Vampires Doesn't Suck!

How much did your beloved Canadian Correspondent adore John Carpenter's Vampires? So much, that he did something he hasn't done since the mid-80s. He sat through it twice. In a row.

Granted, anyone who knows me in my corporeal form will probably groan. I admit it, I think John Carpenter is a genius (Editor X has to agree with you there, Maxx). I love his work. ALL of it. I raised more than a few eyebrows when I championed the impending release of Escape From LA like it was the new Star Wars prequel. I probably lost friends waxing romantically over Village Of The Damned like Dustin Hoffman cried over Tootsie on the AFI special. For me, cinema is defined by a 2.35:1 Panavision frame and a throbbing electronic score.

But trust me, folks, Vampires IS John Carpenter's best film since They Live. Does it rank with Carpenter's enduring classics? Ask me again in ten years. But for now, to those of you who've read the title and think that the Halloween auteur has "sold out" to Anne Rice/Buffy mania, think again. Carpenter's film is an unlikely mixture of Hammer and Sam Peckinpah that combusts marvelously. One moment, we're thrilling to massive firepower and chuckling at obscene quips, the next, we're being treated to the undead crawling out of the earth in the best onscreen presentation of that classic image since John Gilling's Plague Of The Zombies.

Vampire slayer Jack Crow is the most bitter, cruel, misanthropic S.O.B. that Carpenter's ever put on film. Forget Snake Plissken, John Nada, Napoleon Wilson (well, don't! They're great characters, but...)-Crow treats his Vatican-sponsored teammates as badly as he regards his undead prey. I'm hard pressed to remember when I last saw a character this rotten in the "hero" role of a mainstream movie. Some women's groups won't be too happy with Crow's extremely physical and verbal abuse of hooker Katrina , played by Sheryl Lee (once the girl is bitten by the vampire master, Crow refuses to regard her as human). And the Catholic League Of Decency, now that they've finally calmed down after The Last Temptation Of Christ, will have a field day with this one: Vampires has so little respect for the church and its rituals that it'll make even Ken Russell's jaw drop open in amazement.

Woods is pure joy as Crow. He's one of those rare actors who has basically forged his entire career playing himself, even when he was a voice for Disney cartoon! But unlike other superstars who repeatedly play "themselves"-Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson - Woods has a persona that's full of contradictions. Alternately charming (True Believer), roguish (Videodrome), and utterly terrifying (The Onion Field), Woods can survive a bonafide debacle like The Specialist only because he always seems to be operating one or two levels above the material, even when the material is good.

And Vampires is good. Carpenter has substantially rewritten Dan Jakoby's boneheaded adaptation of the novel Vampire$ by John Steakly, and surprisingly, receives no co-authorship credit (who can figure out those WGA arbitrations?). Taking what was essentially a dumb, overlong "A-Team Fights Vampires" potboiler, Carpenter has streamlined the material, and like best of his idols Howard Hawks and John Ford, delivers a lean, mean, straightforward action yarn with a complex main character. Killing off virtually all of "Team Crow" in the first act, Carpenter focuses Vampires on Crow's personal vendetta. Crow doesn't seem to like people at all, so one wonders why he devotes his life to saving them. At one point, slayer Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) states that the team is certain of the existence of God, and yet Crow is indifferent to his existence, even spiteful. We do find out that Crow's parents were killed by vampires: his father was bitten, killed his wife, and then came for his son. "I killed my own father, Padre. What makes you think I won't kill you?" Crow warns wholesome Father Adam Guiteau (Tim Guinee).

It's in this relationship between outlaw Crow and holy man Adam that Vampires feels most like a Western, or at the very least, Assault On Precinct 13 revisited (you'll see what I mean in the final shot). Adam quickly learns that doing the Big Man's work sometimes requires its fair share of shotgun shells and bloodshed (he takes to staking a female vampire like Kate Hepburn takes to riding the rapids in The African Queen).

On the technical side, what did you expect? Carpenter's widescreen compositions, roving camera, and expert staging are immaculate (Carpenter has compared using the aspect ratio to painting, and if so, this man is bloody Rembrandt!). KNB's always-stunning illusions are focused mostly on dismemberment and vampire disposal, since the undead baddies in Vampires are subtley realized. Like Christopher Lee and his Hammer brood, the goons in this film, esp. Griffith as "Valeck", are frightening for their nimble, graceful savagery, and not because of the amount of glop on their faces.

I can't end this review without mentioning the music: Playing as part of The Texas Toad Lickers, Carpenter builds on the bluesy motifs of They Live, and the rock n' roll power chords of In The Mouth Of Madness, and delivers his most ambitious score to date (aided by none other than blues legends (and Blues Brothers alumni) Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunne). Accompanying the opening New Mexican vistas and James Woods' haunted face, the Cooder-esque riffs will seduce you immediately.

A rare opportunity to see a genuine artist working at the top of his form. See it once, then see it again. Buy the soundtrack CD. Make this one a hit, TapeHeads, I implore you. We need more movies like this.

- Maxx Renn