VAMPIRES (1998)

Starring: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith, Maximilian Schell, Tim Guinee, Mark Boone Jr., Gregory Sierra. Written by Don Jakoby & Dan Mazur, based on the novel "Vampire$" by John Steakly. Directed by John Carpenter. USA.

Let me say from the start that I'm a JC fan from way back in the daze. In fact, he was a childhood hero of mine because he was one of Hollywood's few gen-u-wine autuers - a guy who not only wrote and directed his movies but composed and performed the scores as well! Talk about having the ability to get your vision across. However, I was sorely disappointed by some of his recent efforts, most notably his rather limp (not to mention totally unnecessary) 1995 remake of Village of the Damned and the long-awaited-but-ill-fated Escape from L.A. (which had to be the biggest let-down since Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. However, with Vampires I'm happy to say that Carpenter delivers his best movie in years, a blood-spattered old-school horror movie that is his best in over a decade.

The always intense James Woods gives a particularly spirited turn here as jack Crow, the leader of Team Crow - a surly gang of hard working, hard drinking vampire hunters funded by the Vatican. The wild bunch find themselves working down South in New Mexico when they make the deadly mistake of exterminating a nest of bloodsuckers belonging to Valek (Griffith), the 600 year old gawd awmighty badass of all master vampires and the original progenitor of the race. Valek pays an unexpected visit to Team Crow's victory celebration, cutting a bloody swath through the group in a horrifyingly savage display of his seemingly unstoppable powers. With most of his old homies cut to ribbons, Crow sets forth with the sole remaining member of his team, Montoya (Baldwin), a young priest (Guinee) and Katrina (Lee), a prostitute bitten by Valek, to stop the master vampire before he can find the undead equivalent of the Holy Grail - the Berziers Cross, a powerful talisman that will enable Valek and his kin to walk in the daylight, thus making them utterly invulnerable.

Be forewarned though: If you're a wishy washy PC pod person, do NOT see this movie. It'll rub you the wrong way. TRUST me. Go watch Amistad and eat some humus instead. Vampires is a red meat, domestic beer and unfiltered cigarettes kind of movie. This is a fine case of the always rebellious-minded and taboo breaking Carpenter engaging in a gleeful "Let's see who I can offend here" game with the audience, deliberately trying to fuck with the heads of an increasingly delicate and hyper-sensitive film-going population. For one thing, Sheryl Lee ("Laura Palmer" on Twin Peaks) just gets ABUSED through the entire film by puffy Daniel "I like to smoke crack and run around nekid in hotel hallways" Baldwin. He smacks her around, lashes her to a bed (giving us a nice look at the snake tattoo on the small of her back) and generally mistreats her through the course of the story (Yeah, you can tell that it's gonna be true love. ) in an orgy of total misogyny that would no doubt make Susan Faludi burst a blood vessel and cause Andrea "King Kong"  Dworkin to choke on a chicken bone.

And then there's James "Big Daddy Longstroke" Woods, a consistently awesome actor who REALLY shines here as a mean ass, foul-mouthed motherfucker of a vampire hunter. The kind of guy who has no compunctions about smackin' a ho, torturing a priest, or calling The Grandaddy of All Vampires a "pole smoking fashion victim". (As horror novelist Ed Gorman points out, one of the wonderful things about the horror genre is that the hero doesn't always have to be such a candy-ass, something that Carpenter has taken full advantage of here.) Sure, the guy may be a bit of bastard, but when vampires are crawling around your neighborhood like cockroaches he can whack the pricks like nobody's business.

Now, in the past few years the horror genre has experienced a long awaited and much needed Renaissance thanks to the Kevin Williamson scripted McHorror snooze-fests Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. But the interesting thing is that these films have been surprisingly GORE FREE. Vampires, however, is CHOCK FULL of hideous splatter effects. The scene in which Valek butchers nineteen people in a sleazy motel room, shearing heads and limbs off with his diamond-hard, razor-keen talons, is one of the most extreme scenes of balls-out visceral horror seen in an American horror movie in ages. And, thank the Dark Gods, there's not a single lame animated GIF computer generated effect to be found! Weee-doggies!

As a pure filmmaker Carpenter is up to his old tricks with those serpentine Panaglide camera movements, but he also goes for something new, using a series of slow dissolves in rapid succession to dramatic effect in certain scenes. But the one moment to die for this puppy is the sequence in which Valek and his crew of fellow master vampires come crawling out of their loamy graves, clawed fingers rising from the soil and reaching towards the burning twilight sky. It's a superbly eerie, evocative moment worthy of a true horror grandmaster like Mario Bava, James Whale... or John Carpenter.

*** Three BBQ'ed Vampire Skulls Out of Four

* Dead meat, ripe n' reeking.
** Moribund, but showing a slight flicker of life.
*** Good and healthy.
**** Brimming with vitality!