VAMPIRES
I got mahogany!
I'm afraid that "mahogany" is a word that's gonna be uttered a lot by my friends in the future. Hot chick walks by, "Mahogany." The lower half of the poster for I Still Know, "Mahogany". Slight breeze, "Mahogany." How long until I join in?
I've been waiting, practically salivating, for this movie for about sixteen years, ever since it was finished and started looking for a North American distributor (okay, slight exaggeration). There just ain't no justice when the French get a perfectly good American movie the better part of a year before the Americans (and thus Canadians) do. Hmph.
Big Carpenter fan that I am, I was pumped, baby, pumped! (no jokes, Doc - they're not funny when you can see 'em a mile away) I couldn't imagine anything more maddening than the constant scoops that it looks like the western release date for this one was about six months off. (I'd get that one about every few weeks)
And are my expectations met?
For the most part...yes. This movie kicks some ass, ladies and gentlemen. It doesn't just kick ass, it bends ass over and... well, use your imagination.
James Woods is wonderful in the lead role as the chief vampire slayer, chewing scenery, grumbling, snarling, almost reaching heights of hard-boiledness attained by Ted Levine in The Mangler. The supporting cast was great too - especially Thomas Ian Griffith as the chief vamp, and Sheryl Lee as a bitten hooker who turns more feral as the movie goes on (mmm...feral chick...).
There's lots of laughs (many of them from pretty raunchy/ rude moments), and lots of action, and lots of gore (even though the best gore effect was stolen from Jason Goes To Hell, and even then it was probably stolen from somewhere else). Lots of great images too, Carpenter feeling particularly inspired visually this time around.
Plot's good too, and I loved the explanation of the alpha vampire (best story of the origin of vampires I've heard), and his plans.
Here's my only three quibbles.
One, the motivation of the surprise badguy seems a little unlikely. I mean, without giving away too much, it seems to me that there's only so far along you can move in the clergy before any doubts about your faith send you packing. Then again, I'm not Catholic, so what the hell do I know?
Two, some of the raunch seems a little on the unneccessary side. I don't think it's fair that some critics of the film are harping on some issues (cliche'd movie vampires are referred to as "fags" twice, not out of character for the speakers, and given the sexually ambiguous nature of the recent crop of Rice-ian vampires, not entirely inaccurate), but some of this really does seem excessive. Montoya slugging the hooker after she chomps him is fine - but having her tied face-down (for a lovely look at her posterior, which is so round you could calibrate scientific instruments with it...sigh...) and naked for no reason other than to clean her up (?) is gratuitous.
And three, the ending. No, it's not a bad ending. It's actually quite a good ending, which leaves you thinking and entertaining possibilities, and all the moral problems therein. But it's a, dare I say, underwhelming ending. If there's one thing Carpenter excels at almost every time, it's throwing in a really killer ending. (Village Of The Damned and Memoirs Of An Invisible Man are the only Carp films that come to mind right now that didn't delight me completely with their endings) And I'd expected the kind of ending that just blows your hair back...no, this is a rather quiet ending, and it's not helped that the climactic battle between anithero and villain doesn't seem very built up to, and it's over almost before you know it.
Enough of my bitching. Go see it.
I'm just wondering when Carp's gonna do his next real, balls-out, scare-the-living-shit-out-of-you horror movie - he hasn't done one in almost four years.
Mmmm...Sheryl Lee in "feral" mode...mahogany, baby.
Mahogany.