Vampires (film)
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| Vampires |
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| Directed by | John Carpenter |
| Produced by | Sandy King |
| Written by | Novel: John Steakley Screenplay: Don Jakoby |
| Starring | James Woods Daniel Baldwin Sheryl Lee Thomas Ian Griffith Maximilian Schell |
| Music by | John Carpenter |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures |
| Release date(s) | April 15, 1998 |
| Running time | 108 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20,000,000 (est.) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Vampires (also known as John Carpenter's Vampires) is an action / horror film directed by John Carpenter in 1998. Adapted loosely from the novel Vampire$ by John Steakley, the film stars James Woods as Jack Crow, leader of a Catholic Church-sanctioned team of vampire hunters. The plot is centered on Crow's efforts to prevent a centuries-old cross from falling into the hands of Valek, a master vampire. Vampires also stars Daniel Baldwin (as Montoya), Sheryl Lee (as Katrina), Thomas Ian Griffith (as Valek), Tim Guinee (as Father Adam Guiteau) and Maximilian Schell (as Cardinal Alba). Vampires is characterized by its strong Western overtures and allusions and its unapologetically masculine leads. Two sequels direct to video followed : Vampires: Los Muertos and "Vampires : The Turning" in 2002 and 2005.
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[edit] Plot
The film starts off with the two vampire hunters Jack Crow (James Woods) and his partner Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) in the middle of New Mexico, United States staring at an old abandoned farmhouse. Montoya asks him what he thinks of the place whilst Crow is glaring at it through his binoculars. Crow replies by giving him a coarse answer and soon after that they both go to the van and release the rest of the slayers. They then put on their equipment such as stakes and crosses etc. and quietly enter the eerie farmhouse. For about the next two minutes nothing happens and the farmhouse seems to be empty until a female vampire flies and pounces on one of the hunters.
Desperately trying to get her off he does eventually manage to do so and the rest of the men shoot her, she then collapses on the floor. She then raises her head with dark dead blood pouring out of her mouth.
As Crow is about to shoot her, another vampire (this time a male) comes through the roof from the second floor and starts to have a fight with the rest of the slayers, all the slayers fail to restrain him until Crow shoots him in the chest with his gun and then stabs him in the heart with a stake killing him.
The hours pass and they kill all the vampires by sliding them on the floor into the sunlight. All the other men cheer as they feel they have done a good days work but Crow is perplexed as well as worried that the master vampire wasn't there.
Time passes again and now night has fallen, the time when it is only safe for vampires to go outside and feed. The slayers stay at a motel in the middle of a desert, getting drunk, smoking and courting with women as they celebrate their victory. Many of the women are prostitutes including Katrina (Sheryl Lee). Then to the slayers oblivion the master vampire, Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), turns up at the motel, bites Katrina and massacres the slayers except for Crow and Montoya who just manage to escape with their lives. As they run outside they grab Katrina and take a pickup truck and drive off as fast as the engine can carry it. As the truck travels at high speed driving through a desert road in the middle of nowhere, Valek catches up with them, jumps on the back of the truck and smashes his fist through the back window.
As things seems to turn out from bad to worse for desperate humans, Montoya reaches his revolver and shoots Valek in the forehead sending him flying. After that dawn begins to appear and Valek flies off to prevent himself from burning to a crisp.
They keep on driving for a few more hours until daylight fully arises when suddenly out of nowhere they spot a broken down car in the middle of the road blocking their path. Due to panic Montoya swerves the wheel and they go spinning down a hillside. Coming out of the pickup dazed and slightly confused, they grab Katrina once again and start walking along the roadside in the blistering sun hoping to pick up a ride. Later they come to a gas station waiting for a random automobile to come by, when one does Montoya threatens the driver with his pistol and they steal the car. They then drive back to the motel to where they were staying and after one big argument Crow stays at the site, while Montoya takes Katrina to the nearest hotel. Crow stabs all the corpses of his fellow slayers in the hearts of the victims with a wooden stake and beheads them. This will prevent them from turning into vampires. Crow then burns the motel with a can of gasoline and matches and drives off about half a mile away from the burning building where he buries the heads of the corpses, Crow is not taking any chances. Meanwhile at the hotel as Montoya is watching the news on the television and smoking a cigarette, Katrina starts to have telepathic links with Valek.
[edit] Production
Shortly after finishing work on Escape from L.A., John Carpenter was thinking about quitting filmmaking because as he said, “it stopped being fun.”[1] Largo Entertainment approached him with a project called Vampires, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Steakley. They gave him two screenplays – one by Don Jakoby and the other by Dan Mazur. Carpenter read them both and the novel and saw the potential for a film he’d been interested in making. “I went into my office and thought, ‘It’s going to be set in the American southwest and it’s a western – Howard Hawks.’”[1] Vampires gave Carpenter the chance to do a western disguised as a horror film. He said, “the story is set up like a western. It’s about killers for hire. They’re a western cliche. In this movie they’re paid to kill vampires.”[2] In terms of tone and look, Carpenter felt that his film was “a little more like The Wild Bunch than Hawks in its style, but the feelings and the whole ending scene is a kind of replay on Red River.”[1]
He wrote his own screenplay taking elements from the Jakoby and Mazur scripts, the book and some of his own ideas. For this film, Carpenter wanted to get away from the stereotype of gothic vampires as he said in an interview, “My vampires are savage creatures. There isn’t a second of brooding loneliness in their existence. They’re too busy ripping and tearing humans apart.”[3]
Carpenter cast James Woods as Jack Crow because he wanted “the vampire slayer to be as savage as the prey he’s after. James Woods is the kind of guy you’d believe could and would chew off the leg of a vampire.”[3] Woods was interested in doing the film because it was something different for him. Contrary to his reputation, Carpenter didn’t find the actor difficult to work with because “we had a deal. He would give me one take as it’s written and I would let him improvise...Many of his improvisations were brilliant. When I needed him to be more focused and disciplined, I had the take from the script that was straighter.”[1]
Carpenter had not seen any of Daniel Baldwin’s work and had the actor read for him. He had seen Sheryl Lee on Twin Peaks and cast her based on her work on the show. Carpenter’s wife and the film’s producer Sandy King cast Thomas Ian Griffith because she and the director wanted “someone who looks formidable, but is also alluring. There always has to be something alluring about the evil nature of the vampire.”[3]
The MPAA took issue with the film’s over-the-top violence, threatening to give it an NC-17 rating unless some of the gore was cut. King said, “We satisfied the ratings board by just cutting short of a few things that went into really gruesome stuff.”[2]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Ferrante, Anthony C. "Carpenter King", Dreamwatch, November 1997. Retrieved on April 3, 2007.
- ^ a b Hunt, Dennis. "Carpenter Goes for the Throat in Vampires", San Diego Union-Tribune, October 25, 1998. Retrieved on April 3, 2007.
- ^ a b c Hobson, Louis B. "Biting into Love of Fear", Calgary Sun, October 25, 1998. Retrieved on April 3, 2007.
[edit] Trivia
Director Frank Darabont makes a cameo as a truck driver who chases after his stolen vehicle that's carjacked by Montoya.
[edit] External links
Feature films: Dark Star • Assault on Precinct 13 • Halloween • The Fog • Escape from New York • John Carpenter's The Thing • Christine • Starman • Big Trouble in Little China • Prince of Darkness • They Live • Memoirs of an Invisible Man • In the Mouth of Madness • John Carpenter's Village of the Damned • Escape from L.A. • Vampires • Ghosts of Mars • Psychopath
Made for television: Someone's Watching Me • Elvis • Body Bags • John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns • John Carpenter's Pro-Life
