The evil is out there.
By Lawrence Schubert
"I am an atheist and a materialist," John Carpenter proclaims, and the director is one whose position rarely needs to be clarified. No fuzzy logic or slippery slopes for the man who has owned Halloween for the last two decades - but I wouldn't accept an apple from him without checking it for razor blades.
We're in a building built near the turn of the century, once the home to silent-film director Rupert (PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) Julian and, allegedly, Aleister (666 - THE BEAST) Crowley - and Carpenter looks right at home. The director has a stake in the Fall '98 release schedule with his latest nailbiter, JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES, the cozy saga of a posse of Vatican-funded vampire hunters in search of the original nosferatu, the infamous Valek, who ironically traces his cobwebbed lineage back to a botched exorcism in the Middle Ages.
Carpenter describes the film, filmed in the hinterlands of New Mexico, as "Southwestern Gothic," and with rotting wood and dried blood predominant, it's a description that's bound to stick. Thomas Ian Griffith plays the sexy, sepulchral Valek, and with his flowing locks, piercing eyes, and bone-white palor, he is bound to set the tanning industry back by a decade. Carpenter's sympathies however, are obviously with the hunters, and not the game.
"I never wanted to make a traditional vampire movie," Carpenter relates. "I was afraid of getting stuck in some Victorian costume drama, and that scared me to death. I wouldn't know what to do with that stuff. If you modernize the story, that gets a bit closer, but I didn't want the urban milieu either. It's too much like that TV series with Darren McGavin..."
"NIGHT STALKER!" I interject, with Fangoria-fueled excitement. Carpenter smiles indulgently and continues: "This story had the appeal of the Western to it [the film is based on the novel VAMPIRE$, by John Steakley], and I started to believe that perhaps these creatures could hide out there in the wide open spaces." The appeal of the Western cannot be underestimated in Carpenter's canon, because as any dilettanta will tell you, the director has been remaking RIO BRAVO in one way or another his entire career. (Carpenter is a noted Howard Hawks scholar and enthusiast, but this doesn't seem like a prudent time to ask about the homosexual subtext in Hawks's canon. Not unless I want a stake through my heart.)
"I grew up watching all the classic Universal monster movies on television," the director continues, "FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA, THE WOLFMAN... but the first one that really got me was when I was 10 years old and I saw THE HORROR OF DRACULA with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. First of all, it was in color. Second of all, there was a lot of blood. Third of all... the girls had these low cut dresses." Fond memories illuminate his face. "This one gal opens the door for him, then opens her nightgown, and says, 'Bite me.' It was pretty clear what was going on, and I thought, That's pretty hot - at least it was for a 10-year-old."
Now, a few years older, Carpenter's enthusiasm obviously lingers. And what scares the man who makes it his business to scare others? He lights a cigarette with dramatic pause and delivers the answer. "Basically, we're all scared of the same things, but there are two types of horror movies. First, imagine that we're all sitting around a campfire, and our witch-doctor is telling us about evil. 'The evil is out there,' he says, pointing beyond the range of the campfire, into the darkness. 'It's them, the other - the other tribe, the other religion, the other color - they're the dangerous ones.' That's the easiest kind of horror to deal with on the screen," the director says.
"The second type is the hardest," he continues. "The witch-doctor points to his heart and says, 'Actually, the evil is in here. It's in us. Wer'e the demons out there. Each one of us has a demon inside, and every day we get up and have to cope with it, and not let it rule us.' That is always the toughest kind f horror to deal with."
His story concluded, he stubs out the cigarette with finality. This is the Director's Cut. On the drive home, I look in the notebook I'd given the director to sign. There's an autographed picture of a vampire giving me the finger.
Trick or treat, Mr. Carpenter?
