A Retrospective of Vampires in the Movies, Part 2

There seems to have been a movement in the late 80s for bringing back the classic vampire character in a thriller or serious scary movie. By this I mean the suave, sophisticated leader with power or authority, and whom all the other creatures of the night take their orders from. His power was sometimes shown in a business or a big house. Like Chris Sarandon in Fright Night, the "head vampire" in The Lost Boys (1987), or Lance Henriksen in Near Dark (1987). These guys tend to be calmer and more at ease than the others they hang with, but that only makes them seem more powerful, and they cana be very dangerous and violent when they are ready to strike.

Now, Near Dark is a movie I never knew existed before until recently. Director and co-writer Kathryn Bigelow cast three actors (Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein) who also appeared together in the previous year's Aliens, which was directed by her future husband (now ex-husband) James Cameron. The movie takes place in present-day Oklahoma and is kind of a reinterpretation of the western and vampire genres. The plot involves an everyman, played by Adrian Pasdar (TV's "Heroes"), who gets mixed up with an outlaw gang of vampires after he himself is bitten by a innocent-looking femme fatale in the film's romantic first 10 minutes. He starts to experience the change and is rescued by her and her friends before he is exposed to too much sunlight. The rest of the film shows him not wanting to kill, but still needing blood to live, and the gang becoming impatient with this. They intend to kill him themselves if he does not embrace his new way of life and start acting like they do in attitude and bloodthirsty actions. The film is easy to nitpick - for one thing the gang makes some dumb decisions and gets in too many life-threatening situations for having survived as long as they have as vampires. But Bigelow does a fine job creating an atmosphere and tone of uneasiness, with help from a synthy score composed by Tangerine Dream.

The 90s would also bring a shift from comedy into action-based vampire movies, but the shift was gradual, beginning before the 80s ended, notably with The Lost Boys (1987), Directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Richard Donner. This film, which was marketed towards teens was equal parts drama, horror, action, and dark comedy. It took place in a seedy coastal town where a mother (Diane Weist) and her two sons move in with her eccentric father after a divorce. They've heard talk of the town having a high rate of violent crime, but what they don't know is that much of this can be attributed to a motorcycle gang of young-looking male vampires led by David (Kiefer Sutherland).

The Lost Boys is one of the quintessential mainstream 80s teen-horror movies. It's got an ensemble cast with star power with Weist (taking a break from Woody Allen films to be in this), the two Coreys (Haim and Feldman) and Sutherland - who had a recognizable family name but was still in the very early part of his career. This was a breakout role for him. Schumacher, an inconsistent director who put together arguably one of his better films, would cast Sutherland again in Flatliners two years later. It's been said that The Lost Boys is like a mash-up of The Goonies and Near Dark. The older brother Michael (Jason Patric) gets tricked into drinking a vampire's blood and becoming a half-vampire. He is also smitten with another half-vampire played by Jami Gertz. (This was the second time Patric and Gertz were paired opposite each other after the previous year's Solarbabies.) In Goonies fashion, the young kids band together to save the day. Haim and his new vampire-hunter friends, "the Frog brothers," get ready to go to the gang's hideout and drive stakes through thier hearts while they sleep. The movie is complete with a getting ready montage as they buy and prepare all their weapons and holy water for their battle with the undead.

The Lost Boys also sports some memorable signature songs in the soundtrack including "Cry Little Sister (Theme From The Lost Boys)" performed by Gerard "G Tom Mac" McMahon,  Echo and the Bunnymen's cover of The Doors classic tune "People Are Strange," and "I Still Believe" as performed in the movie by buff, oily, shirtless singer/saxophonist Timothy Capello.

The Lost Boy's spawned two direct to DVD sequels (with poor reviews) starring a grown-up Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander, reprising their roles as the Frog brothers. Haim also appeared in the first of the sequels, The Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008).

 "Cry Little Sister (Theme From The Lost Boys)"

"People Are Strange"

"I Still Believe" (performance scene from The Lost Boys)

1992's Buffy the Vampire Slayer was at its surface a teen comedy, but it had an edge of gothic, dare I say erotic horror. It still stayed pretty tame. Just when it was starting to get somewhere in that direction, the tone would change back with a joke or jump-scare. While the slayer-destiny plot of the title character, played by the perky Kristy Swanson, was interesting and fresh, the villains never seemed all that formidable. I mean, Rutger Hauer as the main villain pranced about playing the violin until he had to bite or fight. And his sidekick was Paul Rubens- kind of funny, but not scary at all. The screenwriter, Joss Whedon, didn't like that the tone of the film turned out as light and comedic as it was, so he went off and created a successful TV-series of the same name that was much more serious and only darkly comedic. Because of that, the film is largely forgotten, but I consider it a guilty pleasure.

I recently caught Cronos (1993) which is available in a Criterion edition and was on Netflix Instant streaming at the time I watched it. This is a character driven, slow-burn surreal thriller that takes place in Mexico and is in Spanish. For its unique tone, it kind of seems out of place in the early 90s, but it's from a filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who would reach notoriety in the 2000s decade with Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth.

