JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES

It seems Buffy isn’t the only vampire slayer in town. John Carpenter, who created HALLOWEEN and perhaps shares the title of leading horror dispenser with Wes Craven, applies his name on a profane, violent, obscenity filled blood bath set in the deep Southwest, called JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES. Unlike BLADE, which gave no recognition to the church or Christianity, this movie features the Roman Catholic Church employing James Woods as Jack Crow, the leader of a North American vampire extermination team.

When he was a child, Jack Crow’s parents were bitten by vampires. Not wanting to see them hurt anyone, Jack killed them and was raised in the Catholic Church. In modern times, he takes a scruffy team (not unlike the one found in TWISTER), and finds a “nest” of vampires in New Mexico. This movie tells us that vampires can only be killed with a wooden stake to the heart, or brought out into the sunlight where they immediately combust. After a profitable “kill” where seven vampires, or “goons,” were fried, the team celebrates in a seedy motel, called the Sun God Motel. A vengeful, vicious 600-year-old vampire named Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith) finds the team and kills all but Jack, Jack’s partner Tony Montoya (a more obscure Baldwin, Daniel Baldwin) and Katrina (Sheryl Lee), a prostitute bitten by Valek who has yet to “change over.”

Cardinal Alba (Maximillian Schell) gathers the remaining team and tells them that the European team has all been killed. Cardinal Alba says that Valek seeks the Berziers Cross, an implement of ritual that can give him and all vampires succeeding him omnipotent power to walk in the daylight. Cardinal Alba commissions a young priest named Adam (Tim Guinee), who can channel Valek’s thoughts, to join Jack, Tony and Katrina in a do-or-die crusade to find Valek and finally put him down. They trail him to an old abandoned Western town where Western gunslinging images come into play in a final confrontation of the good guys vs. the bad guys with, of course, massive bloodshed and mockery of the cross.

Cliché filled, very violent, containing many obscenities, and anti-Catholic and anti-Christian at times, this is the hardest and most wicked that John Carpenter has gotten. HALLOWEEN took horror to a new level of terror and relentless pursuit by a unmotivated stalker, but this movie seems to demonstrate 90s excesses without a heart and without creativity. Terror, suspense, intrigue, and genuine horror are replaced by excessive gore, blood and a mean spirit.

John Crow displays great animosity and anger toward the church and, at one point, even cuts a priests hands in anger. Furthermore, a high ranking Catholic official proves himself to be a traitor to the faith, seeking immortality through vampirism and not eternal life in Christ. Another priest is shown as a drunk. A single priest demonstrates love and compassion, telling John that God is with them, and seeking God’s forgiveness for betraying the church by revealing secret knowledge. Even so, this movie has a low opinion of the church. Ultimately, the vampires are destroyed by force and not by the Cross, although they do recognize the Cross as having power by perverting it in a demonic ritual seeking Satanic power. The only tenderness in this movie is a desire by Tony to save Katarina from becoming a vampire, but he fails. They both become vampires.

JOHN CAPENTER’S VAMPIRES is not the most evil of vampire movies. It’s not like some contemporary vampire movies which have completely secular heroes who totally ignore God. Blasphemously, however, this movie turns God, the church and love into weak weapons in the fight against evil. Thus, the good guys require sheer force to completely vanquish evil. With the strong performance of other horror movies at the box office, however, we shall not see the end of movies like it in the foreseeable future.