Review #65: John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)

Cast/Notable Credits:
John Carpenter (Director): Halloween

James Woods (Jack Crow): Cats Eye (1985), Scary Movie 2 (2001), Shark T.V. series

Daniel Baldwin (Anthony): Vegas Vampires (2003), Paparazzi (2004)

Sheryl Lee (Katrina): Twin Peaks T.V. series (pictured right)

Maximilian Schell (Cardinal Alba): The Black Hole (1979), Deep Impact (1998)

Tim Guinee (Father Adam): Blade (1998), Iron Man (2008)

Danielle Burgio (Female Vampire): House of the Dead 2 (2005), Summer of Sam (1999)

Mark Boone Junior(Catlin): 30 Days of Night

Trailer:
(Sorry couldn't find an embedded one to put on here):

Trailer Link:

To be honest, I'm not really a big fan of John Carpenter's projects after the year...1986. Sure I like the original Halloween and earlier 80's movies but have found little enthusiasm from his newer projects.

With all that said, I dug his take on vampires. I really enjoyed this movie. It had plenty of deaths...a horror movie must. In fact I stopped counting the number of them. I guess there were too many to count. Kind of like a zombie movie. Not that I'm complaining about it.

On to the movie...John Carpenter's Vampires is a movie about the Catholic church employing vampire bounty hunters...or slayers...(I'll go with bounty hunters because Buffy is the only vampire slayer) to hunt the pointy teeth beast into extinction. Yes, you heard me right, the Catholic church. Now you may ask yourself why would the "church" want vampires dead. I'll let you take a second to catch your breath.

Ready?

Are you sure?

...they accidentally created the "first" vampire during an exorcism gone wrong hundreds of years earlier, so they need to correct their mistake by ridding the world of their faults. To do this, they employ a secret society of vampire bounty hunters to hunt down and kill vampires and their masters. Of course to make things interesting they run across the "original" vampire master who is searching for a black cross (named the Berziers Cross) so he can cross the day/night barrier and rule the world.

Yep. The Catholic church invented the first vampire. Who knew? Certainly not me. I'm Catholic and I don't remember any stories of vampires during church. I remember them talking about a guy rising from the dead three days after being crucifixed on a cross. But I'm pretty sure that it was that Jesus guy. Not a vampire. I guess every vampire story needs some type of back story, this one just involves the church into it. So let's blame the Catholics for vampires. Why not? We blame them for everything else.

Any ways, James Woods and Daniel Baldwin leads a platoon of vampire hunters...oh my God, ANOTHER Baldwin. How many of them are there?

Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Possibly....billions?

No, just four at least of the Baldwin brothers. Right. No, really there are four of them. Let me break it down for you:

1. Alec Baldwin: the man who only plays one character, Alec Baldwin. The dude from 30 Rock. And many, many, many other movies I'm not going to type. A.k.a.- the successful one.

2. Daniel Baldwin: The Vampire hunter. The one in this movie. The one responsible for this rant. The one in a lot of B-grade movies. A.k.a.- the "B-movie" Baldwin.

3. William Baldwin: "Hey, I'm a Baldwin brother, give me a job!" In the movies Sliver, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Backdraft. A.k.a.- the Alec's younger, less talented older brother of less talented Stephen

4. Stephen Baldwin: Barney Rubble from the 2nd Flintstones movie. The jack-a** starring opposite of Pauly Shore in Bio-dome. Forgive me lord, I have sinned. I mentioned the movie Bio-dome. Also in The Usual Suspects. A.k.a.- the youngest, less talented brother.

5. Joseph Baldwin: The Cousin of the "Fab Four".

6. Adam Baldwin: NOT RELATED!!! He's got talent. Don't confuse him with the others! The cool mother f*cker from Firefly/Serenity, Chuck, and Angel T.V. series.

Back to the story...James Woods and B-movie Baldwin leads a platoon of vampire hunters tracking down and killing vampires across the states for the good of man kind. And to cover up the "church's mistake".

They stumble across a vampire nest during the day time and slaughter all of it's inhabitants and then go to a motel later that night, hire a bunch of hookers and get drunk celebrating their day's work. Hey, sounds like a job I need. Benefits are good. Where do I sign up?

Little do they know, a vampire master (powerful one who leads his gang of vampires) was sleeping in the ground a few yards from the now destroyed nest, has come to act out his revenge on the platoon while they get drunk and laid.

The vampire master, named Valek, starts off by turning a hot looking blonde hooker, Katrina, into a vampire. Katrina is played by the lovely Sheryl Lee. Twin Peak fans may remember her as the "dead girl" the series was based off of.

Valek gets his vampire-lovin' on with her and then turns Hooker Fest 98' into a blood bath, wiping out everyone but Woods and B-movie Baldwin. They narrowly escape with Katrina in tow. Woods, the expert vampire hunter he is, knows that Katrina has just been bitten, but has not completely turned into a vampire yet. Because of her recent change of lifestyles, she shares a telepathic link with Valek for the next five days. Woods wants to keep her, because she can see what Valek sees, and he wants to track Valek down for killing his mates, yada, yada, yada.

After the great escape, Woods meets with his Catholic Cardinal boss, and gets assigned a new padre to look over him. Woods also learns that Valek is the "original vampire" from the church's botched exorcism, and then proceeds to use Katrina to track him down through her "psychic link" the rest of the movie.

Valek is on his own mission as he has found the hidden location of the Berziers Cross, and wants to possess it so he can cross the day/night barrier and eventually rule the world with his day-walking vampires. While B-movie Baldwin falls in love with Katrina.

To start off, my expectations of this movie were not that high due to some of the recent past experiences with John Carpenter movies. But I did like this one. James Woods had a great role, and his cocky, smart ass dialogue won me over. B-movie Baldwin did alright as he had puppy dog eyes for Katrina all movie. I had them too.

John Carpenter wrote a cool funky horror-western theme music for the film. Just like he wrote his own music to Halloween. I dug the music. The film came through with some brief booby shots, but could have used some more hot chicks to fill the screen. But I give it props for having Hooker Fest 98' to celebrate a wiping of a vampire's nest.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on October 30, 1998 and made $20.2 million at the box office ($9.1 opening weekend)
-Dolph Lundgren was originally going to star in the film, but didn't. What!? No Dolph?