John Carpenter’s Vampires
Year: | 1998 |
Production Co: | Film Office |
Director: | John Carpenter |
Writer: | Don Jakoby |
Cast: | James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Maximilian Schell |
The vampire legend is so tired on screen nowadays it's hard to offer something new, but this does in a fairly inventive way. To begin with it doesn't appear to be offering very much apart from John Carpenter's rock-music schlock panache most of the way through - Woods and his team form a team of vampire hunters that behave like jive-arse exterminators working their way through the American Midwest.
All seems well until most of team are decimated during a post-hunt party by a superpowered bloodsucker who turns out to be near the top of the vampire family tree, and is on the hunt for a trinket that can allow vampires to walk in daylight after all this time.
Then we find out Woods and his band are part of a global network of vampire hunters under the direction of the Vatican. When the local Catholic bigwig (Schell) betrays them all at the climax - having struck up a deal with the undead - you realise you've had a fairly good time with some corny characters and dialogue and nicely gruesome effects.