It was John Carpenter's birthday last week and, contrary to what Rotten Tomatoes briefly told us, he is still very much alive. So ideally the thing to do would be to review one of his films - but I've already done most of the best and well-known ones. So instead let's take a look at one of his less-well-received films that I still have a soft spot for regardless - John Carpenter's Vampires.
Jack Crow is the leader of a Vatican-sponsored team of vampire slayers operating in the United States. After a successful mission in New Mexico, the team's celebrations are interrupted by Valek, a master vampire who slaughters nearly everyone there except Crow, his friend Tony Montana Montoya and Katrina, a prostitute who is slowly turning into a vampire after Valek bit her. Valek turns out to be the very first vampire, turned in the 1300s in an exorcism gone wrong, and now he's looking to complete the ritual so that he can walk in the sunlight. Can Jack, Montoya and new priest Father Guiteau stop Valek's plan and defeat him once and for all?
Vampires is very much a boys' fantasy movie, much like Predator or the Expendables movies, but with vampires. It's got a hard-as-nails lead who's got a really cool name, who wears shades and smokes all the time; he also swears all the time as well and makes plenty of dick and gay jokes, and there are absolutely no girls in his super-secret vampire hunting club unless he invites them in (and I'll cover the movie's attitude to women in a minute). At one point Jack Crow even walks away from an explosion slowly. It's a vampire-action movie as written by an eight-year-old. And there's nothing wrong with that - as well all know, movies don't have to be emotional or intellectual powerhouses to be enjoyable.
So obviously the action sequences are the high points of the movie. There's the vampire hunting/slaying scenes, which include a bit where Jack Crow shoots vampires with a large crossbow, the bolt of which is attached to a cable on a winch which pulls the vampires out into the sunlight, whereupon they go up like they're made of flash paper. Then there's the massacre at the motel, where Valek turns up and literally rips nearly everyone there to pieces. He doesn't quite rip someone's arm off and beat them to death with the soggy end, but I wouldn't have been in the least bit surprised if he had.
But splattery and kick-ass action sequences aren't enough to hide a movie's sins, and Vampires' biggest problem is with its treatment of women. Female characters get one of two roles in the film - they can be vampire cannon fodder, or they can be prostitutes, who are also cannon fodder. Apart from Katrina, of course, but as lovely as Sheryl Lee is, it's very uncomfortable to watch her being stripped naked and tied to a bed while unconscious, slapped around, tied repeatedly to the frame of a Jeep and called "bitch" and "whore" repeatedly by our alleged protagonists. Tony Montoya is by far the worst offender here, and by the end of the film the two of them apparently develop a two-way case of Stockholm Syndrome, which doesn't help matters.
The thing is, though, that this is really not much more than accidental misogyny at best. It's not that John Carpenter (who, of course, gave us one of the very first Final Girls in Laurie Strode) and John Steakley in his book Vampire$ that this movie was based on set out to write a story/make a movie that knowingly treated women like crap - it's just that in their Boy's Own Vampire-Western-Action world, there was no room for female characters (although there is a strong one in Steakley's novel) and it never dawned on them how this could actually look.
Elsewhere, the character of Valek is particularly anaemic (ironically), swanning through scenes with his Lestat haircut and his ankle-length velvet frock coat - despite Jack Crow saying at one point: "Well first of all, they're not romantic. It's not like they're a bunch of fuckin' fags hoppin' around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Euro-trash accents, all right?" and having very little presence in the film until the final act. Which is a shame, because as I said before when he's chopping and slicing in the motel massacre, it's really fun and exciting. We could have done with another scene or two of him doing that.
In the end, Vampires is a solid B-movie. Certainly not without its faults and don't watch it expecting to see any strong female characters, but it's more than enjoyable enough. Kind of like the cinematic equivalent of comfort food - one of those films you watch when you don't want to think about anything and just want to sit back and watch things and people blow up.
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