I thought I'd post my 2004 review of Near Dark, which came in an email to JPX and JSP after I wrote the reviews at work. Since these two reviews came in one package, I'm reprinting them both.85. Lost Boys (1987) ***
My roommate has a synopsis of this movie from the TV section of Entertainment Weekly pinned to the fridge: "Vampires chase everyone named Corey."
This is the movie that immortalized the words "My own brother, a shit-sucking vampire! Wait until Mom finds out, buddy!" and planted its own flag in the ever-crowding hill of modern vampire movies. Universal movie mom Diane Weist and her two sons move in with Grandpa in the vampire-infested beach town of Santa Carla. One son gets recruited by the vamps, the other son gathers two allies and starts the fight.
This movie has some stuff going for it. There's some original applications of the age-old vampire rules. Yeah, why not fill a water pistol with holy water? That just makes sense. Keifer Sutherland pulls off a decent villain here, too, there's a good deepness to his voice I hadn't really noticed before. There are some perks on the soundtrack. Also, I absolutely love the last line of the movie. Here and there are a couple of other moments that still ring true, but what does this movie not have going for it? Quite a bit.
First of all, Lost Boys has the incredible disadvantage of being one of the definitive bastions of late 80's cool. Uh-oh. I'd hope we all know by now how I feel about the late 80's. (Love the early 80's, of course.) You've got the bizarre showcasing of Corey Haim, not knowing that the ride will ever end. Watch as preteen girls get excited about Corey...taking a bubble bath! Or looking at the sexy Rob Lowe poster on his wall (I'm not kidding, it's there). We have the antics of the other Corey and his onscreen brother -- while sometimes still funny, it turns out they get more annoying with time. And then there's the vampires, whose main recruiting promise is that you can rev your motorcycles in the dark and go "woo hoo!" and stuff. This time around I didn't find the vampires flying like Superman really to be all that interesting, and the bulk of the scares are based on those flying POV shots, so...
I don't think I realized this was directed by Joel Shumacher until this viewing, but I wasn't surprised. The sets and costumes reminded me a lot of the unfortunate set design of the back alleys of Shumacher's Gotham City. Everything is all cluttered, the vampires' lair is a fathomless collection of posters, drapes, hanging chandelier things, candles. The costumes on the hench-vamps are complicated collections of colored jackets and shirts and scarves. A lame design sense I don't miss.
It's not like this movie is unwatchable now, but so much of what made it fun feels extremely diluted. Good performances, and enough action to propel it forward, but it'll be a few years before I think about checking this out again.
87. Near Dark (1987) ****Ah, here we go. A vampire movie that came out the exact same year that still has staying power. Also director Kathryn Bigelow's best movie, in my opinion. Caleb is a young cowpunk who's got nothing to do because he lives in Oklahoma. He meets a pretty girl one night who nips him on the neck, and soon finds himself unwillingly hooked in to a roving gang of Western vampires, led by the always-eerie Lance Henriksen. Unlike Lost Boys, all the vampires in Near Dark have personalities. They've also got a nasty, dirty look to them, both from the dust of the road and the leftover soot from catching bits of sunlight.
This movie doesn't bother with any of the vampire rules except drinking blood, never dying, and avoiding sunlight. And they do some great stuff with the sunlight, like when Caleb is walking home in the sun just after getting bit and there's all this smoke coming off of him, or when Bill Paxton blows a shotgun hole through a door (and the cop outside) and then the sunlight comes through the hole and slams him across the room. Like any good western, there's a lot of gunplay.
The key to this movie is mood. The stylish direction and Tangerine Dream soundtrack never stop delivering the agoraphobia of the open West, or the nightblue strangeness of being a vampire out in the big country. So many movies will lack this completely, or flub the attempt (Shumacher's mood bits in LB involve a lot of dreamy crossfades and come off very Hallmark).
I'm a little dubious of the plot point about reversing vampirism, but I'll certainly let it go for this yummy gem of a movie.
14 comments:
1) You stole my framegrab! Thief!
2) Here's the thing: 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead (2004) change the zombie rules (to varying degrees: 28 Days Later is, technically, not even a zombie movie). But the result is that they're scarier, Everybody has acknowledged this.
