John Carpenter is clearly the topper filmmaker in the horror genre. With films like Halloween, The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness, I looked to Vampires with great anticipation. Alas, this film was not what I hoped for merely it’s sure enough better than Village of the Blessed and Escape From L.A. The biggest disappointment is that it’s not scary. Many of Carpenter’s best films evoke a sense of doom, whereas this movie is more of a light-hearted runaway with some stunning special effects.
In Vampires, James River Woods plays Jack Cut across, a really edgy vampire killer wHO is hired by the Catholic christian church to kill the number 1 original lamia Valek, a priest off vampire played by Seth Thomas Ian Griffith. Woods is assisted by Daniel James Baldwin and a group of partying lamia hunters.
Carpenter tries to have sport with the story in the same way Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did with From Nightfall Till Dawn. It would have been nice if Carpenter made a scarey movie rather of a light-hearted one. Still, this film has enough to recommend, including strong performances from D. W. Griffith and Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks). They play their roles straight instead of for laughs. I tail only hope that the next fourth dimension Carpenter sets out to make some other horror film, he sticks to what he does best–scaring the hell prohibited of me!