Vampire film has bite
Carpenter has Rice for dinner
By John Powell
It's about bloody time. Someone - namely director John Carpenter - has finally driven a stake through the heart of Anne Rice's detrimental rule of the vampire horror genre. A reign of absolute terror that saw sissy blood-suckers speak in exquisite sonnets as they walked the planet like self-absorbed fashion models in search of a runway.
Her hard-hearted Lestat reduced to a bowl of quivering J-e-l-l-o because Louis won't return his undying love and creampuff Louis chowing down on small critters because he can't bring his widdle self to take a human life.
Oh, please. Rice's vampires have more in common with vapid Harlequin Romance hunks than vile creatures of the night.
Premiering approximately a month before it's nationwide release on the closing night of Toronto's FantAsia Film Festival, Carpenter's take on John Steakley's novel VAMPIRE$ has a mean streak through it a mile wide. It's as irritable as a rattlesnake. As pissed off as a foaming mutt left out in the summer sun for far too long. Starry-eyed Victorian-esque horror this is not.
You know you're in for a bumpy ride when even the reputed hero of the piece - vampire slayer Jack Crow - is a bad-tempered son of a bitch. Snake Plissken is a Girl Scout compared to this guy. Crow's actions in the film are sure to offend some.
Played with ultra-coolness by the stone-faced James Woods, Crow will stop at nothing... and I mean nothing... to defeat the vampire master Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith). This includes kicking the crap out of a Roman Catholic priest who is part of his high-tech vampire hunting team. The priest won't reveal some important information so Crow stuffs a towel in his mouth and slices padre's hand with a hunting knife. I can see those frivolous picket lines forming as we speak.
The Catholic Church takes it in the shorts. In the film, they are responsible for creating the very first bloodsucker, Valek. As penance, the Vatican funds Crow's team and other clean-up crews to quietly tidy up their mess by staking, burning and beheading the undead bloodsuckers. All the blood-letting is shown in brilliant Technicolor. You gotta like that.
On such a murderous mission things go very wrong for Crow and crew. Someone close to the operation has turned traitor. Also hampering the search for Valek is Katrina (Sheryl Lee - TWIN PEAKS' Laura Palmer), a prostitute with the noxious vampire virus (AIDS symbolism?) coursing through her veins.
Vampires has all the off-the-wall humor of the EVIL DEAD flicks toned down a notch and the grit of Kathryn Bigalow's classic NEAR DARK. It's a feast for the famished splatter movie aficionado... that's if the meddling censors don't take a chainsaw to it. Heads roll. Blood spurts. Bodies spontaneously combust.
The scene stealer is Valek slicing a victim from crotch to head and the body splitting in two spilling the guts and gore.
VAMPIRES ain't for the squeamish so you best leave Grandma Walton and Aunt Bea at home.
An anorexic plot kept afloat by bawdy dialogue and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA-like action, VAMPIRES doesn't dig any new graves as far as the cinematic bloodsucker mythos go. Been there. Seen that. But, we're having too much of a good time to find fault with it.
