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Be prepared for dialogue this erudite and informed if you venture out into the night to see Vampires. Such crusty and expressive bon mots are flounced wholesale by Jack Crow, vampire killer extraordinaire, played by James Woods in one of those why-did-he-do-this film? -- oh-yeah-it-must-have-been-for-the-money performances.
A prodigy, discovered by the Catholic Church after he kills his abusive vampire dad, in adulthood Jack leads a blue-collar crew of crack vamp slayers on a mission from the Vatican. With this wonderfully absurd premise barely enunciated, it becomes clear that suspension of disbelief will be totally out of the question among relatively sane audiences. The outlandish movie falls somewhere between semi-campy and unmitigated trash. Problem is, Vampires is not so bad that it's good. It's just run-of-the-mill lousy.
When first we meet Jack and his motley band of merry exterminators, they're canvassing the American Southwest in search of the walking dead. Attacking by day, they clean out an infestation of the fanged fiends in an old farmhouse. Bones crunch, blood spurts and horribly unholy utterances accompany the utterly macabre scene. It's quite an operation, two trucks full of the latest, snazziest vampire-busting equipment and an attitude. Shooting the monsters with grappling hook-like spears launched from crossbows, they then haul the ghouls out into the sunlight via a tow-truck winch, where they instantly blaze and become, in Jack's colourful vernacular, "crispy critters."
But alas, on this particular mission the boys fail to liquidate the Master. And no wonder. He just so happens to be Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), the original bloodsucker himself. A former priest, six hundred years ago he became the template for modern vampirism, the victim of an exorcism gone awry. Now he roams the Earth looking for the black cross used in the originally botched ritual. There seems to be a little-known loophole as regards this vampiric answer to the Holy Grail; a re-enactment of the rite would allow vampires to walk by day without compunction. Yikes! We might as well just give them the Bomb.
Naturally, or rather, unnaturally, there's hell to pay that night at the victory party, a work-hard, play-hard soiree attended by the killing team, several ladies of the night courtesy of the local diocesee, and a beer-drinking priest who serves as liaison from the church. When Valek crashes the party with revenge on his degenerate mind, the payback is sheer carnage. Jack, suspicious that the counterattack was an inside job, must re-think his mission. Who tipped off Valek?
Director Carpenter, attempting to play renaissance horror mayvin, garners a dubious additional credit via a redundant, rock-staccato musical score. Betrayed by his slice-and-dice roots (Halloween), he seems inordinately fond of punctuating his blood baths with a liberal peppering of decapitations -- much more than is considered good form by vampire movie standards.
But then the script by Don Jakoby, based on the novel Vampire$ by John Steakly, pays little homage to the established vampire cinema lore. Bram Stoker's scholarly Dr. Von Helsing would be abashed by the coarse, hard-hat ethic of these techno-driven vampire killers.
James Woods' working class hero is notably unromantic and vehemently anti-intellectual in his approach. He cynically chides a rube about all the Hollywood-inspired myths; that one shouldn't expect to catch a vampire off guard in a silk-lined coffin. And that crucifixes and garlic work only in the movies -- not in the real world where, thanks be, a good stake to the heart is still the only thing a vampire understands. What's more, the demons can't morph into bats, either (What fun is that?). Are we really ready for a dumbed-down, realistic take on something that is supposed to be a supernatural fantasy in the first place?
Inane dialogue as flat and dry as the Southwestern film locations insures Vampires' B-movie status. It reminds me of those failed horror pictures played in the middle of the night on the more exploitative cable TV stations. You know, the kind of inept, laughable flick that makes you wonder, "Was this ever shown in the theatres?" One prerequisite of such ignoble fare is the perfunctorily sad appearance of a once famous actor whose star has apparently tarnished. In this case, that unfortunate honour goes to Maximillian Schell as Cardinal Alba, the Vatican emissary in charge of the anti-vampire S.W.A.T. team.
Odds are the durable James Woods will walk away from this novelty portrayal virtually unscathed, his whimsical choice of roles seen as a gutsy show of versatility. And Daniel Baldwin as Montoya, Jack's right-hand man who is smitten and bitten by a kindly prostitute-turned-vampire (Sheryl Lee) in the film's pathetic attempt at a sub-plot, is too inconsequential to be remembered. And besides, if someone ever does ask him if he was in this film, he can just say they're mistaking him for one of his brothers.
In the final analysis, this misguided effort plays less like a horror movie than a peculiar Western/action film, replete with a big showdown in the end. While several scenes are adequately gruesome, at no point will the dastardly doings launch viewers from their seats in terror. Those hoping for a more toothsome experience among the blood-sucking set will be disappointed to find Vampires surprisingly short on fright and clearly lacking in bite.
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