The story involves an antique shop owner and his granddaughter, who find a clockwork beetle inside a statuette. An alchemist centuries ago had hidden it there as a talisman containing a secret to eternal life - an ageless insect with the ability to turn a person into a vampire. A reclusive and sick old wealthy man is seeking the statuette, but is having no luck. His grumbling assistant, played with some humor by the great Ron Perlman, is sent out daily to locate and retrieve the statuette and talisman. Soon he is pursuing the antique store owner instead, when he finds out that he has the cronos talisman- and is becoming a vampire.

In Cronos, like in many vampire movies, when someone is becoming a vampire, they need to ingest human blood or they will waste away and die, like a starvation sickness. Their body will slowly decay and their skin will flake off. Jesus gets bitten by the Cronos by accident, but the antagonist wants what he has attained. The film has its slow parts, but del Toro makes it visually interesting with strong characters and some humor. I found it to have a satisfying climax and ending.


Along with Coppola's Dracula film and Cronos, the early 90s also brought us the Anne Rice book adaptation Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, directed by Neil Jordan, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas. Christian Slater plays the interviewer, who is not given much background. Apparently Pitt's character, Louis, who was turned into a vampire by Cruise's character, Lestat, has a deep need to tell his life story. The film plays on the idea of vampires being immortal and therefore sometimes very old, but in bodies that remain the way they looked at the time they were turned. Cruise's character Lestat is 200 years old, and 10-year old Kirsten Dunst turned in a fine performance as a vampire who remained physically a child and is treated as a daughter to Lestat and Louis.

 I found the movie very engaging after a slow first act, and the acting was top-notch. Cruise as Lestat loves being a vampire and doing what comes naturally with snark and dark humor. Pitt's Louis is more serious and brooding, He never fully embraces the murder that would satisfy his hunger, because of its immorality (see also the main characters in Near Dark and Thirst). It was tonally uneven, perhaps reflecting the different dispositions of the two main characters. The score also seemed wrong for the scenes at times. Anne Rice adapted her own novel into the film's screenplay, and I am left to wonder if it could have been better if another writer had changed some things for the film medium (like fleshing out Slater's character). Interview with the Vampire spawned a disappointing sequel in 2002, Queen of the Damned.

Remember when Eddie Murphy's career started to go downhill? Yeah, that was also around the time the public decided that a stake should be driven through the heart of the vampire-comedy sub-genre. For further proof, this is the same year as the release of Mel Brooks's Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), which currently has a rating of 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. I remember seeing Murphy's Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) back then and wondering how in the world Wes Craven thought this mix-up of horror, comedy, and romance would ever work. Probably the low point of Craven's career as a director- he would do Scream as a follow-up. He was a director for hire. He had nothing to do with the writing or producing. That was mainly Eddie's doing.

Now a movie that was mix-up in a more successful way was From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), directed by Robert Rodriguez from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino. This movie is best known for being two movies of different genres in one; split at the midway point with nary a clue in the first half about the shift it takes in the second half. If you read the DVD box or read any synopsis of the film this will be given away so nothing is really going to be spoiled if I discuss it here. But I wish I had somehow never heard of this movie and caught it by accident on television. The chances of that ever happening these days is pretty slim.

So, the basic idea is this: The first half is like a Quentin Tarantino film about a couple of outlaws on the run (George Clooney in his first post-ER film role, and Tarantino himself). They kidnap some innocent folks on the way including ex-priest played by Harvey Keitel, and his daughter, played by Juliette Lewis. It is very dialogue and character driven as they drive the kidnapped family's RV to meet up with an old friend at a seedy bar/night club across the border. So what happens when they're settled at the bar watching Salma Hayek do her exotic dance number? I'll give you a hint- it involves half the people in the bar shapeshifting into demon-like vampires, attacking and feeding on the rest of the people (mostly truckers, lured there by the place's word-of-mouth marketing). This is the more Robert Rodriguez-like half of the movie. There is obviously true danger for the main characters, but the evil vampires are the smiling and laughing type, prompting the good guys (the outlaws and kidnapped now on the same side) to make jokes themselves while running and screaming. For those of you who like tough guy character actors, this movie also features Tom Savini, Fred Williamson, John Saxon, and Danny Trejo. Cheech Marin also shows up as three different characters.

The horror-comedy Vamp (1986) had a plot similar to the second half of From Dusk Till Dawn, but instead of a night club in Mexico, this one follows a couple of fraternity pledges into the city looking for an exotic dancer to hire to come to the fraternity house to prove themselves. They find a sleazy strip club that they think will fit the bill, but they learn too late that most of it's staff are vampires. When vampires find out that the visitors know their secret, they make it their mission to keep them from leaving town alive. Vamp stars Robert Rusler (Weird Science), Chris Makepeace (Meatballs), and Gedde Watanabe, as the college kids, along with Dedee Pfeiffer, and Grace Jones as the head vampire, Katrina. Vamp is a cheesy B-movie, but it doesn't take itself too seriously, which made it worth the watch.

To be continued...