Vampires

Vampires; Horror, USA, 1998; D: John Carpenter, S: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Thomas Ian Griffith, Sheryl Lee, Maximilian Schell

Jack Crow is a Vampire slayer who has a loyal crew and financial back-up by the Vatican. They find some Vampires in a house and throw them out in the Sun where they are killed by daylight, but their leader Valek managed to hide under ground. That night the whole crew is celebrating in a nearby bar, but Valek finds them and makes a massacre. Jack and his friend Tony manage to escape and bring prostitute Katrine, who was bitten by Valek, with them. They settle in a motel and get help from a priest.Jack hates Vampires because they obsessed his parent whom he had to kill. He is surprised that Valek intends to take a balck cross in order to walk at daylight. The priest betrays Jack, but he still kills Valek. Tony becomes a Vampire himself, but Jack let's him go.

John Carpenter gained the title of 'master of horror' in the 70s and 80s, but his creativity started to deflate itself with time and that's evident in "Vampires", a slasher flick that lacks style. Unlike some of his excellent films that had a wonderfully smooth straight-forward approach, "Vampires" can't brag that they are genius just because they are violent, but just banal. Sadly, despite some traces of director Hawks, this is simply cheap trash. The cynical James Woods is the only one who brings a dose of freshness in the story (in one scene, a prostitute approaches his body and tells him he needs to "search for happiness on different places") as well as cannon ideas that the Vatican is financing the Vampire slayers, as well as an unusual ending that says something about friendship between two people even when it's over. There's gore and violence here, yet the biggest omission is the fact that Jack's crew died already somewhere at the beginning of the film - together they could have made a paraphrase of "The Magnificent 7".

Grade:+