too much to stomach. I say that Vampires does have its faults but that its abrasive characters aren't one of them. While I wouldn't refer to the movie as camp, there's clearly an element of over-the-top humor here that has gone slightly unappreciated. I mean, when you have a nice Catholic priest being beaten like a dog and then afterwards be asked by his abuser if that sexually aroused him, you've got to concede that the movie is deliberately crossing a line.

A case could be made that Carpenter let Woods improv a little too much, allowing him to play his role like a parody of a macho hard-ass (in contrast, Baldwin delivers a sincere, low-key performance as the loyal Montoya) but it's also hard to deny that his performance helps to make Vampires memorable. Even if it sometimes feels as if he's trying too hard to get a laugh ("Garlic? You wanna try garlic? You could stand there with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you fucking over and take a walk up your strada-chocolata!"), at the end of the day you've got James Woods as a vampire hunter so even if it isn't perfect, it's still pretty awesome.

From the start, Carpenter has shown a kinship with anti-authority figures - from criminals to rock and rollers - and Vampires may represent his most gleeful celebration of that rebel streak (it's neck and neck with 1996's Escape from L.A. - sending the whole planet into the Dark Ages is awfully hard to top as a "fuck you"). In the wake of L.A.'s failure to reestablish him as a commercial force, Vampires seems to be a case of Carpenter acknowledging, with a middle finger held high, that he's out of step with Hollywood, out of step with the public, out of step with what's fashionable, and not giving a fuck about any of it. This is not a movie that was made by someone looking to ingratiate himself to the masses.

At the time of its release, Vampires suffered from comparison with the much slicker Blade, which had proceeded it into theaters by a few months. That film was state-of-the-art in a way that the lower-budgeted Vampires wasn't and I think that initial perception of not being "top of the line" still haunts Vampires. But while Vampires' action isn't so hot (watching one vampire after another be dragged out of their nest via a steel cable gets to be sluggish), the practical FX from KNB are nicely accomplished. More importantly, the relationships between the characters play out in a satisfying fashion and that's something that doesn't date with the passing years.

Yeah, in the short run it might have been cool if a bigger budget had allowed Vampires to compete head on with other films in the market then but I still love it when Father Adam steps up and blows a hole through the traitorous Cardinal Alba's chest, or when Montoya fights on after having his neck ripped open and he rides to Crow's rescue.

Those are the moments where Vampires' heart lies and whether the film is ever seen as classic Carpenter or not, that's something that time won't be able to drive a stake through.