But Near Dark changes the rules in a way that removes the entire essence of the vampire concept. I'm not talking about fangs, bats etc. I'm talking about what the change does to your identity, your drives and desires. My friend Barney and I had a long conversation about this recently, trying to pin down why vampires and zombies are scary. The reasons are similar (and I was cribbing heavily from Stephen King's nonfiction Danse Macabre, which is excellent). But the point is that all trust goes away...including self-trust. Both zombie stories and vampire stories employ the trick of fallen comrades returning to the game and playing for the other team, but vampire stories additionally have the element of the vampires remaining cogent and rational (and seductive as hell) but losing their allegiances instantly; their morality flips around as "the hunger" overcomes them. (Speaking of The Hunger, watch Susan Sarandon in that movie for an illustration of the phenomenon I'm discussing). Stephen King's descriptions in 'Salem's Lot are mesmerizing and terrifying, as he portrays people who've been bitten or are facing vampires directly, dealing with what's going on in their heads, and how they aren't in control of what they're doing or what they want. Dracula is filled with this, too. In both of those novels, the girlfriend gets bitten and appears outside the window immediately, begging to be let in to feast.
That's what's frightening about vampires! And Near Dark throws that all out the window. When the guy's dad and sister show up and he's all "Leave them alone; they're my family" and hugging them and etc., (two days after he was first bitten), it's like, "Wha?" He should be immediately diving on their necks, taking advantage of their sentiments! What kind of "vampire story" abandons that idea?
To be clear: I'm not saying that they're "not allowed" to change the formula. They can do whatever they want, obviously. I'm saying that the result is not frightening. It's just an action movie.
I totally stole your framegrab! It wasn't on purpose. I forgot you used it when I Googled for something good.
Holy shit! I only just noticed that they don't match. I got mine directly off the DVD; obviously somebody else did exactly the same thing and chose the same shot to lift from.
2) You're right that it gives up the scare factor, but bump the question up a notch and it's "do vampires belong in action movies?" To which I would give a resounding yes, because they can be shot without being killed. Arnold's original Terminator murderously approaching someone who is looking bewildered at their own smoking gun is preceded by countless vampires doing the same thing.
And again, at the cost of the specific horror you mention, lots of vampire stories abandon the specific horror you mention. Then they can have the goal of rescuing someone who is on their way to becoming a vampire but isn't there yet. Lost Boys and Fright Night spring to mind, as does Dracula (although that story has it both ways: Lucy turns into a full-blown night leech like those of Salem's Lot while Mina is saved). While it's informally dealt with, I think Caleb never really "enters the club" because he doesn't kill anyone. I've seen that rule applied elsewhere.
As far as I'm concerned, the vampire idea is as mutable as the Gremlins in Gremlins 2. That is, inject them with some random flask labeled DNA and see what happens.
Okay, fair enough. I was explicit about my belief that they're allowed to do whatever they want, at the risk of losing the fear factor. I think, in this movie, they lost the fear factor (since I wasn't scared).
What you might be noticing how horror movies in the late 80's started to completely lose their fright powers, with varied results. One result was a slew of slashers that are almost more action than horror, and then lots of flicks that claim horror but are in reality action (like Near Dark) or worse, comedy (like Freddy Krueger in sunglasses in 1988). For a lot of the genre, I don't think that really got fixed until after the 90's.
Maybe...but you can't talk me out of my disdain for Near Dark and its inability to scare me. I'm not going to grade on a curve!
Oh, goodness no, that was never my intent. Hate away.
Hey Catfreeek, which part of the ending did you dislike?
The transfusion ordeal, I thought it was rather ridiculous and completed the films transformation from vampire/action flick to sappy love story. Otherwise I liked the film and thought it was so much edgier than Lost Boys. I think you have to put '80's "horror" in a category all it's own since most of it is non-scary and a good portion of it is actually silly. Near Dark thankfully skipped the heavy comedy element and was a welcomed change at the time.
I just realized that this may be the first time that I've reviewed an 80s movie for Horrorthon. I repeat: "God, the Reagan era sucked."
Angel Heart was scary! 1987.
I loved Angel Heart.
The original elm street was scary!
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